Going back to an earlier conversation, I feel you're overly bound to this ideal of formal logic.
Overly bound? If so, then only by necessity. But I'm not too much of a logistician. More of a philosopher in general. I enjoy informal logic more, or at least what I understand of it. Here is a link to informal fallacies that are fun to play around with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fa ... _fallacies
As for an alogical or illogical system of assessing veracity, I would need to be a student to you. Perhaps there are a large number of systems that don't include logic. I would wonder why, since it is so reliable in achieving truthful results.
When reading any narrative, I think it's always important to remember the overall context, even while focussing upon the individual details.
For understanding the story you're right. That's a necessary wisdom, I think, in studying the bible. What are you wanting us to focus on? I've been focusing on whether or not the story is true. I would like to know that at some point. I've studied the storyline when I was younger, and some recently.
But if we focus on the veracity of the story(don't you think that matters?), the details really do matter. If one thing is said on page 5, that is then later used as evidence for something during page 7, we're sort of in a pickle. You see, the thing on page 7 might not be true or have happened, if the thing on page 5 didn't happen. The only thing that "taking it all in context" would do here is give us a reason to ignore the issue. It won't become true or resolve itself if our focus is elsewhere.
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 with you, for the very reasons I enumerated earlier regarding the nature of the evidence and how these constitute a fallacy in logical terms.
It doesn't need to be within formal logic. I'm merely using objective language. Most of the time I use the word "evidence", it's a placeholder for "valid evidence", but I'm being more precise because it matters. If it's bad evidence, I'd refer to it as such, or good evidence, or invalid evidence if there's some sort of subterfuge or motive involved. You were right when you said that darn near anything can be evidence. But that is a category, and the subcategory is what conveys the status.
One can still come to a point of personal decision regarding what the Bible asserts, just as a jury in court can come to a decision based upon the evidence provided. Would that be based upon valid evidence in logical terms? Possibly not.
I'd think a lot of juries decide on a whim, without any logic, or even relying upon contradictions! Do you think the victim in such a trial is fairly judged? Would you agree with the jury even if they based their decision on a contradiction? This is an honest question.
The reason for the strong convictions is precisely because of surety about the truthfulness of events. That surety is often (we're talking about multiple claims, so obviously not all are the same) due to being an eye witness to the events in question.
Are you sure? Could the reason for the strong convictions not be that they are fabricated to gain further believers? Are you sure you're even reading the testimony of the supposed witnesses? If so, are you sure they weren't tampered with to increase believability in the story? Can a person not fake strong conviction to start a movement? For each of your answers, is there sufficient reason to be sure, or is it based on weak reasoning? That's not an insult, we all use weak reasoning at times.
There are unknowns as to why the witnesses are sure the events are true. The unknowns cannot be eliminated, because to do so you'd need to be inside the heads of the witnesses when they were alive. If you were able to do so, and get inside the head of one of the witnesses(personal questioning), you might be able to tell if their certainty is honest.
But then there's another problem. Even a person who's honestly certain can be(and often is) wrong. The things that people believe can only truly be used in conjunction with something else, to determine that there's truth to what they say. Otherwise, how do you know they aren't mistaken? You could come up with a thousand reasons
why they aren't mistaken, but how do you
know.
Let's say we find something that shows the person to be telling the truth(some evidence, if you will). The problem is, part of the story was unusual, in that the witness supposedly saw butterflies turn in to bumblebees. Now, since we found something that shows the person to be telling the truth about one part of their testimony, should we assume the rest is true as well? Of course not... the 'assume' part. We need to check up on it. After talking to a host of experts who say that such an event is next to impossible, we suddenly have a whole bunch of "contrary evidence" that needs to be surmounted before we believe the witness.
I don't believe the bible is true witness testimony. I believe there is a great deal of truth in many of the events, people, and locations. But those truths are mixed with a storytelling narrative that evolved as it changed hands. Even in those instances where scholars have determined the writing style belongs most likely to the original writer, I believe it to be a story crafted with motive. The writer wanted something to change, or wanted reknown in some form. There are a thousand other motives, I couldn't guess at them. After a decade of making oral rounds, I'm sure others would join the cause. Like attracts like, given the right time and setting.