(Since Jersey Girl’s post time-stamped Apr 6, 2008 7:45 pm was long, I’ll not replicate that entire post in response but allow this to serve as reference to the post and to which I respond.)
No
“Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry” can be regarded as an
objective,
unbiased source. It begins with a doctrine accepted absent the skeptical review required to establish it as
free from bias.
Despite the dates here, the bias is clear in the introduction of your source. It’s doctrine vs. discovery. And in cases of many of the biblical references, we are dealing with
word of mouth claims
prior to any written record.
Let’s look at the language in the introduction claiming “manuscript evidence for superior New Testament reliability.”
Jersey Girl linked it. Here is the opening statement:
The New Testament is constantly under attack and its reliability and accuracy are often contested by critics. But, if the critics want to disregard the New Testament, then they must also disregard other ancient writings by Plato, Aristotle, and Homer. This is because the New Testament documents are better preserved and more numerous than any other ancient writing. Because the copies are so numerous, they can be cross checked for accuracy. This process has determined that the biblical documents are extremely consistent and accurate.
There are presently 5,686 Greek manuscripts in existence today for the New Testament.1 If we were to compare the number of New Testament manuscripts to other ancient writings, we find that the New Testament manuscripts far outweigh the others in quantity.
Now what is the problem with this statement? The critics do not “disregard the New Testament” as the second sentence claims.
On the contrary, critics take the New Testament and point to the various contradictions contained in the very words of that New Testament.
So the claim that Critics want to disregard the New Testament is false. Critics take the words contained therein and point out the conflicts and contradictions by direct quotation of biblical scripts.
Objective, non-pro religious doctrine observes and documents:
New Testament Contradictions
In short, the claim above from Jersey Girl’s source
misrepresents critics as it claims critics “disregard the New testament.” Quoting the New Testament and demonstrating contradictions
is not disregarding it.
Second, that
Plato, Aristotle, and Homer were writers is documented. They were the intelligentsia of their time. No such claim can be made for
Jesus. There were
no original writings for the
Christian claimed Jesus. No evidence is presented by Christian pundits that
Jesus ever wrote anything. Could the alleged
Jesus read? Is there any compelling evidence that
Jesus had even that much education? The second
false implication by the
Christian pundit website is that writings by Plato and Aristotle and Homer must be treated equally with the
word of mouth stories which are the basis for the
Christian claims. Nothing supernatural was claimed by or for Plato, Aristotle or Homer. No
extraordinary claims were made for the intellectuals named here. No defiance of science is claimed for these writers.
However,
Christianity, based on hearsay, must rely not only the storytelling, but it must rely on
supernatural claims for which only assertion by doctrine is offered. Repetition does not give such doctrine credibility as a matter of fact. Extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence.
Christianity offers only claim for the extraordinary.
Again Jersey Girl’s source is disingenuous regarding its attempt to criticize the critics.
There are
original New Testament writings about events
based on hearsay of characters claimed by Christianity. There are
extraordinary claims absent anything more than hearsay. The fact that hand written copies were made of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer is all the more significant as genuine documentation of
what those people wrote.
Jesus wrote
nothing. And what was written about the alleged character was written
after the fact and was written by no one who was a prodigious
note taker to the words alleged to have been spoken. Intellectuals of Plato’s day read and copied what Plato himself wrote (and Aristotle and Homer as well).
And that does not begin to address the extraordinary claims of “Immaculate Conception” and other supernatural claims made by
Christianity which are critical essentials for
Christianity. No such thing is required for Plato, Aristotle, and Homer or for their thinking.
The
New Testament has been checked for accuracy and has been found to contain numerous contradictions despite the efforts of early adherents to the religion and their attempts (or modern attempts) to deny or explain away contradictions.
Review this site again.
Objectivity comes from
detached study. It does
not come from those committed to proselytize for a religion. That is exactly the case for the link as I have demonstrated here. It proselytizes for
Christianity. It lacks objectivity. It’s a biased source in support of a religious mythology.
Phrases such as “extremely consistent and accurate” are assertions from a biased source which denies or ignores the clear evidence of
inconsistency as the sources which demonstrate such inconsistencies and contradictions linked in this post.
In addition, as objectivity is at issue, we have the following.
A List of Biblical Contradictions
General Contradictions
General Contradictions in the New Testament
“
Conclusion
If there is any area in which the Christian Bible's imperfections and errancy is most apparent, it is that of inconsistencies and contradictions. The book is a veritable miasma of contradictory assertions and obvious disagreements, which is to be expected in any writing formulated over approximately 1,500 years by 40 or 50 different writers, few of whom seemed to be precisely concerned with what the others had penned.
In fact the writers were just never there.”
Many more examples could be cited which demonstrate the opposite of the claim in the
pro-Christian website regarding “superiority” for “reliability.”
The fact is that people who
want to believe in a given religious myth are probably not genuinely interested in historical accuracy. They are more likely interested in patching together a series of claims to support their view, their denomination, their sect, or their cult.
Jim Jones belonged to
Disciples of Christ before he established the “Peoples Temple” and
preached the Bible to his converts. That
Christian sect resulted in
Jonestown and mass murder-suicide. Scroll down to find the title and the description of that
Christian group.
Jim Jones in this multi-page report read from the
same Bible and preached
his Christianity. The well-reported story demonstrates well the
dangers of religion about which I wrote previously.
Relevant is the inconsistency, widely varying views and interpretations of the
Christian doctrines including the ones under discussion here. Virtually every
Christian pundit argues from authority (a logical fallacy).
Therefore,
evidence such as the one Jersey Girl offered is
irrelevant. It is, however a technique used as a kind of patchwork support for any particular version of
Christianity. The number count as cited above regarding “Greek manuscripts” is also irrelevant.
Here is why. Christianity was adopted by the authorities of Constantine The Great and his descendents beginning around 300 A.D. As a result, the religion was perpetuated as authentic (true) over time. In spite of that fact, not only do we have many internal contradictions, we have claims of supernatural events and acts (miracles)
used as devices to perpetuate that religion.
In fact, quantity does not equal quality as the author above implies. That many believed in “the Immaculate Conception” (for example) over centuries gives
no credibility to the doctrinal claim. And those who believe it in whatever form did so (do so today) as a matter of subjection to
religious indoctrination. Ancients were not biologists or scientists of any way as we understand those researchers today.
Truth by assertion does not make truth as some wish to believe.
Those who
wish to believe are most unlikely to be convinced by any of the analytical dissection of New Testament contradictions or by biblical contradictions in larger context inclusive of the Old Testament.
Religious beliefs are not based on rational thinking, yet most who are religious like to perceive themselves as
rational.
It’s irrational to claim validity for
the literal words of Jesus, who wrote
nothing and compare that fact with the words of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer who are
documented to have been intellectuals of their day and
documented to have
written extensively by their intellectual students.
The
pro-Christian chart does nothing to demonstrate superiority of New Testament (multiple writers) with singular writers of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer. Had the alleged
Jesus written as did these three, one could draw some parallel. But that was not the case.
The fallacious argument here is
argument from number. It argues that
because we can count more New Testament copied manuscripts, that makes
what is in those copies reliable and valid. It’s a false argument. More important, however, are the multiple contradictions. Even more important are the multiple
interpretations which clearly do not agree.
Christianity, while one religion, is one greatly
fractured religion as demonstrated by
Christian pundits such as Warren Jeffs and before him Jim Jones. While most
Christians today would see a wide separation between themselves and Jones or Jeffs, the fact remains,
Christianity is the religion.
Interpretations are the differences.
In short, Jersey Girl’s website which is a
pro-Christian website is
not an objective website.
Those websites which show clear contradictions or contradicting interpretations of what currently stands in the Bible are addressing the Bible
not disregarding the Bible or the New Testament as the source above falsely claims.
While time between when something is alleged to have been said and when it was alleged to have been put into writing may be important, of greater significance and importance is the fact that there
were writers and (for their time) well educated writers and readers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Homer. The fact that they
themselves made writings gives them more credibility than writers who relied on
word-of-mouth for years before any writings were made.
It is also likely relevant to the invention of supernatural claims by those writers since the
story telling could not possibly have been the word for word, verbatim script as the Bible portrays. That notion defies rational analysis. But those are the
claims of
Christianity albeit so fractured today that the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the past week had more than 400 children removed from that Texas compound which was the “kingdom” of one Warren Jeffs. Warren Jeffs is now in jail serving 5 years to life for crimes (well covered in the news). He, Warren Jeffs, used
exactly the same Bible to establish his
Christian religious group as do other Christians who have a
far different interpretation of the Bible than did/does Warren Jeffs or the people remaining in that Texas compound who were indoctrinated to believe in hell and that they would spend eternity in hell if they did not do just as their
religious leaders told them to do.
Christian believers in any one of the wide variety of
Christian myths from which to choose today are most unlikely to be persuaded by skeptical review or by any analysis which tends to refute their
sacred beliefs.
It’s important to recognize that in our friendly discussions here, we may not have much concensus.
There is no question that virtually every
Christian denomination and other
Christian groups as well have a presence on the Internet. They also have their own religiously based schools, their own
faith-based literature, and their own theologians representing their particular slant on the religion of
Christianity.
It is without doubt that added together, numerically they total in their differing views many websites. It might be difficult to make a case that they total more than all the science-based websites addressing what we can find in medical science, physics, mathematics, etc.
But, as these are friendly discussions, we understand that we come from different backgrounds with different perspectives.
JAK