Skepticism and Religion Some Christians suggest that skeptics are not consistent, that we demand a higher standard of evidence for events involving Jesus than we do for other historical figures. This is blatantly incorrect. It needs to be highlighted that historians dont necessarily accept everything they read about people such as Pontius Pilate. The Bible tells us that he supposedly performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. Thus Pilates existence is more widely accepted than his connection with Jesus. What some Christians dont grasp is that historians may be prepared to accept, on rather weak evidence, that Pontius Pilate for example, may have had two children. Pilate having children is perfectly feasible, it doesnt contradict other reports about Pilate or known laws of physics and it doesnt have any real impact on history. Christians then make the unwarranted leap that weakly supported claims about Jesus should also be accepted. If this merely involved the possibility that he ran his own carpentry business before turning to preaching or that he had two brothers, then historians would happily accept these claims as plausible even if there was only weak evidence for them. However the claims that Christians want accepted, based on weak or non-existent evidence, is that Jesus was actually God, that he walked on water, turned water into wine, raised people from the dead, performed numerous miracles and rose from the dead himself after being executed. These are claims that no sane person would accept without extraordinary evidence, yet Christians imply that if these claims were attributed to Pontius Pilate then historians would be more accepting of them, due to different standards. This is utter rubbish. Imagine if an ancient document surfaced that said Pilate could fly like a bird, turn himself invisible and walk through walls. Historians and skeptics would correctly state that there is no evidence that humans can perform these magical feats, that no one else wrote about Pilate possessing these powers and that Pilate himself did not write about it. They would deduce that this one document was a fantasy and could not be relied on to inform us about Pontius Pilate. And Christians would wholeheartedly support this conclusion. They would see it as ridiculous and impossible that Pilate had these magical powers. Even if you claimed that Pilate had these powers because he was actually the son of the Roman god Jupiter, still no one would believe you, neither skeptic nor Christian. The fact that Pilate was a real historical person rather than a biblical figure would not stop skeptics immediately dismissing this claim.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 05:44:56 +0000
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