We're talking about two different things. Christianity is not true because many people adhere to it. You are right about that. I'm not arguing that at all.

The validity of a text that is reporting about a man and the years following his death is definitely enhanced when numerous people write accounts that are in agreement. Does that make sense?

The validity of a report is more probable should many independent writers report with agreeing accuracy. The validity of a movement or belief-system is no more or less probable due to the amount of its followers/practicioners.

As Indiana Jones put it, Archeology is the search for Facts, not Truths. If you want Truths. The philosophy class is down the hall. Truths are what we perceive them to be. Facts just are.

As far as History... History is written by the dominate factions (usually the winners, but they can lose like the US in Vietnam). If the crusades had benn rejected more severly and the middle east become the dominate faction, then Christianity would be viewed as this evil religion that believed in butchering any one who didn't follow their ways. After all, that was the end result of the crusades. Likewise, had Hitler succeeded in taking Europe (not attacking Russia until Europe was secure) and Japan not over-reached and pissed off the US, then Hitler might have been written into the history books as the Great Cleanser of the "Christ Killers" or some such crap.

bartdogg42, I have a question for you: Who do you believe in - God, the Bible, or the Catholic Church?
As you're a man of faith(?) I think I don't need to explain why these 3 are different?

The key is the independence of the writers. (as well as the quality of the information - such as how much is based on hear-say). Four gospel versions does not prove the correctness of the account... If these were indeed eyewitness accounts, all it proves is that there were four people willing to assert essentially the same account. Joseph Smith also had four witnesses to his miraculous angelic visitations - it certainly didn't prove that it was a correct story. You said "The validity of a movement or belief-system is no more or less probable due to the amount of its followers/practicioners." I couldn't agree more. The gospels were written by followers/practitioners and thus are immediately suspect in regards to their objectivity and thus their truth.

ivo - I think you already know that I allegedly have stabbed previously in one or possibly two games. But I've repented - I never stab now :P

Seriously though, this is a game, not a real life situation. The rules of the game specifically state that any agreements that are made are non-binding.

Jacob - of course, I was joking. I'll keep in mind the disclaimers about the stabbing in light of our current game :)
But you can address the question I gave to bartdog maybe?

I believe in God, and that He has revealed himself to man in written form, that being the Bible. The Catholic Church question is a much larger one, that I suppose I can address if you wish. But i must ask, why do you assert they are different? Is it the obvious, or are you getting at something else?

Draugnar I've already talked about this. See above. In short, the early church were in no way the "winners", nor were they the "dominant faction". Besides, this line of approaching historical information gathering is just dangerous anyway. Would you consider Israel to have been "winners" or "dominant" EVER? Yet we have tons of historical information about them.

Dexter the difference is Joseph Smith and his followers had much to gain in their acconts. The writers of the New Testament had nothing to gain, in fact, I've argued they had only things to lose, including their lives. They had no reason to fabricate lies and conceive a plot, because there was nothing in it for them. Additionally, who writes stories in which the writers themselves appear as aloof and ridiculous as the disciples? Not only did they have nothing to gain, but they clearly portrayed themselves as dumbfounded bumbling idiots!

I think the writing of the NT is drastically different in that it's difficult to pen a clear motive toward the in-objectivity of the writers. They had no reason to lie!

"But i must ask, why do you assert they are different?"
Ok, let's take out the Church then. As for the Bible - do you believe it represents in full all there is about Jesus/God?

I am simply asking whether you think something man-made can be treated as absolute and holy - a representation of God if you like.
If the answer is NO then you have to admit that everything you've read (Bible and other sources) and been told (Church) might not be true?

ivo - I haven't been paying quite as much attention to this thread today - which question did you want me to address?

And I refuse to accept that Jesus told his followers:
"You'll tell my story and when, in a couple hundred years, some other people in some distant lands put it down in writing you'll all go brain-dead.
Whatever you learn about the world from then on you'll ignore. Whatever you invent/discover you'll pretend it does not exist. You'll stop evolving and learning."

Which is my problem with the Bible and Religions :)

Oh definitely Ivo, I would admit they might not be true.

The Bible, I believe, is truth, about God, men, etc, but it is not exhaustive truth. It does not say, for example, that when my son cries I need to feed him, or that grass is green because of whatever, or many other things. I believe it is unfailing and authoritative on everything it speaks, but it is not exhaustive.

So, to answer your latest post, we have no need to go brain-dead! We can learn, grow, develop etc because we can learn many other things outside of the Bible about any number of things. But, these things cannot contradict, and will not so we needn't worry about it, things in the Bible.

bartdogg, you state that the writers of the NT had nothing to gain... I'm not doubting their sincerity. The world is full of writings where the writers believed what they wrote and wrote it even though they realized that it put their lives in jeopardy - or at least held them up for possible ridicule. Examples: Socrates - who ended up drinking hemlock for his "crime" of speaking against the authorities, Galileo was imprisoned for his writings, many victims of the Inquisition died for their beliefs - or lack of beliefs, Thomas Paine and the rest of the founding fathers of the United States risked death for their writings and beliefs, Joseph Smith was imprisoned and shot and killed for his writings, etc., etc. The fact that members of the early Catholic Church risked much for their beliefs is remarkable - but not unique by any means - and not proof of their beliefs being based on fact.

i fully agree with bart in that the NT writers that were accepted as canon had nothing to gain in this life on earth other than abuse, hate and everything that goes with it.

i saw earlier that someone proposed that the gospels according to phillip and other (gnostic) gospels were thrown out because of ridiculous reasons but i would add the following:

the reason that these other gospels (that we call gnostic gospels such as the gospel of thomas, phillip, mary, etc) were easily discredited for the following reasons:
1) they are not eyewitness accounts. they were not even written by the people whos names bear the title. they were written over 1 century after the death of Christ and most even later than that. the latest book in our bible that was written is Revelation which was written about 96 a.d. (b.c.e.) whereas the earliest of the gnostics wasnt written until halfway thru the following century.

secondly, the writers of these gnostics listed things that didnt line up with the eyewitness accounts (now keep in mind that neither luke nor mark were disciples of Christ but were alive when Christ was around, and also remember that luke investigated these testimonies for himself.).
next, in many other of these documents (including texts from the apocrypha, new world translations and mormon bibles) have listed locations that we still havent found archaeologically even though nearly every location found within the Bible itself has been unearthed!

additionally, science as we know it continues to back up the Bible. consider the following things we "know" about science:

1) we assume evolution and as evidence of our assumption, we include the changes from lizard to snake. we look at how the snake has hip bones where legs apparently used to be. well Genesis covers this in the fall of man when the serpent was cursed by God that it would crawl on its belly and lick the dust of the earth from that point forward (lending to the idea that snakes originally DID have legs).

2) we further use the example that we evolve because of the evidence of human appendixes. today they are useless and science says that if we "evolved" it would have been from monkeys whos primary source of food would have been vegetation. again, i defer to Genesis. in Genesis, we recall that in the beginning God placed Adam into the garden of Eden to cultivate the soil. seed was given to him as his source of food as well as for the animals. thus in the beginning, we needed the appendix to help produce the necessary amino acids that our bodies couldnt get otherwise. humans werent even given permission to eat animals as a source of food until after the flood over 1000 years later.

3) the story of a man being swallowed by a big fish was considered utter fantasy until in the 19th century, it happened to a traveler who was actually swallowed whole by a whale and accidentally discovered by whale hunters who cut the whale open and saw the stomach moving. the man survived but his hair was totally burned off and the pigmentation of his skin was all but destroyed.

4) concerning dinosaurs, there are riverbeds that contain both human and dinosaur footprints that appear to have been walking side-by-side. we also dont fully know what the effects of a world-wide flood would do to life. i do find it strange that we attempt to say that the oil came from fossilized dinosaurs because it takes tremendous pressure and the body must be sealed very quickly to prevent air getting to it to produce oil. this kind of activity would be very appropriate when we examine it under the context of a world-wide deluge. we dont find the amount of fossilization like that today because nearly all of it is consumed by scavengers, bacteria, decomposition, etc.

thus, theres even more truths when we study the amazing sciences about the flood, the accounts of the exodus and many other areas where evidence continually turns up.

Christianity isnt an ignorant religion but God will use things as he sees fit to confound the "wisdom" of the world.

as Christians we are called to adhere to Biblical teaching. secular scientists disregard this notion that it has any scientific bearing because secular science must assume that God does not exist.

also, for Jacob:

translate the following transliteration :)
ego eimi he hodos kai he alethia kai he zoe

looks like "I am the way and the truth and the life =)"

well, minus the smiley anyway...

Tru Ninja, the fact that certain stories in the bible happen to coincide with Science (e.g. snakes from lizards) is certainly cool... consider, however, that if snakes have hipbones that this is something that someone even in biblical times could easily observe... it's a credit to some unknown person's observation... call it an early scientific hypothesis. Their subsequent speculation as to why snakes lost their legs, however, is just that - speculation. Obviously there are certain other stories in the bible that have been directly falsified by scientific evidence (e.g. the age of the earth and the universe). Such is the nature of knowledge - we explain the world the best we can until better data allows us to refine or overturn our current view. The dinosaur/human footprint story, by the way, has been thoroughly debunked.

Science is silent on the existence of God. Science hypothesizes/tests/theorizes on issues where there is physical evidence or a testable principle. God cannot be tested... just as parallel universes or the existence of something before the big bang (or the non-existence) cannot be tested. Science deals with the how... not the why.

@truninja - "as Christians we are called to adhere to Biblical teaching. secular scientists disregard this notion that it has any scientific bearing because secular science must assume that God does not exist"

TruNinja - I guess by saying "Secular science" that does kind of throw out God when dealing with scientific matters, but it's not accurate to say that scientists must assume that God doesn't exist. In fact I would say that the % of scientists who believe in God is roughly the same as the % of any given population as a whole - and always has been. Many scientists believed that they are trying to figure out God's design. It's when their discoveries hit an apparent contradiction with the bible, that the church leaders have an issue. Galileo ran into this, as did Darwin (who was actually considering a life in the clergy prior to his trip on the Beagle). But most scientists deal with issues not mentioned in the bible and are therefore not part of any direct contradiction.

Newton, for example - once everyone accepted that the planets did revolve around the sun, non of his work was controversial to the bible. He just described Gravity and static and dynamic forces better than any of his predicessors - if Gravity is God's work, then he's just trying to figure it out.

The people who were investigating radioactivity weren't doing anything controversial with respect to the bible, and were therefor not scrutinised. But when that research was applied to geology and paleantology and archeaology in a tool that proved remarkebly accurate in dating artifacts and fossils and rocks, all of a sudden the interpretation that the Earth is Billions - not thousands - of years old does contradict some interpretations of the bible - and when astonomers and earth scientists alike conclude that a commet or meteor hit the planet some 65 million years ago likely wiping out the dinosaurs - which all of the seperate dating techniques agreed died out 10s of millions of years prior to anything resembling a human fossil was ever found, then that throws another wrench into the inerrancy of the bible.

But that has nothing to do with all of those scientists, building off all of the work done before them having to assume that god doesn't exist. THey're all just doing their work in their own labs and putting evidence with theories to either support or disprove them and if they disprove them, coming up with new theories or modifications to existing ones. On a mico scale with only a few notable exceptions (Galileo and Darwin, for instance) the contradiction between science and the bible (not religion, or belief in God) becomes clear.

So what do you do? If you're a religious scientist, you have to come to the conclusion that the bible was the best attempt at the time to explain God's position and explanations for a people who would not understand things in terms of how we know them today. But that God is allowing, and indeed encouraging you to continue your process of discovery into his universe and it's complexities.

That is how the religious scientists that I know view their mission in life.

If you're not a religious scientist, you don't have to worry about the fact that the Jewish bible says your science cant be right for these 6 reasons and the Muslim bible says you can't be right for these 4 reasons and the Hindu bible says .... and so on. You just keep exploring and testing and investigating.

Only the religious fundamentalist HAS to start off with assumptions. And that assumption isn't even that God exists - but that the God of the OT is the one and only God, AND that the OT is in fact the LITERAL inerrant word of God, and that anything that contradicts it, can not be correct and then you have to figure out why.

Notice, it's only the OT that have all of the science contraditions, by the way. Excluding the miracles, because it plainly says that they were one-time miracles, after all. Science would never try to disprove that Jesus walked on water or that he turned water into wine, because they don't need to. It's not science. It's a miracle. But when you screw up the order in which things are now know to have been created, science is going to say - "actually, it didn't happen like that according to our observations and our knowlege of how the forces of the universe act". Call it a traditional creation story of the near East if you want to, but we're not changing our theories to mach one chapter of a book written 5000 years ago. That just doesn't make sense.

"On a mico scale with only a few notable exceptions (Galileo and Darwin, for instance) the contradiction between science and the bible (not religion, or belief in God) becomes clear."

I must have gotten sidetracked in the middle of that thought. I meant to say:
On a micro scale with only a few notable exceptions (Galileo and Darwin, for instance) an individual scientist's work has no relevance to anything written oin the bible. It's only when you look at the macro - the combination and application of many scientists' work, that the contradiction between science and the bible (not religion, or belief in God) becomes clear.

I would add that this seeming "contradiction" is not that at all with regards to the inereancy of the bible for many scientists also. A dilemma, to be sure, but no contradiction.

Francis Collins (worked on the human genome project) in "The Language of God" would say that Genesis deals more with the questions of who and why than with questions of how and when. His belief in the Bible's inerrancy is intact.

And I've argued in other posts that Darwin's theory of evolution is upheld by many in the Christian community. Not all born-again Christians are 6-day creationists. Collins is a great example.

I don't see how people within the Christian community uphold evolution.

The idea that God created everything via evolution is not consistent with the Bible.

However, I think there is definitely room for a difference of opinion between young-earth and old-earth creation within the Christin community.

@Jacob - Do you believe that micro-evolution is possible? That is that one species can evolve into another. Because we've seen that actually occur in labs, using artificial selection, rather than natural selection to speed the process up. This makes possible for all modern cat species to have a common "proto-cat" ancestor.

This is one hybrid that I have heard even young-earth Creationists consider. This not only solves the problem that we can actually see evolution in the lab , but it also solves some of the truly outlandinsh claims regarding Noah's Ark. If Noah only had to cary a "proto-dog" and a "proto-cat" instead of hyennas, foxes, bobcats, wolves, tigers, lions, leopards, mountain lions, etc. this clears up a lot of room on the Ark and makes the story at least possible, logistically.

One proponent of this is Ken Hamm. His website is www.answersingenesis.org and I have spent countless hours on it because he gives the best defense I've seen to a literal translation of the bible. He is a hard-core young-earth Creationist, but he also understands science and the scientific method and which sciences have WAY too much evidence to try to discredit in order to hold to his beliefs.

And he is ok with the species level evolution - but not the Order-level. So he would not agree that cats and dogs had a common ancestor at some point farther back in time, or certainly that humans shared a common ancestor with any other primates.

Here's the specific link to his "poodles" article but check out the rest of the website anyone who does believe in a literal translation of the bible - he will give you very strong reasons to continue to do so.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v25/i4/poodles.asp

For those who dont believe that (like me) it will at least open your eyes a little to how smart the Creationists are. They aren't a bunch of hillbillies from the south, as they are often portrayed to be by the likes of Bill Maher.

In fact Ken Hamm is an Australian and went to Queensland Institute of Technology. Smart guy.

Micro-evolution can be proven and shown in wirtten history, heck it has happened in our life times. So if micro-evolution is valid, why not macro-evolution? Also, some Christians (myself included) differentiate between the OT and the NT. The NT is a record of what happened: Christ's life, ministry, death and resurrection, and a record of what is to come in Revelations. Genesis is a series of stories (much like the parables Christ used to illustrate various principles) written to provide meaning to mankind at a time when the true compexities of the universe would have been as gibberish to us. Eden and Adam and Eve didn't actually exist. The flood was a localized flood. Until we reach Abraham, we are dealing in stories to provide a reason for our existance beyond "because" and to provide morals for living in early civilization with one another. Jonah and the great fish? A morality tale about obeying the supreme being. Cain and Abel? A morality tale meant to keep us from randomly killing each other. Even much of the stories of Abraham are intended to provide a moral/civil basis for living together in peace. It isn't until Moses that we start getting into the more historical aspects of the OT, covering the last 3500 years or so. And even some of those tales are less than reliably accurate. But that is where the "hero" of the tale starts to have real flaws and we get to know him. So it is either better prose or a more accurate portrayal of what was happening at the time. I guess you could say I'm an OT Minimalist.

But Jesus came to give us a new commandment and to teach us a better way than they Old Testament ways of Judaism. So those stories are a nice start to civilization, but the New Testament is what we should live by and what is the real Word of God.

I was writing the same concepts, philcore, while you were. Great minds think alike!

Jacob, I'd refer you to Collins' book "The Language of God", or even just google it and read a bit about it. He is nowhere near alone on the Christian front for Theistic Evolution. Joan Roughgarden [Stanford], Kenneth Miller [Brown University] and Alister Mcgrath [Oxford] are others you could look up. This is a belief that is given no credence in the Christian community and I think, shamefully. Check it out.

and to this, Jacob: "The idea that God created everything via evolution is not consistent with the Bible" I would ask, why?

Did draugnar not just present a compelling argument?

I'm a believer in the inerrancy of the Bible as well, but lets be careful that we don't hold everyone to that standard. Inerrancy is, afterall, a very new argument. You'd be throwing everyone at Fuller theological Seminary out with the trash to assume "true" Christians cannot hold a view of the Bible in which it is not inerrant.

@Draugnar - "I was writing the same concepts, philcore, while you were. Great minds think alike!"

Yes but the greater mind thinks it 11 minutes ealier ;-)

LOL! Actually, we were 1 minute apart and that's only cause you read it 11 minutes earlier :-)

oops, we were 11 minutes apart. Ok, you must have read it 22 minutes earlier <hehehe>

yikes - if a Christian can't believe that the Bible is inerrant then what do you have left to believe?

Honestly though, I start to get tired of apologetics, it's really not my favorite thing. I'd much rather talk about the gospel than talk about evolution.