It is more probable that Jesus was God than that He was not

I do not agree with Pro's interpretation of Matthew. There are 3 parts to that section: 1) Disciples ask when apocalypse will happen. 2) Jesus says there will be wickedness, tribulation, a heavenly sign (interpreted as a second coming), then the world ends. 3) Jesus says "I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place. " The adjective use of "this", grammatically, means something close at hand. Your interpretation tries to prove "this" means "that" by saying it could not have referred to the contemporary generation because they never saw the second coming. Completely illogical considering Jesus made it clear that the events were to happen sometime in the future, and thus the disciples of his contemporary generation would have been waiting for it. Though the Iliad mythology was created in more years of story telling than the New Testament, it was also much more developed. Christianity evolved only to the point of a God, a Son of God, and the Virgin Mary, but if a few hundred more years of broken telephone took place before it was set in text, it may have resulted in Christians currently worshiping a pantheon. There was more than enough time for broken telephone to take place, and the disparate accounts reinforce this. Thus, I maintain that because the New Testament based its accounts on narrative that developed and evolved through years of story telling, it should not be considered historically credible. I'm glad Pro mentioned Paul, as I hoped to get to him in round 4. When citing a specific instance with Paul, one must refer to the epistle, as the authorship of many are questionable. However, I assume Pro means 1 Corinthians, as that is the Epistle that supposedly proves the resurrection. In the text "Paul was making claims as early as 3 years after Jesus death" although I honestly believe that's a typo. The average date given to the text is 56 AD, so I'm guessing Pro meant 30 years, using a late date. . http://www.errantskeptics.org.... There Paul says the risen Jesus appeared to: Cephas, the 12, 500 followers (whom he says were mostly still alive at the time of writing), James, the apostles, then himself. In total, 514 individuals besides himself. Yet, Paul was not with any of these other people; he was on the road to Damascus at the time. So how did he know that it was 500 people who saw Jesus, except through hearsay? Likewise, how did Paul know that most of these 500 people were still alive after 20 years? He definitely did not do a survey, so it must have been interjected as an unfalsifiable claim adding credibility to the resurrection, or just a guess statement. Unfalsifiable because who would find these 500 people (already a problem because they were not named) and count how many are still alive. This also addresses Pro's objection to my point about the broken telephone system. In fact, Paul's witnessing of the resurrection consists solely of being blinded by bright light, something that has a very plausible natural explanation. I agree that "which ever way one interprets the Greek word, it makes no difference", but the fact that it was interpreted both ways does. An Aramaic speaker could not have told this exchange to a Greek writer because the double entendre-ed word for "from above" and "again" does not exist in that language. Only in Koine is ἄνωθεν a homonym for "from above" and "again". Thus, Gospels could not have been written or told to writers by Jesus' followers. It seems the Wikipedia definition changed since round 4 (or Pro got it from a different part of the page): "Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied. " The reason I mentioned primary source is because a biased or non-objective historical account should not be discredited on that basis alone. For example, many history books set out to argue a revisionist account of certain events in history; many of them might be right. However, these books must cite objective primary sources to make their case, and also eyewitnesses if they are to be considered credible. The gospels and Corinthians are the primary sources. They are not objective and were written with the intention to convert. Pro argues though, that this was not so, specifically looking at Matthew. His logic is as follows: Paul and the disciples were spreading certain ideas (Jesus as the Old Testament Messiah) before they were written; thus, it would be redundant to write a book to convert Jews. The problem with this logic is that text was a form of mass communication, so it could reach out to the Jews who did not hear the account of Jesus orally. Also, there is no evidence that Paul and the disciples were preaching an account of Jesus' life that emphasized Old Testament prophesies. Therefore, I believe the evidence points to these texts as being doctrines meant for converting, not giving historical accounts. Pro repeatedly states that the texts were written closer to the event than other historical accounts. We only mentioned Plutarch's Alexander in this debate, but it used primary sources from the lifetime of Alexander, as opposed to being a primary source itself. As a primary source, the fact that the New Testament was written as doctrine, and not objectively, is why it should not be considered historically credible. While Pro's anecdote about Jesus' disciples was inventive, it was not based on scriptural evidence. In John, the disciples were filled with joy immediately after Jesus spoke, while the disciples in Luke have the opposite emotion immediately after. That is not to mention that the two dialogues are completely different, which is something that cannot be harmonized. The problem with the harmonization of the cross-carrying, and many others, is that they rely purely on conjecture. If one considers the accounts of such events as they are written, they are contradictions because the series of events that readers are led to believe by the author - i. e. without suppositions created to harmonize accounts - are incompatible. I am not going to pile on these contradictions as it would be unfair to do so in the last round, though I believe the three I used adequately represent the historical disparity of the accounts of Jesus' life. This is another reason why the New Testament should not be considered historically credible. I feel my strongest point is the illogical connection between one's supernatural powers and their divine claims being true. Pro says "since we have already seen the gospels are reliable and that there is a high probability that the resurrection did occur and Jesus claimed to be God, it would lead us to the conclusion that Jesus is God". However, it would not lead us to that conclusion at all. Jesus' supernatural powers are a logical dead end; they don't imply anything further that is not self-referential. "But I haven't seen you give any other reliable evidence that someone else claimed to be God, had historically accurate text written about them, and was resurrected. " It would not matter, as I don't suppose one's supernatural powers lead to the conclusion that their godly claims are true. You do though, and that opens the door to all the others who have claimed both supernatural powers and their holiness. Yet if one approaches this logically, which I propose, he will accept that the former does not prove the latter in any case. The assumption that because one has supernatural powers his claims are correct is purely based on faith, not mathematical probability. So even though we spent quite a few characters arguing on scripture, their historical accuracy ultimately doesn't matter. If they are historically accurate, which I deny, all that's proven is that Jesus had supernatural powers, not that he was God - which is the topic