Hacker News Reader

> 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.

[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

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.

See also the first answer here: https://www.quora.com/Was-the-first-gospel-written-300-years... and https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/how-new-testament-w... which notes that:

> 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 was raised to believe the same propaganda.

It's not true.

Sure, but can any of those things be replicated in a controlled experiment?

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

> Parthenogenetic offspring in species that use either the XY or the X0 sex-determination system have two X chromosomes and are female.

From this we can infer that Jesus had two X chromosomes, and was therefore a trans man.

> but unlikely events are still consistent with reality

We name people who overly act on this premisse as schizophrenics.

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.

>Even more so if that person happens to be God incarnate who created the universe.

Allegedly. No evidence to support this claim exists.

Yall are getting it backwards:

I believe Jesus was God because he claimed to be God. Also, the "unlikely events" (aka miracles) don't disprove he existed and was God.

Other people have claimed to be God, too. They were either lying or were crazy. Jesus was neither.

I recommend watching this to broaden your views: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM

> When a religious person says they "believe" something, it means they operate as if it were true even though they have no evidence to indicate it as such (a.k.a. the god of the gaps).

In practice religious (or spiritual) people are a rather diverse bunch and it's not all that helpful to paint with too broad of a brush.

I will point out that in at least Christian theology, "faith" and "trust" are basically synonyms. In the original Greek of the New Testament, it's literally the same word.

In that sense, making choices based on trust in God or making decisions based on trust in science are really fairly similar. And quite often they're not contradictory either.

For example, both science and scriptures say worrying is bad for you, so someone can try to minimize worry based on faith in science and faith in scripture simultaneously.

I'll also point out that a lot of the "scientific" objections to religions boil down to metaphysical disagreements about the nature of observation of the nature of a (notional, at least) deity. I put "scientific" in scare quotes because science itself only makes sense given some assumptions, like the axiom that it's reasonable to assume things do not exist until it's definitely proven they do. That's a valid opinion, but it's not scientific as such. Another common assumption is that a creator and a fossil record (for instance) are somehow incompatible. As if a creator can create the cosmos but a fossil record is a bit much somehow.

Anyway, I think folks would find each other more thoughtful and reasonable if they'd take some time to listen more. There are lots of misconceptions in all directions in these discussions.

> When a religious person says they "believe" something, it means they operate as if it were true even though they have no evidence to indicate it as such (a.k.a. the god of the gaps).

That is not true. As I pointed out, belief in the unseen, with evidence, is very different from believing without evidence.

Check out this lecture for a more detailed and nuanced explanation[1]. It details some of the inherent limitations of science.

[1] https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM

Yet your opinion falls in the same criteria on limitations of the language you're confining it to. "believe in science" can mean what you said, i.e "it means all evidence gathered so far indicates that it is true, but if more data comes in and a different conclusion is drawn, then the belief should be abandoned"; however, it was also exemplified during COVID as "You're not allowed to question it no matter what merit you have, no matter how logical and methodical your perspective is and regardless of the content of your argument; science is untouchable". The latter is absolutely a religion, but worse, it is a religion that's masquerading as real science, the former, dictating public policy. Far more dangerous and destructive than your run of the mill religion/faith.

>"You're not allowed to question it no matter what merit you have, no matter how logical and methodical your perspective is and regardless of the content of your argument; science is untouchable"

Is this what happened, though? Outside of the politicization of COVID, the majority of the conversation that was anywhere near this was more simply "if you are going to question the people who are providing evidence, you must provide evidence to the contrary". It wasn't that science was untouchable and the change in guidance proves that not only was that not the case but it was shown that science was not untouchable and regularly changed with new information so long as that information was backed by evidence.

Absolutely, here is Stanford Prof that was cancelled. All of his viewpoints were grounded in science, but he was skeptical and simply raising the concerns such as "There is no high quality evidence for masks and we should conduct further studies" (Emphasis mine, he didn't say there was no evidence, just not good enough). Worth watching his interviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpnbMIOvbjc

That's not how evidence works. He either needs to show evidence that they don't work or he has to show why their evidence is unsatisfactory. Based on that video, he's done neither. Saying "nuh uh, your evidence is bad" is not an argument against the evidence.