Here are some good quotes from Andy Bannister's book titled "The Atheist Who Didn't Exist":
"Yet that's precisely the level of detail the Gospels get right, managing to know not just major cities such as Jerusalem but minor villages like Cana and Chorazin, one-goat towns in their day. The Gospels also get a wealth of other local information right, from politics to agriculture, economics to weather patterns; they even get people's names right...In 2006, a British scholar called Richard Bauckham...decided to painstakingly cross-check this database with the New Testament. What he discovered was that the naming patterns in the Gospels precisely match those of the period, adding further evidence (if any were needed) to the idea that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were intimately acquainted with the time, place, and culture that they wrote about; in sort, the Gospels have the flavour of eyewitness accounts." p. 221, 222
"If we cannot know anything about Jesus then we cannot know anything about the Caesars, or Plato, or Alexander the Great, or anybody. Forget the Dark Ages...modern technology doesn't actually really resolve the problem...records can always be destroyed or manipulated, images Photoshopped, or the truth buried...Historical skepticism is a universal acid, destroying everything it touches." p. 217
"...if your thoughts are just a by-product of atoms jiggling in your brain, that may make them sound chemically, but it does not make them sound logically. And if that's the case then you've no reason to trust your initial belief that your mind is composed of atoms. That's a circle that's not just vicious, but positively voracious and ravenous to boot. Once you've explained away mind as a chemical reaction, thinking as a reflex, and selfhood as an illusion...you are left with nothing...according to this description of reality, you don't exist. 'You' are just a flickering of electrons, a fizzing of chemicals, a banging-together of atoms." p. 135, 136
Here are some good quotes from Andy Bannister's book titled "The Atheist Who Didn't Exist":
ReplyDelete"Yet that's precisely the level of detail the Gospels get right, managing to know not just major cities such as Jerusalem but minor villages like Cana and Chorazin, one-goat towns in their day. The Gospels also get a wealth of other local information right, from politics to agriculture, economics to weather patterns; they even get people's names right...In 2006, a British scholar called Richard Bauckham...decided to painstakingly cross-check this database with the New Testament. What he discovered was that the naming patterns in the Gospels precisely match those of the period, adding further evidence (if any were needed) to the idea that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were intimately acquainted with the time, place, and culture that they wrote about; in sort, the Gospels have the flavour of eyewitness accounts." p. 221, 222
"If we cannot know anything about Jesus then we cannot know anything about the Caesars, or Plato, or Alexander the Great, or anybody. Forget the Dark Ages...modern technology doesn't actually really resolve the problem...records can always be destroyed or manipulated, images Photoshopped, or the truth buried...Historical skepticism is a universal acid, destroying everything it touches." p. 217
"...if your thoughts are just a by-product of atoms jiggling in your brain, that may make them sound chemically, but it does not make them sound logically. And if that's the case then you've no reason to trust your initial belief that your mind is composed of atoms. That's a circle that's not just vicious, but positively voracious and ravenous to boot. Once you've explained away mind as a chemical reaction, thinking as a reflex, and selfhood as an illusion...you are left with nothing...according to this description of reality, you don't exist. 'You' are just a flickering of electrons, a fizzing of chemicals, a banging-together of atoms." p. 135, 136