From: wiggins@hurricane.cs.odu.edu (Samuel E Wiggins)
Subject: Re: Jesus is the Son of God, not a prophet
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 22:05:38 GMT

In article <WIGGINS.92Nov20123316@lightning.cs.odu.edu> wiggins@lightning.cs.odu.edu (Samuel E Wiggins) writes:

**Sorry, the other posting of this message got inexplicably garbled.
Read this one instead.**

   In-reply-to: rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu's message of Tue, 17 Nov 1992 18:44:26 GMT
   Subject: Re: Jesus is a Prophet, not Son of God
   --text follows this line--

   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.  I could always interpret the facts differently,
or claim your facts were forged or came from incomplete or invalid testing.
Moreover, your scientific testing methods cannot be applied in this instance,
since these scientific instruments you rely on so heavily for hard proof were
not around then.  They only had what was available, just writing and word of
mouth; things that don't really stand up to scientific testing well anyway.
   I have a question:  How come people who never became Christians agreed that
weird things were going on and miracles happened?  Witness the Quran.  People
in Palestine at that time other than the followers of Christ (Pharisees,
Sadducees, etc.).
   I have another question:  Why believe 90% of a newspaper which only tells
of events without hard scientific scrutiny?  (Is it because there are witnesses
one can refer to, if need be?  Both pro and con for the subject known as fact.)
-------
      >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?
     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.)
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