Don McLeroy, young-earth creationist dentist and former head (and then member) of the Texas Board of Education, left a comment on my website a while back–a comment that I didn’t approve but put it up as a main post. Here it is:
He then tendered his “evidence” for those 500 witnesses, which I also posted; let me just say that it wasn’t very convincing. Readers asked him a number of comments, but his replies were ineffectual and I suggested he lay out his evidence on his own website.
He has done so, in a post on his site (To My Listening Ear) called “My response to Jerry Coyne and his readers on the Resurrection.” It’s a long post, and I’ve eliminated the introduction for brevity, but have reproduced the bulk of his text below. Since he’s banned here, if you want to argue with him, I suggest you go over to his site, which will surely gladden him as it will boost his traffic by several orders of magnitude.
What I’m just doing here is showing you how one diehard believer justifies not only his faith in the Resurrection and the 500 witnesses, but in why he thinks Christianity is the “true faith.” I’ll leave the comments up to you either here or there.
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My Response to Jerry Coyne and his Readers on the Resurrection
Posted on August 1, 2014 by Don McLeroy
Reply to “Why Evolution Is Not True”
This blog post is my response to Dr. Coyne and the WEIT readers who made almost 400 comments to these two blog posts.
First, I would like to thank and complement the many who took the time to thoughtfully reply to my two comments on the 500 eyewitnesses. Daniel Dennett touts “Sturgeon’s Law” which says that 90% of all comments are rubbish, but here, this is clearly not the case. Most were very serious reflections and reasonable statements and questions.
Biblical scholars differ on the resurrection. I admit that I am only well-read among the conservative scholars and my familiarity with the liberal scholars is limited to the critiques of them by the conservatives. Definitely not the best policy. The only skeptical book I have read is Russell Shorto’s Gospel Truth: On the Trail of the Historical Jesus as he had interviewed me for a major essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Just as the scholars differ so do I and the readers. I accept a scholarship that dates the Gospels as written between 40 and 65 A.D. whereas most readers believe they were written 65 to 100 A.D. or later. These later dates allow for conspiracy theories and myths to be more easily developed. I don’t think any reader held the early dating gospel view.
But no matter which scholars are correct, we still have to account for the phenomenon of Christianity and its powerful influence over the last 2000 years and today. And, we have to account for the fact as to why my simple comment about “500 eyewitnesses” could stir up so much interest? Christianity seems to draw a lot more interest than it should. Of course, atheism and evolution do the same for me. I admit that I enjoy following many of Dr. Coyne’s blog posts. I like keeping up with the evolutionists and atheists; I want to understand how the atheist mind thinks and reasons. I believe that Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins are much clearer thinkers about the implications of evolution than Kenneth Miller and other theistic evolutionists.
Specific Objections
Overall, I found the objections raised to the resurrection to be focused on plain skeptical thinking about miracles in general, the accuracy and reliability of the scriptures, contradictions in the gospel story, and especially, the lack of corroborating evidence of biblical accounts concerning the resurrection—especially the dead coming out of their graves and seen walking around Jerusalem.
Specific to the resurrection, no one advocated the swoon theory, and only a few commented that they thought the disciples hallucinated. Most focused on the idea of a conspiracy of early Christians or the gradual development of Christianity as myth. Also, no one was impressed with the experts I cited—Andreas Kostenberger, Darrell Bock, and Josh Chatraw, Peter Kreeft, Norman Geisler, Frank Turek, Lee Strobel, James Hannam, Moyshe Averick, Rodney Stark, Ravi Zacarias,G. K Chesterton, Paul Johnson, Abraham Kuyper, C. S. Lewis, and David Brog.
I do not know why there is no mention of the dead coming out of their graves and seen walking around Jerusalem. But it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened.
While we do not know their names or have the testimonies of the 500 in question, we do for Paul and James and Peter and John and Mark and Matthew. I am not too bothered about the actual number of eyewitnesses. As noted in my comment to McLeroy replies about the crucifixion the testimony of just two eyewitnesses is very powerful. Even so, if Jesus did actually rise from the dead and spent around a month among the people, it seems logical the claim of the 500 witnesses could have happened. And, Paul is issuing a challenge to those skeptics reading his words to go and ask these folks—many who are still alive. This is not something you would do if making up a myth or a conspiracy.
Another good point the readers made are why some disciples did not recognize Jesus immediately. I don’t know. Again, it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened. I can only speculate as to why he was not recognized; my speculations are not very important.
I am not in a position to debate the strength and weaknesses of Bart Ehrman’s scholarship. As noted in my first reply in Jesus Delusion I have my own set of experts I trust. I will let them have that debate.
As for Paul’s claims he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, it certainly was more than a vision. There was light and all present heard Jesus speaking.
One reader stated that Christianity “attained its current heights due to” purely naturalistic causes. I hold the view that Christianity reached its lofty status because it is based on truth—truth about the nature of God, the nature of man and the nature of the world.
One reader asked if I would still believe if there were no eyewitnesses. A good question. I can only speculate because the account says they were eyewitnesses. With no witnesses, the biblical accounts would have been totally different and history would have been completely different. I don’t know what I would believe today if that were the case.
Biblical Trustworthiness in General
It seems to me that the starting point for many of the readers in rejecting the resurrection are an anti-supernatural bias and assumption that the Bible is not reliable or authoritative. I believe the supernatural exists and miracles happen. Miracles can happen; the greatest miracle was the creation of the world. For me, I have found the Bible to be extremely reliable; this is not the case for many of the readers; I see no way of resolving these differences here.
Other Questions
A very good question raised by Dr. Coyne and others is why I believe I am right when I have not studied other religions for 29 years. Could I be wrong? Yes, I could be wrong. I try to understand what others believe or don’t believe. This is one reason I listen to the podcast “Point of Inquiry.” They have fascinating discussions about issues such as these. Again, my testimony of “How I became a Christian” can be found on my website.
The timing of events during the “Passion Week” is difficult. I do not know for sure. A lot had to happen if the “Last Supper” was Thursday night and the crucifixion was Friday. For me, this is not insurmountable.
One reader asked “What would it take to change my mind?” This is a good question. Since my whole life is wrapped up in my faith—my friends, my church, my sense of who I am, it would be very difficult to give it all up. I believe I am honest enough to do so if I was presented evidence of a viable alternative.
This works both ways. For those of you who are atheists, how can you hold to something with so little evidence? You have to have something from “Nothing.” If “Nothing” is defined as “what a sleeping rock dreams of;” I would think you have a serious problem.
For those of you who are evolutionists, how can you hold to something with so little evidence? To explain all the diversity of life on this planet by unguided natural processes requires a titanic amount of evidence. I think the best evidence you have is the fossil record. You say the present is the key to the past, present animal life consists of life so discontinuous that it is unimaginable how you could have bridged the gaps, and the fossils record shows the same gaps—with a some transitional fossils. But it is not enough! There should be “zillions” of them. When it comes to explain the evolution of the biochemical processes in the cell, you have nothing.
Therefore, I find my biblical beliefs to be much more reasonable. For any other alternative, the evidence doesn’t support it.
In conclusion, all of us reasoning creatures hold some irrational beliefs. I find mine to be less of a problem than the way I understand yours; this is why I read your blogs—to better understand your beliefs. And, after reading your responses to these two WEEIT blog posts by Dr. Coyne, I find your reasoning much more coherent and evidence based.
Thank you.
Don McLeroy
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Nah, I’m not gonna bother. The third paragraph starts off with “Biblical scholars” and you just know that whatever follows is useless.
Careful there. I went down that road the other day and it didn’t go well.
His most telling sentence is: “But no matter which scholars are correct…”- in other words, “It doesn’t matter what the facts say; my mind’s made up.”
His body was probably never buried…part of the execution was to leave bodies out on the crosses for all to see what happens to troublemakers.
My problem with everything about the Jesus stories including details like whether he was executed and how, are the sources. They practically invalidate themselves. What kind of a researcher takes a story with so much magic, inconsistency (internally & externally) and religious pandering and then searches for the truth? These searches for the historical Jesus seem to have everything backwards. One would never read “Harry Potter” for instance and search for the historical Harry. As far as I know, those who are interested in an historical Odyssey don’t start with the book they find what happened independently and say “oh this is interesting, the book mentions this detail. Neat.”
You’re skeptical about the tomb and so you should be. But why should we think Jesus was executed? On a cross? What about that wild story about freeing prisoners and carrying the cross?
Why should anyone believe that once we’ve removed the obvious fictions what remains should be reliable? If a teacher catches a student cheating on 40% of the questions on a test, should she conclude that the student was honest in the remaining 60% or should she assume that many issues were missed? If a witness raves about demons and magic, who would assume that she is reliable about the rest of her testimony?
I don’t think you need to be a mythicist and say that there was no Jesus. But I think that if there ever was an historical person we can’t use the bible to determine what this person was really like. And without the bible, we’ve got nothing. I think that means a healthy skepticism towards all aspects of his life, including the brief mundane bits like the execution.
You’re missing one key question.
I think there’s a slim chance that Mr. McLeroy isn’t completely beyond hope. Indeed, I think he may well be in the same position so many here have been in: staying in the church primarily because it’s such a powerful social focus in life, and therefore not poking all that hard at the resulting cognitive dissonances lest that go away and take so much else with it.
b&
I agree with Ben Goren – I detect small chinks in McLeroy’s armour – it takes one to know one – I was there 60 years ago.
I disagree. This fellow, from beginning to end of his plea, shows such poor thinking skills, it is a wonder he graduated from dental school. This is not a holy ghost of a chance that McLeroy can read WEIT and comprehend much more than the sentence syntax. Nothing in it would make sense to someone who thinks there must be zillions of transitions visible in the fossil record for evolution to make any sense.
No, I’d say this man is a lost cause. Forget it.
“… shows such poor thinking skills, it is a wonder he graduated from dental school.”
I am not amazed. I had a flatmate who was a dental student.
I disagree. I liked reading most of what he wrote. He was honest and he showed a few little signs that he had some curiosity of what and how other people think. I say only a little bit of curiosity because he mentioned he only reads blogs and websites, never put in the effort to read any of their books. He seemed like a nice guy. Then he started talking about science, here he really showed his ignorance and no curiosity. He wants to understand how we think but he doesn’t want to make much effort into studying the evidence. I think there’s hope, he can be a curious human who wants to learn how the world works, so far he’e relying ti much on authority to tell him what to believe and he’s only listening to those he trusts, those who share his Christian views. I wouldn’t mind inviting him over for a cup of tea.
“Also, no one was impressed with the experts I cited—Andreas Kostenberger, Darrell Bock, and Josh Chatraw, Peter Kreeft, Norman Geisler, Frank Turek, Lee Strobel, James Hannam, Moyshe Averick, Rodney Stark, Ravi Zacarias,G. K Chesterton, Paul Johnson, Abraham Kuyper, C. S. Lewis, and David Brog.”
Experts I have heard of from this list who I would consider learned:- C. S. Lewis.
Experts I have heard of that can be dismissed as jokes:- Norman Geisler, Frank Turek, Lee Strobel, Ravi Zacarias.
Experts I have not heard of:- Andreas Kostenberger, Darrell Bock, and Josh Chatraw, Peter Kreeft, James Hannam, Moyshe Averick, Rodney Stark, G. K Chesterton, Paul Johnson, Abraham Kuyper, and David Brog.
The idea that anyone should be impressed with this motley crew is laughable.
He only reads “experts” with whome he already agrees, then he cites their expertise as justification for agreeing with him. A very well-rounded argument. Circular, you might say.
So round it’s a sphere of large radius …
Few of these are experts in Biblical scholarship.
I’m a reluctant (and atheist) fan of C.S. Lewis, but his great area of expertise was medieval and Renaissance literature, and he wrote two groundbreaking and important works of scholarship in that field (“The Discarded Image” and “The Allegory of Love”), but he isn’t an expert on the Bible by any means.
I agree. Perhaps I should have clarified. I did not mean that Lewis was to be trusted to be considered an expert on Christianity or Biblical history. More that I consider him a respectable academic. The likes of Turek, frankly, I would not trust to open a can of beans.
“Lewis was to be trusted to be considered an expert on Christianity or Biblical history”
should read:
“Lewis was to be considered an expert on Christianity or Biblical history”
Editing fail. Ops.
C.S. Lewis may have been learned, but his learning wasn’t in any relevant area; his expertise was in medieval literature. His inclusion in the list is as laughable as the rest.
Agreed. I only meant he was learned.
I agree with you in regards to the jokes; but Paul Johnson and G.K. Chesterton I would consider learned.
Paul Johnson, who a million years ago was the editor of the New Statesman, wrote an execrable book on the history of the United States which was almost uniformly panned by the historical academic community for its numerous errors of historical fact.
The book does appear to have many errors (I’ve never read it), but why do you consider it execrable?
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/reviews/980301.01maiert.html
I think it’s worth reading Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Christ, just to read how laughably thin and unreliable is the evidence for the Jesus story.
When Mr. McLeroy states that he is comfortable with the evidence for the resurrection but thinks there is insufficient evidence for evolution by natural selection, he is making an absurd mistake. The two levels of evidence do not belong in the same category.
Jerry: You may have already done this; but he deserves a signed copy of WEIT, I think. He might even read it. He clearly hasn’t looked into the evidence for evolution very much at all. He probably reads the DI website and thinks he knows about the evidence for EBNS. (Similar to how he only reads critiques of people whose ideas he doesn’t want to countenance.)
Ceiling Cat help us if people like him get to impose their foolish know-nothing ways on the rest of the country.
I’ve watched about half of Steve Shives’s reading through it, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j60-eK5sfwk&list=PL8B722E1FA8681B70; however the arguments got too painful to follow through to the bitter end. Like Turek he relies on anecdote 98% of the time. It is amazing how many of these guys have trounced Ivy-League professors in debate yet I’ve never seen it. It is a shame that Don has been banned, otherwise I am sure he could find us 500 witnesses to confirm this has happened. I’d not bet on Turek winning a debate if his opponent was a McDonald’s Happy-Meal.
Steve Shrives does a yeoman’s work on apologetic works.
He’s just finished one of Comfort’s tomes. It’s as bad as you’d think.
He’s definitely worth a sub.
I actually read all of one of Comfort’s books and reviewed it on Amazon. I was asked to do so by another atheist. Really, really silly stuff.
Another Shives fan here. His deconstructions of apologetic tomes are thorough, ruthless and quite entertaining – if I’m not in a musical mood they’re my favourite thing to listen to while I putter about on my off days.
Shives won’t be doing another book review for the rest of the year, having just reviewed two Ray Comfort books in a row (a testament to his mental fortitude), but there are plenty to catch up on at his channel: he’s done Turek, Strobel, Rick Warren and a few others. All similarly long and detailed and irreverent, they’re a great resource.
Are you theHank
??
There is only one true Hank.
Damn straight. I wouldn’t lie.
G.K. Chesterton was actually a Catholic, wrote some pretty entertaining theology akin to Lewis whom he deeply influenced, as well as fiction. As a writer, he actually isn’t all that bad. Read his Everlasting Man, it is complete theological nonsense, but at least it reads like an entertaining story much superior to 99% of tomes of theological drivel written today.
Chesterton also wrote a series of detective novels, well received in their time, with a priest as the detective. He was not a biblical scholar.
You can safely toss Peter Kreeft in the ‘jokes’ category. I’ve linked to him before and am too lazy to repeat it, but just google him.
You day the biggest problem atheists have is that of something from nothing but you, on top of the myriad falsehoods and contradictions of your bible, have the very same problem. Yes of course you claim that your god is eternal and has always existed but that is equally valid for the universe and it gets rid of all the superflous, and frankly harmful, need for any god.
We know the universe as we know it had a beginning but it’s perfectly possible that it has always existed in some other form before it became what it is now.
“Just as the scholars differ so do I and the readers. I accept a scholarship that dates the Gospels as written between 40 and 65 A.D. whereas most readers believe they were written 65 to 100 A.D. or later.”
I haven’t read past this, I have to get back to work and will consider later whether I even need to read past this, for the argument, which seems to be a base premise, is a non sequitur. He’s just presented himself with another burden of proof: To show why an account written 7 to 32 years after alleged events should be more reliable than one written 32 to 67 years later, especially when it is hearsay in both cases and there was nothing written down in the intervening gap between the alleged events and their recording.
Even in today’s world of global communication where it is many orders of magnitude easier to verify assertions, we still have conspiracy theories. The 9/11 Truther movement comes to mind, which popped up only months after the event, not years, and it arguably revolves around better evidence than does the Bible. At least we know the WTC fell.
Let’s not forget my favorite: The Sandy Hook Truthers.
Yup, that’s another prime example of absurd thinking. In fact, it would probably be difficult to find an issue tied to politics that doesn’t have some conspiracy theory tied to it claiming witnesses who know the real truth, which is contrary to evidence and/or lacks evidence.
“You have to have something from ‘Nothing.’”
No. We don’t.
I’ve never been convinced about an ex nihilo origin. It always seemed to me that it was far more natural for there to be (and have “always” been) a fundamental something.
Quote from Sagan goes here.
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Always the same response: How do you know that?
Exactly. Nowhere does he site any actual evidence. He is simply a follower of conservative thinkers.
Always such a strange claim. Who believes there is such a thing as “nothing”? So far as I can tell it’s a concept that no one believes in. In that sense it’s like saying, “You have to have three headed purple unicorns.” What? You don’t believe in three headed purple unicorns, I don’t believe in them, no one I’ve ever heard of believes in them, so why, exactly, do I have to have them?
Christians certainly don’t believe there is such a thing as “nothing”. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Christian who claimed God was “nothing” or that there was a “nothingness” that proceeded God. Maybe they believe in the beginning there was nothing *but* God, but that’s still not nothing, that’s God AND nothing, which is something.
I don’t know any atheists who believe there is such a thing as nothing either. The Big Bang is not conceived of as “from nothing”, but very much as being from something. Something is assured. Nothing is a purely hypothetical and quite fantastical creation, unobserved by anyone and seemingly, not even a part of anyone’s actual cosmology.
It’s a kind of über-strawman.
I was a child when I first thought of the idea that maybe everything is just here and there never was nothing. The fact that I didn’t come to full grips with this and the many other questions until well into my adulthood shows the grip indoctrination has in many social circles. For a long time, I honestly accepted that no one else thinks this way, which fed into my own periods of self loathing, which fed into the “religious answer” which fed into more guilt, and round and round. I wonder how many religious adults question these concepts from the time they are children and just simply never break the cycle.
I would think quite a few. There is a period of time when most children haven’t learned what they aren’t supposed to think, and in that period many children can be surprisingly lucid. Then it happens. Like a curtain descending over their mind they learn that some ideas are bad, that you shouldn’t even think about them. That you are a bad person if you think too hard about God. That it is blasphemy to inquire.
Which Lawrence Krauss (among others) has perpetuated …
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Argument from incredulity, not valid. Do you have something to support that?
Yes. The fact that there is something here now. There is nothing by way of evidence to support the notion there is or ever has been a god.
Er, so, no response whatsoever to his double standard on witnesses, that is, witnesses don’t mean squat to him unless they say what he wants them to say. He continues to tout purported witness to things he agrees with, but completely ignores or dismisses the far greater number of witnesses to the miracles of other religions. Thus he doesn’t actually accept eye witness as proof and is asking us to do what he will not. A clear failure of the outsider test of faith.
Yes, I was most disappointed in that. Several quite specific examples were given. I really did expect to see some mention of those in his response. I wasn’t expecting it to be good, I’ve heard many sad responses to this question in my years in the pew, but I didn’t expect it to be ignored.
Yep, he ignored the stuff I posted to him regarding Sathya Sai Babba.
I’m not surprised. I have never had a Christian do anything but run away from seriously addressing the Sai Babba eyewitness testimony.
(Sorry, Sai Baba…)
That’s actually a pretty good letter. There’s zero compelling arguments for his side, but at least it admits he’s doing a giveupski on a lot of issues.
Just to consider a couple of points:
Ehrman covers this exact point. Evidently it’s not unusual for forgers to add useless and even incorrect details to a personal letter or account to make it sound more authentic. “Too perfect” rings our alarm bells, so forgers take care to make it sound like it was the product of imperfect humans.
I am flummoxed; what does he think evidence of atheism should look like?
You have to have something from “Nothing.”
deltax * deltarho >= hbar/2. Educate yourself in physics, Don.
My experience with my teenage children and lying was the same. They used to add in a whole bunch of irrelevant (and often implausible) details when they were lying, apparently thinking this would make the lie more believable. It had the opposite effect, of course, of making it rather obvious they were making shit up. Apparently this can work with some people though, as when McLeroy states “why would they include such weird details if they were lying?” As if having irrelevant and implausible details in the narrative somehow counts as additional evidence for the main claim. Strange.
And it seems this is the only “evidence” he gives. The rest is appeal to authority, which I think is an indication of frame of mind. Hard to persuade him unless you can come up with someone or something he loves more dearly than conservative authors.
It makes perfect sense if he’s trying to convince himself as hard as your teenagers were trying to convince you.
b&
I was talking to a friend about 20 years ago about my loss of faith. I was explaining how one of the things that sold me was the coherence of the story science tells us compared to the relative incoherence of the story the Bible tells us. Across cosmology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, history, pre-history, the whole shebang, everything fits together with science, everything makes sense.
Without any sense of irony he said, “Well, of course it fits together. It’s designed to. It’s the fact that things don’t fit together well in the Bible that makes me think it’s credible.”
Zilch strontium Nero crackpot crockery free bird salad.
Based on your friend’s logic, the above sentence has to rank as one of the most credible things ever said.
Perhaps not. But it would make a good password.
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Damn, now I’ll have to change it!
That’s actually a pretty good letter.
The language skills are far better than I have come to expect from Creationists. He did mix up “complement” for “compliment”.
Yeah I love the atheist – why do you believe that something comes from nothing trope. It almost always comes up. But the corollary but then how does your god make something from nothing never seems to cross their minds. Or the notion that something quantum foam or whatever could have always existed, or really everything did begin from nothing, but that everything in toto is nothing, and lots of other debated and researched possibilities that don’t entail gods.
I always answer that question (if I have enough space-time) with “My non-acceptance of theistic or supernatural claims (not just Western European Christian ones, btw) has everything to do with the lack of compelling evidence & plausibility and/or the presence of contradictory evidence; it has virtually nothing to do with the formation of the universe.”
“I think the best evidence you have is the fossil record.”
Has he read WEIT?
Phylogenetic analysis derived from genes and proteins to construct phylogenetic trees is way more powerful than the fossil record, since the odds that identical trees derived from multiple distinct genes and proteins astronomically increases the odds that they could be due to chance, plus the fact that this analysis can be done here and now with an arbitrary group of organisms therefore providing powerful inferential evidence for evolution.
Agreed. The genomic evidence is beyond overwhelming, and it’s so very direct. It is proof beyond what anyone before Gilbert could have even hoped to ever find. The nested heirarchy of shared common errors is the sort of thing that an evolutionary biologist in 1950 might have written out as his “dream proof” of evolution. It didn’t have to be that way. It could have been that genomes only work when they don’t have lots of crap in them. Then we’d only have functional trees, which someone could at least attempt to argue is a hierarchy of design. But, lucky for us, genomes can function with heap loads of crap in them, and do, and the pattern of the garbage can’t be argued as a latent pattern of design. It can only be interpreted as coming from a history of shared common ancestry. This evidence is to evolution what spaceships to mars are to heliocentrism.
It seems like the bulk of his argument is that the Biblical account is too illogical to be false. That’s not what “Truth is stranger than fiction” means…
Credo quia absurdum.
Popularity: People have believed this for a long time, it must be true.
Er, so then why don’t you accept Hinduism? It’s been around longer, much longer.
“I found the objections raised to the resurrection to be focused on plain skeptical thinking about miracles in general, the accuracy and reliability of the scriptures, contradictions in the gospel story, and especially, the lack of corroborating evidence”
Bingo on those contradictions!! Father Dan’s Easter Quiz right here.
http://articles.exchristian.net/2004/04/easter-facts-quotes-and-quiz-for-you.html
As for “And, Paul is issuing a challenge to those skeptics reading his words to go and ask these folks—many who are still alive.”
…nope, Paul is here in I Corinthians 15 debating the truth or falsity of the doctrine of the !*general*! resurrection (of everybody) not the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it’s pretty clear that Paul really believed this. I too accept that he was “not making up a myth or conspiracy”. That isn’t relevant here.
As a non-biologist, I am bothered by arguments by creationists that the evidence is “not enough”. If you have assembled only one-fourth of a jigsaw puzzle, getting stuck isn’t necessarily a sign that you assembled that portion incorrectly. Creationists it seems just set the bar artificially too high, in addition to arguing illogically.
All very thin (and fallacious beyond the point of obviousity) considering the gravity of the claims involved and the alleged accessibility yet utter absence of said god in question.
I hope he is reading these fantastic replies by the way. Although it would not be the first time he read them though! Round and round we go.
I could only find two arguments in what the gentlemen presented:
1) The growth of Christianity is due to the fact that it’s true
2) Christianity is true because there were 500 witnesses (or two, whatever)
Argument #2 is circular, because the only evidence we have of the existence of witnesses is the Bible, and if you’re going to assume the Bible is accurate, you’ve assumed your conclusions. You might as well assume that Homer is accurate and use all of his eyewitnesses to justify the existence of Zeus.
So really, the only thing he offers is that Christianity is successful because it’s true. If that were good evidence, then he would also have to agree that Islam is also true, and getting truer by the day.
And Mormonism even truer than Islam!
And Hinduism’s been around longer, must be true!
That’s the funny thing. Joseph Smith was a convicted fraudster, and even those disciples of his who he fell out with (apart from his wife, maybe) refused to call him a fake…
“Christianity seems to
drawdemand a lot more interest than it should.”FTFH.
Hardly: Promise people eternal life and they’ll come running. Enforce belief in it at the point of a sword/gun for a couple of millennia and it gets well-entrenched. Surprise, surprise.
Yes, of course.
I was referring to all the recognition and special dispensations the zealots demand, though. Such as making sure state-approved textbooks support their & only their theology.
Yes, I know. I was snarking at McLeroy.
They sure have big demands — like: NEver criticize me or anything I subscribe to — or you’re strident and bigoted.
Why does this stir up so much interest? Umm, because Xianity is a cultural template that unfortunately influences social interactions and informs decisions of those gullible enough to seek solace in the consensus.
McLeroy DDS wishes there was 1% as much evidence for the resurrection of Jesus as there is for evolution.
While the majority of the good dentist’s experts assert to a minimal facts case of claiming “it’s likely at least this is true” — the whole mess, including its supposed witnesses, is undermined by a single minimal fact. That fact being that the resurrection had no resonance among the Jewish population it is supposed to have occurred within.
How do we know this:
1) non-Jewish investigators of Christianity raised this issue to such an extent that Paul gave/made up an explanation in (approx) Romans 13 that was because God was hiding the truth from the Jews.
2) Peter required that Jewish Christians continue to follow Jewish law — no such discernible group continues very far into history. Current groups of Christians following Jewish law are modern creations.
3) The Christian church in Jerusalem was such a failure they needed outside funds/shakedown from non-Jewish Christians as mentioned by Paul in several of his letters.
Estimates are that there were only 10,000 followers at the beginning of what we now refer as the second century. Putting Holy Spirit guided church growth on a pace that would barely meet the growth rate of Scientology. Those witnesses that Mcleroy has based his life on have proven to be terribly ineffective.
This is an outstanding point. If the testimony of the witnesses at the time was so credible, why was it ignored by almost everyone?
Even more to the point was the decision of Constantine to declare Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Sans that, Christianity might today be just another minor sect, like Zoroastrianism.
Constantine merely established tolerance for Christianity (in 313). Theodosius made it the state religion in 380, 43 years after Constantine died.
It is far worse than that – they don’t even *notice* it until a few hundred years later. This is one piece of evidence in the mythicist arsenal, too, but even with that aside, it is clear that whatever, if anything, happened, it was so unimportant to fall afoul of the “Fred Dudley is Santa Claus” lesson.
Drove my Chevy up to Levi but Levi was dry…
Oh wait, that’s Don McLean not Don McLeroy sorry.
Oh Donny Boy
Your Christian tripe
Is galling
Well done! 🙂
“I do not know why there is no mention of the dead coming out of their graves and seen walking around Jerusalem. But it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened.”
I haven’t read the conspiracy theories McLeroy is referring to, but this strikes me as illogical.
It’s like he’s saying,
“Because we can easily dismiss it as silly, it must have happened!”
“Because it is absurd, it must be right”
“Because it doesn’t make sense, it makes sense!”
At first I was willing to dismiss this as a momentary lapse in coherence, but then he repeats the same point as if it would actually seem profound:
“Another good point the readers made are why some disciples did not recognize Jesus immediately. I don’t know. Again, it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened.”
Maybe details like these get added like every other urban legend which is furnished with embellishments. Maybe people don’t think when they go on a roll of creative license.
A is evidence for A.
Not A is evidence of A.
I have left some comments on his blog, filled with actual arguments based on evidence, rather than invective. I suppose it’s pointless. His stint as head of the Texas Board of Education indicates that he must have been presented with a great deal of evidence and none of it got through to him.
He’s 68 years old. He has undoubtedly been through many iterations of of such argumentation. While he remains “polite”, and has a veneer of “reasonableness”, he obviously has no intention of genuinely engaging anyone with a view not in line with his fanatical brand of Christianity or in really considering the evidence. He’s a narcissist.
What did the dead do after they had walked around Jerusalem? Go back to their graves and rebury themselves or something?
Oh, those dead are still walking around. Recently they have been hired as extras on a very good and popular TV series on FX.
If Christianity is the true, then an omnipotent deity lived a human life, in order to bring the only correct faith to all of humanity. In circa 2,000 years since, this omnipotent deity has managed to recruit less than a third of humanity, a quotient which is not increasing appreciably. By any measure, he is very poor at his job. I suspect he would flunk deity school. Give anyone on this forum the supposed powers of the Christian god and they could recruit the entire human race in a weekend.
Good points.All it takes is the right social conditions (oppression, poverty, imbalance), superstition due to widespread lack of education and wishful thinking to create religion and allow it to spread and flourish.
This point is completely apropos. I tried for a moment to remember from my Christian days how this rather obvious point was addressed. For a second I drew a blank, then 1 Corinthians 1 came flooding back to me. Oh, yeah, I had forgotten. They answer this glaring problem with their religion by raising a quote-shield. This is what evangelicals do, at least. I can’t speak for other branches. Basically you find some verses that somehow assert that the glaring problem isn’t a problem, and you’re done. To wit, below is the verse that leapt to mind from my 2000-sermon indoctrination. As you will see, it simply asserts that it’s not a problem. Case closed.
==================
For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him
=============
Having recalled this verse many (most?) Christians will be satisfied that they are done. See, Paul said you’d say it was foolishness and, lo, it has come to pass! You just weren’t called, ‘suckas. Too bad for you!
“Again, it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened.”
1. The story was made many years later, probably not even in the place of events, in an age when documentation and communication was far less good than now.
2. Being easy to be dismissed not something that keeps modern day storytellers and myth makers from making up stuff. Why would have been a problem back then?
I’ve skimmed over the text and I noticed this:
For those of you who are evolutionists, how can you hold to something with so little evidence?
That’s enough for me, I’m not going to waste my time on the rest.
“One reader asked “What would it take to change my mind?” This is a good question. Since my whole life is wrapped up in my faith—my friends, my church, my sense of who I am, it would be very difficult to give it all up. I believe I am honest enough to do so if I was presented evidence of a viable alternative.”
A very telling comment, and one which echoes almost word-for-word a comment by Karl Giberson which Jerry pointed out in his magnificent review ‘Seeing and Believing’:
“As a purely practical matter, I have compelling reasons to believe in God. My parents are deeply committed Christians and would be devastated, were I to reject my faith. My wife and children believe in God, and we attend church together regularly. Most of my friends are believers. I have a job I love at a Christian college that would be forced to dismiss me if I were to reject the faith that underpins the mission of the college. Abandoning belief in God would be disruptive, sending my life completely off the rails.”
Of how many more believers is this true, I wonder?
A very great many, I should suppose. I think even believers realize, in their gut, that they don’t believe because of evidence. They believe because they want to, because their friends do, because their parents do, because their wife does, because their life is embedded in the religion and it’d be painful to reorganize that life, because they are afraid not to.
I don’t doubt that the strain McLeroy would incur if he were to walk away from his faith would be enough to break many otherwise brave people. From that point of view, I can see why his standards for a “viable alternative” are ridiculously higher than his standards for the views he already has. The views he already has are costing him nothing. You have to have a lot of confidence to embrace the world of pain that the transition would involve, and most people just aren’t brave or curious enough to dig until they get that evidence.
I think McLeroy drops a big hint about his mindset with his statements that he has admittedly not read much of opposing views. He may well be afraid that he would be able to accept it and what that would do to his worldview and life.
Who was it who said famously
“Somebody has to stand up to the experts!”
Oh, yeah, it was Don McLeroy.
Only the wrong sort of experts. As in the ones who disagree with you.
Keep up!
“I do not know why there is no mention of the dead coming out of their graves and seen walking around Jerusalem. But it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened.”
Right there. One of the reasons you “see no way of resolving these differences here” is because you imply that it’s *more* odd that someone would make up a story about zombies greeting people in Jerusalem than actual zombies greeting people in Jerusalem.
LOL! Yup.
Evidently it’s more reasonable to believe that magic and resurrections happened than it is to believe that people were mistaken, exaggerated or cared more about glorifying their god than about recording history.
If only people were that honest.
I laughed out loud – really! – when I read that.
By sheer coincidence, I felt really weird last night and found out out could fly at near-light speed. I flew to the Jovian moon of Io and discovered a Klingon base there on my sixth circumnavigation of the place. They have been testing matter-antimatter drives and I witnessed an incredible accident in which Io shone as bright the moon for five hours. Now I know that no one on earth reported that, but why would I have included such a detail in my story of my Jovian adventures if such a matter-antimatter explosion could be so easily dismissed. Surely then, my story must be true!
McLeroy’s summation was perfect; “In conclusion, all of us reasoning creatures hold some irrational beliefs. I find mine to be less of a problem than the way I understand yours; “
A fine admission that he knows religion is irrational and that he has no understanding of any other way of thinking.
I wouldn’t let this guy anywhere near my teeth.
It’s amazing that they can look at the very evidence that tells us the Gospel’s not true and twist it into evidence that the Gospel is true.
Don McLeroy is a troll, pure and simple, and a textbook case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome. His prose just radiates narcissism and he obviously adores the fact that his terrible reasoning seems to be taken seriously by actual scholars.
Pretty lame response. A couple of examples jump out;
“For those of you who are atheists, how can you hold to something with so little evidence?”
I rather suspect that most atheists are so not because the evidence for atheism is overwhelming but because there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of supernatural deities.
And then…
“To explain all the diversity of life on this planet by unguided natural processes requires a titanic amount of evidence.”
Fortunately, we DO have a titanic amount of evidence to support it as something like WEIT makes clear.
Equally though, to explain the diversity of life on this planet by guided, supernatural, means would also require a titanic amount of evidence. Evidence that is completely lacking.
If you want to know more about McLeroy watch the documentary The Revisionaries, it might alter any temptation to sympathies. As Texas SBOE chairman, he was not only interested in teaching creationism in school, but other odious things like abstinence only education and falsifying and slanting history to whitewash negative aspects of the past. The scary thing is that school boards are awash with McLeroy like zealots across the nation. He has a charming personality, but he is a total zealous nutcase in almost all his views. He actually lectures his dental patients on the evils of evolution even kids while filling molars or cleaning teeth, which is his right of course, but shows the level of zealotry we’re talking about.
“I do not know why there is no mention of the dead coming out of their graves and seen walking around Jerusalem. But it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened.”
The utterly bizarre “logic” of this remark pretty much tells the whole story. I think a fair rephrase is, ‘the claim of the biblical authors went unconfirmed, therefore they must be trusted. Because.’
This guy sets his own standards of verification and still can’t come up with an argument that leads to any logical conclusion.
There isn’t much point in engaging such as this in debate.
Okay, so in effect his argumentation seems to go like this:
1. We have got “testimonies” for the resurrection. But that is special pleading because many religions advance claims on similarly weak evidence that rightly do not convince him either.
2. He believes in miracles, and that belief makes the resurrection seem plausible for him. Well, I am not sure if there actually is a useful definition of the term miracle (Hume, 1748) nor which of the various problematic definitions on offer he uses himself. But it seems as if this specific argument is somewhat circular: the resurrection is generally cited as the most important Christian miracle that “supports” their religion, and here he basically assumes the truth of the religion to support the reality of the miracle.
Reasonable this isn’t. And then follows the usual “something from nothing is unbelievable but something from god and god from nothing makes much more sense”. Yeah, right…
Again, the dentist tells us that his nonsense should be believed over every other religion’s nonsense and has no evidence that is better than those other religions.
“The timing of events during the “Passion Week” is difficult. I do not know for sure.”
This is pure silliness. We have completely contradictory claims, things that cannot happen at the same time claimed for the story of Jesus. Dear dentist, how is it that JC has no problem with dying in John but is so distressed about it that his sweat is like blood in the other stories? Why does Gesthemane vanish in John?
It’s worse than that. What agreement we do actually see in the canonical gospels is due in part to selection. There are many other gospels that were written at various times. What we have in the NT are a subset of those gospels that a later group of people chose as canonical. A major part of being chosen to be canonical is agreement with the position of the council defining the canon. This selection creates an illusion that the early writings about Jesus life are in more agreement than they really are. If we were to collect all of the stories written about Jesus before 325 A.D., though, you’d find much wider range of disagreement than you see in the NT. The canon texts have been through a filter which greatly reduced the amount of discrepancy, yet even still much discrepancy remains.
indeed, you are quite right. the evidence is that the early believers tried their best to get rid of the worst of the discrepancies and still ended up with complete contradictory stories, assumably from trying to reach an accord with differing groups of TrueBelievers.
“Christianity seems to draw a lot more interest than it should.”
OK, it’s late, and I haven’t read any comments, and I hope to read the rest of the gentleman’s pearls of wisdom in The Fullness of Time.
However, I must ask: just how much interest does Mr. McLeroy say Christianity should draw if, accordingly to Mr. McLeroy, it draws more than it should?
“Another good point the readers made are why some disciples did not recognize Jesus immediately. I don’t know. Again, it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened.”
You must be joking, Don McLeroy! For a scholar of Xianity, you apparently know little about the culture and times in which it grew up. All the popular religions (not Stoicism, the philosophy of the educated classes) in Rome at the beginnings of Xianity had god-men who resurrected from the dead. Osiris, Mithra, Dionysos, etc. The death and resurrection of Jesus is NOT an original story but was invented many times before 33 AD. But only Xianity claimed its myth was really, truly TRUE. Were it not for Constantine and the super-power thus conferred upon Xianity, which immediately proceeded to demolish all pagan temples, the famous Alexandrian Library and just generally persecute all disbelievers, this absurd literalizing of a well-known myth could never have come about. See Dawkins’ current website article about how Christian children are more liable to confuse reality and fiction. And obviously Christian adults too…
To be even clearer, the mystery religions preceding Xianity did not think their god-men literally existed in real life. They did not expect to meet Dionysos or Mithra, resurrected or not, in the street. Their myths were understood as allegory, hopeful wishing in an after-life. Still absurd, but infinitely less so than Xianity, which insisted that yes, it all did actually happen.
“It seems to me that the starting point for many of the readers in rejecting the resurrection are an anti-supernatural bias and assumption that the Bible is not reliable or authoritative.”
1. “Anti-supernatural bias” makes it sound like a motivated denial of something that actually exists. The problem is that this is just another form of ducking the burden of proof: you don’t get to take an invented category and then suggest the other side is biased against it because they don’t take it seriously. The onus is on you to give good reason to take it at all.
So when there’s no good reason for thinking the supernatural – or at least things that are called supernatural – actually exist, it’s less a bias and more common sense skepticism, the sort anyone would show when confronted with bald-faced and extraordinary assertions. Lastly, the person who wants to demonstrate the existence of supernatural elements beyond a fantasy or horror novel has got a lot of work to do, because many who have tried can’t even pass basic benchmarks like consistent results, strict testing, or experiments designed to rule out competing explanations.
2. There is no assumption that the Bible is unreliable and lacking in authority. “Assumption” makes it sound like we haven’t read the thing, and in any case betrays a refusal to look at the texts with a critical eye, which is self-deceiving gullibility.
Beyond all the hit and miss polemics and preaching, the few times it dips into science or history, it’s either as bland as a psychic’s cold reading, or utterly wrong. If you want to claim that the Bible is an authoritative text on any field, then you have to show how it earns that authority. You can’t just say it does. That’s how scams, cons, and arrogance work.
As for reliability, the books can’t even agree on the details of their baldly asserted mythology and theology. For instance, the details of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection are rarely the same from book to book, and simple questions like “Is faith enough for salvation?” have multiple and mutually exclusive answers in different passages of the New Testament books. Much less can the Bible demonstrate any scientific knowledge unavailable to the culture of the time, or demonstrate anything more hard-nosed like historical triangulation (Luke contains an embarrassing example in its first two chapters, as commented upon by Hitchens, involving the census).
If there is a God, I imagine he’d be embarrassed by being associated with such an anthology of blood-stained fantasy, legend, commentary on the same, and half-baked platitudes.
The anti-supernatural bias you hear about all the time is a total cop out. If I walked around outside and saw dead birds and insects periodically rising from the dead, my anti-supernatural bias might start to wane. Everyday reality reveals a strong anti-supernatural bias.
If the Bible is god-breathed or guided or whatever, wouldn’t God get the one essential story of Christianity straight? There are four different versions of the empty tomb. How would an omnipotent, omniscient god let that happen?
Fundies don’t even recognize that there are four different versions, they combine them together and explain away any irritating contradictions. Just like the birth story, blatant contradictions through and through, not even an agreement on the genealogies. As Mick Jagger would say, fundies are “practiced in the art of deception,” especially self-deception.
People who have had auditory hallucinations can believe that other people heard them. I didn’t address this story specifically, but in my blog post on mental illness & the major characters in the Bible, I offer neurological explanations for several stories. If someone takes the Bible as literal history, they should consider these points:
http://ladyatheist.blogspot.com/2012/11/mental-illness-and-main-characters-of.html
Bookmarked.
Thanks. 🙂
It is clear that Leroy puts his trust in the humbugs of “biblical historians”, those that have no evidence but instead assumes what they need to prove.
But the problematic stuff, reliance on unobserved magic agencies, unwarranted claims of “sin” and other non-evolutionary moral, rejected claims of omnipotence and benevolence while suffering exists, that Leroy avoids!
Some specific problems:
I’ve never heard of a historian claiming an earlier date than the 2nd century, it seems well established and conform to what I suspect Leroy ironically claims is “conspiracy theory and myths”. Biblical “historians”, certainly, as per above.
So do any successful scam, by definition. And what has that to do with its veracity? In this case the popularity assures us it is fake!
So now the original claim has been goalpost moved two (!) orders of magnitude from 500 down to 6. Why not one oom more, why not 0 witnesses while we are at it?
But there is no evidence of those 6 myth figures existing, except in the myth that needs independent verification.
Instead, modern text analysis has concluded that all those figures are composites of multiple authors, those that rewrote and added myth fragments a few centuries after the alleged events. It is encyclopedic knowledge, for Darwin’s sake!
“Few biblical books are regarded by scholars as the product of a single individual”.
“The gospels (and Acts) are anonymous, in that none of them name an author.[70] Whilst the Gospel of John might be considered somewhat of an exception, because the author refers to himself as “the disciple Jesus loved” and claims to be a member of Jesus’ inner circle,[71] most scholars today consider this passage to be an interpolation (see below).
The gospels (and Acts) are anonymous, in that none of them name an author.[70] Whilst the Gospel of John might be considered somewhat of an exception, because the author refers to himself as “the disciple Jesus loved” and claims to be a member of Jesus’ inner circle,[71] most scholars today consider this passage to be an interpolation (see below).
There is general agreement among scholars that the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) show a high level of cross-reference. The usual explanation, the Two-source hypothesis, is that Mark was written first and that the authors of Matthew and Luke relied on Mark and the hypothetical Q document. Scholars agree that the Gospel of John was written last, using a different tradition and body of testimony. In addition, most scholars agree that the author of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, making Luke-Acts two halves of a single work.[72][73][74][75][76]”
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Bible ]
By Leroy’s witness evidence alone, we have to conclude the abrahamistic texts is myth!
_Nature_ shows anti-supernatural bias, no evidence such as Leroy’s “miracles” for magic agencies.
And the abrahamistic texts are myths in a long myth tradition, pre-dating later judaism, christianism or mohammedanism. [See the Dead Sea Scroll for dating of the earliest such myths.]
What would differ re similar myths, e.g. semitic and egyptian beliefs (which were glommed together with the greek pantheon to make abrahamism after the hellenistic conquests of the region), hinduism, buddism, confucianism, et cetera?
And yet he earns a living mostly dealing with the consequences of our evolutionary history:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/my-wisdom-tooth/
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/130301_plaque
Good point! With a better education, Leroy would be an “evolutionist” too, familiar with the biology behind dentistry.
And he owes Jerry to read the WEIT book! At least before posting* on evolution and ‘little evidence’…
* Initially edit had “posing” here. I guess it fits too. 🙂
When in problems, try to paint the problems on the other side. Do we really need to do this science erroneous claims whack-a-mole with every creationist?
Well, I have to assume Leroy reads this and never, ever repeat his particular jabberwocky again, which is long since refuted by TalkOrigins Index to Creationist Claims [ http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html ]:
– The idea of “causes” is aristotelian philosophy used to shore up religion, not the observed lightcone causality of relativity. In science we have processes, and over lightcones they can be eternal.
Cosmology modifies that topology, but how the result works out is an open question. For example, inflation is naturally eternal. (I.e. you need unnatural finetuning to prevent it.)
Creationist claim CF101.
– How do you define ‘nothing’ testably anyway? Everything we know of is something.
The closest we can come to ‘nothing’ is zero energy systems. The universe is such a ‘nothing’ system, and it looks as very much consisting of somethings.
Creationist claim CF101.
(Somewhat outdated, since there are explicit zero energy descriptions of the universe now.)
I’m not a biologist (“evolutionist”), but I can read: creationist claim CA201.
But more pertinent here, read Why Evolution Is True!
Except all the genomic gene fossils that predict everything biochemically: creationist claim CA350.
Edit error, the first creationist claim should be:
Creationist claim CI200.
NOT
A
BLOG!
1. “Something from nothing”: Read “De Rerum Natura” by Lucretius, follower of Epicurus and Democritus. They posited that the universe is composed entirely of “tiny indivisible particles” (atoms) that cannot be created or destroyed and that move in the “infinitude of space” (void). Democritus thought that atoms moved in a straight line. Epicurus and Lucretius disagreed, believing that atoms “swerved”. Epicurus and Lucretius explained “the universe as an ongoing cosmic event – a never-ending binding and unbinding of atoms… Our world, our bodies, our minds are but atoms in motion.”
The quotes are from the Wikipedia article on Lucretius.
There is no proof that any of the New Testament books providing what little we “know” about Jesus were written by the authors whose names are associated with the books. And, it is unlikely that the disciples who were companions of Jesus were literate, and able to write.In fact, Peter, if he was the first Pope as the Catholic Church says, as a fisherman was no doubt unable to read and write.
There are so many discrepancies between Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that one might think the books were written about different individuals. However, the authors probably each interpretted oral histories to meet the needs of the culture they lived in at the time different they wrote.
Whether Jesus was or, was not, an historical figure the stories about him are not compatible, and contain a great many mythical elements that could not have been historical.
There are a number of current Christian academic scholars (not just Bart Ehrman)who believe it possible that Jesus was a historical figure, but most of them do not express belief in the mythical and miraculous elements of the story.