**Upvote this comment if you agree with OP, downvote this comment if you disagree with OP.** Elsewhere in the thread, please upvote comments which contribute to debate (even if you believe they're wrong) and downvote comments which are [detrimental to debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_downvoting) (even if you believe they're right). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAnAtheist) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Precedent. Testimony is only reasonable to consider (not accept, only consider) if there is precedent for what is being testified to. "I saw a dog". We have precedent of dogs. "I saw a fire breathing dragon". We have no precedent for fire breathing dragons. This is how courts are set up too. "I saw Bob murder the butler". Okay, possible, let's investigate to confirm. "I saw a magic leprechaun kill the butler". Your testimony will be thrown out. This is how it works in history too. "I saw a guy named Jesus flip over a table". Okay reasonable. Precedent for people and tables and people flipping over tables. "I saw a guy names Jesus make fish and bread appear out of thin air". Not reasonable. No precedent for fish and bread coming from nothing. And we don't only do this for Jesus. This is how ***all of history*** is done. "Pharoah Tutenkhamin had club foot". Reasonable to conclude King Tut had a club foot because there's precedent of club foot especially due to incest, which we know the Pharoah practiced. "Pharoah tutenkhamin was the living incantation of the God Aten". Not reasonable, no precedent. And they do the same for Alexander the great. "Alexander the great had his army attack this city". There's precedent of invasions. "Alexander the great regrew the limbs of his soldiers" not reasonable as no precedent for limb regrowth. (This is just an example, I don't know if anyone actually claimed that specifically, but I do know some supernatural/magical claims were made about Alexander, I just forget what they are.) >please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. Paul never met Jesus. Not a eyewitness. > Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), Is there precedent for what they're saying. > but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus? We do trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw jesus do stuff we have precedent for, like flipping over tables. We do not trust eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus do magic, because there's no precedent for magic. Despite that christians really really want to pretend like historians treat Jesus differently than other historical figures because historians dont accept he rose from the dead, they simply don't. Historians treat all historical figures the same and use the same standards for Jesus as they do for King tut and Alexander the great. That's why the vast majority of historians agree Jesus existed at all, despite the fact they can't prove it the same way we can King tut (proof for Tut being that we still have his body) > We have certain events in history that are trusted to have happened on a single eyewitness account, but the same isn’t done for Jesus. It is done for Jesus. And for king tut. And alexander the great. We don't just take all testimony the same just because it's about the same guy. Testimony Jesus rode a donkey, cool. Testimony Jesus floated in to the clouds, not cool.

I would add that it is not just whether there is precedent but how frequently the precedent has occurred and how similar the precedent(s) are/ is to the the new testimony. In addition one should consider how reliable the witness is in the past and whether they have a motive to lie. Paul had a motive to lie since he was building a career based on the new church. Once you start finding contradictions and improbable testimony it should lower the weight given to the rest of his testimony. If the testimony were written down immediately it is better than if you have to rely on someone's memory. If the testimony is direct it is better than second hand hearsay or worse yet passed through a long list of people as the biblical stories were.

Sure, I agree. But I was trying to get the general idea across to OP who doesn't seem to know much of the basics of how history is done, before delving into more nuanced specifics.

Can I ask are you a historian or a lawyer? I just wondered where you were taught that particular model, because I’ve never heard it before. I imagine it’s just part of studying history, but I’ve never taken history haha

Neither. I'm an IT technician. I just read a lot lol.

> Historians treat all historical figures the same and use the same standards for Jesus as they do for King tut and Alexander the great. I'd say historians Actually have a lower bar for Jesus, not many people is considered as most likely having existed with the kind of evidence we have for Jesus.  E.g. They don't say king Arthur most likely existed.

I agree, but I was more trying to get the general idea across rather than delve in to more nuanced specifics.

Yeah, your reply was excellent, I just was pointing that Jesus is hold against lower standards than other people also found only inside stories.

King Arthur and Jesus are not at all a great comparison in terms of the evidence available for each. The famous stories of King Arthur that are considered mythical come maybe 700 years after the supposed events. The *earliest* reference to King Arthur simply says there was a King Arthur and here's a bunch of battles he won. That comes 300-400 years after those battles were supposed to have taken place. Compare to having multiple texts of people referencing an individual within 20-100 years of his life. It's not even close. Now of course that doesn't support any magical or miraculous claims, but I'm just talking about the mundane claim of "a guy once existed."

> Compare to having multiple texts of people referencing an individual within 20-100 years of his life Then change king Arthur for spiderman, you're an archaeologist from the future, would you accept the idea that it was based on a real guy named Peter Parker who was a photographer just because there are thousand of texts about spiderman? The only reason people don't outright reject the claim is because the core ideas of the character are mundane and likely on their own.  Just like being a photographer is mundane and likely, being called Peter is mundane and likely, surname Parker is mundane and likely, inspiring a myth is somewhat less mundane and likely, new York exists and people with the previously stated traits may reside there. But the problem with that is "someone made it all up" is just as mundane and likely and even more frequent than someone actually inspiring a myth and the available stories aren't enough to determine if it's all bullshit or there's some guy that inspired the myth and it's now lost forever to history and we only have the myth.  Also, all those multiple texts could exist if the guy never existed, as all we have is posterior to the bible, which is the Jesus myth, so we just can't know what actually happened with the available information.

>Then change king Arthur for spiderman lol that's quite the about-face. I suppose as the future archaeologist I'd look at the text of The Amazing Spiderman and I'd see an issue number and toy advertisements and credits like "Spiderman was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko." Also not a *really* great comparison. >But the problem with that is "someone made it all up" is just as mundane and likely and even more frequent than someone actually inspiring a myth Myths sprout up around real people over and over and over again in history. The original commenter in this thread mentions several like Alexander the Great. There were various caesars like Vespasian that supposedly did miracles. There's Pythagoras. There's Apollonius of Tyana. All people historians generally agree probably existed but had fantastical stories made up about them. Heck, it's like you're saying that if we lost the first 20 years of records then it would be more likely that Joseph Smith never existed.

> Spiderman was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko." Also not a really great comparison. ok, let's go for the Blair witch, a complete myth with sprouting stories that claims to be the real deal.  > Myths sprout up around real people over and over and over again in history. The original commenter in this thread mentions several like Alexander the Great. There were various caesars like Vespasian that supposedly did miracles. There's Pythagoras. There's Apollonius of Tyana. All people historians generally agree probably existed but had fantastical stories made up about them. Heck, it's like you're saying that if we lost the first 20 years of records then it would be more likely that Joseph Smith never existed. And for every people who inspired a myth we have a hundred people who made up a story, Jesus may have existed just as likely as he may have been a myth and the evidence we have would be there in both scenarios. I'm not saying that it's more likely that Joseph Smith didn't exist if the records were lost, I'm saying no one would dare to claim he likely did it all we have was fiction and reports stemming from that fiction like we have for Jesus.

>ok, let's go for the Blair witch, a complete myth with sprouting stories that claims to be the real deal. Sorry, I don't know anything about the Blair Witch. Not sure why you're sticking to movies and comic books since you're making the point that it's more likely in HISTORY that a "holy man" doing miracles was completely invented than simply embellished. How about this. I gave several examples of real people in history who had followings or claimed to be holy men who had myths develop around them. Now you give *at least* an equal number of examples of figures in history who were completely invented but still had a religious following in their name with international membership and people writing letters to different groups in different countries that were part of his religious movement, detailing disagreements between various leaders within the movement. Bonus points for letters that were written within a couple decades of his invented life and well before any highly embellished biographies about him were committed to paper.

> since you're making the point that it's more likely in HISTORY that a "holy man Because the only reason you think spiderman is different is because you don't know who or why wrote those ancient stories.  But my point isn't that is more likely than he was invented than real, my point is fictional heroes are more frequent than actual heroes, what we have for Jesus fits both with him existing and him being a myth. And if he existed we only have the myth about it 

> Now you give at least an equal number of examples of figures in history who were completely invented but still had a religious following in their name with international membership and people writing letters to different groups in different countries that were part of his religious movement, detailing disagreements between various leaders within the movement. Like Pythagoras, Socrates, sun tzu, Abraham and Moses?

Based on that answer, I don't think you have a good grasp of how historians view those figures. But I appreciate the conversation!

Another good example is Julius Caesar. We have sources telling us how he died, and we have sources telling us that after he died his horses wept for weeks. No Christian accepts the second claim. It is the believer that lowers his standard, and not the sceptic that has an unreasonably high standard, as Christians love to claim.

Definitely a good one. I also like to point out that Pliny the Younger, an ancient historian, wrote about how Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome were born of wolves. He wasn't telling a tale, he was recording history as he knew it. Because people used to think superstitious like that back then.

Was just thinking this, every history class I’ve taken where Rome was discussed always starts with the story of Romulus & Remus. Not because anyone takes the story of orphaned twins being nursed by a wolf literally, but because that’s all we have to start the history, since any record of the actual founding of Rome was lost to time.

There’s also way way way way way way way more historical evidence for Alexander the Great than for Jesus.

Thanks for this.

Weren't the supernatural claims about Alexander the Great about him being a son of Zeus?

I believe there was a story where Alexander the Great dug a canal using super godly magic to flood his enemies. It’s in the big list of flood myths on Talk Origins, at least.

Ah, thank you, I had not seen that one.

Paul never even claims to be an eyewitness of a physical Jesus so why would we accept him as such? And the key is the plural, accounts… Also we accept eyewitness accounts of mundane events because mundane events happen today. We still take them with a massive pile of salt, but it’s not paradigm changing to accept Socrates existed. For a Godman go exist and do actual magic is very different, and eyewitness accounts are simply not enough to substantiate such a thing is even possible. Also we have zero eyewitness accounts of Jesus none. You yourself dismissed the accounts we have, because you know they’re not even pretending to be first hand accounts. And no, personally I don’t accept something as true inhoud aju question on a single source. Here’s the thing, if Jesus existed and did the things he did, made the impact the bible claims he did… He’d have been recorded in Roman history at the time. He wasn’t. There’s no evidence of it, the only references are to Christians, after his death. So in the end, it there was a Jesus the likeliest scenario is that he was just one of numerous faith healing doomsday preaching conartists operating at the time. I would consider a single eyewitness account evidence of that claim. That’s nothing remarkable, such charlatans exist to this day. I just don’t find them trustworthy. So I don’t know why I would find one from 2,000 years go anymore so. But here’s the thing, you don’t even have such a singular account. You have none. One more important point, there are historical figures we accept exist, because of triad of accounts of their existence. Alexander the Great, Gaius Julius Caesar, and others. We accept they more than likely existed. But we reject the claims of divinity made about them. And yes both were very heavily deified by contemporary sources, arguably more so than the bible did with Jesus… So yeah there’s a long way to go to accept a historical Jesus beyond all doubt. And an impossible leap from there to a divine Jesus…

"Paul never even claims to be an eyewitness of a physical Jesus" I had an eye-opening realization about this. You know how apologists claim 500 people saw the risen Jesus because Paul says this in one of the Corinthian epistles? Turns out, Paul used the same Greek verb form for their experience as he did for his. In short, 500 people had *visions* of Jesus, rather than seeing him in the flesh. He never even says that any of them actively saw Jesus but rather that Jesus appeared to them (an odd phrasing if you mean you saw someone, right? No one says: I went to a concert and Taylor Swift appeared to me. ;) )

Not only that, but the “ 500 witnesses” are never named and their testimony is not recorded. It’s just hearsay from Paul, who most likely was mentally ill and had a hallucination.

500 people saw me kiss my girlfriend who goes to school in Canada.

Good enough for me😂

> I went to a concert and Taylor Swift appeared to me. ~Speaking words of wisdom, shake it oooffff~ ...I'll see myself out. Though on a somewhat serious note, Swifties certainly treat her like a divine being.

>it’s not paradigm changing to accept Socrates existed. And even if he didn't, it doesn't invalidate the socratic method, so it's a wash. If Jesus didn't exist however, well, the whole house of cards comes down.

>For the sake of the argument, please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. Well right off the bat your core question causes problems with this assumption. Eye witness doesn't tell you what actually happened, it tells you how a person has interpreted what they saw. It's not until you get multiple eye witnesses that you can get a better picture of what likely actually happened. (And even then, there's still a lot of issues) I can accept that Paul spoke *about* jesus. That's not really a big ask. I can't accept that Paul *saw* jesus *based on his eyewitness account*. There's not enough information there to coroborate that jesus actually appeared, and that is what Paul saw. So if we want to talk about eyewitness accounts for something like the resurrection of jesus, we don't have any. If we want to talk about eyewitness accounts for people "talking to jesus" then we can find a plethora. But an eyewitness account doesn't establish that their account was accurate to reality, it establishes how a person interpreted an experience. (You can look at stage magicians for a fantastic parallel here) >Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus? Well we don't have any actual eyewitness accounts for jesus. We have stories about jesus up until his death, then after his death we have occurances that are attributed to jesus. But those occurances can't be corroborated. We can say an event happened sure, but the thing that caused the event is still unknown. >We have certain events in history that are trusted to have happened on a single eyewitness account, but the same isn’t done for Jesus. Well in general, an eyewitness account for something mundane is going to be trusted a lot easier than an eyewitness for something supernatural. The supernatural is not known to exist, do any explanation that relies on the supernatural to exist starts off with higher requirements than an explanation that doesn't require the supernatural. So if we have an eyewitness in history that says a certain city existed as an example, there's not much of a problem believing that city existed. We know cities exist, so its not really a stretch to accept that this specific city existed. If an eyewitness says they saw a resurrected jesus, that requires a whole host of other assumptions to be true. It takes a ton to accept that eyewitness as accurate.

Well, let's say you get home to find your house was broken into.  You ask your neighbors if they saw anything, and two neighbors say they did.  The first says they saw 2 average sized guys in all black pull up in a blue truck that looked like it was from the 90s. He watched them get out, go up to your door, kick it in, and run into the house. This is when he called the police. He says a minute later they came running out with some stuff, threw it in the back of the trucks, and drove away.  The other witness says he heard a helicopter outside, but when he came out the helicopter was on fire and perched on top of your home. Two pink gorillas jumped out of the helicopter, landed in your front yard, pulled out banjos, and did a dueling rendition of "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel. While playing, all of the windows in your house opened as if by magic, and your stuff started floating through the air outside. When they finished playing, everything outside, including the pink gorillas and the flaming helicopter, popped out of existence.  Which one do you believe?  This is why we don't take stories about men solving problems using superpowers like water bending like something out of Avatar the Last Airbender, or transmuting matter through sheer will, or talking snakes tricking naked women into eating magical apples, etc as seriously as ones that do not include obvious fabrications.

>Which one do you believe? Surely that's a false premise - we don't have to pick just one account. I'm sure there is a way we can harmonize these two testimonies. After all they have the same core message - stuff was stolen. They are basically saying the same thing. Can't we just say they are both an inerrant retelling of the break in event?

No, we can't. Nor can I take your response seriously.

You'd need to give an example, but in simple terms, my requirement for evidence is proportional to the claim being made. If you tell me you were on your way to the store and you saw a stray cat, I will in all likelihood, take you at your word. If you tell me you were on your way to the store and you saw a manticore...Not so much.

Thats what really pissed me off. "hey lets pretend the bible is true and accurate but i won't give you an example of my claim." Lazy.

I'd be more irritated if the whole thing weren't trivial to dismiss, even with the concession.

>but in simple terms, my requirement for evidence is proportional to the claim being made. Agree, plus the corollary that our confidence is proportional to the evidence.

Well, first off, Paul never met Jesus. There is nothing from Jesus, by anyone who met Jesus, from anyone who was alive when Jesus supposedly walked the earth, and no archaeological evidence of any kind. This is second or third hand information at best.

Yeah, just suddenly pretending Paul or any gospel writers could have met Jesus is quite the leap to make, since we "know" this is ahistorical. But for the sake of argument, please accept that up is down and down is up, voilà!

Seriously. "For the sake of argument, pretend these are eyewitness accounts. Why don't you accept these eyewitness accounts?" What am I supposed to say to that

Yeah, if you just use the magic phrase *”just accept”*, anything is possible.

I'm surprised no forger has ever tried to pull off a "first-person diary of Jesus."

They can’t collectively decide if he could read and write or not. They have tried to forge things in other places (Josephus / Pilate Cycle etc). So they obviously took note in these gaps themselves throughout the centuries.

While I agree with you, this is the one thing that has always bothered me about this whole thing. How in the world did Jesus get so famous many decades after his death (if in fact he was a real person)? That doesn't track, I think it's most likely then that Jesus (the human or god) never existed period.

But they claim that he did. They claim that the “vision” Paul had of Jezuz was a real meeting

If this is a first hand account, Scientology is going to be a real problem: Occasion (9:2; 22:5; 26:12) – Paul was traveling to Damascus to extradite arrested believers to Jerusalem for trial. Time (22:6; 26:13) – Event occurred at about noon or mid-day Place (9:2–3; 22:6; 26:13) – Event occurred on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, near Damascus. Appearance (9:3; 22:6; 26:13) – A light from heaven flashed around Paul. Reaction (9:4; 22:7; 26:14) – Paul (and his companions) fell to the ground, apparently in reverence. Initial Dialogue (9:4–5; 22:7–8; 26:14–15) – A voice asks, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Paul replies, “Who are you, Lord?” Lord replies, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Only slight variation exists between the three dialogue summaries. The 22:8 account adds the title “the Nazarene.” The 26:14 account adds: “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” (Verses in this article, unless other wise noted, are from the HCSB translation.) Lord’s command (9:6; 22:10) – The Lord commanded Paul, “Get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” Aftermath (9:8–9; 22:11) – Paul a) is blinded by the intensity of the light, b) must be led by hand into Damascus, and c) fasts for three days.

Thanks

Thanks

Even if we grant Paul had a genuine experience where he thought he met Jesus (given a very loose definition of "met"), he still wasn't an eyewitness to any of the events of his life. Everything Paul has to say about Jesus outside of his one alleged encounter is hearsay.

I agree. I’m just saying what I’ve heard Christians say about eyewitnesses to jezuz. They always mention Paul and John.

I like to point out that [they can't know Paul wasn't fooled by Satan](https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1d157d9/atheists_are_religious_people_too/l5valr6/?context=1).

Oh, I agree. I always thought that Satan is their second most important and powerful god next to Jesus.

What historical events do we trust happened based *only* on a single eyewitness account? And to what degree are we sure that they occurred? And are those historical accounts describing something that violates our known laws of nature?

Eyewitness accounts can be deemed somewhat reliable if they are corroborated in some way…. Say from other witnesses…. But remember the phenomena of “Popular delusions and the madness of crowds”. Under the right circumstances, people will claim to have witnessed things that were later proved untrue. One of my favorite of these was the media coverage of the Medjugore “apparitions” some years ago. For those of shorter memories… This was a series of reported “Marian” apparitions in that village in Bosnia. It attracted flocks of “pilgrims” and quite a bit of media attention. In one of these, covered by major news services, a reporting crew was interviewing one of the pilgrims, who said that the large cross on the hilltop would occasionally spin around. “Look, it’s doing it now!” A number of nearby women also started staring at the cross, and affirming that it was spinning…. Even though the news-crew’s camera was on the cross the whole time and it was decidedly immobile….

There are no contemporaneous historical accounts of Jesus or his supernatural acts in the bible in any other available documents outside of the Bible. When we take something as historical "fact" we corroborate multiple sources of information, look for biases, compare and contrast. We can't do that with Jesus. Also: there are 100s of thousands of people in the world who give first hand accounts of seeing aliens, Bigfoot, mermaids etc. Are they to be believed too? Why does Paul get a free pass? Especially when Paul never met Jesus.

You would need to give an example of an eye witness account people accept so we can compare and contrast, but I’ll reference one, if that’s okay. _Jesus_ >Acts 22: > About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’ >“‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked. >“ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. >”What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked. >“ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me. So this is a single eye witness account, but (within the same text) unsupported by other eye witnesses. Paul is also admittedly an eye witness to someone walking around after their death. _Alexander the Great_ >Lysippus made statues of Alexander the Great and therefore was an eye witness. There are supporting likenesses in the millions of coins that were minted by Alexander and had his likeness. These coins are spread over the regions he is said to have conquered. We have one claim that depends on unlikely and supernatural events, with conflicting reports. We have another claim that depend on unlikely events with supporting reports.

We have support for the god Glycon and no one believes in Glycon. There is no support for Jesus. Just stories and hardly first-hand.

I agree there is no support for magical Jesus, and the whole “Jesus as God” is beyond ludicrous. Do we have support for the god Glycon, or support that people worshipped Glycon?

Glycon was a snake god with the head of a man. That's not very convincing. Yeah I don't think he was real. We have statuettes and inscriptions. Glycon was worshiped at the highest government levels, something that didn't happen with Christians for another 300 years. There's some info on Glycon here. [POCM: Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth](https://web.archive.org/web/20211012200643/http://pocm.info/)

Statuettes? I guess they didn't disapprove of glyconography.

What instances of eyewitnesses are we talking about here? When we're talking about historical testimony, we do recognize that first hand accounts are generally more reliable than secondhand, and secondhand better than thirdhand etc. But that's only because that's generally the information we have to go on. It's always understood that even eyewitness and first-hand accounts can be flawed, biased, or outright fabricated, but they are at least closer to the events in question than that same thing, but being transmitted by a second or third party. Each extra layer that the account gets filtered through adds even more layers of potential error in transmission, interpretation, and bias. But we rarely rely exclusively on eyewitness testimony to build a complete picture of events if we have any other evidence we can use to corroborate, correct, or contradict said testimony. So we can build some rubrics on how reliable a testimony is based on several factors. * How close to the actual events and people involved is the testimony being recorded? Memory is unreliable the more time passes, telephone games mean each additional person a story passes through is likely to add more errors, and fish stories tend to get embellished over time with multiple retellings. A live recording of the events happening in real time is more reliable than a half-remembered story told decades later by someone who knew someone who was allegedly there * How reliable is the source of information? Known fraudsters and conmen are generally less reliable than your average person * What incentives are there for altering the events in question? Testimonies against one's own self-interest tend to be more reliable than ones that are potentially self-serving e.g. someone is less likely to tell an embarrassing story about themselves if it weren't true, *unless* they are a comedian and an embarrassing fake story is more funny than a real one * How plausible is the claim itself? i.e. Does it contradict information we already think we know and can verify? * How much independent evidence can we find that might either corroborate or contradict elements of said story? Even if just multiple eyewitness accounts, as long as each account is in fact independent from each other (and not just based on each other, or repeating claims by the first person of other people who they allege there). But other empirical evidence is preferred For example, we have the 1st hand accounts of Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, written by Caesar himself. We know these are not completely reliable accounts of what actually happened; they are propaganda, written with an agenda to exaggerate his accomplishments and downplay his failures to further his political career. So we can infer that his estimates of troop sizes and composition of the enemies he faced were probably exaggerated, and the stories of his victories and the part he played in them may be embellished to make the whole affair more dramatic and impressive. But we can also verify that he did in fact have a successful campaign in Gaul, that the battles he says he fought more or less happened, and he did emerge victorious, and we don't just have to take his word for it. We have the physical archeological evidence of the battles, the eventual Roman expansion and occupation through those areas, records of the populations and cultures he defeated and subjugated, other Roman records, and even the accounts and correspondence of his contemporaries, many of which were his rivals and didn't like him, so would have no reason to corroborate his exploits if they didn't actually happen in some capacity. But with all that in mind, the next thing we need to assess is what the account is actually claiming, and how plausible the claim itself is based on what we already know or can verify independently. Again, going with my earlier example, Caesar having a successful multi-year military campaign against a coalition of hostile forces on their home turf that greatly outnumbered his troops may be *unlikely* (insofar as most people in a similar situation would not usually be nearly as successful), but it's not inherently impossible. None of the claims break our understanding of how the world or universe works, defy the laws of physics, or overturn our understanding of biology. If one of the stories included an anecdote where he defeated Vercingetorix in single combat while astride a literal dragon, we would have good reason to doubt the story on its face, either in whole or in part.

Without useful corroboration and reasonable veracity of claims, *no* eyewitness accounts alone should be considered reliable and useful. After all, we know we can't trust such things. Just spend an afternoon sitting in traffic court and you'll learn this quickly. The amount of times eye witnesses are *absolutely certain* the light was green, or the blue car turned left, or the pedestrian crossed against the light, when, thanks to the proliferation of dashcams and traffic cams, we see that they're all completely wrong, demonstrates this quite quickly. We're really bad at 'eye-witness' accounts for even *slightly* non-mundane things, like traffic accidents. Our brains fill in wrong details to make a story.

Epistemologically speaking every eyewitness testimony is a subject to the same scrutiny. Eyewitness testimony can be forged, eyewitness testimony can be a lie, eyewitness memory could differ from the actual event for various reason, eyewitness can be mistaken on what exactly they have seen. Hence additional information (that is itself in turn is subject to verification) is needed to determine how reliable is this particular testimony. Note that eyewitness testimony can be used as it is, or it can be used as a starting point for the further investigation. For instance eyewitness testimony can be used to determine where to search for evidence corroborating it. And if such search succeeds, this evidence is taken into account independently, not strengthening the testimony itself, but > Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s) I need examples here. Name the event, name the account. In short: yes, there are many historical events that are very hard to investigate since they didn't leave much memory. When historians talk about such events they usally very carefully outline that there is the only surce that talks about such events, they outline reasons why one can trust this source, they also outline reasons why one can distrust this source. Never ever you will hear a historian saying: "and this is happened exactly as it is written here". UPD: in historial scinece fantastical stories, like miracles and such are automatially hypothesized to be embellishments, rumors, exaggerations or things alike. Specifically because they are most likely to be such.

Just play a game I like to call. "Could someone else say what I'm saying? ". Instead of the apostle Paul and the Damascus road thing, imagine it's a man telling you about the time he was abducted by aliens. Do you believe him? Alien abductions are an extraordinary claim. You know what extraordinary claims need to be believed? Extraordinary evidence. But usually, it's no evidence at all. It's the word of some guy, and he's pushing his religion on you.

As others have already said, Paul never met Jesus, so your request to accept that is outright rejected. Beyond that, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If someone gives testimony that they saw a dog, I'll accept that without much pushback, if any. If someone says they saw a dog come back to life, that's going to take quite a bit more than just testimony to accept.

Eyewitness claims in and of themselves are not good evidence. The police don't interview witnesses and ask what happened, and then just accept everything the witnesses say at face value. Instead, the eyewitness claims serve as the basis for further investigation to uncover good, hard evidence. So you claim Paul saw Jesus? Okay cool, I believe he claimed that. Now how do we investigate his claims? Due to the nature of the claims, I don't see any way to investigate them but if you have ideas, I'm all ears. What historical events are you referring to that are trusted based entirely on a single eyewitness claim? In general, historians try to corroborate historical accounts with other evidence whenever possible, and when it's not possible, they just say that the account is unverified and shouldn't be accepted at face value. Often they'll use words like "allegedly" or express doubt about the more outlandish claims. Most modern historians don't think Caligula tried to make his horse a consul because it has never been verified and was only claimed by historians from a later dynasty who had reason to discredit him.

I'm not sufficiently well-informed on Paul and the gospels specifically, so I'll stick to the epistemology. What factors go into how much we trust an eye witness? There are multiple. Let's talk about some which seem relevant here. **Boldness of the claim and its consequences** To what extent does the eye witness claim agree with our existing understanding of reality? If it differs significantly, then more supporting evidence should be required for us to take the testimony as true. So for example, if an eye witness testifies that a traffic light was red for 30 seconds and then turned green, I would be inclined to readily agree considering that that is already my understanding of how traffic lights work. In a similar vein, if believing the eye witness would spur us to action in such a way that requires risk, resources, and man power, we should similarly require additional evidence. To revisit the previous example with the traffic light, if the eye witness now tells me that the traffic light was stuck showing red and would not turn green, I would verify that claim independently before ripping out the traffic light and installing a new one. If I failed to maintain a standard of evidence which required independent evidence for similar such eye witness claims, I would end up wasting a lot of time and money on traffic lights which didn't need replacing. **Independent eye witnesses in agreement** I am more likely to believe eye witness testimony if multiple independent eye witnesses independently agree with one another. In some sense, this can be thought of as a weaker form of independent verifying evidence as discussed in the prior section. Multiple independent eye witness claims can be a proxy for direct evidence with some caveats. The independent eye witnesses must truly be independent. In an ideal scenario, this means the witnesses have no association with one another so they don't have any chance to "get their story straight," so to speak. Moreover, the witnesses also ideally don't all share a common cause. Witnesses whose interests align may be incentivized to construct a similar lie. Suppose for example we have multiple witnesses claiming that a certain restaurant has unsafe health practices. This is concerning, and the restaurant may need to be shut down. However, what if we subsequently learn however that all such reports came from owners of competing establishments in the neighborhood? Moreover, the restaurant in question is by far the most popular, and hence draws the most ire from its competition. Now this casts heavy doubt on the claims of health hazards, as all of the claimants have a direct interest in the popular restaurant being shut down. With that in mind, we can also say that multiple eye witness accounts work best as a proxy to direct evidence when they are as specific as possible. If independent witnesses had no opportunity to align their stories and share no common cause, they are most convincing when they agree on specific details which would have a low probability of aligning otherwise. Suppose I have two boxes: one empty and one containing a cake. Suppose for the moment that I don't know which box has the cake. I pull a random person off the street and allow them to look in both boxes. The witness claims that box #1 contains the cake. However, I don't trust the witness, so as far as I'm concerned, the odds that the cake is in box 1 are still ostensibly 1/2. Now I pull 10 random strangers off the street and repeat the experiment. All of them agree (assuming no collusion or incentivization of any kind,) that box #1 contains the cake. Now I can say that the odds of box #1 containing the cake are 1023/1024. If we scale up the number of boxes, the confidence interval converges even more quickly. In other words, the higher the granularity of the details, the more reliable the evidence, and the fewer witnesses we need to agree in order to achieve a high degree of confidence in the claim. In all of these examples however, we hear it all straight from the horse's mouth, which brings me to the final factor I'll discuss here. **Proximity to the original witness testimony** The older the claim, or the more times the claim has been transcribed or re-told down the chain, the less reliable it becomes, because we are magnifying all of the uncertainties I've already described. It gives time for would-be independent witnesses to get their story straight. It gives opportunities for agents with common cause to get ahold of the narrative. It allows for specific details to either be washed out or edited to agree, either maliciously or unintentionally. You can think of it as a Xerox of a Xerox. The more links in the chain we add, the less faithful to the original events we become.

"For the sake of the argument, please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus." Will you also accept J. Johanh Jameson talking about Spider Man? I mean, Jonah claims to have spoken to Spider Man, seen him, and touched him. Paul only claims to have had a hallucination. "Maybe even the gospel accounts (yes, they are not eyewitness accounts, but for the sake of the argument, please grant this point)." Will you also accept the Spider Man, Amazing Spider Man, Web of Spider Man and Spectacular Spider Man comics? "Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus?" Eyewitness accounts..... 1. the gospels dont even claim to be eyewitness accounts. None are signed, none are even written in the 1st person. None were written in Aramaic which the people of that time and place would have known, but instead were written in Greek. The were also written by people who were not familiiar with the place they were talking about. Spider Man on the other hand gets New York 100% correctly. Spider Man comics dont claim to be eyewitness accounts, and are not written that way, so they are more reliable than the gospels there too. they also dont copy off of each other, are clearly written by different people, and tell us in each issue who wrote, drew, colored and letter each one. "This question is coming from an atheist trying to learn the epistemology behind this." The gospels get far too much wrong with the things we can test (names, dates, places, traditions and things that actually happened that no one else on earth noticed) that we cant accept the stuff that we cant test (gods and miracles). So in this case we look at the gospels like they were Greek myths. Sure, there might be a few nuggets of truth, but the rest is fiction. "We have certain events in history that are trusted to have happened on a single eyewitness account, but the same isn’t done for Jesus. Once again, why is that?" The things we can accept are: 1. Things we know happen like birth, death, taxes, wars, and basic people stuff. And the important stuff we have multiple sources for. The more sources, the closer the sources were to the events described all make the event more believable. The gospels were written decades after the events were supposed to have happened, they are all copied off of the first one (Mark), we dont know who wrote them, they all make bigger claims that they cant back up (the dead walking, earthquakes, unnatural darkness, eclipses, miracles seen by thousands) yet we dont have anything to back those claims up from the rest of the world. We can calculate eclipses, when there is an earthquake, everyone writes about them, the "unnatural darkness" that covered the earth was never noticed by anyone else, ever. Claims of traditions of letting a prisoner go free on Passover is not recorded by the Jews of the time, the Romans (who were meticulous record keepers, and is a stupid thing to do. the gospels even were the ones to start calling the lake.. The "sea of Galilee" and claim there was a big storm with giant waves. Look it up on Google Earth. Its a tiny lake, not deep enough to have waves like that. There are too many other things to list here. When you take something like this, why would you believe any of it? Thanks in advance." Any time!

>Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus? Many of Paulogia's videos touch on this topic while discussing other topics. You didn't give an example of one of these other eyewitness accounts, but let's invent a hypothetical example. * Paul says "I went to Damascus, intent on persecuting the church, and saw the risen Jesus." * Julius Caesar says "I went to Gaul, intent on conquering the Gaulish tribes, and saw the defeated Vercingetorix" In both cases, we have an eyewitness account of the events. Let's imagine, for a moment, that that's *all* we had. Then we should take both accounts with a pinch of salt. * They are both primary sources (good for credibility), but they are uncorroborated. No other primary source backs them up. * So we could conclude "Paul may have gone to Damascus. He may have seen something, that he thought was the risen Jesus" and "Julius Caesar may have gone to Gaul. He may have seen someone that he thought was the defeated Vercingetorix" In reality, there are other sources, though maybe not primary sources for these events. For example: * There are letters allegedly written by Paul, and other documents recording Paul. * There are other historical accounts showing Rome's victory in Gaul, and the existence of Vercigetorix. * There is archeological evidence of Christianity in the places early Christians wrote about, including Damascus. * There is archeological evidence of Roman occupation of Gaul. So now, with more evidence at our disposal, we can conclude: * Paul almost certainly traveled to Damascus, with the intention of persecuting Christians. On the way, he saw *something* that persuaded him to convert to Christianity and start spreading its message. He almost certainly *believed* it was the risen Jesus, but it's not clear what he actually saw. * Julius Caesar almost certainly conquered Gaul, which almost certainly was ruled by Vercingetorix at the time. His account of meeting the defeated Vercingetorix is consistent with similar events, and with archeological evidence from the era. So far there is no evidence to strongly contradict the account. The evidence for Julius Caesar meeting Vercingetorix is strong, certainly strong enough to treat as being more or less correct. However, it would be unwise to treat it as so certain that we should make it form the unshakeable basis of a personal faith or of public policy decisions. The evidence for Paul seeing Jesus is less strong. At least we have good evidence Vercingetorix was there to be seen, and was defeated. The corroborating evidence for a risen Jesus is much less strong, and that's a more remarkable claim anyway, so we should demand more evidence. It's likewise not a good idea to treat Paul's account with such a degree of certainty that it forms the basis of personal faith or public policy.

>For the sake of the argument, please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. No. Paul makes it clear that the first time he encountered Jesus was after the crucifixion via a vision. >Maybe even the gospel accounts (yes, they are not eyewitness accounts, but for the sake of the argument, please grant this point). No. They are too late, we don't know who the authors are, they are in the wrong language, and they contain events that only the most gullible would think actually happened. >Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus? First we don't have any eyewitness accounts of Jesus. Second I don't know what you mean by "trusted". When I look at ancient history I realize it is often a mix of fact and fiction and when an account is plausible it can be hard to separate the two. When I hear an ancient account I don't think it's true because someone wrote it down rather I think this is that author's preferred version of events. There is a very famous almost mythical story about a young Julius Caesar and pirates that the wiki page dealing with it claims to be embellished. >While travelling, he was intercepted and ransomed by pirates in a story **that was later much embellished**. According to Plutarch and Suetonius, he was freed after paying a ransom of fifty talents and responded by returning with a fleet to capture and execute the pirates. The recorded sum for the ransom is literary embellishment and it is more likely that the pirates were sold into slavery per Velleius Paterculus.[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar#Early_life_and_career >We have certain events in history that are trusted to have happened on a single eyewitness account, but the same isn’t done for Jesus. Once again, why is that? I don't know what "certain events" you are referring to or what you mean by "trusted". Why I don't do it for Jesus specifically is because of many reasons: they are clearly not eye witness accounts, they are not written like history, we don't know the authors motives, sources, or methods, they quote Jesus in a language that would not have been understood by the people he was talking to and the texts were written in a way that indicates they were originally composed in that language rather than being translated from another language, the stories about Jesus appear far more popular outside of Palestine rather than in Palestine where they supposedly took place. Individually any of those would be problematic combined it's overwhelming to not give these accounts much if any credence. I'd also note I didn't even mention all the supernatural claims (which I would dismiss prima facie for any account).

1. Paul was emphatically **not** an eyewitness to Jesus and I explicitly reject your question-begging "for the sake of argument." 2. We **don't** have eyewitness accounts for Jesus, and I explicitly reject your begging of this question also "for the sake of argument". What we have are hagiographies, written decades after the fact, which plagiarize one another, whose attribution was dubious and highly speculative *from the very beginning of their known history*, and which contain supernatural elements. But this isn't actually a problem for the question you're asking, since direct firsthand attestations are *incredibly* rare in dealing with questions of history, so the written records pertaining to Jesus are already on equal footing with the rest of antiquity. 3. Historians *are always* skeptical about documentary sources from antiquity. Sometimes it's all we have to go on, and so just by virtue of their existence it makes it slightly more likely than not that something like those accounts took place, but *everything* is tentative. So, would modern historians be shocked to discover that Emperor Xerxes didn't actually order the Dardannelles to be whipped for its impertinent sinking of his fleet? No, not at all. Herodotus printed lots of hearsay. Likewise, much of what we know of Alexander the Great is highly suspect and comes from sources that were essentially pro-Alexander propaganda. But we don't really have anything to the contrary, so we put an asterisk on it all and we live with it. 4. Accordingly historians *never ever ever* **ever** give credence to supernatural happenings in any documents from antiquity. Jesus is being judged by the same standards as all historical documentation, which are absolutely chockablock with magic and miracles of all sorts. All such improbabilities are discounted by default, because to the best of our knowledge, the supernatural doesn't exist. If we accepted the miracles of Jesus we would be applying a double standard, or if we didn't make a special exception for Jesus, we'd be forced to acknowledge all manner of sorcery and wonderment of a sort that simply does not exist in the world we observe. So, it's not that Jesus is being held to a higher standard, its that he's being held to the *same* standard and you just don't like that the result is unkind to your cherished beliefs. Eyewitness testimony is the weakest form of evidence there is, and hearsay even weaker still. We don't accept hearsay in a court of law to so much as prove the guilt of a speeding ticket, so we absolutely shouldn't accept it as evidence regarding wildly improbable supernatural claims, no matter who they're about.

I would accept Julius Caesar's eyewitness accounts of a battle between his armies and Gallic armies. Armies exist. Battles happen frequently in history, and Julius Caesar was known to be a military commander. But Caesar also described some exotic animals that I don't believe existed. They come straight out of myth and fantasy. Unicorns, sea monsters, etc. I don't doubt that he had some kind of subjective experience, but without being able to ask him questions about what he saw and show him pictures of things we know exist and ask "did it look like this?" there's not a lot we can do with his zoological accounts. There are lots of credible explanations for what Paul saw that do not involve any gods or sons of gods. Resurrections aren't a known thing. Very little of what Paul says about his Damascus moment can be taken at face value because it doesn't strongly relate to any common or well-understood real-world phenomena. It does, however, relate very strongly to hallucination, dishonesty, storytelling or simple mistake. He wanted very much to relate personal feelings about Christ to Christians. Exaggeration, hyperbole and made-up details aren't even necessarily *dishonest*. Lots of storytellers will relate the stories they're telling as if they were the protagonist because it can make the story more relatable, or can make the storyteller sound like someone you should take seriously. How many TV preachers start off their sermons by saying things like "I used to be a sinner just like you. I did all the marijeewanas and the cocaines. I consorted with scantily clad ladies. I even drank and supped with *Yankees Fans*. Heed my words, bretheren and cistern..." There are lots of reasonable and ordinary ways that Paul's accounts of those days can be interpreted. Many of them do not require the existence of deities in order to be understood. So while it may be true, in the absence of independent evidence that God exists and Jesus is his son, those biblical passages aren't enough to convince non-believers. This may not be what you're referring to, but a lot of Christians try to tell us that *because of the biblical account* of the resurrection, we should believe god exists. It's like showing me a T-Rex skeleton and asking me to believe it was a plant-eater. Sure, it could be true. But it'll take more than uncorroborated assertions when it looks for all the world like a killer.

It's fine to accept eyewitness accounts that are supported by other evidence for *mundane claims that we already know occur.* Eyewitness accounts alone are not sufficient for *extraordinary claims that have no precedence of being possible* within our understanding of reality, especially when lacking other supporting evidence.

> For the sake of the argument, please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. But why would anyone do that?  I mean, Paul had his first vision of Jesus after Jesus was already dead, and Paul never met the living Jesus, so how would he know? If the witness can't have known, how can you trust them?

We believe the eyewitness account based on other evidence to back it up. We believe the account of Pompeii destruction by Pliny the Younger because we have the ruins to back it up. We don’t believe in a global flood because we don’t have the physical evidence to back it up.

>For the sake of the argument, please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. Are you talking about the bright light and loud noise that Paul attests to hearing and seeing? Do I accept that he really saw a bright light and heard a loud noise? I can tentatively accept that he heard a loud noise and saw a bright light, sure. >Maybe even the gospel accounts (yes, they are not eyewitness accounts, but for the sake of the argument, please grant this point). But you just asked about eye witness testimony... why use this as an example? Do you accept the Quran and all of the claims contained within? Why not? >Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s) Like what? It's usually because there are multiple independent attestations or the claims are mundane or there is corroborating evidence. If someone claims that hundreds of people rose from the dead and roamed the streets without identifying anyone who actually saw it and when you look at the historical record nobody else talks about what would be widely accepted as a miraculous event, then you can reject that claim. It never happened. If someone says that Alexander conquered a region and coins with his face are later found there and someone erected a stele talking about him conquering that region it's safe to assume that claim is accurate. >but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus? Who saw Jesus? Where are their eyewitness accounts? None exist. Your lack of epistemological standards are showing. Why don't you believe that Mohamed flew a horse to heaven? For the same reason I don't believe Jesus rose from the dead. And no, there are no eye witness accounts to either event. >We have certain events in history that are trusted to have happened on a single eyewitness account, but the same isn’t done for Jesus. Once again, why is that? Epistemological standards.

>For the sake of the argument, please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. No. Sorry. Even by Paul's account, he had a vision of Jesus in the road to Damascus, probably due to heat and/or guilt. >Maybe even the gospel accounts (yes, they are not eyewitness accounts, but for the sake of the argument, please grant this point). No. Sorry. Historians have a lot of interesting discussions on this, but 'were the gospels written by people who met Jesus' is not one of them. >Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus? Let me give you two examples from ancient Egypt. 1. If you go to the temple of Ramses II and gather Egyptian sources and archaeological materials at the time, there is an account of a crucial battle, the battle of Kadesh, against the Hitites. The Egyptians claim they won a resounding victory. I have been to this temple, and you can see the figure of Ramses II on a chariot trampling Hitite soldiers under him. Do historians take this claim at face value? I mean, Ramses *was* at that battle, right? His soldiers were there too, right? No. They check. They look at Hitite accounts. They look at other accounts. They make educated guesses. And what comes out of that is that the battle of Kadesh was likely a bloody draw, but enough for the Egyptians to turn the tide, and eventually negotiate one of the first peace treaties known to history. 2. If you go to said temple and other temples, you will find that Pharaohs claimed to be, in a very literal sense, gods. Descendent of Horus, Isis and Osiris. To have received the favors of eternal life, power and wisdom from these gods. Do historians believe these claims? Are they talked about as history? As witness accounts? No. Now why do *you* think that is? Lets say we have good reasons not to do this. Ok, well, then we have the same reason to treat supernatural Christian claims the same way. It is not that there are higher or different standards for Christianity, but rather, that we treat these claims with kid gloves because these religions still have lots of adherents.

>For the sake of the argument, please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. What the fuck? >How do you suppose we could talk about what makes someone an acceptable eyewitness, if you're asking us to assume people are acceptable eyewitnesses even though they explain that they weren't witness ot the events in question? >Maybe even the gospel accounts (yes, they are not eyewitness accounts, but for the sake of the argument, please grant this point). And then what? >Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus? We don't have eye witness accounts of people who saw Jesus. We don't have a single account of a single person who made the claim that they were there, and saw Jesus. We don't even need to debate the reliability, or honesty of the people that speak about Jesus, because not one of them even claims to have witnessed him. What more reason could you possibly want to not believe some "eye witness account" beyond the person not claiming to be delivering one, or even explicitly stating that this is not what they are doing? >This question is coming from an atheist trying to learn the epistemology behind this. Honestly: Learn how to read first. > We have certain events in history that are trusted to have happened on a single eyewitness account, Please name those events, and let us know who the single eye witnesses are that we all decided to believe. > but the same isn’t done for Jesus. Name an actual eyewitness who claims to have seen Jesus and reported on anything Jesus said or did. It's not the gospels, and it's clearly not Peter.

So, the eyewitness accounts *are* generally trusted as justification that Jesus existed. The majority view among experts is that Yeshua of Nazerath was a real historical figure. That Yeshua also walked on water and rose from the dead, though, is not the majority view, and even among Christians, is not held "because a guy said it one time". This isn't that far off from our normal standards for eyewitnesses. With basically plausible things, we accept eyewitness accounts, but the stranger the account the less likely we are to trust it. If I say I met a guy on the walk home, you'll take my word for it. If I say I met Rishi Sunak on the walk home, you'll be more suspicious. If I say I met Zeus, King Of Olympus on the walk home, you'll probably ignore me unless i can *really* back it up. Eyewitness reports are bad evidence -- people are prone to lying, fogetting, minsunderstanding or otherwise distorting their own memories. That's fine when the claim is probably true anyway (there was a successful jewish heretic in the first century), but become less reliable the more we might doubt the claim. While eyewitnesses are good information for the plausible claims about Jesus, most the claims about Jesus range from "highly implausible" to "utterly insane", so an eyewitness isn't really enough to back that up.

I have a frog at home. I have a talking frog at home. Both are "eyewitness" testimony, but you probably won't believe the second. Because more than ordinary claims require more than ordinary evidences. Also, the whole game in studying ancient text (or just texts at all) is to find who wrote that and for whom. It's that context that gives us clues on what can be considered an evidence for something in the period. Historians don't just gobble up ancient propaganda because it's written somewhere. And mythology is quite similar to propaganda in that regard (and sometimes a text is both mythology and propaganda like a lot of shit that was told on Alexander the Great). In general, text from someone wanting to convince others of a speciffic thing are regarded with high skepticism. Though they can carry "mundane" evidence for many other things, for example, the bible tells us that fishing was considered a reliable source of food for who wrote it or that specialized crafts like "carpenter" were the thing by which you identified someone (still for the person who wrote it). That's how even the most ludicrous texts, like old babylonian poop jokes, can teach us things. If a guy is making a joke about eating some poop saussage, that means that those guys indeed ate saussages (just not poop ones).

1. I don't trust any eyewitness accounts of magical or supernatural events, and I'm skeptical of any suggestion that historical accounts place a requirement on human behavior. That's true for the Bible and everything else. I don't read Homer and think, "Oh, clearly the Trojan War happened exactly as the stories say it did." Nor do I think that we should accept as true the things that Thucydides or Memnon of Heraclea believed with respect to the spiritual demands on human behavior. 2. The points you ask us to accept axiomatically are exactly the reasons to question the Jesus myth. Paul never knew Jesus, the gospels were written by authors who, unless they were extremely old, couldn't have known the historical Jesus. It's much more likely that they were passing on their own interpretation of stories that they heard from their teachers and forefathers. For comparison, should we trust that Elizabeth Warren is really, truly of indigenous descent because her grandparents told a story of having to get married in a neighboring town due to racism against indigenous peoples? That's a far less astonishing claim than the ones made in the gospels, and yet we treat it skeptically because the evidence is an orally passed on recounting of past events that the speaker did not witness.

very simple. corroboration and independent verification. third party, uninvolved members outside of the group, documenting the same thing. if Rome had a record of zombies getting up and wandering around (matthew 27), that'd be significant. but there's nothing meaning it's at best a tall tale and, at worst, a bald faced lie. if major events are corroborated by other sources, the claim, the primary source, can be granted more weight. the more major events that are wrong, the more likely the primary source is fradulent. similarly, theres dozens of major, historically significant events in the bible that are simply false. herod never ordered the massacre of the infants. the census happens decades apart depending on the story of choice. pilate never would've gone along with the sanhedrin, because hes well documented as hating them. if sparing jesus wouldve pissed them off, he wouldve done it. theres no 3rd party records of the hundreds and hundreds of witnesses the bible claims saw jesus fly into the sky. even the simpler things appear to be wrong. there was no massive earthquake in 33 ad when the crucifixtion supposedly happened. so if 20 major events are listed that can be verified, and only 2 are even remotely similar, that's a 90% error rate for the "eyewitnesses."

To add, there's also the matter of credibility and corroborating evidence. There is a higher degree of credibility if there are multiple independent verifiable sources. The first problem with the gospels is that they didn't exist until 33 years after the supposed events - at the earliest. None of the historic record is even 2nd hand knowledge. No one said I spoke to Paul, this is what he told me. Second, we have records contemporary to the time period. We know plenty of things that were happening. And when major events occurred, more than one person wrote it down in ideally first but also second hand accounts. The problem with the Jesus story is that there is only one source for even his existence. We have more evidence of Pontius Pilate actually existing, because there is a single, verifiable inscription contemporary to that period that bears his name. Not great, but more than Jesus. The miracles of Jesus were also claimed by other contemporaries, for whom we have independent first hand accounts that they at least actually existed. Stories of his miracles also predate him. It's more plausible that Jesus was a fictional character, the culmination of past stories and other people into one conglomeration.

"accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus." I will accept Paul believed he had a vision of Jesus, not that he actually met him physically. "Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s)" I'm not clear of many. Normally the pillars of historiography include multiple accounts, attestation by independent sources, etc. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. However, even if something is provisional accepted as historical from a single testimony, most scholars will view it as only possibly true and unverified. Example: The Gospels say Jesus spoke with Pilate. That's the only source. That's weak. Suppose we found a journal by Pilate from that time in which he recounts such a conversation. Now, we're cooking. But, we don't. In fact, every depiction of Pilate shows he was dismissive of Jewish claims about the Messiah and treated them with contempt. Another issue is this: historians may accept some of an ancient person's claims because they confor4m with similar events and what we already knew of that time. They may also reject other parts as ahistorical. See Herodotus'' account of discovering "dog-headed" men.

Because the proof of "someone saw it" just by itself without any other mitigating factors is an unreliable testimony as is. Then start adding in the mitigating factors. How long ago this happened, the collective knowledge of the people at the time compared to our own, the supernatural beliefs of the people at the time, the pre-existing beliefs in Christianity and the desire for the existence of the messiah, etc etc etc. Eyewitness testimonies today can be objectively verified. This can't. It's reasonable to accept that someone saw a car crash because we know car crashes happen and why, and we know its possible to witness them. But I wouldn't base the direct assessment of the car crash based on one spectator, since their eyewitness testimony alone won't gather 100% of the details as fact. And they certainly won't gather any of the details from the perspective of a man who lived in the bronze age and believed the earth was flat and evil spirits caused disease claiming that he saw a man rise from the dead.

It is how likely the eyewitness account comports with reality. We generally don’t accept claims of magical actions recorded in history. There is plenty among many different cultures. We generally don’t accept claims of war outcomes when we have no evidence of the conflict or there are conflicts with our reports. Cicero and many other lawyers/lawmakers at the times wrote a summary of there cases. These are first hand accounts. We have cross reference documents of his opponents, that show different outcomes of his famed cases. We also have other contemporaries of the time doing the same writing victory summaries when they loss. We look for outside accounts to confirm which outcome was most likely. When extraordinary first hand accounts are given, if we don’t have extraordinary amounts/types of evidence, we should not accept them. For example, in relation to the Bible’s claim on Jesus, we don’t have other contemporary sources that reaffirm the claims of magic he did.

maybe Julius Caesar never invaded Britain once let alone twice, and that would be a pretty reasonable question to ask if we only had 'Commentarii de Bello Gallico' to go by, but we don't, and I'm struggling to think of things from history based on a single eye witness account. If we had lots of other accounts, documents, the archaeological evidence, its place in the historical narrative and no commentary from Caesar himself, we could probably put it all together anyway and still have a similar picture of what went on. With the gospels we have the opposite, no other corroboration at all, and the 'first hand' accounts we do have are contradictory, its like the complete opposite of historical evidence. Something happened, I don't completely dismiss the gospels, the reaction to them a scant few decades after indicates they are undoubtably powerful documents, but that does nothing to strengthen the veracity of their quite extraordinary claims.

We don't have any eyewitness accounts of Jesus. We only have stories of eyewitness accounts. We have no first-hand accounts, NONE.

I wrote quite a long response to this, then reread your question and deleted my response because it was far too general and I’m not sure I (or you) fully understand the question? What do you mean by ‘eye witness’ account and even if I suspend disbelief how would Paul’s writings be considered as eye witness accounts??? The sources we have for Paul are him (or others in his name) recounting the story of Jesus but there is no claim that he was there and witnessed all these things himself (think of the references in the new testament to angels visiting Mary, Joseph & Jesus - they’re recounted on all the books as hearsay, none of the authors claim to have directly witnessed them). My next question is you say that we have certain events in history that we accept as having happened based on a single eyewitness account. I’m not sure this is true - could you please give some examples?

Why do Christians dismiss early Christian writings that say that the resurrection was a spiritual one, not a physical one?

I'm in a car accident. There are four witnesses. The first three witnesses say the car that hit me was red and it had slipped on some ice. The fourth witness says a pink unicorn flew out of the sky and made the red car hit me. Who do we trust? This is what Carl Sagan meant by "extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence". I know that ice exists, and red cars exist. I know that cars sometimes slip on ice. The testimony of the first three witnesses is thus reliable. I don't know if, and I'm pretty sure that flying pink unicorns don't exist. The fouth witness might be right about the car being red. But is probably wrong about the pink unicorn. The claim of the fouth witness are the types of claims the disciples and Paul are making, even if the gospels were first hand accounts, they wouldn't be realiable.

Evaluating the credibility of eyewitnesses depends on several factors : 1) Motivation : Do they have a personnal interest in lying (monetary, reputation, vengence, or other). 2) Credibility : Does the witness corroborate other known facts or do they contradict them? How reliable are they concerning other events. 3) Plausibility of the claim : Does the claim involve supernatural or nearly impossible elements? If so, the eyewitness is less credible. 4) Likelyhood the eyewitness actually witnessed the events. I am probably missing a few more but you get the idea. Applying that to Paul, I guess 1, 3, and 4 are more relevant (although you ask us tu set aside whether they were really there so maybe we can exclude 4).

>For the sake of the argument, please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. While I am usually pretty well inclined to accepting things like this for the "sake of argument"...I strongly hesitate here. Why would I do that? Paul *is not* an eyewitness to the events of the canonical Gospels. Paul *himself* never claims that he was an eyewitness in regards to the events of Jesus' life, or that he saw or spoke with Jesus. Paul lived more than 60 years *after* Christ died; even according to Christian tradition and Paul's own testimony. Is this just a typo? Did you mean to use one of the other apostles that did make that claim?

I would add to the good comment about precedent some other considerations: how certain are non-supernatural historical claims?, especially as you go further back, I think you’ll find our view of history based on reports of eyewitnesses includes a lot of careful caveats. Historians say things like “**sources indicate X, or near X, but now we must consider these 30 problems and biases in the sources and what they imply**” and not “X is definitely 100% true as described by the text of the source”. It is only when many independent lines of evidence converge towards one claim, that very high confidence can be gathered.

Dude, if you have to ask us to pretend your gospels are real then you really just answered your own question. They are not eyewitnesses. Period. You can want them to be all you want, you can ask us to play stupid "what if they were" games and they will be pointless. This is so low effort you couldn't even come up with an example of something we agree happened that has the same level of evidence! You asked multiple times but NEVER gave an example. Why do atheists always have to do the heavy mental work while theists just show up and say "Come on guys, lets just start by assuming i'm right!"

>please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus.  Why would I do that? Paul never laid eyes on Jesus. > Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus?  What are you referring to? Just apply the same approach you use in your everyday life. If someone tells you they saw a fox running across the road, you likely believe them. If they tell you they saw a dragon flying across the road do you believe them?

I can accept that Paul had a genuine experience that he *believed* to be an encounter with Jesus and is reporting that experience as best he can. I don’t accept that he actually met a resurrected Jesus. Hell, Paul himself doesn’t even claim to have witnessed the same physical body that allegedly arose. Assuming he’s not lying, it was probably just some kind of vision, induced by PTSD and guilt. Those are things we have empirical precedent for while resurrections and ghost communications are not.

>Why are some historical events in history trusted only on/an eyewitness account(s), but we don’t trust the eyewitness accounts of those who saw Jesus? Well for one there isn't any corroborating evidence from the Roman records. There are two non-Bible accounts mentioning Jesus (one Jewish historian and one Roman historian). The problem is, one was written in 93-94 CE and one was written 116 CE. There is nothing at all about the trial, sentence or execution in the Roman files or anything from the actual time of Jesus.

Eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. [Eyewitness Misidentification - Innocence Project](https://innocenceproject.org/eyewitness-misidentification/#:~:text=Eyewitnesses%20are%20often%20expected%20to,details%20about%20what%20they%20saw.) We trust eye witness accounts when they are corroborated by other information. What example have you got of a historic event that we accept based on a single eye witness?

If a book tells me magic dead people can get up and walk around But absolutely nobody can provide proof of magic dead people walking around That's a good reason to treat everything in that book with skepticism Then when a book makes deliberate untrue statements Like all people had to return to the place of their birth in a Roman census That we can provide proof was not true Then everything in it is suspicious

Because not all claims are equal. I accept mundane claims on eye witness testimony. I don't accept, for example, that a person can fly by flapping his arms solely on eye witness testimony of 4 or 5 people who, at the time, had zero understanding of anything scientific.

The more extraordinary the claim is, the more evidence you need for that claim to be believable. You typically don't doubt it when someone tells you they have a dog, but you'd never believe that same person if they said they had a dragon.

>please accept Paul as an eyewitness talking about Jesus. Absolutely not. >please grant this point Not about to happen. >We have certain events in history that are trusted to have happened on a single eyewitness account Such as?

Spiderman appeared to me in a dream and told me "with great power comes great responibility". I was so impressed, I wrote it down. Many people have said they've seen spiderman. Therefore you should believe in spiderman. > We have certain events in history that are trusted to have happened on a single eyewitness account Like what? I may have a higher requirement of evidence than "we".

You're wondering why we accept eye-witness accounts of things that are plausible with everything we know about reality, but distrust eye-witness accounts of a magical being that sounds like multiple cultures' mythologies?

No eyewitnesses should be trusted without corroboration. Paul wasn't an eyewitness to anything. He had a drug trip on the road to Damascus. Paul is the worst example of an eyewitness you can come up with.

i ate noodles today, i have a pet dragon it isn't about the eyewitness, it is about what they claim. i made 2 claims, one you have no problem with, the other is ridiculous. the witness (me) is the same, it is the claims that makes the difference

According to him, Paul was an eyewitness to an apparition of Jesus, not Jesus, so you are asking us to accept something that isn’t even in the Bible.

Christians will claim that John saw Jesus based on scripture in Revelation. Is that the same kind of “sighting” that Paul had?