Did Jesus Exist - Bart Ehrman's new book

[ant]

it is improbable without extraordinary evidence.

What evidence are you looking for as it relates to a miracles recorded in history 2000 years ago?
I thought I had explained it fairly clearly..., From a HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE..., yada, yada, yada...,

Are you looking to recreate the parting of the red sea?
Give it a shot

[geo]

Did Jesus actually perform miracles or were the stories of miracles simply invented to bolster their new God?

You need to first get the above correct:

The earliest "christians" (followers of Christ) DID NOT believe Christ was "their new God."
That simply is false.

Their Messiah then? Who was the son of God? Right?

[ant]

Their Messiah then? Who was the son of God? Right?

What do you mean by "son of god"?
(not being sarcastic here)

[johnson1010]

Ant:
How are you able to determine a miracle recorded in history did not happen?

Several ways. As in all things, we cannot say 100% certainty, but we are still dealing with confidence levels so high it may as well be 100% certainty. Much better than your odds of not winning the lottery, haha.

So how?

First, through demonstrable experiments, or comparison to reality.

Taking only walking on water, but realizing that these apply to all instances, what’s the claim? Jesus walked on water. This is implied to be a deep body of water, and not a mere puddle, and that he walked across the surface of that body of water without sinking as though it had the same supportive properties as land.

Empirical check: Can a man walk on water? I don’t have to do an experiment now, because I’ve been dealing with water my whole life and in every single instance I have ever observed and in every single instance which has ever been reported to me humans are unable to walk across the surface of water as though it were land. We sink beneath the surface.

Why is that? Because our tissues are more dense than water. There is a deep and fundamental reason why we can’t walk on water and it is a testable physical thing. The way to walk on water is to be so light so as not to break the surface tension, as is the case with so called water bugs, or to have a volume greater than your weight comparing like-units. This formula works because it finds your relative density to water. 1 unit of water in volume corresponds to 1 unit of water in mass. If your volume is larger than your mass in corresponding units, you are less dense and can therefore float. Although even in these instances some portion of the floating object is generally submerged so that too misses the image implied by “walking on water”.

So is it physically possible to walk on liquid water? No.

“Walking on water” does not fit with the physical realities of this world. The claim is invalidated demonstrably.

So what are the alternative explanations, if it is not a situation where a man physically walked on water?

The first, and the one true believers advocate is that Jesus performed a feat of magic and suspended the physical laws and that enabled him to walk on water as a demonstration of his supernatural magical powers.

Another alternative explanation is that Jesus rigged up some physical mechanism to allow him to fool onlookers into thinking he walked on water, but he was in fact walking on a jut of stone just under the water’s surface, or perhaps being a carpenter he built a ramp which he could walk out on the water and seem to stand on its surface.

Another alternative explanation is that the story of the event was blown out of proportion. Perhaps Jesus merely waded out into water, or stepped nimbly through sinking mud, avoiding losing his sandals, or perhaps jumped over a puddle and his followers told and re-told the story, embellishing it with each telling so that in the end their leader appeared to be more powerful, or to have performed some magical feat, rather than the ordinary less than news-worthy thing he actually did.

Another alternative explanation is that the story is a complete fabrication of Jesus’ followers who sought to build a supernatural event for believers to get behind and upon which they could establish Jesus as being more than a mere man.

How do we analyze these alternative explanations? By comparing what we know of the world with what is reported in the story.

Have we ever seen anything remotely resembling magical powers? No.
Have we seen people perform illusions to fool onlookers? Yes.
Have we seen people exaggerate stories? Yes.
Have we seen people lie? Yes.

Seeing as there have never been any credible, verifiable instances of magical powers, yet thousands, millions of instances of the other alternatives the obvious conclusion is that it was one of the three “yes” alternatives.

This can also be analyzed categorically. We group things in accordance to their shared characteristics. Grouping all things which share common characteristics and leaving out those things which do not share those characteristics. This is how we can separate things into identifiable groups and it works well with everything we’ve tried it on so far: biology, chemistry, physical law, mathematics, linguistics etc…

What we have in the case of “Jesus walked on water” is a claim.

It shares characteristics with other stories with which it can be grouped. It is set in a historical period, true, but it also makes claims of magical and fantastical events, so that separates this claim out from “history” and into “Fiction”, along with the thousands of other stories in fiction which make similar claims of characters performing magical feats, unsubstantiated by record, evidence, and in conflict with empirical demonstration. The fact that this claim takes place in some identifiable historical context gives it no more credence than “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire hunter.”

So, what do we know?
Humans cannot walk on liquid water.
No human has ever demonstrated magical abilities, despite urgent desire to perform magical feats.
Humans do lie.
Humans do desire power.
Humans do perform illusions.
Books can contain falsehoods, and they can be misleading.

So, we don’t need to chase this rabbit any further at this point. Somebody lied and wrote it down in a book.

There is no justification for treating this claim more seriously than spiderman clinging to walls

Ant:

Historians study past events that can not be repeated.

The fact that historical events cannot be viewed in real time is no impediment to determining their veracity. A big clue is if, in a historical account, something happens which cannot happen. Such as walking on water, or transmutation, or becoming a wear-wolf.

Ant:

An event might be considered miraculous to one person and something else to another

Events either are miracles, or have rational explanations. You might think birth is a miracle, but it is not. Being ignorant of the processes does not provide you with some special referential frame where you view a legitimate miracle. It just means you are ignorant of the facts. Eclipses were thought to be miracles to millions of people in the past. They were all unequivocally wrong. You may be amazed at them, you may be astounded by them, you may be surprised, energized, terrified, awed… fine. Eclipses are not miracles, and they are not made so by being ignorant of the cause.

[johnson1010]

What do you mean by "son of god"?
(not being sarcastic here)

You are nitpicking Ant.

Early christians fragmented into a variety of belief systems and continue to do so to this day.

There were christians who thought Christ was one with god and there were christians who thought of him as a prophet and christians who thought of him as pure spirit, and as flesh only etc...

[Dexter]

it is improbable without extraordinary evidence.

What evidence are you looking for as it relates to a miracles recorded in history 2000 years ago?
I thought I had explained it fairly clearly..., From a HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE..., yada, yada, yada...,

Are you looking to recreate the parting of the red sea?
Give it a shot

You are the one having trouble with burden of proof. Lack of evidence means it will forever be highly improbable, unless you can find more evidence.

[ant]

it is improbable without extraordinary evidence.

What evidence are you looking for as it relates to a miracles recorded in history 2000 years ago?
I thought I had explained it fairly clearly..., From a HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE..., yada, yada, yada...,

Are you looking to recreate the parting of the red sea?
Give it a shot

You are the one having trouble with burden of proof. Lack of evidence means it will forever be highly improbable, unless you can find more evidence.

Where am I trying to prove miracles have happened in the past? Show me
This is a historical discussion. I think you're clearly the one having trouble with just the idea of miracles in general

[ant]

What do you mean by "son of god"?
(not being sarcastic here)

You are nitpicking Ant.

Early christians fragmented into a variety of belief systems and continue to do so to this day.

There were christians who thought Christ was one with god and there were christians who thought of him as a prophet and christians who thought of him as pure spirit, and as flesh only etc...

First of all, I'm not nitpicking.
We are speaking of the historical Jesus and the context in which he lived. Therefore, we need to get our definitions straight.

You are clearly not familiar with the historical study of Christ. Why bunch everything up together for the sake of jumping into the conversation?

[ant]

The talk of miracles is a total digression from our main topic - the existence/non existence of the historical Jesus.

I'll refrain from pursuing this red herring.

[johnson1010]

The talk of miracles is a total digression from our main topic - the existence/non existence of the historical Jesus.

I'll refrain from pursuing this red herring.

Agreed, though you did pose the question.

I've caught this particular fish and placed it here:

http://www.booktalk.org/post104201.html

Where we can see if it is a red herring.

alley-OOP!