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Layman Going to Trial

I have a trial starting in early November, which means I will be pretty busy from now until it ends (probably sometime in mid-December). There is always the chance of a last minute resolution of the case or a surprise continuance. The bottom line is that my blogging may slow down for a while. I will still do what I can and try to respond to any comments. So please understand that any inactivity is only temporary.

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How Many Children in Bethlehem Did Herod Kill?

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A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the slaughter of the innocents. Therein, I argued that some of the skepticism about the account was unjustified. One argument I made was that the number of children killed in Bethlehem would likely have been no more than 20. Though obviously an act of great evil, the killing of 20 children would be much less likely to be noticed by historians of the time than the slaughter of thousands as later traditions speculated. In response to the post, Peter Kirby asked a few questions. He has patiently waited my response, continuously delayed by work, family, and the completion of my Acts article . Two of the questions had to do with how the amount of 20 was determined. Others with the omission of the account by Luke and the reliability of the tradition recounted by Macrobius. Peter also mentioned that there were other reasons to doubt the story's historicity beyond just the silence of other sources. I ...
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Do you say this of your own accord? (John 18:34, ESV)

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Resurrection harmony

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The purpose of this argument is merely to establish that the events described in the four canonical Gospel resurrection accounts can be construed as a coherent event. Atheists are always harping on the many differences in the accounts. They seem to feel that these amount to insurmountable contradictions, marking a totally contradictory story. But I will argue that we can pull together the events described in all four Gospels to create a unified harmony which shows that there was a single coherent event taking place.This may not mean that call differences vanish away, but most of them can be explained by the process of eye witness testimony and story telling based upon the accounts of eye witnesses. There may be a couple of loose ends, but I will argue that these are not important when one considers the over all agreement and ensuing harmony, (for harmony table click here) * my model: (1) women go to tomb find stone moved, immediately  they suspect the Romans or Sa...
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The Bogus Gandhi Quote

By J. P Holding -
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I first made this post in 2012, and since then I've made a sort of mini-career out of tracking down bogus quotes like this one (including a video version below). It's a sort of fun microcosm of the way information is mishandled in the Information Age. ** I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. – Mahatma Gandhi A Christian can probably expect to get this quote thrown at them at least once in their lifetime, and waved in their face many more. I had it put to me recently, but my experience with this sort of thing immediately led me to wonder -- is it real? The evidence at this point seems to be no. The first signal of a problem was that anywhere I found it, no source was given. That's often a sign that something is being passed around uncritically. Whether online sources or books, no one seemed to have a source for this quote. A second warning was that the quote has been given more than one context. As ...
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Where did Jesus say "It is better to give than receive?"

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By J. P Holding -
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I'm kind of busy this week, so I asked our recurring fundy atheist punching bag, I. M. Skeptical, to write me a post about the best argument for atheism he could come up with. Here's what he gave me. ** There was once a slimy, snotty Christian apologist who made the argument that the banana is an “atheist’s worst nightmare” because it has so many great design features. I used to love that argument when I was a stupid, blind fundy, and now as an intellectually fulfilled atheist I think it is really stupid ! In fact, I want to argue now that if anything, the banana proves that God does not exist, or that if he does, he is evil, malevolent, and really snotty! Here’s why: The banana has a slippery peel which can be thrown on the ground, causing innocent people to slip and fall. The banana has been used for endless, cruel practical jokes (especially on me, and I have the bruises on my butt to prove it!) and this would only be a feature designed by a m...
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Archaeological Confirmation of Acts 18:2

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Refuting the "No Body" Theory of The Resurrection

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Resurrection of Christ  by  Noël Coypel , 1700,  using a  hovering depiction  of Jesus Corinthians 15:  50 Now this is what I am saying, brothers and sisters: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen,29 I will tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a moment, in the blinking of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound,  and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 Now when this perishable puts on the imperishable, and this mortal puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will happen, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 55 “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”  The "no Body" theory comes in two versions: 1) that Jesus was an historical fig...
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