Being agnostic in regards to the historicity of St. Paul is justifiable.

Major contradictions between what a persons says about themselves, and what another person says about them, doesn"t prove or imply the person doesn"t exist. People have different views of President Obama, does that mean he doesn"t exist? There were contradictions in the various accounts of how the Titanic sank, does that mean there was no such boat? So because Pro thinks Luke gives a different version of Paul from what Paul says of himself, he thinks Paul didn"t exist? Pro gave no link to his source for his quote from Britannica, but since he trusts Britannica as a source, let it be known that in the link I am providing, you"ll see that the Encyclopedia Britannica says that Paul was indeed a historical person, and admits he wrote at least 7 books of the NT. "Saint Paul, the Apostle, original name Saul of Tarsus (born 4 bc?, Tarsus in Cilicia [now in Turkey]"died c. ad 62"64, Rome [Italy]), one of the leaders of the first generation of Christians"Only 7 of the 13 letters, however, can be accepted as being entirely authentic (dictated by Paul himself)." http://www.britannica.com... To conclude that even both Acts and the Epistles are unreliable in how they portray Paul is no indication of his non-existence. Most historians don"t accept the miracle stories in the Gospels concerning Jesus. Most of them believe the four Gospel are embellished with legend and contain contradictions about his life, yet, they agree he existed. "Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that"Jesus existed historically." http://en.wikipedia.org... So Pro thinks for a person to exist that every account of their life must be truthful and in agreement, and this is his own made-up standard which historians do not use, otherwise, our history books would be very few and very small. Pro says "Acts would probably be written in the mid to late 2nd century." But there are good reasons to think Acts was written before 70 C.E. "A.D. 70. No mention of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 21:20). 1."The fall of Jerusalem in A.D 70 is hugely significant, and Acts leaves you with the impression that the temple is still standing. 2.Luke did mention fulfilled prophecies, i.e.,"Acts 11:28""so, why not mention the destruction of Jerusalem as was prophesied?" Wouldn't it have added to the validity of the"Christian"message? 2.A.D. 64. No mention of the horrendous persecution of Nero in A.D. 64. 1." 2.Luke recorded Christian Martyrs: Stephen in"Acts 7:55-60"and James in"Acts 12:2." Why not write about the martyrs of the Nero persecution as well--if it happened before Acts was written? 3.A.D. 64. No Roman persecution of the Church mentioned. 4.... 5.A.D. 62." No mention of the death of the apostle James." https://carm.org... As for the so-called contradictions he didn"t list, they don"t exit. http://www.tektonics.org... As for "On the Historicity of Jesus" by Richard Carrier, Carrier agrees with me that Paul existed. So Pro"s own source disagrees with him. http://freethoughtblogs.com... Pro, you cannot assume an epistle is not authentic just because you have others that are not. Every president of the US before Obama was white, so what is the probability of a black US president based on that? Yet, "yes we can!" The authenticity of Paul"s letters is decided based on the evidence behind each letter, not on a probability calculated from the amount which are classed as forgeries. Once a document passes the tests for authenticity, it is accepted as authentic regardless of how many others are forgeries. Scholars admit 7 of Paul"s letters pass these tests. Furthermore, Pro"s argument is one from authority. He gives no proof for the 6-7 letters being forgeries, just a mere claim that this is generally accepted by scholars. But the same scholars generally accept that Paul wrote the other letters, thus he existed. So why should I accept what scholars say in one instance but not the other? Just shows Pro"s bias. How do we know Paul wrote 1Corinthians? A. It is generally agreed by all that Paul was the author of First Corinthians B. The account of Paul"s founding of the church is reported in Acts 18 C. External evidence: also supports this conclusion1 1. Clement of Rome (c. 95-97) 2. Polycarp (c. 110-150) 3. The Shepherd of Hermas [Mandate 3:6 (1 Cor. 7:11); 4:4.1 (1 Cor. 7:38-40)] (c. 115-140) 4. Didache [10:6 (1 Cor. 16:22); 13:1-2 (1 Cor. 9:13-14); and 16:6 (1 Cor. 15:22)] (c. 120-150) 5. Irenaeus (c. 130-202) 6. Justin Martyr (c. 150-155) 7. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) 8. Tertullian (c. 150-220) 9. Origen (c. 185-254) 10. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315-386) 11. Eusebius (c. 325-240) 12. Jerome (c. 340-420) 13. Augustine (c. 400) D. Internal Evidence: 1. Paul identifies himself as the author in 1 Corinthians 1:1; 16:21 2. Paul refers to himself within the epistle (1:12,13; 3:4,5,6,22) If Paul didn't write 1 and 2 Corinthians, why is there no other surviving tradition of another author? First and second-century testimony is unanimous in attributing these letters to him. This suggests that they received their titles early; for if they had not, there would have been a great deal of speculation as to who had written them - a variation of titles would have inevitably risen, as had happened with the apocryphal gospels. It is rather harder to believe that these letters circulated anonymously for 60 or more years and then someone finally thought to put an author's name on them -- and managed to get the whole church across the Roman Empire to agree. How could the early Christian community honor these letters as authoritative unless they knew who had written them? Even granting such a late date as some critics surmise, it is doubtful that these letters could have gotten anywhere unless they were certainly attributable to someone who was recognized as knowing what they were writing about. If Paul didn't exist, the church would have asked, "who is Paul, that we must accept his letters?" On the other hand, I must say that some critics assume a high degree of gullibility in the first-century church. For an anonymous author to have penned a Gospel, and have it accepted as from the hand of any authoritative person, would have required them to first produce the Gospel, then present it as the work of another; they would have to concoct some story as to how it came peculiarly to be in their possession; get around the problem of why a work by such a person disappeared or was previously unknown; then get the church at large, first in his area and then throughout the Roman Empire (and would not the claimed discovery of such a document cause a sensation, and controversy?), to accept this work as genuine. Please show us, Pro, where is the historical documentation of the controversy surrounding these letters when they were first given to the church. At the beginning of the second century, there would have been first-generation Christians alive who recalled the apostles and their teaching, and many more second-generation Christians who would have had information passed directly to them. We have early witnesses to the authorship of some of the Gospels. Papias wrote around 110-130, and he surely did not design the authorship of Matthew and Mark on the spur of the moment. That being so, how could anyone have dared to attribute the Gospels to anyone other than the genuine authors with these first- and second-generation witnesses still alive? Believers in the 70s-90s, when critics suppose that the Gospels were authored anonymously, would have known of no works of Paul; believers after the 90s who descended from this generation and lived into the lifetime of Papias would have had no tradition of such documents. How does Pro imagine a forger got the church to accept the letters of a man whom they didn't even believe to exist? Pro said "For a long time 1 Clement, 2 Peter, etc. were thought to be authentic and were preserved as well. Is it really evidence for this particular set being authentic just because of it being preserved like that?,"but first of all, we don't have many copies of 1 Clement and 2 Peter when compared to the thousands of copies of Paul's letters from all over the Roman Empire. Why would so many people try to preserve the works of a man who didn't exist? Further, Clement was a real person, so was Peter, they existed. Maybe that's why people tried to preserve their work, cause these people were important to them. The same could be said of Paul. Richard Carrier says: "Detering seems to think self-referencing signatures commonly appear only in forgery; in fact, they are commonly found on real letters"I"ve seen several examples in papyrological journals)...the letters explicitly present themselves internally as having been written in the 50s A.D. So the congruence of that fact with their content totally ignoring later existing doctrinal and tradition battles in the Church is very likely if the 50s is indeed when they were written. It is very unlikely otherwise: not impossible, but very unlikely, and that produces a strong Bayes factor favoring authenticity. I can"t even think of a single example of an ancient forger successfully ignoring all the central doctrinal and tradition disputes of their own day merely to produce a convincing period-accurate but thereby contemporarily-irrelevant document. ...These six letters also claim to be written by Paul and cohere in references to and descriptions of himself, and if they were indeed written when claimed, there is no reason to doubt that the author was Paul. No motive existed then to invent that name. Nor would such an invention at that point in history matter, since the exact name of this apostle is irrelevant to any argument one might construct about this man"s and these letters" role in the history of Christianity." http://freethoughtblogs.com... More later