Dr. Ben Witherington refutes Dr. Michael Shermer

Interesting exchange

Category:

Education

Tags:

• debate
• Jesus
• God
• Bible
• new
• testament
• Holy
• Spirit
• apostles
• mathew
• mark
• luke
• john
• paul
• lee
• strobel
• faith
• under
• fire

[kaduisaui]

What bothers me is when people consider the Bible a true account of the times back then. Yes, it is good to study and understand how people behaved in that part of the World two thousand years ago, but it is wrong to think the accounts were true. There were no miracles, no virgin birth, no walking on water, no burning bush and no tablets from God. The Bible is full of bad lies and we must take that into consideration when studying it.

[KeithTruth]

@kaduisaui What bothers me is when untaught people don't realize that professional secular historians use much of what is contained in the Biblical writings as part of their construction of ancient history. What is more bothersome is when internet skeptics presuppose naturalistic materialism without proving it or defending it against the many cases against it, and then proceed to make absolute arguments based on their faulty naturalistic presuppositions.

[lfzadra]

@KeithTruth What is really bothersome is deluded people having access today of fresh data about miracles around the world from all sorts of religious lunatics and dismiss them all for lack of proof of the claims. After his healthy exercise of skepticism, they analyze data from 2k years ago and conclude that the miracles of resurrection and virgin birth must be true because the Bible says so. I call this self-inflicted idiocy. Hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty can define it too.

[KeithTruth]

@lfzadra If naturalism is true you have no laws of logic or transcendent measure with which to judge absurdity, only your opinions. You're borrowing from the Christian world view which says there are *transcendent* logical laws which a universe of mere matter and energy could not produce. But then you attack the Christian world view with the laws God gives this world. Now that is insane and foolish. As for miracles of false religions they don't meet the historical criterion the Resurrection does

[lilrat489]

Wow, I thought Shermer was supposed to be a true skeptic. how can you be a skeptic of the bible if you haven't really read it all the way through. It looks like mr.skeptic is basing his skepticism on presuppositions.

[1GodOnlyOne]

Why does this retard keep saying"BethleHAM?" LOL

[KeithTruth]

@vespine Do you know why the video was cut? Because that topic and section ended. There was no more said about that specific issue. If you want to go watch the whole debate go for it, its like 10 min. But don't complain over something so absurd.

[luizborgesjunior]

Shemer said in this video that Jesus was born in Nazareth, is just listen the video.

And the Bible have not a contradiction about city where lived Joseph and Mary. Matthew in anywhere said where they lived, only said that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, just Luke said they (Joseph and Mary) lived in Nazareth before birth of Jesus.

Let's go stop whit lies and read the Bible before tell bullshit.

[1empathy]

@KeithTruth The bible contains some history and where that can be verified it has some merit. Historians can also tell us how the bible was cobbled together and science can tell us that much of the book is nonsense, which strongly suggests that it is not the work of an omniscient god.

[vespine]

@KeithTruth I know the section ended on that point and I'm happy to admit Shermer was wrong, but it was obviously cut, it's too abrupt, their conversation obviously didn't just end there, they didn't just stand up and go home immediately after Witherington finished that sentence. All i said is it would have been interesting to see if shermer admitted his mistake and what was said afterwards.