Monday, August 22, 2011

Lame Atheist Argument: No Eyewitness Gospel Authors

Atheists like to claim that none of the Gospel Authors were eyewitnesses to the events in the Gospels, therefore, the Gospels are just "hearsay".

Problem Number 1: John's Gospel. Contained in the last chapter, verses 21-24, is evidence to the contrary. Whether or not you choose to believe the Gospel Author was John (and deny the scholarly consensus that has been accepted for 1000 years), the verses clear state that the Gospel Author was also an eyewitness to the events he described.

Going further, if you look at Chapter 19, verses 25-27, you'll see that the Gospel Author was also an eyewitness to the Crucifixion.

If Atheists wish to offer this argument, they are now in the uncomfortable position of proving that the Author of John's Gospel was a liar.

As far as "hearsay" goes: is a Court Reporter's offical record just "hearsay"? The Reporter is recording the words of eyewitnesses in many instances.

The Authors of the Synoptic Gospels were also like court recorders, writing down testimony from actual eyewitnesses.

The "hearsay" brush-off by so many Atheists is just a cop-out based on their ignorance of history. Otherwise, to follow their logic, ALL ancient historical documents would be "hearsay" and we'd know virtually nothing about the ancient world.

A certain amount of trust is both rational and logical, until contradictory evidence can completely disprove the claims of a previous record.

History scholars operate quite safely under that assumption.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Keep up the good work, man... honestly, somebody has to call these guys out!

Alejandro said...

Honestly, I don't care whether or not the things described in the gospels actually happened, I just care about the message that Jesus told us, His message is much more important than Him existing. And also, disproving Jesus' existence doesn't disprove the existence of God anyway.

The Stoogemaniac said...

Alejandro:
Without the reality of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, He is no better than Buddha.
Jesus didn't come here to say nice stuff and teach us a few things, He came here solely to satisfy the perfect will of the Father and reconcile mankind to Him.

sptrfn said...

Amen, people.

Yes, not all atheists are ignorant, but the ones that are, are very ignorant.

There was one on You-Tube that was critiquing a video of this teenager fundy Christian. He was saying things about how the things that were written about Jesus were centuries after he "supposedly" existed. What a joke.

The Stoogemaniac said...

Not only that, but with the discovery of what is most likely a 1st century fragment of Mark's Gospel, we have more evidence that Jesus wasn't a 4th Century invention.