"Theist": is a Transitional Form In Human Cultural/Cognitive Evolution

Pro keeps arguing that to show the Gospels to be reliable history, I need first hand, eyewitness accounts from the time of Jesus, but he is so incorrect. This may be a long quote, but it will show why Pro is so obviously wrong. "One of the major problems with the legend hypothesis, however, which is almost never addressed by sceptical critics, is that the time between Jesus"s death and the writing of the gospels is just too short for this to happen. This point has been well-explained by A. N. Sherwin-White in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament.2 Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is a professional historian of times prior to and contemporaneous with Jesus. According to Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman and Greek history are usually biased and removed one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence the course of Roman and Greek history. For example, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander"s death, and yet classical historians still consider them to be trustworthy. The fabulous legends about Alexander the Great did not develop until during the centuries after these two writers. According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be "unbelievable." More generations would be needed." (Rediscovering the Historical Jesus: The Evidence for Jesus, Prof. William Lane Craig) Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org... Pro's standard for historical proof wouldn't be passed by many ancients historical works, and our history section in the libraries would become very small. We would know next to nothing about the ancient world. Thing is, we do have eyewitness testimony for the life of Jesus. In 2 Peter 1:16 Peter tells us that 'We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.' Similarly, 1 John 1:1,3 states that 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched ... we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.' The authors also claim they are telling the truth and not lying, (Rom. 9.1) We should be willing to investigate whether they were or not. In Luke's prologue (Luke 1:1-4) he makes note of the importance of speaking with eyewitnesses. Also, Peter's insistence on replacing Judas Iscariot with someone who had personally observed what had occurred (Acts 1:21-22) demonstrates the firsthand eyewitnesses. Ancient historians did not value recording the exact words spoken by an individual as highly as we value it today. Instead, ancient historians attempted to communicate a speaker"s intended meaning. Therefore, while different authors may record a speaker's words differently, their testimonies can still be reliable if they are in agreement. Additionally, if the stories in the Gospel were all related in exactly the same way, we might suspect the authors were merely copying (colluding with) each other. 'If the Gospels were too consistent,' notes Craig Blomberg, 'that itself would invalidate them as independent witnesses.' The differences in the resurrection story itself shows that they were not colluding together in a conspiracy as Pro imagines. What's more, we know that all four Gospels were written before 100 C.E., which implies strongly that the authors would have been alive before Jesus died in 33 C.E. Many eyewitnesses would still be alive to refute the Gospels but they didn't. If the Gospels were not authored by the apostles Matthew and John for example, but were anonymous, we would have had more than one name popping up as possible authors before unanimity was reached on who the author was; but no such controversy existed. None of the church fathers ever offered any other name than those we have today as authors for the Gospels, and these names are found in all the manuscripts we have. So yes, we have eyewitness testimony, and we have multiple testimony from various persons, which again shows the reliability of the Gospels. So far, Pro hasn't been able to deal with my arguments on Christian theism, and until he does it seems that we have good evidence that God did indeed reveal himself to human beings, and therefore such theism cannot be a natural byproduct of cognitive evolution. Pro's argument began with the idea that human language began with simple grunts and gradually developed into complex languages, but I refuted this argument by showing that human language was complex from the very beginning, and challenged him to show us proof of an ancient language which was simple. He has failed to even attempt to meet that challenge. I also argued that languages become more complex as time passed, which contradicts Pro's hypothesis that the evolution of language is from the simple to the complex. I even gave examples, to which Pro has made no reply. He argued that theism evolved out of polytheism, but I gave references to the ancient documents showing that theism, belief in a Supreme Being as God was around along with polytheism, and therefore one did not evolve from the other. To this Pro said nothing. He now argues that as time passes, more people become atheists, and Christian numbers fall, which shows theism is just a passing faze of our evolution. But he fails to realize that birth rates for the the non-Christian population, as well as decreases in the fertility rate of Christians plays a role in this matter. There is actually very good evidence for increase among many denominations claiming Christianity. For the Catholic Church: "Church membership in 2007 was 1.147 billion people,[5] (17% of the global population at the time) increasing from the 1950 figure of 437 million[6] (17% of the global population at the time) and the 1970 figure of 654 million.[7] On 31 December 2008, membership was 1.166 billion, an increase of 11.54% over the same date in 2000, only slightly greater than the rate of increase of the world population (10.77%). The increase was 33.02% in Africa, but only 1.17% in Europe. It was 15.91% in Asia, 11.39% in Oceania, and 10.93% in Americas. As a result, Catholics were 17.77% of the total population in Africa, 63.10% in Americas, 3.05% in Asia, 39.97% in Europe, 26.21% in Oceania, and 17.40% of the world population. Of the world's Catholics, the proportion living in Africa grew from 12.44% in 2000 to 14.84% in 2008" "Christianity has been estimated to be growing rapidly in South America, Africa, and Asia. In Africa, for instance, in 1900, there were only 8.7 million adherents of Christianity; now there are 390 million, and it is expected by 2025 there will be 600 million Christians in Africa. The number of Catholics in Africa has increased from one million in 1902 to 329,882,000. There are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people." http://www.google.com... So Pro doen't get that numbers tend to rise and fall for various reasons. Christian numbers falling doesn't mean humanity will become all atheists, anymore than when they rise show humanity will become all Christian. Pro did his best, but he'll have to try it again.