> was immaculately conceived, walked on water, turned water into wine, all things that you and I know are inconsistent with reality.
All those things are completely consistent with reality. Every year there are virgin births[0] (not immaculate conceptions[1], which is a term specific to the birth of the Virgin Mary herself), water turning into wine[2], and people walking on water[3].
I think what you mean is, the specific details of those miracles, as described in the Bible, have not been observed since, and they would have required a succession of extremely improbable quantum events. No one disagrees with the notion that those events were scientifically unlikely, but unlikely events are still consistent with reality.
You're right. People forget things like: Jesus' disciples witnessed his miracles and wrote about them, other nonbiblical scholars wrote about Jesus and his miracles, there was recorded evidence to his death, there were witnesses to his ascension, 11 of the 12 apostles died for believing that Jesus was God (the 12th was Peter, marooned on Patmos, also for believing Jesus was God)
None of those things are true. The earliest known manuscripts of any biblical text post-dates Jesus by 300 years. There are no eyewitness accounts in existence. Non-biblical scholars did not write about Jesus and the only mentions that we have of his existence are from someone who was shown to forge documents (Josephus) and Roman documents using general terms that refer to a criminal as "someone claiming to be the Messiah" rather than a specific person who was making those claims. We have no evidence that any of the apostles actually existed or died for believing anything.
> The earliest known manuscripts of any biblical text post-dates Jesus by 300 years.
It's easy to make bold statements, but that definitely doesn't match what most historians, Christian and secular, claim. (And I believe several of your other claims have been largely discredited, even by secular historians.)
Bart Ehrman, a New Testament historian who is well known for his critical eye on this stuff (he was a Christian but later became an atheist), dates the NT books between 50 and 120 AD, and from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament, the latest date scholars give is 150 AD. Other scholars date the NT books from between 70 and 90 AD.
The 300 AD date you're referring to may be when the New Testament was approved as "canon" by the church. Again from that Wikipedia article:
> The earliest known complete list of the 27 books is found in a letter written by Athanasius, a 4th-century bishop of Alexandria, dated to 367 AD. The 27-book New Testament was first formally canonized during the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) in North Africa.
> By the time of Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165 AD) and Irenaeus (ca. 130-202 AD) we find extensive quotations from New Testament books; while the First Letter of Clement, addressed to the church in Corinth, quotes Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.
>Bart Ehrman, a New Testament historian who is well known for his critical eye on this stuff
He is not known for any such thing. Ehrman's claims are all on the historical chain of evidence for the books, not whether the books are true accounts. I'm very familiar with his work. In fact, in his book "How Jesus Became God", he suggests that there's no evidence at all, historically speaking, that Jesus ever even claimed to be the Son of God or anything supernatural and that, if he did exist, he was just a preacher. Jesus was not mentioned by any of his contemporaries or the Romans at all and they kept excellent documentation of official events of their empire.
Either way, by your own admission, there were no eyewitnesses. If the books are dated 120 years after the birth of Jesus, then the people that wrote them were not around when those events occurred.
Also, your evidence is simply showing that the books existed. It doesn't prove or support the idea that the events in them were true. Your argument here is akin to saying that Ghostbusters is a true story because it takes place in NYC and that's a real city that exists now.
Quoting a book as evidence that the book is true is tautological.
> Quoting a book as evidence that the book is true is tautological.
I wasn't arguing that the books were true. I do believe that, but you'll note my reply above simply tries to show that your bold claim that "the earliest known manuscripts of any biblical text post-dates Jesus by 300 years" is widely discredited.
I didn't "admit there were no eyewitnesses" at all -- my response wasn't related to that. Overall it seems like your reply had very little to do with my response above?
Yes, you did admit that there were no eyewitnesses. You stated:
>Other scholars date the NT books from between 70 and 90 AD.
Jesus lived to be 35 years old. Even if you take the most supportive version of this statement, the earliest NT book was written over 35 years after Jesus' supposed death and there's no evidence to support the idea that they were written between those dates. Even the Wikipedia link that you sent says that there's no evidence for it:
>The New Oxford Annotated Bible states, "Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus's life and teaching."
I'm not a Christian, but it is a fallacy to assume that the only way to arrive at truth is through controlled repeatable experiments. Watch this lecture to get a more nuanced view on the subject: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM
Or gamblers, or entrepreneurs. I don't know why you'd single out schizophrenics. Well, actually I do know why, but I still don't think it's a reasonable example for you to highlight.
It's a totally different level. Believing a shitty product will make a successful entry on the market does require some level of self-delusion, but nothing like believing a cluster of extremely low probability hypothesis about the world. The closest comparison to that, again, is a schizophrenic.
He isn't predicting the future, he is reflecting on the past. Is it likely that all of those unlikely events will happen to the next person born? Definitely not.
Is it possible that they happened to one of the billions of people who lived? Yes. Even more so if that person happens to be God incarnate who created the universe.
In fact, the chances of these highly unlikely events actually goes up if you consider the person claimed to be God and did miracles to demonstrate his divinity - highly unlikely events is the exact thing you would expect from someone proving to be God
> highly unlikely events is the exact thing you would expect from someone proving to be God
That's circular reasoning. "I believe a extremely low probability event because that's what we should expect from the entity I believe in". If I go with that, I can create any weird belief.
All those things are completely consistent with reality. Every year there are virgin births[0] (not immaculate conceptions[1], which is a term specific to the birth of the Virgin Mary herself), water turning into wine[2], and people walking on water[3].
I think what you mean is, the specific details of those miracles, as described in the Bible, have not been observed since, and they would have required a succession of extremely improbable quantum events. No one disagrees with the notion that those events were scientifically unlikely, but unlikely events are still consistent with reality.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowshoe