- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
I think we simply disagree on this one, DA. 1) I don’t see any difference in unbelievability between the two accounts – and the VAST majority of people who heard Paul didn’t believe a word of it either, even as skilled an orator as Paul was. His travels and teachings are well-documented; his vision is his word alone. Period.
2) There is serious disagreement among scholars as to whether or not any of the important details in the Gospels are accurate to any measurable degree – and that’s not limited to just the miraculous claims.
3) Paul was a hardcore fanatic. He went from an extreme Stage 3 Jew to an extreme Stage 3 Christian. He makes Pres. Benson and Elder McConkie look tame in some ways – even though he also preached charity. In many ways, Elder Packer is probably the closest to a modern-day Paul – since he has said some really conservative, exclusionary things but also some really progressive, compassionate things. I am pretty sure Paul would be the focus of many posts if he were a modern apostle – and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be the favorite of anyone here.
Old-Timer wrote:I think we simply disagree on this one, DA.
I don’t see any difference in unbelievability between the two accounts – and the VAST majority of people who heard Paul didn’t believe a word of it either, even as skilled an orator as Paul was. His travels and teachings are well-documented; his vision is his word alone. Period…There is serious disagreement among scholars as to whether or not any of the important details in the Gospels are accurate to any measurable degree – and that’s not limited to just the miraculous claims…Paul was a hardcore fanatic…He makes Pres. Benson and Elder McConkie look tame in some ways… I understand why Mormons or some skeptics would think these stories are similar as far as relying mostly on faith rather than undeniable evidence. However, in this case I’m more interested in talking about solid reasons why some stories are more problematic than others rather than pure opinions. For example, there are quite a few different problems with the Joseph Smith story that we don’t really have to deal with in the case of the Jesus story if you want to try to defend them.
If you already don’t want to believe in most of the New Testament then you don’t have to. My point is that for people that want to believe in the Jesus story there is no way to clearly show them why exactly they should have serious doubts about it quite the same way we can easily do with some of the traditional Mormon doctrines. From the beginning, it looks like the principal authors of the New Testament were not overly concerned with trying to prove anything to skeptics that don’t want to believe or think they are too smart for this (1 Cor. 1:18-27).
Basically, the only significant problem I see with the general idea of the Jesus story is mostly that miracles sound so unusual to people because they are just not the kind of thing we really expect to happen based on our own experience. For example, if we look around we don’t typically see the dead come back to life. However, that is the whole point of the story to begin with because Jesus was supposed to be special and not just an average and ordinary man.
The problem with trying to disprove most of the miraculous claims of the New Testament is that they are just not the kind of reported events where we should realistically expect to find any indisputable physical evidence for them at this point if they actually happened approximately the way we are told. In contrast, the BoM, BoA, Book of Moses, and D&C 77:6 make some fairly specific historical claims where we should reasonably expect to see something different than we do if they were all literally true as advertized. The result is that Mormon apologists have to employ all kinds of sophistry and complicated speculation to try to explain why the evidence we see doesn’t quite fit with what some of the LDS scriptures and doctrines say.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.