re: Powerful image from today's attack

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No, they don't. A+B does not equal two.

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I already explained how the testimonies of the writers lend credence to the supernatural things events they wrote about. I gave an example of testimony in a court case being used as evidence for or against a person accused of a crime. It's why lawyers are always trying to discredit the witness so that their testimony doesn't hold much weight. The same things happens all the time with the Bible where people are always trying to argue that it isn't true so that they don't have to believe its contents.

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Well, except all those times it doesn't.

You also seem to assume that one of them has to be correct.

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I believe the worldview proffered by the Bible accurately describes the world as it is observed. My statement doesn't lend itself to "times when it doesn't", unless you are talking about something different than what I'm talking about.

I also am not assuming that one of them has to be right, but that the Bible is right and thus the others have to be wrong due to the law of non-contradiction. Since the Bible's view agrees with what I observe in life (or what I observe agrees with the Bible), I believe that is an evidence that it is true.

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But no evidence

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It seems that you are talking in circles now. You said, "evidence needs to support the correctness of your claim." and then seem to agree that I'm providing support for the correctness for my claim but then say I need to provide evidence. One of us appears to be getting confused as to the definition of "evidence".

I used witness testimony as an example of evidence in a court setting and then applied that to the testimony of the writers of the Bible as evidence. You reject the testimony of the writers as evidence in spite of the fact that witness testimony is considered evidence in a court setting. Testimony can be considered direct evidence or circumstantial, but you can't deny that it is evidence just because you don't like what it points to.

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I'm not dead-set on anything. That's an ignorant assumption made because I don't buy into the things you bought into.

I'd settle for one piece of evidence. Just one.

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That you keep asking for evidence after I've provided it shows that you are either confused as to what evidence is or you are so deadest against it that you can't accept it for what it is.

Looks like she has a tooth ache and is checking google maps for the nearest dentist. To her dismay she realizes England doesn't have dentists. The Horror, the horror, the horror.

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testimony that has been confirmed as being truthful where it can be proven one way or the other.

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You've provided no such proof.

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Are you getting paid for every time you say you don't care about what I believe?

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No, but as long as you use what you believe to make points, I'll continue to remind you.

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people are free to provide their opinions, beliefs, and views

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Have I ever stated otherwise?

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facts

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Here's your hangup.

I also didn't use "support" as a noun. Might want to check again.

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Luke

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Written a century later...

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I have provided evidences.

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You've provided none.

I don't need you to care.

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You've provided no such proof.

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No proof of what? Reliable testimony? Would you like me to post one of those badly-made websites that lists out all the archaeological confirmations of Biblical stories and events?

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No, but as long as you use what you believe to make points, I'll continue to remind you.

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That's going to be a waste of energy on your part, I think. If you haven't noticed, I use a lot of words and make a lot of points. If you're going to ignore most of what I say in favor of pointing out the "I believe's" then it's going to look petty. Perhaps you don't care, but there are a lot of things you can respond to aide from the obvious.

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Have I ever stated otherwise?

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Not that I'm aware of. However your insistence on ensuring every statement that professes belief is qualified as such seems to suggest that those things are acceptable in a discussion with you.

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Here's your hangup.

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Not a hangup at all. I believe the Bible describes facts. I believe it is a fact that there is a God, there is sin, and there is a need for salvation through the death of Jesus. I believe all of the miracles are based in fact and not made up to tell some story to make people feel good about themselves. The only problem is that those facts cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to every person because they are based on eyewitness testimony that may be credible but it is insufficient to convince every single person of its validity. Thus, faith is necessary to accept those facts as facts rather than fables.

Something being a fact and something being proven as fact (beyond doubt) are two different things.

I wore brown shoes yesterday. That is a fact. However, because I didn't take pictures of that, I can't prove it to you beyond a doubt, so you'll just have to take my word for it or the word of someone else who witnessed it.

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I also didn't use "support" as a noun. Might want to check again.

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Noun or verb doesn't really matter to your argument because they are used the same way. In the example I quoted, you said the evidence needs to support the correctness of my claim. In this case, "support" means give weight to, hold up, buttress, and other synonyms. What you are saying is that my claims need to be substantiated, which means I need to provide evidence for them, which, again, is why I think you are being circular. Providing evidence for my claim supports my claim by definition because evidence is used to support a claim; evidence = support, which is the opposite of what you said.

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Written a century later...

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Not quite. Nothing was written about the destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) in any of the gospels or the epistles. Such a significant event (that was prophesied by Jesus in the gospels, themselves) would have been included, especially in the book of Acts (also written by Luke) had that happened before the texts were originally written. Luke, especially, would have had interest in detailing the destruction in Acts as the book was essentially a history of the early church after the resurrection of Christ. Assuming the writings are accurate (I believe they are), there is evidence to suggest that the gospel according to Luke was written at most in the 50's AD, or about 20 years after Jesus' death and resurrection.

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You've provided none.

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I'm done arguing this point. I provided evidence and if you don't want to accept it, that's fine, but going around in circles is pointless.

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Testimony that has been confirmed as truthful. Post anything you like. There's nothing you can provide that will prove the correctness of the claims.

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OK. Shishak’s Invasion of Judah described in 1 Kings 14 and 2 Chronicles 12 in the Old Testament. Hieroglyphs have been found in Thebes that commemorates this event.

One instance from the New Testament was Luke's comment about Jews being expelled from Rome (Acts 18) by order of Claudius Caesar. Roman Historian Suetonius recorded this exact event in his historical narrative.

Like I said several times previously, truth about one claim doesn't mean truth about all claims, but a good track record of truth in the things that can be confirmed lends more credence to the claims that can't be confirmed.

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It isn't that much energy and I'm happy to continue pointing it out. Using a lot of words doesn't give your beliefs any more meaning.

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Do as you wish then but I think it's useless to continue doing it as it adds nothing to the discussion. To each their own, I suppose.

My point about using a lot of words was not to say that they mean more, but that I have a lot of material for you to comment on or refute yet you seem to ignore most of that and focus on the trite usage of the word "believe", adding nothing of substance to the discussion. You'll do as you wish, but you are obviously not stupid and have a lot to say. I think it'd be more fruitful to say more about consequential things and leave the petty things alone.

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That's your issue.

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One reason why I use a lot of words is to help clarify what I mean to reduce the amount of misunderstanding in a conversation. Since you aren't being very clear at all, the best I can do is infer meaning from what you are saying based on the context in which you are saying it. That's natural in dialogue, so if you think that is a problem, perhaps you should flesh out your statements a little more to add clarity.

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Do you think this helps you?

If someone a century from now writes down that you wore black shoes yesterday, and in 2000 years people believe that you wore black shoes yesterday, did you wear black shoes yesterday?

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Yes, I believe it helps me because the value of the statement doesn't lie in the statement itself but in the credibility of the person making the statement, which has been my point all along. My testimony is more valuable than a person who I told about the color of my shoes and that person's testimony is more valuable than some stranger who happened to see me pass by on the street who doesn't recall clearly what color were my shoes.

In your example, no, someone writing that my shoes were black nor people believing that they were black makes them black, but the author would need to first be deemed reliable in order to determine the truthfulness of the statement about my shoes. Who wrote that they were black? Me? My mother? Or someone who passed by me on the street one day? Did the person writing about the color of my shoes have a good record of being truthful about details such as ones shoe color? Those are questions that must be asked by people 2,000 years from now wondering about the color of my shoes. Those are the types of questions people should be asking about the Bible.

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I don't really need to teach you grammar, do I?

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No, you don't. I understand grammar very well, actually. There isn't a grammatical explanation you could provide that would explain away the usage of the words "support" and "evidence" within the context of the discussion where you used them. If you want to try to explain it, I'm curious what you are thinking.

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Some say it was up to two centuries before the text was finalized. I don't need that long. Believe it if you like, but I see no reason to do so.

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The reason it matters is because (as I said previously) historians are confident in writings that our first copy of was over 1,000 years after it was written, yet people dismiss the authenticity of texts we have 20 to 30 years after the originals were penned. The dead sea scrolls are another good example of the care given to and the preservation of the writings of the word of God.

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You were already done. Posting your beliefs and interpretations is not evidence, and I won't accept it as evidence

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You don't have to accept anything on a public message board but I already said that my personal beliefs weren't evidence in themselves. The evidence I provide for the reliability of historical references within the Bible have been independently verified, which lends credence to the reliability of the books as a whole.

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And like I said several times previously, the easiest way to convince someone to believe a myth is to mix in some truth.

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I understand that concept, but how would you differentiate truth from lie in the Bible, then?

Here's the crux of the issue with the Bible: it makes claims about the natural world and the supernatural world. The claims about the natural world may be verifiable, depending on whether or not there is physical evidence or independent testimony preserved that corroborates the claims being made.

The supernatural claims cannot be necessarily be verified through physical evidence as they are, by definition, not bound by the natural and material world and they do not necessarily have effects that can be scientifically measured and reproduced. Therefore, the only evidence we can hope to use for verification of supernatural claims is personal, eyewitness testimony.

The eyewitness testimony that the Bible claims to have must have its reliability tested by the consistency of its claims of natural history as well as its consistency in topics of the supernatural, meaning it cannot be false where falsehood can be determined and it cannot be contradicting in what it says, or else the trust in the testimony is considerably diminished. In the end, testimony must still be taken on faith, but there must be a foundation of truth that the testimony is based on which makes faith in said testimony reasonable.

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There's a reason for that. Your beliefs are not valuable to the discussion. I understand that you believe what you believe. I have no desire to change that, but I won't accept your beliefs as points in the discussion.

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You are making a subjective determination of value and then proposing your own belief to minimize mine. My beliefs have no value to you but they may actually have value to someone else who might be reading the discussion. The foundation of a message board is sharing of ideas and opinions. Belief is foundational to ideas and opinions so belief has a place in this exchange. You have your own beliefs with undergird your comments. You probably think those beliefs are pretty valuable to any discussions you have as you couldn't care any opinions of your own without beliefs.

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I disagree. I think I'm being very clear and direct. If I thought you couldn't share your opinions, I'd say so, or more likely wouldn't even respond to you

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Perhaps I'm just not understanding you clearly and the issue is on my side, but your short statements lack detail and thus are construed as being unclear by myself.

If you think my beliefs aren't acceptable in a discussion like this then you might as well say I can't share my opinions. You have already said they are unacceptable, which I can only conclude you believe that they have no place here and should be withdrawn from conversation.

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Who cares. The author, their past, their credibility, etc doesn't make the shoes you wore yesterday blue.

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It matters greatly when trying to determine whether or not the author was telling the truth and should be believed. While it's possible that a credible witness who gives perfectly accurate (and verified) evidence in all other facets of their testimony can
then tell a lie about a particular detail, how can you know for sure? Perhaps you can't, which is where faith comes in. You can either believe the witness or not. The accuracy of their other statements only provides weight of credibility when faith and trust are necessary.

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Cool, then we agree my usage of support and evidence were correct.

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You said support =/= evidence. Within the context of the discussion, the usage of "support" for an argument and "evidence" for an argument are the same, exact thing. If you want to argue about how the words could mean different things in different contexts, that's fine, but within the context of this discussion, support = evidence.

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It only matters if you want it to matter. You believe what confirms your views.

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Not necessarily. My own beliefs have been refined greatly over time as I learn more and understand better what I thought I already knew. Regardless, you responded to my statement starting with "the reason it matters".

My statement was objective, not subjective, as the distance from the original to the copy certainly does matter (objectively) to historians who want to be confident that they know the content of the original. The thought is that the further away a copy is from its original, the greater likelihood for edits and errors to creep in, altering the message we observe in the copy from the message in the original.

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You've provided none for your larger point. A small number of accuracies in the Bible aren't meaningful

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My larger point is that the Bible has been proven to be generally reliable in what it teaches, at least in terms of history that can be confirmed. If it can be trusted on the small things, there is greater weight of trustworthiness to what it teaches on things that cannot be verified.

Aside from historical confirmation, I also stated that the philosophical and moral concepts taught in the Bible (mainly the moral law of God) align with what we see in the world today. While it may seem insignificant to you, being able to identify today with a worldview that is thousands of years old, even with the improvements in technology and knowledge transfer, adds some veracity to its claims. As much as people want to claim that the Bible is "outdated", it really isn't.

The moral issues it speaks to are alive and well in modern society, and the human condition is the same today as it was when it was described in the Bible. Therefore, the worldview it proclaims makes sense of the world around us, if not proving it's truthfulness absolutely, at least it proves a better guide than those religions and philosophies that don't adequately describe the world.

Every now and then I skip to the end of a thread just to realize I walked into a shitstorm of something I don't care about.

Carry on.