From: rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla)
Subject: Re: Jesus is the Son of God, not a prophet
Organization: Rescorla for himself.
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 00:34:45 GMT

In article <WIGGINS.92Nov20123316@lightning.cs.odu.edu> wiggins@lightning.cs.odu.edu (Samuel E Wiggins) writes:
>In article <1992Nov17.184426.2067@cs.yale.edu> rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla) writes:
>   In article <WIGGINS.92Nov17122722@hurricane.cs.odu.edu> wiggins@hurricane.cs.odu.edu (Samuel E Wiggins) writes:
>   >I don't believe you got up this morning.  Prove that you did.  Or, maybe 
>   >you only believe you got up this morning, and this is all a silly dream.
>   I'm not arguing that I got up this morning. Presumably you are arguing
>   that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. However, I could provide
>   the sorts of proof that are generally considered sufficient in science
>   that I woke up this morning--pictures of me at my workstation, time
>   stamped EEGs, time stamped polygraphs, that sort of thing to prove
>   it in the usual scientific fashion. I doubt you can do the same for
>   any of the claims that Mr. Hudson is making.
>-------
>Well, you still can't prove to me that you ever woke up, even using these
>scientific instruments.
Naturally. Nothing can be proved beyond all doubt--ever, as far as I
can tell. But I can prove that I woke up as far as a certain standard
goes. That standard is far higher than you will be able to meet for
Biblical truth.

> I could always interpret the facts differently,
>or claim your facts were forged or came from incomplete or invalid testing.
Naturally.
And I would be able to counter some of these claims by suggesting
that you make your own tests and try to see if you come up with
your own results that match mine. You could choose to ignore those
results as well, however, as you note.

>Moreover, your scientific testing methods cannot be applied in this instance,
>heavily for hard proof were : these scientific instruments you rely on so
>in question.  They only had what was available, just writing and word of
>mouth; things that don't really stand up to scientific testing well
>anyway.
Damn straight. Which is why it is foolish to trust their accounts
as really firm unless one can verify them in a decent independent
fashion--particularly when they tell of events of a general class
which is not known to exist--"miracles."

>How come people who never became Christians agreed that weird things were
>But I have a question:
>going on and miracles happened?  Witness the Quran.  People in Palestine
>at that time other than the followers of Christ.
I'm sorry, this is very garbled. What are you trying to say here?

>I have another:
>Why believe 90% of a newspaper which only tells of events without hard
>scientific scrutiny?  (Is it because there are witnesses one can refer
>if need be?  Both pro and con for the subject known as fact.)
I don't believe much of what a newspaper says. They are frequently inaccurate.
I believe most of it provisionally. If the newspaper said that
San Francisco had just disappeared, I would probably be rather skeptical.
Do you believe in the children of space aliens that the Weekly World
News writes about?

>   >So.  Don't skirt the issue.  Address what I Peter says, regardless of the
>   >fact that Peter did write it. :)
>   You're begging the question. It only follows that Peter believed what
>   1 Peter says if it is shown that Peter wrote 1 Peter. Since this
>   has not been shown, I do not need to show that 1 Peter does not
>   indicate a belief in resurrection to show that it does not logically
>   follow from 1 Peter that Peter believed in resurrection.
>Say again?  Why don't you take a "suppose Peter wrote 1 Peter approach."
>Then take a "suppose he didn't."  Try to argue from each possibility.
>Would this affect your conclusions?
No, not at all.
I'm prepared to grant for the sake of argument that 1 Peter supports
a stance which believes in resurrection. It doesn't affect the strength
of my criticism of your argument.

>Even aside from Peter, 1 Peter makes claim to the resurrection; here
>another person is claiming Christ rose from the dead.  This must still
>be proven false, independent of who the writer was.  To blow him off
>simply because he's not famous and doesn't have clout doesn't disprove
>what he's saying.  (It really makes no difference to me whether Peter
>wrote 1 Peter or not, though I personally believe he did; what does matter is
>that some Christian wrote 1 Peter who believed in the resurrection.)
No, that doesn't matter. For instance, YOU believe in the resurrection.
But you don't have any first person knowledge of the event so the
fact that you believe in it means basically nothing(pop over to alt.
folklore.urban.). The reason Peter's testimony would be interesting is
that he would (or so the argument goes) know. Let's refresh the argument.
1) Peter would know if the ressurection was bullshit.
2) Peter taught that the resurrection was true.
3) Peter was martyred.
4) Peter could have saved himself by saying the resurrection was bullshit.
5) If Peter had known the resurrection was bullshit, he would never
have allowed (3) given (4).

Now, I'm prepared to grant point 1. I think that 2-5 are pretty dubious.
The way 1 Peter came up was in an attempt to show (2). If Peter
didn't write 1 Peter than (a) it's not interesting since it's not a first
person account and (b) it doesn't support (2).
-Ekr


-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Rescorla, DoD#431 (Nighthawk S)              rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu
Former chemist now CM400 mechanic                 ekr@eitech.com(preferred)
                "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."