Dang. I better get tickets to Men In Black 3 before the 27th then. Sony Pictures is going to be seriously pissed, as this will affect their opening week numbers!

That's exactly the point, Doulos. If the evidence doesn't exist, why do you think your belief is justified? I'm sorry that the supposed events happened so long ago, I truly am. This is part of the reason the word "faith" is so popular, as I've said before. Many extremely intelligent men t...

The claimed events need to be supported before they can support anything else. Why you skipping?

When reading any narrative, I think it's always important to remember the overall context, even while focussing upon the individual details.

The clarification doesn't help. The subject is the "strong convictions". The subject is not "the content of the testimony". How strongly someone believes the truthfulness of events is not valid evidence. The reason they believe the truthfulness of events is valid evidence. You'r...

What I'm saying is that you have a small amount of evidence for any claim within the bible. You have no valid evidence for any of the more extraordinary claims. You're still playing with that word 'valid' here. If you mean from the sense of creating a valid argument in logic, I would actually agree...

The convictions are evidence? The testimony can be considered evidence, but not the conviction the person has regarding the testimony. This is what we're trying to say. It's a critical distinction. What's more, the testimony must be from the witness, and not in any form that could be altered by a t...

Hi Robert, That ignores the comple backdrop of economic and social relations between Christians and Jews. It is rather like saying the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland have hated each other because of specifically religious differences, when it is obvious these differences are primarily...

Hi DWill, The causation I'm claiming is simply that what the Gospels say about the role of the Jews had a great deal to do with their treatment down the ages. 'The Jews' may be too broad a term. Remember that Jesus and his disciples were also Jews, as were the vast majority of their early followers....

A pleasure to 'meet' you as well Johnson ;) It doesn’t beat modern standards, or sidestep modern standards, or ascend above modern standards, or defy them like a righteous peasant before a tyrant king. It fails to meet modern standards. That's part of the problem though. Ancient texts were written t...

Are you wanting to use the ancient standards of evidence? There is nothing wrong with the intelligence or reasoning ability of ancient peoples. In assessing any ancient claim, we should look at it using period knowledge and an understanding of the norms of communication of the time. Anything less, ...