Mowing Down Paulogia's Undesigned Coincidences Objections
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- Are undesigned coincidences evidence that the Gospels are eyewitness testimony? Skeptical RUclipsr and Paulogia says no, not really at all. I think he's wrong about that.
In about a 10 minute segment section a video response to Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Jonathan MClatchie on the resurrection, Paulogia criticized the argument from undesigned coincidences and asked what he was missing. While Dr. McLatchie recently debated Paul on Capturing Christianity and discussed this topic somewhat, I wanted to dedicate one video strictly to the topic of undesigned coincidences because I keep seeing objections like Paul's coming up.
Dr McLatchie's blog post: jonathanmclatc...
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Paulogia make me a stick figure. (Or I'd love to talk specifically about UCs sometime)
@Paulogia you got beaten badly
Not to mention, his favorite refutation is that the Bible came from legends written down decades after they occurred. After a few decades, the eyewitnesses would still be alive. Oral tradition doesn't deteriorate that quickly.
1) It’s traceable to within 15-20 years
2) They were oral cultures that were skilled in memorizing stories usually verbatim
@@DaneilT Correct
@@StudentDad-mc3pu if you adjust for infant mortality, you could expect to live into your sixties.
@@StudentDad-mc3pu without infant mortality, people have been living to the early sixties since the stone age.
@@StudentDad-mc3puWhat you said is also equally misleading
Paulogia’s devastating knockdown of every undesigned coincidence in the NT:
“They’re all just coincidences!”
Is that what he said? Or are you lying?
@@truncated7644 its what he acts, not that deep
@@heftymagic4814 ???
Basically be doesnt refute anything he just pulls out a bs criteria, and say *uhuuuh it could be this wayyy*! Like bro he mastered flat earther argumentation
@@truncated7644 7:58 -8:05
i do not have the patience to bear paulogia's smug tone of voice or animated avatar. thank you for your work
I have to be honest, Paulogia shook my faith once in one of his videos. I'm glad there's someone who takes time to examine the soundness of his arguments. Thanks, Erik!
One thing I've realized is that there is no inherent problem with listening to & entertaining arguments against the veracity of Christianity. In fact, if Christianity is true, investigating the difficult questions will reveal the truth of the faith. Don't be afraid to look at what Paulogia posts, but don't let it shake you in the moment. There are plenty of responses available, such as this one. Dialogue is important.
If what you said is true, than Testify is more creditable. However, is just your opinion. What his argument is revolves on reliability of the gospel story the feeding 5000. The Paulogia argument revolves on unreliability of the gospel story while Testify is argument revolves on reliability of the story.
Most Paulogia argument is about the inaccuracies and futility on the literature supported by scholar with his careful studies. He had fair reasons on his side on why it's unlikely and unreasonable for this story to be reliable.
While, Testify asserting his viewer the ignorant of Paulogia without further details and his personal assumption and theory with the gospel. Net picking the once that supports his idea and avoiding other part of the gospel that contradict it.
After finishing the video. I realize why this channel is not fond by many Non-believer and believer. For lack of intellectual honesty and reliability.
@@goodmaninthemoonyt4778 so according to your logic more subscribers or viewers mean you have better argument?
@SheepofChrist818 Wow, didn't know God was separated from critical thinking.
Glad to see someone with a platform answer this guy instead of all of us leaving comments and responses on Paul's page and building his platform.
Thanks Testify.
You are a better man than most of us and it is why you have the platform. Be careful and keep up the great work.
A year later, but thanks. I hate growing his platform by debunking his flawed reasoning and starting comment threads, debating his blathering sycophants for weeks or longer. I think that he trolls Christians intentionally because we bring him views.
@@Daniel-mw7pu That's just a so-called "lucky coincidence."
It has little to do with the coincidences in the Bible. The point is that the different Gospels, Acts, and the Letters match in a way to each other and history that they really seem like reports from eyewitnesses and boost their credibility. And yes, the authors didn't meat each other while writing the Gospels, and that's the impressive thing that the narratives still match to each other!!!
Imma give you an example, which Testify also made a video about, in John's Gospel it said how the pool of Bethesda had 5 entrances. Jerusalem was definitely destroyed in July of 70 A.D. so if the writer of John was just some dude in Turkey writing in 120 A.D. and probably never visited Jerusalem. How did he know it was there? Scholars even doubted it existed before it was refound! That was not common knowledge! So, an eyewitness must have seen and reported that!
And yes, they're coincidences, not made on purpose, and that's what strenghtens the reliability and historicity of the Gospels, that they're not made on purpose!
I watched the recent debate between Paulogia and John. Paul kept claiming the stories evolved over time to be more reliable, but that doesn't address the fact that many of the undesigned coincidences weren't noticed in the early church, and why as you pointed out a number of times that the Apostle John would add information to a story, and leave out additional relevant information from previous gospel writers.
Not only does the claim that "the stories evolved over time to be more reliable" not address the undesigned coincidences, it also is empirically false. Stories don't evolve to become more reliable over time, but rather become less reliable and less detailed. That's the reason why atheists want to date the gospels to be as late as possible in order to allow for sufficient time for legendary development. You can't have it both ways and claim that the evolution of the narrative made it both more accurate and less reliable.
@@truthmatters7573 olá! Você acha que temos boas evidências de uma datação recente dos evangelhos?
@@truthmatters7573 that is true, but certainly over time you can have access to a bigger picture.
This is in part why a somewhat popular theory is that John had read Luke at some point or used it somewhat.
Of course, we really can’t know that 100% because of lack of data. We only barely have enough clues to suggest things like Markean priority , and there’s still debate among scholars about who copied who in the gospels.
So yeah I mean I suppose any explanation one gives is unlikely because we really don’t have much evidence. I’m not sure that’s a good idea though
@@truthmatters7573 But that’s Paulogia playing his favorite game again:
Heads I win, tails you lose.
@@truthmatters7573well said brother
This is either my second or third exposure to Pauligia, and my impression of him remains just about where it was - though I have become more certain of what before was a judgement based on limited evidence from shorts and other clips. He comes across as one of the most… annoying “debunkers” whose “arguments” simply infuriate me. Attempting civil discussion in his comment section is a thorough examination of the ol’ pearl toss.
A thing in particular I got into a bit of a comment exchange over was the fact that he didn’t believe someone named Luke wrote Acts for various reasons though about the only articulable reason his comments section could provide was “It isn’t signed and Luke never took an affidavit that he wrote it, check mate theists”, which is just… SO infuriating. Especially since these are people who are equally as likely to then turn around and say the epistles with salutations from Paul and sign offs from Paul in them and are held as being authentic Pauline Epistles are clearly not written by Paul. You don’t sign your homework and you’re in trouble, you sign your homework and obviously it’s not you who did it.
I appreciate the video, you handled it with far more grace than I can currently manage.
Its strange how Paulogia uses the argument that the undesigned coincidences might just be coincidences. And that somehow refutes them?
Like, yeah, they're coincidences, thats why its a good cumulative argument in the first place...
"Coincidence" and "just coincidence" is not the same thing.
Two stories coincidentally having details that don't conflict and that could be about the same event doesn't mean the event actually happened or if it did, that it happened as described.
@@cjdennis149 absolutely, on its own, one instance of it doesnt mean much. Thats why its a cumulative case.
@@slythawyrda The plural of anecdote is not data. 0 × 1,000,000 = 0. Each one needs to be looked at with its own merits. If it doesn't stack up, you don't get to add it to other stories that don't stack up.
@@cjdennis149 still missing the point. They dont prove. But they provide credibility because this IS what we would expect to find in reliable accounts.
Perhaps they have already, but I’ve often thought that J. Warner Wallace and Lydia McGrew should collaborate. Undesigned coincidences fit perfectly into the toolbox of cold case investigation.
Can we also mention how typologically significant Jesus’ death on Passover is. “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” If it is on the basis of reading about green grass that John decides to put the story in Spring, what great luck! Because now he can make Jesus die on Passover in his narrative. Wouldn’t it make more sense that John believed Jesus died in the spring before he read about green grass?
PLUS it even adds more theologically. Psalm 23 says he makes them lie down on green pastures.
Depends which gospel you're reading. They disagree.
@@thebiblemademeatheist5 That’s not true. They all agree Jesus died on Friday, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. When John says he died on the Preparation day of Passover. Preparation day meant Friday because it was preparation for Sabbath Saturday. So he’s saying he died on the day of preparation for the Saturday during the feast.
Mark, of course, was not an eyewitness, but Peter, Mark’s source, was. As was Matthew.
Mark was a eye witness as well as peter they recalled the events toghter so marks gospel isnt badly remebered, infact they used to get togheter at marks house
@@Onlyafool172"they used to get together at Mark's house"
Source?
@@AnHebrewChild John Mark was the son of a widow woman named Mary (Acts 12:12-17). The disciples met in Mary’s home, its not all clear, but its possible, its one of the reasons why mark would be naked, he would be probably on his house with what we would call something the equivalent of a pijama, seeing the mess he grabbed some clothes, tried to get dressed, saw the jews or romans(i dont remembered) hid, and later ran away leaving his clothes on the floor because he didnt wanted to be killed
@@Onlyafool172 interesting. I always assumed the young man was Peter.
And after he lost his garment, he was cold, this is why "he warmed himself at the fire "
I believe Mark was written _directly_ by Peter and Andrew.
@@AnHebrewChild but peter cut the soldiers ear, so it couldnt be him
I feel like also this is Paulogia not realizing the power of the improbability of so many of these things coming together. As you said, this is a cumulative argument. Not to mention, if all these were really planned as needed at some point you need some massive conspiracy playing 20d chess second guessing everything 20 times like that scene with the poison in the princess bride.
@paulogia put out several explanations, but @Testify doesn't think that its valid to have different explanations for different coincidences. I think life is complicated and whatever the answer is, it most likely isn't exactly what anyone is theorizing.
As for the cumulative case, people who disagree with you use that too. That is, there are what seems to be hundreds of inconsistencies, errors, contradictions, and theological disagreements in the Bible. Yes, you can harmonize them all I am sure, but the plausibility for each harmonization is less than 1 and therefore the cumulative effect is far less. This makes the case that the Bible is a only a man-made book highly likely in their opinion.
@@truncated7644 This is where calibration is needed. The same kind of "errors", "inconsistencies", "contradictions" can also be found in other historical works. And if one wants to be picky, I'm sure one could even find hundreds. And yet generally they are considered reliable, atleast in the gist of what they say.
But undesigned coincidences are indeed rare. I've yet to hear of them being found in legends or fiction. Same thing with of external confirmation of minor, incidental details. The apocryphal gospels (for example) simply don't have these features, let alone in such numbers. That's the consideration which breaks the alleged "symmetry" between your cumulative case and ours.
Muslins can say the same about Quran and its "scientifics" evidences
@@user-qh4dr1vy9d Except that those aren't coincidences but just quote mining. Tell me that you have no clue about undesigned coincidences without telling me you have no clue...
@@truncated7644 I definitely think that each explanation for a coincidence is … pretty flawed and unlikely.
The reason because of that is we just don’t have that much data. We don’t have the data to support any skeptical conclusion strongly except for the most basic of things like the Synoptics copying from eachother.
And I mean If J McLatchie and Testify think they can make a conclusion based on LACK of data then I guess good for them . But I am not buying it.
The undesigned coincidences argument is solid as a “rebuttal” to claims that the Gospels lack historicity, weren’t eyewitness testimony, etc. They greatly lose force when advanced as prima facie evidence of these things, and it’s a mistake to use them this way. When used this way, Paulogia types are given easy strawmen.
Here’s a silly example. Say a crime scene has the same shoe size and hair type as a suspect. And (for the moment) that’s all the evidence we have. To argue that this *proves* the suspect is the criminal is rather weak (not wrong per se, just weak). However, if the criminal argues “it couldn’t have been me,” then the fact that those pieces of evidence coincidentally match him has good rebuttal force and leaves the possibility of his guilt wide open. Ie, The rebuttal argument is stronger than the proof of guilt argument.
What then makes the case even strong(er) is when “other” circumstantial evidence is brought in: eyewitness placing him there, lack of alibi, past record, relationship with victim, etc. None of it alone is strong enough but taken together with his shoe size and hair, a compelling case can be made.
Tl; dr - That is the power of undesigned coincidences: good rebuttal evidence and nice-to-have evidence when used cumulatively with other evidence. But weak (and unnecessary) as stand-alone proof…
Yes, but everybody needs to take honest look, though. If all evidence points to a 5'9" black man named John Smith born on Feb. 29th, then they'd better check for other people with the same features.
I love that skeptics get to site the source of “Trust Me Bro” but when context and evidence are sited they attempt to sweep it away by stating it’s only unsubstantiated claims.
Faith in Christ truly is only for those who have ears to hear.
Somehow, it just seems more reliable. After all, unsubstantiated claims just confirm that it is not conspiratorial.
You're such a blessing Erik!
if it's good it's grace.
Is it just me or Paulogia sounds like he’s trying to make his voice sound deeper
He just does some kind of audio editing. I equalize my audio as well, not a big deal
If you use some kind of compressor on your voice, it can make it sound all kinds of ways. Often people go for the kind of "radio voice" that's big and powerful, because it's nice to listen to. I think that's probably all he did.
If he uses Adobe editing software, it has built-in compressors you can drag and drop onto your audio.
If undesigned coincidences prove credibility of gospels, do contradictions and falsehoods prove it's implausibility? (dates surrounding Jesus birth, Herod's massacre, cursing fig tree like a maniac, physically impossible clearing of temple square, who came for Jesus in Gethsemane, who and when arrived at grave and many others)
Since literally dependence between gospels is well established (Mat from Mark, Luke from Mark, Luke from Mat or both from Q, John from all three) and disconnect of authors from actual events is also established, both literary dependence and genuine coincidence must be excluded as probable cause beforehand.
16:35 - 17:30 - afaik that feeding of 5000 occurred outside of Betsaida is only mentioned in Luke. Philip being from Betsaida is mentioned only in John, Philip being asked in only in John. John "forgetting" to mention Philip origins and location of the miracle is equally probable on John forgetting while inventing things (which he did plenty) as on John forgetting while recollecting real events.
If all "undesigned coincidences" had such probability, entire argument would hold no value, so that case is not helpful.
Wife of Herod's household manager mentioned once is a very weak connection to how that one information could (stress on "could") reach Christians. You'd need dozens of such connections.
Which brings me to a question - is there some catalogue of "undesigned coincidences" in the NT?
I'd be way easier to grasp the scale and scope in a text format.
"is there some catalogue of "undesigned coincidences" in the NT?"
I doubt it exists. But I would really like someone to make that effort. At least we could verify the power of this argument.
Someone could also do the same for other ancient writings, for comparison.
@@davidpinheiro9650 That's what I'm getting at. List could be even "overblown" and "too apologetic" of a creation, containing many cases which are either weak or invalid (like Philip above). I'm okay with filtering for myself.
Doing something analogous for ancient writings or even for "hypothetical writings" (exploring space of possible texts) would be next step. Some level of coincidences is expected, it would need to be established that NT scores significantly higher than average.
Jonathan and Tim have this same accent, but I can't figure out what it is. Any ideas?
Jonathan is Scottish
Love your stuff! Especially the meme inserts. Quick suggestion:
There's often a liiiiiittle bit of time between the end of what you say and the start of the meme that's dead space, and it stops the flow of the sentence. If you take that out and make it sound like the sentence continued as normal, just under a different voice, that would help a ton.
Thanks! I'm trying to do that but apparently not always succeeding.
@@TestifyApologetics Bro what can we do to help the channel blow up?
Share. Like. Comment. Watch. The usual stuff, I'd think. Oh and pray.
I’ll try and sum up every conclusion from Paulogia on this topic with two words - *Worldview bias*
That’s really all it is.
That also applies to the Christians especially.
@@Vinnymanvinny1 I’m not saying otherwise. I was only offering an observation that seems apparent with Paulogia.
Bias is something everybody deals with and confirmation bias feels pretty dang good when we’re proven right. But I don’t much humility from Paulogia in what was shared from his content.
You're the best Christian apologist on RUclips that I've found. You make arguments respectfully, you don't twist the words of those you respond to, and you don't ignore possible counter-arguments to the points you make. We don't have enough of that.
Would you do any responses to Matt Dillahunty on the resurrection? I haven’t seen as many responses to him
also your videos have helped a lot with my doubt and my existential anxiety thank you 💙💙
If you have any Dillahunty videos you'd like me to respond to, let me know I'd be happy to take a look!
@@TestifyApologetics idk if you do debate reviews so obviously no pressure at all but if you could review his debate with Trent Horn or Jonathon Mclatchie on the resurrection, or maybe his own commentary/review on his debate with Trent Horn that would be really great but no worries if you can't (:
also, I know I said this before but I really have to reiterate how much your videos have helped- i converted from agnosticism to christianity as of a couple months ago but i've still been in a really bad place with existential anxiety (the "what if atheists are right, what if life has no meaning, what happens when we die" kind of thing, which is ironic since i'm 16 but I guess it's better to deal with that now than have it come in 30 years) and sometimes I see atheist youtube titles/comments/etc out of context and I get very panicky, but seeing that there's someone credible refuting those arguments with resources is always really reassuring and cathartic, and your videos are really digestible and well researched, so literally thank you so much (sorry for gushing)
@@ihatetuesdays8438 I think all 16 year olds have existential anxiety, it's probably just a biological condition. Atheists don't believe life has no meaning, it is a truly beautiful and incredible experience. The fact that it isn't eternal doesn't diminish that, it makes it more precious. Good luck on your journey, wherever it takes you.
@@truncated7644 oh yeah I’m definitely not the first person to be experiencing existential anxiety and I’m sure there are people who have had it worse than me sadly ): it’s just been going on for a while on a day to day basis and it’s been exacerbated by some general mental health problems- it definitely reached a point where it was interfering with my social life/academic life/sleep schedule, hence why I’m also going back to therapy 🥲
and I completely agree that not every single atheist believes that life has no meaning, and I’m glad that they don’t, I just think that atheism itself does have nihilistic implications even if not every atheist believes that
and also thank you (: it’s been a difficult couple of months but it’s definitely been better in the past few weeks, (we’ve moved past the having-anxiety-attacks-and-crying-everyday stage for example so that’s a perk) and I am really lucky to have the resources at my disposal that I do to get better because not everyone that’s experienced similar anxiety does and I really don’t want to take that for granted, I can’t imagine having to deal with this if I didn’t have friends/apologetics/parents/therapy lol
@@ihatetuesdays8438 Sounds difficult, I am glad to hear you are surrounded by caring people.
I find paulogias presentation highly unconvincing
I like how RUclips atheists who try to disprove Jesus always sound stuck up and snobby and their voice always sounds nasally
It's funny to me that skeptics bring out a magnifying glass to point out at the minutest of dispcrepancies when it comes to Christian accounts yet for every other non-christian historical figure the smallest of supposed information is enough to be taken as concrete evidence.
quick question, is it only Christians Scholars who accept undersigned coincidences, or are there also Atheist who accept as well
not that I know of, but I think if they were they'd be confronted with the prospect of the reportage model and that leads to miracles and that can be a stopping point for them.
@@TestifyApologetics Didn't @pualogia make it pretty clear that even given all your arguments, it only leads to a general reliability of the texts, but not that of evidence needed to justify the least probable explanation? I could grant you that not only is the text 100% reliable and Jesus rose from the dead, but I would still stand by the reasonableness of anyone not believing due to how weak the evidence for it is (the testimony of a few people) compared to the evidence I have to believe in amazing things like DNA, electricity or gravity.
If it actually happened, there are a lot of people who simply want comparable support before they believe. By their very nature, miracles and testimony are weak evidence of the divine because they aren't repeatable or 100% reliable. It's no coincidence that virtually all religions rely on them to make their case.
A lot of skeptic scholars could benefit from legal interpretation theory, which directs that seemingly conflicting law be read together and harmoniously as far as possible. Supplementary to this, is considering context and circumstance, and rejecting that which creates an unreasonable result under the circumstances. Preference of either or rejection of both only occurring if the result is an absurdity.
The 'contradictions' in scripture exist, because people want them to exist.
Erik,
Do you think Marcan priority is something that is worth arguing about? In my humble opinion, skeptics take it like it’s a proven fact of history, and use this to develop a bunch of complicated theories of redaction, legendary development, etc and I don’t think it’s nearly as clear cut as they make it out to be, even if it’s a majority view.
I subscribe to Markan priority but I think John Wenham's book on the topic gives the theory a run for it's money while arguing for Matthean priority. I think that it's a very low stakes issue.
I agree completely: it isn't clear and it isn't important either way.
However, I do think it was Mark.
They always give these just-so stories with 50 assumptions and think it proves the Gospels are a collusion. It's so weak
Speaking as a skeptic myself, Markan priority is definitely overstated both on the internet and (IMO) in the scholarly literature. (Scholars aren't perfect, I'm sure no one will be surprised to hear!) But, Markan priority is still very likely given the evidence, IMO. And while it may be false, we have to go by the best evidence we have.
Even so, you are quite correct in pointing out that Markan priority is indeed something worth arguing about. (I suspect that the more you argue the more you will be persuaded that Mark wrote first, but this should never provide an incentive not to argue. By all means, challenge!)
@@HatsoffHistory Do you know the early history of Christianity reasonably well?
Little details are always the first thing to go in a retelling. When I tell my mom about a news story I watched earlier that day I often get the small things wrong like some court case concluded. Where? I forget.
Given this human propensity secondary details accidentally aligning seems like the best evidence for the gospels being recorded by eyewitnesses (or by someone hearing it directly from them). Of course they would be more careful than I am chatting with my mom but the idea that multiple sources after decades of playing telephone get tons of seemingly unrelated but complementary details right is extremely unlikely.
The medieval enthusiast in me loved that reference to chainmail armor.
23:28 just an NB: youre often really forgetful about linking stuff in the description, and mcclatchies blog doesnt appear there. Love your work and god bless.
added. Thank you!
Thank you so much for doing these kind of response videos, especially to Paulogia. He is so tricky in his analysis that to the untrained (the regular listener) it all seems fine. I am so tired of these narratives that we can't believe anything the New Testament authors say. Unfortunately, it will have an impact on our youth, unless we make an effort such as this to respond to this nonsense.
@paulogia doesn't take the position that you can't believe anything the NT says. What makes you think that? As to the points where he disagrees with you, being tired of it doesn't make you right. What is your point?
@@truncated7644 His skepticism serves no purpose other than itself. He's condescending, dismissive, annoying & just generally everything you'd expect from the cliched atheist. And no amount of evidence will ever mean anything to him because it's like he doesn't even pay attention to it. He just listens & waits for an opportunity to be a smarmy jerk.
And the worst part is if you point any of this out people like paulogia will just double down and insist this is all an ad hominem because you have no argument. He'll just dismiss your argument no matter what in the most infuriating way possible and call it a victory and if you get mad or avoid him he'll just say 'see, they have NOTHING. I'm so smart and sciencing tee hee' and then an army of blockheads will ask you for evidence or clarification or whatever. Just spewing jargon as if the words have any meaning on their own.
tl;dr modern skeptics are just a waste of time. Randian hucksters just out to trick midwits into believing they're smarter than everyone else. And you say that and they'll just go, 'And? proof? evidence? anything behind that claim?' You call them insufferable and they'll take it as tho they're scathing intellect and commitment to facts has left you destroyed. Its oblivion. Pure oblivion.
I wouldn’t say nonsense. A point I’m always trying to establish with fellow theists is that if the atheists are right. We should be grateful for their work since it’s possible that the authors of the gospels are mistaken.
@@esmarpoole948 Do you think every scholar who studies ancient language, culture, history, etc. is the same, or do you think there are some people who study these topics who simply disagree with you?
@@truncated7644 Nice try. Again, these tactics.. You're trying to paint me as someone opposed to scholarship, linguistics, archaeology, history, sCiEnCe etc when it's people like Paulogia who are. They are the ones w/ an ideological axe to grind and it's obvious. And this is all as they just operate under the tacit, malignant assumption that truth, facts & science are their source, way & destination.
And paulogia is not a scholar. Nor is dillahunty. Not even remotely
Grass is green in Israel for 1-2 seasons (winter and spring), so a 1 day event happening somewhere between a quarter and half of a year is mundane. That one mentions grass being green while the other mentions the spring means both heard it happened that time of year.
To bring in your modern comparison: two separate people hearing decades later that a man robbed a bank and tripped on untied shoelaces does not mean that there was even a robbery, let alone that the robber tripped. People write down that the moon landings didn't happen, and there are people alive right now who literally walked on the moon. We need more evidence than two people writing about something to be impressed that their accounts sometimes have details in common.
Regarding having telephone game cake and eating it too: the cumulative argument is a confirmation bias. If you are going to argue that minute details, agreed upon between books, support the historicity within, then the minute details, disagreed upon between books, oppose the historicity. We can't seem to get straight who witnessed an empty tomb, but asking a guy where to get bread and somebody else mentioning that he's a local is supposed to be convincing? Isn't this having UC cake and eating it too?
Comparing to historical accounts of war: historians acknowledge that small details can be inaccurate about a major event without completely annihilating the major event. The idea that a battle happened during a war is unsurprising. The idea that a man ignored the law of conservation of mass and energy by multiplying fish and bread needs a lot more justification than two dudes saying it happened in springtime when grass is green.
If you're calibrating your expectations... Finding out that the Battle of Pharsalia was made up entirely would not significantly change our knowledge about the Persian invasion of Greece. If the resurrection of Jesus didn't happen, Christianity as a whole is completely destroyed.
@CookiesRiot they aren't responding to you because you are making too much sense. Every point you brought up is valid. There appears to be a lot of special pleading. When the events line up, it's factual history, when there are contradictions, believe the bible over history.
@@Vinnymanvinny1 It's the same confirmation bias that typically accompanies magical thinking with astrology and tarot cards and other woo. Just because a something _seems to_ line up doesn't mean it _actually_ lines up, doesn't mean it lines up _because of_ the suspected reasons, and frequently [but not always] means that the interpreter is _trying_ to fit it to a pattern.
This is where the "Spider-Man fallacy" comes into play - Spider-Man is set in New York City, but the reality that NYC exists doesn't conclusively indicate that Spider-Man must exist. If we find evidence of city walls that got destroyed at the site associated with Jericho, that doesn't tell us that the destruction happened in accordance with the biblical account. If it did, that would also make Greek mythology true because we have evidence of a siege at Troy.
You are right about that last part, at least☺️
13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:13-14, ESV)
For me, undesigned coincidences didn't make sense in a vacuum where I was just hearing them listed off. It really clicked for me when I went through a good study of the Gospel of Matthew, with solid theological and historical explanation for everything that was happening (using allusion to historical events, undesigned coincidences, etc...)
After enough time it hit me really hard that, cumulatively, someone who didn't live and breathe this culture at this time couldn't have gotten this all right. Yet somehow he was. In short, I discovered it had the ring of truth.
Why is anyone using John 6:4? IT WASNT IN THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS !!
It is so funny when atheists question and show doubts and concerns about the history written after decades but are very adamant about the evolution being true that happened billions of years ago upon their own admission.
Atheists are painfully funny....
As a salesperson, I was trained to know my stuff but more importantly make the customer feel good. A customer won't necessarily remember what my name is, but they'll remember how I made them feel and will come back for a good shopping experience. My point is, each detail is remembered because how it makes the writer feel. The grass was green, which was a special annual occurrence, but must have been very nice to sit on. It was crowded. A lot of people hate crowds. Passover is a deeply emotional time for the Jews. Jesus approaches Philip because he knows the area. These aren't random facts. They actually tell us about the sources and how different their personalities are. That's to be expected when different people tell the same story. Even if the writers were trying to rewrite another Gospel from memory, it would not result in these types of differences. If anything, the names, places and color of the grass would be different.
It’s really beginning to seem like Paul is unwilling to actually engage with the data regarding undesigned coincidences, and is unfortunately completely satisfied with sweeping it all aside as chance, even though it seems to be the least likely explanation when we consider just how many of these interlockings occur throughout the gospels.. would love to see you chat with him about it all in real time! As I think it would be much harder for him to hide behind the notion that it’s all easily explainable by chance, rather than admit just how strong of a case it is for eye witness testimony.
Exactly. Deny, provide a “more reasonable explanation”, repeat.
I can’t believe I live in the same region as Paulogia😭😭😭
Anyways he’s wrong because Mediterranean climates vary within themselves and it is also even untrue for here. OUR SPRINGS ARE GREEN TOO. Between early summer and early winter the grass is mostly brown with green patches returning in the fall, and then in late winter to early spring we get torrential downpour that creates flooding and mud and lush green grass. Even in late winter the grass is more of a stunted dark green due to the frost, whereas in the spring it’s lively and beautiful. His error is that he thinks every place that has a Köppen climate classification of Csa is automatically the same, but since it’s a descriptive system, it varies wildly, especially with the very broad definitions it uses
As for the its oral tradition embellishment counter argument that paul uses, then why aren't there more contradictory oral tradition embellishment and only inter confirming oral tradition embellishments?.
There are plenty, probably many more than there are undesigned coincidences. Have you read "Jesus Interrupted" by Bart Ehrman?
@@truncated7644 I have only seen Ehrman presentations and I don't buy that most of his contradictions are actual contradictions.
@@ikengaspirit3063 ok, I won't debate you, just encourage you to read the book, where the scholarly arguments are explained rather than summarize in a debate.
@@truncated7644No way you cited Bart Ehrman LMAOOOOOOO
@@budhuedbuedbed I didn't. I recommended him. What's funny about it to you?
Paulogia says that John was at least aware of Mark. But even if John knew Mark that doesn’t mean he used Mark as a source. There is a big distinction Paul needs to be aware of.
Please pray for him
Another great video! Paulogia is WAY overrated. Not sure why he is as popular as he is.
Always remember how insecure he clearly is.
Honestly I never got it either. I really don't mean this in some hateful way but so many of the arguments he makes do feel downright childish.
@@ALavaPenguin He's a weird and bitter guy (besides being insecure). He was a Christian father and instead of giving up on Christianity (always a possible human response to lack of interaction from God), he went out of his way to blow up his family's harmony instead of quietly withdrawing from the Christian aspects.
I like him...
@@HatsoffHistory Hmmmm. Do you know the relevant history?
Thanks for all the content you make Erik. If you were to pick a few UCs in making a 15 min case which ones would you choose?
Good question:
1. Why Philip? (John 6.5, 1.44, Luke 9.10)
2. Herod's servants (Matt 14.1-2, Luke 8.1-3)
3. Are you the king of the Jews? No problem! (Luke 23.1-4, John 18.33-38, it's a two-fer)
4. I am among you as he who serves (Luke 22.24-27, John 13:1-17)
I'd be sure to explain this is just a sampler though and that the case is cumulative.
I appreciate the completely contextually appropriate screen cap from the Attack of the Clones film 👌🏼
Channels like Paulogia make me more confident in Christianity. You have to be obtuse on purpose to dismiss this.
I like this video. It gives a person a lot to chew on.
My first thought is this: The basic theory (so to speak) of undesigned coincidences is perfectly legitimate. The "modern example" you offer in having untied shoes and tripping does have some persuasive power. But, why invoke such hypothetical examples? If the evidences are so powerful as McGrew claims, then presumably we should not need hypothetical guiding lights. Let her lay out the specific instances, and let us judge them on their own lights!
Glad you liked it. Feel free to DM me on Discord, I can share a list of secular examples if that's what you're looking for. There are quite a few.
@@TestifyApologetics Well what I mean is, you lead with the example about shoelaces and tripping. And this is a good example, because it's clear and unambiguous. But, IMO, there are no such clear and unambiguous examples in the Gospels themselves! Instead, McGrew, McLatchie, and others have to marshal large numbers of very (in my opinion) weak and unconvincing Gospel examples in an effort to overwhelm the skeptic with a kind of cumulative case, as they put it.
So, I just think it's an interesting observation that in order to clearly illustrate how undesigned coincidences are supposed to function, they don't lead with an actual example in the Gospels or Acts. Instead, they have to appeal to artificial examples and hope that they are comparable enough for the reader to buy in.
I guess I don't see that as the case at all. Rather many fit together quite clearly and naturally. I think you're seeing shoehorning and artificialness where there is none, even if I readily admit some examples may be better than others. The case being cumulative isn't a problem because it takes out the "it can just be a small sample of statistical noise" objection. If we had 3 then people would complain it's too small a sample. If we have dozens, people complain and say that they're somehow artificial! 🤷♂️
@@TestifyApologetics Sure, I agree the case being a cumulative one isn't a problem. I just don't think what you are accumulating is worthwhile.
But, there is certainly healthy room for disagreement. I try to put aside my bias in assessing the evidence, but, let's face it, how successful can I really hope to be in that (hopefully!) noble goal?
@@HatsoffHistory I think that the green grass is the best example. You're being too picky, if you're saying that it isn't worth while. It either is an undesigned coincidence or it isn't.
Much like Richard Dawkins, you probably don't have any way to persuade yourself.
Fantastic content! Unrelated, but I couldn’t help but see the commonalities of undesigned coincidences with creationism.
@testify you should do something on the authorship of 1st and 2nd Peter
Go to Google Podcasts: Search Dr. Stephen Boyce FACTS podcast. He has episodes on both.
Ok I will, thank you, your work is helping me a lot!
Thank you and God Bless you!
I liked Lydia McGrews book "Hidden in plain view". There are some really well hidden connections there. Unnecessary ones, that just click into one another. There are above all many of them, which I think matters in this case.
But I can also see a kind of heads I win and tails you lose thing going on when the reasoning goes that harmony equals confirmation and disharmony equals proof of separate individual witness accounts.
I am not saying it is untrue but I would appreciate if that can be adressed.
God bless!
It is ofc in no way better when performed the other way as when congruence is equaled with literary dependence and lack of congruence as impossible contradictions that "prove" they are not from eye witnesses.
No disharmony can definitely disconfirm depending on the amount and type of disharmony there is. Contradictions can definitely matter.
@@TestifyApologetics the more I think about what you wrote, the more I think that makes sense. The saying God is in the details applies rather literally. One does have to weigh each instance individually.
It is fitting that Warner Wallace wrote the afterword to the book as this field is one of witness psychology. Perhaps there is some expert on that very speciality who can add even more.
Undesigned coincidences are a house of cards. 15:49 These are not Independent sources. This is incredibly basic stuff. The similarities are unremarkable- it’s the differences elucidate each redactor’s ideological program.
rekt
How is it that minor discrepancy is not evidence of truthful and independent recollection of events? In crash reconstructions, police expect there to be minor differences in details from eyewitnesses. Ton skeptics claim they colluded , then you claim they are discrepanct.....how can it be both?
How can you reliably distinguish between undesigned coincidences from designed coincidences? Can you design undesigned coincidences?
The difference is subtlety. Most undesigned coincidences fly entirely under the radar to most readers. If you’re trying to make your unreliable testimony look reliable, it’s extremely unlikely that you’d rely on the reader not only being particularly astute, but also having access to the alternative testimony with which the coincidence emerges.
@@yowza9638 A major problem is that the proponents of this argument haven't shown that these type of undesigned coincidences don't appear in fictional literatures that narrate similar stories but are unrelated. It could be a classic Type 1 error of not rejecting the null hypothesis that is actually true in the population.
But more importantly, if undesigned coincidences fly under the radar, even for literate people, and given that most people aren't familiar with the Bible at that level of detail, and billions of people are illiterate or have no access / time to study the issue, what is the power of the argument? Who but an elite few benefit from it? Is that how God wants it to be?
@@truncated7644 Proverbs 25:2
_It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings._
One of the appeals of Christianity/the Bible is that there is always something new to discover no matter how much you know about it. And that is 100% consistent with Christian theology. Or in other words, yes, God wants it to be that way. So much for your last question.
And now to your first question. It is true that there can be sci-fi authors who put in Easter eggs into their stories which only starwars fans will notice. The problem is that the undersigned coincidence are noticeably more subtle and even if it were deliberate it requires a very careful author. That very careful author would try to harmonize the rest of the Gospels while writing it. So there would be no apparent contradictions left.
One funny thing is that those people who dismiss the undersigned coincidence and say they were put in deliberate, also say the Bible is a loose telephone game with lots of legendary development. And those are two contradictory statements. If you could say half of the Gospels are legendary development and half the Gospels are carefully written then that is certainly a possible solution. But the two parts would be so different in writing style that it would be blatantly obvious for any reader. Unfortunately the people arguing for both legendary development and a careful writer just select which one just happened for that specific passage depending on which solution fits their world view best at the current moment. They don't base it on writing style or other textual clues.
@@philippbrogli779 Your eisegesus of Proverbs 25.2 ignores the second half of the verse, which supports my point that it is an elitist perspective. If that's the way you like your God, so much for your first answer.
No one is saying they were intentionally written or cleverly inserted. That removes the dilemma you are posing between crafty and careless. @Paulogia is saying that these stories may have elements of historical truth in them and that different writers may know or select to use different elements of those stories that happen to be consistent with each other. But that doesn't make the stories 100% reliable histories any more than any other ancient record that combines miraculous stories with historical events. There were a lot of stories about Jesus out there and the gospels are a curated collection of those stories that survived because they were helpful in creating believers. Shared knowledge, inter-textual dependence and actual coincidences are also plausible. It's nowhere near as strong an argument as you believe it to be and almost certainly why it is unpersuasive to scholars.
Consistent with the skeptic's view, in addition to what is being called undesigned coincidences, we also would expect to find a lot of variance and even contradictions amongst the texts. And there are hundreds of them. But that isn't consistent with your view of the reliability of the text, so you harmonize them all away into a brand new version of the story never found in a single text.
@@truncated7644 if there are supernatural stories inserted into historical events then that would mean they would be differentiable. For one by writing style and also by the distribution of the testable things like the undesigned coincidences.
But if someone comes at the text having to reject half of it just on pure world view alone I can see how you come to the conclusion you reach. After all anything is more likely than taking it for what it says.
Much to do about nothing; so what? Every so often and by every so often I mean practically a guaranty; someone says I can prove it? Then they point to the bible? Now I get it when someone believes something its more comfortable for that someone if lots of other people believe it as well. Therefore, they tend toward winning converts. But what’s being presented isn’t a car brand, it’s a change to a person so profound they can no longer be considered the same person.
There is a lot to unpack here but starting with the bible itself don’t we all agree its not for the natural reader? Why are people going to it to make arguments for those it was never meant for?
Next just because a person holds an opinion, and that opinion says there is a God, and they are a true, devout, over the top believer; Does that mean they have undergone the aforementioned change?
What, just for curiosity sake, does that change look like; and if the bible can’t bring it about, wouldn’t the person who had undergone that change understand that, and not resort to it?
I could go into the gospel here, spell it out, what it really is, how it’s almost never heard? That’s curious. I could walk through why believing and faith are clearly not the same things. On and on, as I said a lot to unpack; but I’m just going to leave it at much to do about nothing, and move on.
Because Paulogia has obviously bad counterarguments for every theological issue. Good job.
Excellent response Erik, Paulogia really failed to understand the undesign coincidence argument, especially when he proposed John was just trying to fluff up mark’s account of the feeding, whilst not even copying Mark’s details . It really flew over his head.
There's a reason the Book of John is not one of the Synoptic Gospels. The author of John goes out of his way to contradict them. "Don't believe those other Gospels! Here, let me tell you how it _really_ happened!"
I am told two minutes in that the fact that the gospel authors were using each others works and drawing from other identical sources, which is demonstrated by passages that are not only similar but identical verbatim, which is not what you would get even from eyewitnesses who _did_ collaborate to get their story straight - it's too perfect to be anything other than verbatim copying - doesn't actually matter. It doesn't matter if the coincidences in the works that were shared between the authors seem unintentional. Hm. Well, to each his own I guess. I have different questions about this though to anyone who wouldn't mind answering.
Does matter that the gospels were written 30,40,50,60 years after the fact from a culture of oral tradition - and in Greek - by those clearly among the intellectual elite, the top one or two percent of education that is found among aristocracy, when there is only one known example of a writer composing in Greek in first century Palestine? Apparently that number is supposed be five, not one - four of which were witnesses to the life and death of Jesus -- another striking coincidence - including a tax collector who refers to himself in the third person, and fisherman from the backwaters of Galilee.
And at the same time, are you willing to call the hundred other extant Gospels, Acts, and so on that are attributed to Judas, Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and the rest, pseudoepigraphical? Why is that, when Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John don't even _claim_ to be written by Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John, as opposed to the Gospel of Peter, for example.
Another question in this vein, and this is really the one I'm most curious about though I hope the questions above will provide some fodder for reflective critical thought, is,
Do you believe that the Gospel of Thomas was written by Thomas? It has as much of Jesus's teachings as you can find in all of the other gospels combined, and it may be the earliest of all of the gospels, and though it says that these are the teachings whispered into the ear of Thomas, Matthew also refers to himself in the third person, so that shouldn't be a stumbling block to its legitimacy, even though that isn't a practice seen anywhere else. If you are ignoring these early-recorded words of Jesus instead of incorporating them into your faith, or if you are ignoring them entirely, I can only assume as a person of faith that you must have some _very_ compelling reasons to consider the gospel of Thomas to be pseudoepigraphical that could not possibly apply to Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John as well.
And as with any other gospel, even if the Gospel of Thomas wasn't written by Thomas, that wouldn't mean that the sayings of Jesus within it are simply made up.
I appreciate the comment but have you bothered to watch any other videos here? I address these things repeatedly, and even this video answers some of the concerns you're raising here.
I think Protestants, or at least evangelicals, have tried to address the issues you raise with the definition of "divine inspiration" and "inerrancy".
What does it matter that the texts were written far from the events, both spatially and temporally, if it was God who wrote them directly or indirectly?
And this is where the author of the video fails, by not directly assuming this premise.
He knows that its difficult or impossible to defend it, since the Bible has numerous scientific, historical, moral problems and contradictions and modifications to the originals, and for this reason he opted for this more "soft" approach. Which, by the way, is the approach taken by contemporary apologists in the hope of leaving their listeners somewhere in between believing in nothing and believing in everything.
But this intermediate position is not easy and has all these problems. If it wasn't God who wrote the bible then what evidence do we have that the reported events happened anyway? Few or none...
@@davidpinheiro9650 mm. thanks for the reply
Couldn't this argument be used in the reverse as well? There's an excuse for every single inconsistency in the bible. Could you just argue that it's the number of them that's persuasive?
Most discrepancies have good explanations, and are minor in significance if not. They actually make it arguable that there was no collusion. You can't claim collusion and discrepancies.
The number of contradictions in the bible is vastly bloated, and most are pretty easily resolved, though some are harder. You can't say, "The bible is unreliable because there are contradictions!" AND say, "The bible is unreliable because the authors colluded to make the details line up!"
No scholar? Isn't that the no true Scottsman fallacy?
Erik God bless you bro! always fighting the good fight
This video reminds me of David Wood's Scooby-Doo and the case of the silly septic: because no amount of evidence will convince someone I'm denial: we must pray Heavenly Father in Jesus name please please send the right people t9 bring hum back into the fold
I bet he would want to aPaulogize for ignorant remarks. Dedicating his entire life trying prove a religion wrong with false claims. It's rather pathetic to be honest
Although I am not an expert on ancient texts, I did ask one and they were quite clear that for Matthew to write as he did, never mentioning that he is a character in the story -- either first or third person -- would be extremely strange if he was in fact the author but not strange at all if the work is fictive. Further, that it is even stranger for an eye-witness to copy -- in many places verbatim -- from a non-eyewitness. The best "undesigned coincidence" seems to be the philip-bethsaida connection, but there seem to be pretty obvious ways of achieving that through the oral tradition. many of the others -- the green grass, the timing of passover, and the counting of the people -- seem extremely strained to me.
I addressed this 3rd person objection and Matthew using Mark objection in my last video before this one, and on a stream where Inspiring Phil. and Dr. Stephen Boyce on Exploring Reality. I also was pretty explicit why the Synoptic problem and partial dependence does not erase the signs of partial independence. I don't really see a lot of straining happening here, or serious interaction with McGrew's book from critics on a whole, just a lot of handwaving or overly complicated mutliplying of hypotheses to save the standard model.
Your idea that ancient authors did not or could not use the third-person perspective is totally off base. It is ENTIRELY possible that Matthew and John wrote about events involving themselves while not mentioning themselves in their texts.
@@ColinWrubleski-eq5sh It's possible, but it isn't likely given the historical styles at the time. Third person was common in fictional stories but not in historical reporting. Even if they did that, it just meansat best that you can't determine if they were eyewitnesses.
Thank you
Do 'undesigned coincidences' lead us to anything more than 'it's not impossible that, say, this event is not inaccurately recorded'? Maybe it's hoped that 'the grass is green' means we may raise our confidence in other parts of the accounts but I don't see how UCs help establish miraculous claims which, after all, is the main concern & aim of all this.
The fact is that UCs are found in multilple places, across the miraculous and non-miraculous divide. But the more important lesson is if the argument works, and the Gospels are not written from many removes and are based on story telling and embellishment but go back to what the original eyewitnesses were claiming.
@@TestifyApologetics Are these UC documented anywhere? Have other literary works been analyzed to see how rates of coincidences compare? That seems like an absolute minimum to claim that the argument actually works. Until then, it seems completely reasonable for anyone to reject the argument on the grounds that the premises haven't been established.
Good video in response to the critiques.
With the green grass example why couldn't the oral tradition have had the events around passover (with or without green grass) and Mark adds green grass as a literary flourish or John drops it? It'd be like a common story around Christmas, and one author mentions Christmas and the other snow. It doesn't seem to require, or even hint at, eyewitness testimony. It's so indirect -- like all of these undesigned coincidences -- when it would have been much more straightforward for Mark to have said "My name is Mark and I was there when...." like other ancient texts do.
Again Brian you're using one example and not taking into consideration that the case is cumulative. It's not just "Christmas" and "snow" it's Philip, Bethsaida, how they were able to count, the woes pronounced, why a blind man wasn't allowed to return to the town and I still have not outlined all the undesigned coincidences in the feeding of the 5000, not to mention all of them in the gospels. Or if we really wanna go crazy, there's dozen of examples that are found in Paul's letters and Acts that cannot be explained at all by literary dependence or common knowledge.
Also, "like other ancient text do?" Caesar’s commentary on the civil war is not only written formally anonymous but is written in the third person, not too unlike the style we see within the Gospel of John. We see similar things in Xenophon and at times Josephus as well, although Josephus also uses first person often too. While the third-person narrative style of the Gospels may be a departure from the writing style of many ancient historians, it is not much of a strike against them being eyewitness accounts or histories seeing that we it in Polybius, Nicolaus' History, Dexippus; Scythica. See our recent response to Captain Dadpool with me, Dr. Stephen Boyce and Inspiring Philosophy for more. If I were a skeptic I'd drop this one as bad atheist polemics.
ruclips.net/user/live5FIYZ4dUCxA?feature=share
@@TestifyApologetics fair enough, but every one of those examples is not that convincing to me. there seem to be plausible ways to explain each one -- especially given that we have no originals, we know matthew and luke copied verbatim from mark, that there is likely to have been an oral tradition behind the stories. further, it ignores all of the gymnastics one has to do to harmonize what should be simple events, like the resurrection appearances, where legendary development seems to easily account for much of it. why so much indirect argumentation when it would have been trivial for the authors to have simply told us who they were and when and where they were writing?
@@TestifyApologetics Another example -- counting the 5000. What if the number has nothing to do with the count, and is a reference to the old testament, like 2 Chronicles or Joshua where they refer to "5000 from the flocks" or "5000 men"? or perhaps because it's a nice round number (like 500 in paul) and could have been chosen for that reason. I see no strong reason to think this number was an actual count, so this "undesigned coincidence" doesn't seem compelling. Now, this is like the third "undesigned coincidence" that I've looked at, and come up with a plausible reason for in about 5 seconds of thinking. what does that do to the probability I'd assign to the next three I look at? given 1) how trivial finding plausible alternatives is and 2) the entire mode of argument would be made moot if the gospels followed the standards of ancient history, this entire approach seems to me to be a combination of cherry picking and seeing patterns in random data, both of which are common cognitive fallacies.
@@TestifyApologetics as for the Philip-Bethsaida "coincidences", couldn't there have been a tradition that Philip was from Bethsaida? He could easily have been known as "Philip from Bethsaida" in the oral tradition, to keep him straight from other Philips -- which is different than your Bart Ehrman birthplace analogy. If there was such a tradition, then any event that took place in Bethsaida, or was claimed to take place in or near Bethsaida, might have had Philip inserted as a primary character. This seems pretty natural, and wouldn't require any eyewitnesses, or the truth of any of those events. You may think this line of thinking is speculative, but your argument is that the "unintended consequences" could not have easily been produced without eyewitness experience. No one can know for sure how these documents were written, and what they had access to, but it doesn't seem to me to be a stretch that there are processes that do not require eyewitnesses that could produce these. I think this is the kind of thing Paulogia was referring to.
Brian, it sounds like you're just falling into the same traps that Paul is, multiplying hypotheses and trying too hard to save your theory.
John knew of Mark’s gospel, or he was there!
@@tylerdipietrantonio711 Yes, that's what I meant. John, of course, was also an eyewitness.
That Anakin reference XD
Finally someone noticed! 9000 internet points have been credited to your account.
"Give me your best evidence for eye witness accounts in the NT"
- "green grass"
yes that's exactly my argument. you really boiled it down, gj.
Best intro ever
That is a really clear explanation of what an undesigned coincidence is (from 0:55 to 1:35).
I'm enjoying this debate. You both give logical arguments. But neither of you are biblical experts nor is McGrew. Are there any two scholars who can read the languages and know the culture who could make each case as clearly as the evidence can support?
how are languages and culture (or even PhDs) relevant to the understanding this particular argument?
@@TestifyApologetics It may seem like simple logic to you, but you are working with words, twice translated from one language to another, in a context 2,000 years removed from us. The way stories were transmitted, sources were used, evidence presented and genres were enacted are likely to be different from today. So yes, I want to hear these arguments from experts who know the language and context, preferably from those unafraid to allow comments on their posts.
@@TestifyApologetics Do you know if similar techniques have been used to determine the reliability of the Hebrew Bible? If you found them, would it lend credibility to Samson carrying a 10,000 lb gate 38 miles, catching 300 foxes and tying their tales with torches, or killing 1,000 people with a bone?
@Testify So, as usual, crickets? Where's your God now, Moses?
@@truncated7644 None of that affects the argument from undesigned conincidences. That Jesus asked Philip "Where can we buy bread" because he's a local makes sense to anyone. What expert knowledge do you need to understand it. or evaulate it?
The point is that we don’t know the extent of written sources that the later Gospels have and how we can never explain what details end up lining up and which ones contradict. You do agree there are contradictions in the Gospels right? There is simply no way to know what is actually true historically. And remember, you are making a positive claim that Jesus fed 5,000+ people with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread. What are the metaphysical chances that actually happened in history? It is so hard to watch an otherwise smart person like Testify rationalize himself to conclude that miracles happen that defy the laws of nature. 😢
Why couldn't Jesus feed 5000 people? If he managed to create many angels, create hell to be able to put a good part of those angels in eternal suffering, create the world in 6 days, regret having created it, create several languages from a tower, kill all the population except 8, regret doing so, and sending much of the world's population to the eternal suffering previously created for the angels, how could he not feed 5000?
And don't say that he was not resurrected... If he managed to resuscitate the widow of Zarephath's son, the shunammite woman's son, a man who was laid in Elisha's tomb, the widow of Nain's son, Jairus' daughter , Lazarus, Tabitha, Eutychus, and many saints of Jerusalem , how could he not resurrect himself?
Thank you, Erik
You continue to be an accomplished historian, and - man you're a blessing to us all!
I try to imagine the kind of work and time it takes to create a response video like this one... Not just half an hour, I think...
Paulogia at one time appeared on Unbelievable with a trained historian, Sean McDowell, and the guy sort of melted in that encounter - as does Bart Ehrman when he meets guys like Dan Wallace or James White; all Bart's got left is usually screaming his habitual refrain: copies of copies of copies of...
Some people just never become historians... They despise history too much. .
Kind regards Kim
EXCELLENT VIDEO
Form critics like Ehrman seem to just accept their conclusion that the gospels are not eyewitness accounts, and then work backwards from there. Any evidence that strongly indicates otherwise is explained away by creating more and more hypothetical sources for which we have no real evidence.
Great work!!
Good video. You keep mispronouncing Israel tho.
it's just that scholars call it Palestine. It's Israel
Does paulogia even know how historians worked back in the day?
You have people writing about events that they themselves witnessed (Matthew and John) or as the scribe for those who did witness it (Mark and Luke). Who, wiring a "memoir" doesn't reach out to people who were also there and asks "hey, do you remember when X happened? That was awesome", "oh, yeah, I remember. I remember when Herod told us Y in response to it", "oh really? That's cool." *Scribbles the additional details down.
To note, if they know each other they know about how reliable each other are, as well
Just use the atheist deflection, "coincidence of the gaps fallacy, 🤓 haha I deboonked you"
There are different versions of the Hindu badhagdvit, and they also have these coincidences. Therefore christianity is wrong, hinduisms is right. ( Same goes for almost all myths and legends)
Hinduism is false because most Hindus are polytheistic
I hate the fact that Paulogia never shows his real face. He always talks through his condescending cartoon while he makes humiliating cartoons of his opponents in order to make him and his proponents look rational while making his opponents look dumb. This is him making ad hominem attacks. I think Paulogia's biggest strength of his channel is his obnoxious cartoons to make himself look strong while making his opponents look pathetic. He is not aiming to reach the truth rather he aims to win the arguments and control the narrative. I think what he is doing is psychological warfare.
He shows his face on his live channel. I've had chats with Paul and while I don't like all of his tactics I enjoy my discussions with him.
@@TestifyApologetics Yeah I've seen you respond to him on his live channel regarding the Spiderman fallacy. He did show his face there. However, he made a mistake by showing his face. He seemed depressed, upset and less confident probably because his argument got refuted easily. But it is definitely one of those rare occasions where he shows his actual face instead of his cartoon which is there in most of his videos.
Bhai?
@@darshanpatel.1782 Sorry, do I know you?
No, although I share your passionate hatred for Paul Enns (100% serious), he shows his face in debates.
He's a chunky blonde northern European around 40 who lives in Canada, he could actually be my younger brother.
Look for his debates and you'll probably see him in video.
His "hunky Aryan" avatar is even more irritating when you see he's a sausage-chewing POS NOTHING like the avatar.
[I'll bet you'll never guess how much I hate him, ; ) ]
Thank you, brother
Kind regards Kim
L atheists
I paused the video just before your explanation of the the historical kernel theory paulogia explained, and I'm seeing something familiar. A bit of evidence and a line of reasoning. The evidence opens the door to the conclusion that Jesus truly fed 5000 men, and the line of reason doesn't even better explain the facts let alone rule out the miracle.
Thank you very much for all you do!
There is no form of writing, not even autobiographies where we expect the writer to be omnipotent to all events around them. A great deal of research goes into writing a serious factual work of literature.
at 13:33 i was so confused as to why Aniken was in the background.......XD then it clicked!
Haha good catch! 👍
Like
Ya boi 😎
how do you do, fellow kids?
Hmmm... do undesigned coincidences work both ways? Like everyone believing Jesus's failed prophesy and God's Kingdom arriving and Joseph of Arimathea's reasons for being in Jerusalem?
How is that an undesigned coincidence? Sounds like you're just trotting out your favorite pet objection
@@TestifyApologeticsHave me on your show. We can discuss it. Any interest?
I don't do lives anymore on my channel and I don't even know who you are or what you're wanting to discuss. If it's the Jesus is a failed prophet thing, Inspiring Philosophy had 3 videos he's releasing soon on the topic.
@@TestifyApologetics _It is not the critic who counts_ ...Theodore Roosevelt.
He is missing the hpHoly Spirit pointing out that the Holy Spirit wants him to learn please pray Heavenly Father in Jesus name please help him come back to Jesus Christ
Thanks for this!
Great video as always, you’ve helped me a lot!
Dude is just not bright.
You seem to like leaving negative comments about the individuals. Just curious, is there a particular reason for this? Did someone hurt you?
Bla bla bla.... if YOUR religion is the way, the truth, the life and nobody goes to God except through you,, good for you. Keep it to yourself.
As you are probably aware, religion is geographical.
ConfuscianismChina. SihkismIndia. JudaismLevant. HinduismIndia. ChristianityLevant/Roman empire. BudheismAsia. Islam Middle-east/Arabic. UbuntuismAfrica. ShamanismInuits. ShintoismJapan. Jesus' movementLevant. OrishaArica etc etc.
1. Some just concerntrate on what they do and the don't care what others are doing.
2. Some say their religion is the right one and try to beat others.down.
3. Some say theirs is the only way to God, everybody else is wrong.
4. Some are so self-righteous and very judgemental.
5. Some go from door to door imposing their religious views on others.
6. Some do their thing in secrecy and privacy.
7. Some disturb the whole neighbourhood making a nuissiance of themselves....
So out of all these various religions YOURS is the only truth and the only right one! Good for you. You self-righteous and judgemental folk, Keep it to yourself and stop imposing it on others.
Out of all various opinions on religion YOURS is the right one! Good then keep it to yourself and stop being judgemental and imposing it on others
Christianity is international and multicultural, cry me a river.