"I don't see how this big bang could ever have happened, isn't a repeating cycle more likely ?"
These are not mutually exclusive. See: Cylic Model.
"I wonder about climate, isn't it chaotic, are humans even capable of changing it ?"
Also not mutally exclusive. No one is cogently arguing that human activity isn't one of the myriad inputs to the chaotic system called the climate. The question isn't if human activity affects it, it's the degree.
"I wonder about this DNA code and mutations, after all, seeing the code, it doesn't look anywhere near random"
That's because it's not random. In fact, the genetic code is one of the most efficient
and intricate information compression and retrieval systems that we know about. Not even Richard Dawkins thinks a genome is random.
"this God guy, he doesn't seem to be quite the same in all religions. I wonder what religions actually say about it"
Christ on a pogo stick, have you never been outside your basement? There's an entire field called Comparative Religion!
None of these statements is even remotely challenging, original, or contrary to "well-established scientific theories". Anyone who thinks that you're some kind of apostate speaking out against the scientific establishment is even more ignorant than you are, regardless of their political persuasions.
That reminds me of my favorite Scalia quote. From his concurring opinion in Gonzales v. Raich, end of paragraph 3:
"Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce."
New and untrusted drivers were forced to block large parts of their front and rear viewports? That seems more than slightly silly. Why not put it on the body of the car?
Don't you understand that the PEOPLE that run a corporation have both?
Of course I understand that. In fact, I've said it three or four times now. What you're not understanding is that that's not what we're talking about. The basis of the Supreme Court decision, and ergo what you are defending, is a thing called "corporate personhood". It means that when a group of persons get together, that group itself is considered another person in addition to the persons making up the group, and that fictional person, according to this doctrine, has rights unto itself. That's what I have a problem with.
Many smaller corporations are run and owned by the same people.
I know it well. I've worked for small businesses my entire life. I intend to open my own in a few years. I don't think that either my (future) corporation or any of the ones I've worked for have any right to run political ad campaigns. I do myself, but not the corporation.
A corporation is nothing more than a convenient business structure.
Then why does it have rights, and how can it have values?
It is a fact of the human condition, that the rich always have had and always will have more influence on society than the poor. This is true of every government that is now and has ever been on earth, regardless of its form. Democracy is the best form of government, because it allows the poor masses to rise up against their rich oppressors without bloodshed.
I am very confused. With whom are you associating the term "rich oppressors"? Does that refer to something other than a multi-billion dollar business wielding its revenues to lift a candidate into government? How can the "poor masses" rise up against that?
The gum ball machine doesn't get to vote, but whoever manages the gum ball machine on behalf of its owners, is allowed to spend money to elect candidates who favor gumball sales. . . . Whoever manages the gum ball machine is also allowed to vote.
Yes, allowed to spend her own individual money. Not the gumball machine company's money. That person can also vote. The gumball machine company can't.
Corporations don't vote, only people do. Why should people not have the same right to speak as a group as they would individually?
Then why should they not have the same right to vote as a group as they would individually? You're doing a context switch between the two rights. Each person in a group retains an individual right to speech and to vote. Why should a group of n people get n+1 soapboxes but not n+1 ballots?
Corporations are no more moral or immoral than the people running them.
That's the same context switch. Individual persons within the corporation have a system of morality; a corporation itself is outside that system. An individual person will have a variety of values, but a corporation has one: to gain wealth. A corporation doesn't have the liabilities or social responsibilities as an individual person, and it doesn't have the rights.
The right of people to form a common bond group is just as fundamental as the right to speak.
Yes, exactly: forming the group is a right of each person, and freedom of speech is a right of each person. It does not follow from that that freedom of speech is a right of the group.
If a fundamental right like freedom of speech accrues from the members to the group, then why does a fundamental right like the vote not do the same?
There is exactly zero difference in theory between a thousand people buying one ad and giving the cash to a clearing house that buys a thousand ads at once.
There is a difference in theory, which I already outlined. A business is a business (including the Sierra Club); it has a license to be able to do the thing for which it was formed, it's subject to different taxes than a person, it can't be arrested for DUI, it doesn't have to serve on juries, and it doesn't have a right to free speech. It's an abstract thing that derives from individuals' rights.
The more important part, though, is the difference in practice, which you have outlined. It shouldn't be easy for the board of Coca-Cola to start throwing their $6 billion around to pick the next president. (Nor should it be easy for the Sierra Club.) An organization whose reason for existence is to acquire wealth for its owners should not be allowed to rig society and the economy by influencing government.* How about CITGO? Owned by the Venezuelan Government, Hugo Chavez at the helm. Revenue about the same as Coca-Cola Company. You want them running an ad campaign for president in 2012?
* Yes, of course, I know that this happens anyways, has always happened, and will always happen by some method or another. That doesn't mean we have to make it easy.
They can't vote collectively because we have a secret ballot. But they can pool their right to speak.
That's not an argument at all. A person is perfectly free to tell whomever e likes the vote e plans to make or has made. A person is also free to agree with as many other persons as e likes that they should all vote the same. The secret ballot just prevents compelling that person. A corporation could be given a secret ballot to mark just like each one of its members. We don't do that because it's ridiculous on its face. It's just as ridiculous to say that the corporation has a right to free speech.
The question is, if an entity is enough of a person that it has a right to free speech, then on what grounds can you deny it the right to vote? A group of voting citizens cannot band together and ipso facto add 1 to the number of voters. Each of the members of course has the right to free speech, and each has the right to form a corporation. If the rights of the members accrue to the group as an entity, then why not the vote? What would it mean for a group of persons to "pool" their individual rights to bear arms?
Newspapers and other news outlets endorse candidates for public office all the time. Just as an illustrative link, the first thing that came up from googling "obama newspaper endorsements". They usually write a big editorial explaining their position. This has been going on as long as newspapers have existed.
No. The group is a right of individuals. The group does not have rights. Only individual persons with individual responsiblities have individual rights.
By that logic, then, no organization should have any say about how society functions. Unions, think tanks, schools, churches, the dreaded "special interest groups"
Indeed, and wouldn't that be grand?
Yes, that sure does sound nice to me too./me closes eyes, sighs dreamily
I strongly disagree with this decision. I also really like the Sierra Club, but I think the Club should be subject to restrictions on political advertisements just like every other group. An organization doesn't have the same responsibilities or liabilities as an individual person, and it doesn't have the rights of an individual person.
The "corporate right to free speech" idea has always disgusted me. A corporation (or any other group) exists because of individual persons' freedoms and rights to assemble. It is itself a right of persons. It does not accrue rights to itself.
An aside: what I'd really like to see (and I suppose I will in the coming months) is someone try to defend "corporate free speech rights" while denying "corporate voting rights". I don't know how you can cogently argue that an entity must have one fundamental right, but not another. Someone will try, because this decision is of course just a backdoor to that anyways but needs to be covered up as such; I doubt that much of the citizenry would be very happy about GoldmanSachs having a Senator.
It sounds like that would be an invasion of privacy
It wouldn't be an invasion of privacy, really, because you would have had to give that person your credit card number voluntarily. I don't just hand out my credit card number to my friends, because none of them need to know it. (A business from which I want to buy something using my card needs the number, and it's not unreasonable for me to expect that business to only use the number for that purpose, and for the law to reflect that.) If my "friend" has my credit card for some reason and uses it improperly, the loss of money can be treated as a theft.
Likewise with dietary information. My local grocer is still a licensed business, with a different standard than an individual person. If someone who you thought was your friend gives your insurance agent information that leads to a rate increase, then sue the both of them for the financial damage, and pick your friends more carefully next time. I don't mean that flippantly: a friend wouldn't do something like that to you, and I can't really think of a way for a stranger to acquire that kind of information without committing some kind of crime before e gets to the sharing of the information.
then any company with your credit card number could freely share it with anybody else. Your credit card company or bank could share your history of purchases with your insurance company so they can set rates based upon your diet, your recreation habits, and the power tools you own.
Only if you believe that a corporation should have the same rights as an individual citizen. A business has to have legal approval to do its thing, and part of that legal approval can and should be a recognition that the business, not having the same limitations and responsibilities as an individual citizen, also does not have the same privileges or rights.
I think Benoit Mandelbrot (amongst a few thousand other chaos and fractal specialists) would beg to differ on the ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology
That's because they're mathematicians, not biologists. Stuart Kaufmann thought he was replacing natural selection with self-organization back in the 80's, but he's calmed down now, after arguing with actual biologists for a while. Tom Ray is a guy with a foot in both camps, or at least he used to (I guess now he's doing cog. sci. work?), and even though his Artificial Life projects pretty much inaugurated the field, he doesn't seem to really think of his research as revealing anything fundamentally new.
It's hardly the mathematics fault that biologists are lousy mathematicians.
Well, that's true, but neither is it biology's fault that most of what mathematicians produce has no application. It's not like biologists are stupid; they don't learn knot theory because it doesn't improve their work, not because they are unable.
Before he examined the Gospels he was an unbeliever.
I can't find any mention of that except by people who are advocating Christianity. None of his critics seem to recognize him as having been a nonbeliever, and no neutral sources mention anything other than his work as an apologist. Can you refer me to a source?
The fact that there is some variation makes the witness all the more believable.
It removes suspicion of collusion; it does not increase confidence in the individual accounts.
(...probably from Peter's memory...) So what is wrong with that? Mark was just somebody that was taking Peter's deposition.
It means that it's less reliable than an account written by Peter himself, especially since the "deposition" * happened years later, and since the original reason I got into this conversation was because vcgodinich was insisting that the Gospels were made up of reliable, complete, first-hand accounts.
I've read the verses you quoted me from Peter three times now, and I don't understand how you intend them to improve your argument. Furthermore, the authorship of 2 Peter is not certain, and so I think that in fact that quote counts against you.
* If it was really a legal deposition like you're trying to imply, it would have been taken by a neutral party, possibly with adversarial parties present. Mark was most definitely not a neutral party.
(..I saw blanket assertions that such inconsistencies don't impeach the overall accuracy and truthfulness of those writings...)
Even today, the account of several witnesses to an auto accident may differ in some minor details, but the account of the event itself remains consistent.
Nice try at selectively quoting me. Right after that, I said: "[these assertions are] more or less true. ..we don't immediately consider each person who relates a differing tale to be a mad, cretinous liar, but we assume that person is mistaken or embellishing in some points. The same should be true of the Gospel authors." I have not said that the Gospels are false, just that they are probably not completely true.
There are indeed minor differences in the testimony of the Gospels, but the main story is remarkably consistent. In accounts of the resurrection we read that Jesus first appeared to women who testified to this. If the story had been a fabrication, the fabricators would have never brought up the testimony of women, because in that society, the testimony of a woman was worthless.
The Gospel narratives of the Resurrection are a rich source of both inconsistencies and repeated phrasings. I do not say that it's a wholesale fabrication. But where is the "deposition" of the women themselves? If their testimony is worthless, why do the Gospel writers believe them?
Neither he or I believe that human memories are perfect.
Then you should be able to admit that, writing forty years after the events in question, and being fairly old at that point, John probably didn't write things down exactly as they happened.
Each of these other writings were written by one or two people within one human lifetime.
That is certainly true of the New Testament. But perhaps you'd care to look at the Hindu Upanishads, just one of their collections of holy texts, written from the first millennium B.C.E. through the Middle Ages? Taoists also have a large collection of writings, compos
Okay, I read it. First, I don't believe for a second that he's honestly arguing from a position of nonbelief, not when he refers to the Gospel writers as "holy men", Jesus as "Our Lord" and "Our Savior", and accepts that "God has revealed himself to man by special and express communications, and that Christianity constitutes that revelation", and that the "credibility [of Jesus' miracles] has been fully established" without further discussion. He's a Christian apologist, which is fine, and it's a perfectly legitimate technique to strengthen your own argument by pretending to take the opposite side, but he's not actually starting from an atheistic, or even particularly skeptical, point of view.
That established, I noted the following interesting points: Matthew was around Jesus, but didn't write his Gospel until at least five years after the crucifixion. Mark wrote his second-hand, that is, probably from Peter's memory, a number of years later. Despite Greenleaf's focus on the careful attention to detail in Luke's accounts, he may or may not have actually been an eyewitness; he wasn't one of the Apostles, and none of the others seem to have mentioned him being around. John didn't write his Gospel until almost four decades had passed.
I didn't see any discussion of the actual inconsistencies among the Gospel narratives. I saw blanket assertions that such inconsistencies don't impeach the overall accuracy and truthfulness of those writings. This is more or less true. If we take Greenleaf's example of the inconsistencies in the account's of the French royal family's flight, we should of course do exactly as he says, that is, we don't immediately consider each person who relates a differing tale to be a mad, cretinous liar, but we assume that person is mistaken or embellishing in some points. The same should be true of the Gospel authors.
Let me put it to you this way: you (I think) and Greenleaf believe that the Gospel writers were undeceived, were completely truthful, and had faultless memories. Many other people believe the same about their own holy writings. Presumably you believe that Mormon, or Hindu, or Rastafarian holy writings are in error in some way. They, however, have faithful believers and apologists like Greenleaf, too. Why do you select this one book to believe instead of all the others?
Greenleaf's argument that "The testimony of a false witness will not be uniform in its texture", whereas true witnesses provide "an unaffected readiness and copiousness in the detail of circumstances", and characterizing the Gospel stories in the latter manner, doesn't hold water. We can't interview the Gospel writers now to find out if they would say "non-mi-recordo [I don't remember]" to everything outside their original narrative. What we have from each of them is a piece of writing full of the important highlights, "profuse in their statements. . . in relation to the principal matter", but without much background information. This doesn't make the whole thing a fabrication, nor am I saying that they were maliciously altering their story, but the Gospel writers had something they believed and wanted to prove, and they would have presented it in the strongest way they could, and just like Greenleaf's false witness, left out the things that didn't support their assertions.
Greenleaf tries to address this in one of his last paragraphs, but he contradicts himself by doing so. He lists "the absence. ..of all anxiety to be believed,. ..of all marks of wonder, or of desire to excite astonishment". Earlier he notes that in Matthew's writing "Every circumstance is noticed which might conciliate [the Jews'] belief, and every unnecessary expression is avoided which might obstruct it." Luke is "particularly careful to specify various circumstances conducive to the information of strangers", and he gives "particular and even professional attention to all our Savior's miracles of healing." Greenleaf characterizes John's Gospel as having a "studied om
Just look at the writings which were rejected by the Council of Nicaea.
You mean the Council of Trent.
No, I mean the Council of Nicaea.
Well then, you're wrong. You can either tell me that the Christian Biblical canon was more or less assembled at the time of the Council of Nicaea, or you can tell me that the Roman Catholic Biblical canon was formalized at the Council of Trent, but it wasn't on the agenda at Nicaea. Or the second time, either.
It's widely accepted, for instance, that December 25th was not Jesus' birth.
Yes, including by most Christians, so far as I know.
how do we know which places are fiction, and which aren't?
By studying the other evidence that we have from the appropriate times and evidence within the Bible itself.
Slashdot Mirror
These are not mutually exclusive. See: Cylic Model.
Also not mutally exclusive. No one is cogently arguing that human activity isn't one of the myriad inputs to the chaotic system called the climate. The question isn't if human activity affects it, it's the degree.
That's because it's not random. In fact, the genetic code is one of the most efficient and intricate information compression and retrieval systems that we know about. Not even Richard Dawkins thinks a genome is random.
Christ on a pogo stick, have you never been outside your basement? There's an entire field called Comparative Religion!
None of these statements is even remotely challenging, original, or contrary to "well-established scientific theories". Anyone who thinks that you're some kind of apostate speaking out against the scientific establishment is even more ignorant than you are, regardless of their political persuasions.
Well, Ifigured it had to be unintentianal to count! I did my bset to screw something up! Sory!
Change from. . . from what?
This thread is amazing! I can only hope that I've misspelled something or made a grammatical error without realizing it so we keep it going!
That reminds me of my favorite Scalia quote. From his concurring opinion in Gonzales v. Raich, end of paragraph 3: "Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce."
New and untrusted drivers were forced to block large parts of their front and rear viewports? That seems more than slightly silly. Why not put it on the body of the car?
Of course I understand that. In fact, I've said it three or four times now. What you're not understanding is that that's not what we're talking about. The basis of the Supreme Court decision, and ergo what you are defending, is a thing called "corporate personhood". It means that when a group of persons get together, that group itself is considered another person in addition to the persons making up the group, and that fictional person, according to this doctrine, has rights unto itself. That's what I have a problem with.
I know it well. I've worked for small businesses my entire life. I intend to open my own in a few years. I don't think that either my (future) corporation or any of the ones I've worked for have any right to run political ad campaigns. I do myself, but not the corporation.
Then why does it have rights, and how can it have values?
I am very confused. With whom are you associating the term "rich oppressors"? Does that refer to something other than a multi-billion dollar business wielding its revenues to lift a candidate into government? How can the "poor masses" rise up against that?
Well spoken!
Yes, allowed to spend her own individual money. Not the gumball machine company's money. That person can also vote. The gumball machine company can't.
Then why should they not have the same right to vote as a group as they would individually? You're doing a context switch between the two rights. Each person in a group retains an individual right to speech and to vote. Why should a group of n people get n+1 soapboxes but not n+1 ballots?
That's the same context switch. Individual persons within the corporation have a system of morality; a corporation itself is outside that system. An individual person will have a variety of values, but a corporation has one: to gain wealth. A corporation doesn't have the liabilities or social responsibilities as an individual person, and it doesn't have the rights.
Yes, exactly: forming the group is a right of each person, and freedom of speech is a right of each person. It does not follow from that that freedom of speech is a right of the group.
If a fundamental right like freedom of speech accrues from the members to the group, then why does a fundamental right like the vote not do the same?
There is a difference in theory, which I already outlined. A business is a business (including the Sierra Club); it has a license to be able to do the thing for which it was formed, it's subject to different taxes than a person, it can't be arrested for DUI, it doesn't have to serve on juries, and it doesn't have a right to free speech. It's an abstract thing that derives from individuals' rights.
The more important part, though, is the difference in practice, which you have outlined. It shouldn't be easy for the board of Coca-Cola to start throwing their $6 billion around to pick the next president. (Nor should it be easy for the Sierra Club.) An organization whose reason for existence is to acquire wealth for its owners should not be allowed to rig society and the economy by influencing government.* How about CITGO? Owned by the Venezuelan Government, Hugo Chavez at the helm. Revenue about the same as Coca-Cola Company. You want them running an ad campaign for president in 2012?
* Yes, of course, I know that this happens anyways, has always happened, and will always happen by some method or another. That doesn't mean we have to make it easy.
That's not an argument at all. A person is perfectly free to tell whomever e likes the vote e plans to make or has made. A person is also free to agree with as many other persons as e likes that they should all vote the same. The secret ballot just prevents compelling that person. A corporation could be given a secret ballot to mark just like each one of its members. We don't do that because it's ridiculous on its face. It's just as ridiculous to say that the corporation has a right to free speech.
The question is, if an entity is enough of a person that it has a right to free speech, then on what grounds can you deny it the right to vote? A group of voting citizens cannot band together and ipso facto add 1 to the number of voters. Each of the members of course has the right to free speech, and each has the right to form a corporation. If the rights of the members accrue to the group as an entity, then why not the vote? What would it mean for a group of persons to "pool" their individual rights to bear arms?
I don't disagree. I just thought you meant that it didn't happen.
Newspapers and other news outlets endorse candidates for public office all the time. Just as an illustrative link, the first thing that came up from googling "obama newspaper endorsements". They usually write a big editorial explaining their position. This has been going on as long as newspapers have existed.
No. The group is a right of individuals. The group does not have rights. Only individual persons with individual responsiblities have individual rights.
Yes, that sure does sound nice to me too. /me closes eyes, sighs dreamily
I strongly disagree with this decision. I also really like the Sierra Club, but I think the Club should be subject to restrictions on political advertisements just like every other group. An organization doesn't have the same responsibilities or liabilities as an individual person, and it doesn't have the rights of an individual person.
The "corporate right to free speech" idea has always disgusted me. A corporation (or any other group) exists because of individual persons' freedoms and rights to assemble. It is itself a right of persons. It does not accrue rights to itself.
An aside: what I'd really like to see (and I suppose I will in the coming months) is someone try to defend "corporate free speech rights" while denying "corporate voting rights". I don't know how you can cogently argue that an entity must have one fundamental right, but not another. Someone will try, because this decision is of course just a backdoor to that anyways but needs to be covered up as such; I doubt that much of the citizenry would be very happy about GoldmanSachs having a Senator.
You've got my vote. Well-written! (Also, do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?)
It wouldn't be an invasion of privacy, really, because you would have had to give that person your credit card number voluntarily. I don't just hand out my credit card number to my friends, because none of them need to know it. (A business from which I want to buy something using my card needs the number, and it's not unreasonable for me to expect that business to only use the number for that purpose, and for the law to reflect that.) If my "friend" has my credit card for some reason and uses it improperly, the loss of money can be treated as a theft.
Likewise with dietary information. My local grocer is still a licensed business, with a different standard than an individual person. If someone who you thought was your friend gives your insurance agent information that leads to a rate increase, then sue the both of them for the financial damage, and pick your friends more carefully next time. I don't mean that flippantly: a friend wouldn't do something like that to you, and I can't really think of a way for a stranger to acquire that kind of information without committing some kind of crime before e gets to the sharing of the information.
Only if you believe that a corporation should have the same rights as an individual citizen. A business has to have legal approval to do its thing, and part of that legal approval can and should be a recognition that the business, not having the same limitations and responsibilities as an individual citizen, also does not have the same privileges or rights.
I think Benoit Mandelbrot (amongst a few thousand other chaos and fractal specialists) would beg to differ on the ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology
That's because they're mathematicians, not biologists. Stuart Kaufmann thought he was replacing natural selection with self-organization back in the 80's, but he's calmed down now, after arguing with actual biologists for a while. Tom Ray is a guy with a foot in both camps, or at least he used to (I guess now he's doing cog. sci. work?), and even though his Artificial Life projects pretty much inaugurated the field, he doesn't seem to really think of his research as revealing anything fundamentally new.
It's hardly the mathematics fault that biologists are lousy mathematicians.
Well, that's true, but neither is it biology's fault that most of what mathematicians produce has no application. It's not like biologists are stupid; they don't learn knot theory because it doesn't improve their work, not because they are unable.
I can't find any mention of that except by people who are advocating Christianity. None of his critics seem to recognize him as having been a nonbeliever, and no neutral sources mention anything other than his work as an apologist. Can you refer me to a source?
It removes suspicion of collusion; it does not increase confidence in the individual accounts.
It means that it's less reliable than an account written by Peter himself, especially since the "deposition" * happened years later, and since the original reason I got into this conversation was because vcgodinich was insisting that the Gospels were made up of reliable, complete, first-hand accounts.
I've read the verses you quoted me from Peter three times now, and I don't understand how you intend them to improve your argument. Furthermore, the authorship of 2 Peter is not certain, and so I think that in fact that quote counts against you.
* If it was really a legal deposition like you're trying to imply, it would have been taken by a neutral party, possibly with adversarial parties present. Mark was most definitely not a neutral party.
Nice try at selectively quoting me. Right after that, I said: "[these assertions are] more or less true. . .we don't immediately consider each person who relates a differing tale to be a mad, cretinous liar, but we assume that person is mistaken or embellishing in some points. The same should be true of the Gospel authors." I have not said that the Gospels are false, just that they are probably not completely true.
The Gospel narratives of the Resurrection are a rich source of both inconsistencies and repeated phrasings. I do not say that it's a wholesale fabrication. But where is the "deposition" of the women themselves? If their testimony is worthless, why do the Gospel writers believe them?
Then you should be able to admit that, writing forty years after the events in question, and being fairly old at that point, John probably didn't write things down exactly as they happened.
That is certainly true of the New Testament. But perhaps you'd care to look at the Hindu Upanishads, just one of their collections of holy texts, written from the first millennium B.C.E. through the Middle Ages? Taoists also have a large collection of writings, compos
Okay, I read it. First, I don't believe for a second that he's honestly arguing from a position of nonbelief, not when he refers to the Gospel writers as "holy men", Jesus as "Our Lord" and "Our Savior", and accepts that "God has revealed himself to man by special and express communications, and that Christianity constitutes that revelation", and that the "credibility [of Jesus' miracles] has been fully established" without further discussion. He's a Christian apologist, which is fine, and it's a perfectly legitimate technique to strengthen your own argument by pretending to take the opposite side, but he's not actually starting from an atheistic, or even particularly skeptical, point of view.
That established, I noted the following interesting points: Matthew was around Jesus, but didn't write his Gospel until at least five years after the crucifixion. Mark wrote his second-hand, that is, probably from Peter's memory, a number of years later. Despite Greenleaf's focus on the careful attention to detail in Luke's accounts, he may or may not have actually been an eyewitness; he wasn't one of the Apostles, and none of the others seem to have mentioned him being around. John didn't write his Gospel until almost four decades had passed.
I didn't see any discussion of the actual inconsistencies among the Gospel narratives. I saw blanket assertions that such inconsistencies don't impeach the overall accuracy and truthfulness of those writings. This is more or less true. If we take Greenleaf's example of the inconsistencies in the account's of the French royal family's flight, we should of course do exactly as he says, that is, we don't immediately consider each person who relates a differing tale to be a mad, cretinous liar, but we assume that person is mistaken or embellishing in some points. The same should be true of the Gospel authors.
Let me put it to you this way: you (I think) and Greenleaf believe that the Gospel writers were undeceived, were completely truthful, and had faultless memories. Many other people believe the same about their own holy writings. Presumably you believe that Mormon, or Hindu, or Rastafarian holy writings are in error in some way. They, however, have faithful believers and apologists like Greenleaf, too. Why do you select this one book to believe instead of all the others?
Greenleaf's argument that "The testimony of a false witness will not be uniform in its texture", whereas true witnesses provide "an unaffected readiness and copiousness in the detail of circumstances", and characterizing the Gospel stories in the latter manner, doesn't hold water. We can't interview the Gospel writers now to find out if they would say "non-mi-recordo [I don't remember]" to everything outside their original narrative. What we have from each of them is a piece of writing full of the important highlights, "profuse in their statements. . . in relation to the principal matter", but without much background information. This doesn't make the whole thing a fabrication, nor am I saying that they were maliciously altering their story, but the Gospel writers had something they believed and wanted to prove, and they would have presented it in the strongest way they could, and just like Greenleaf's false witness, left out the things that didn't support their assertions.
Greenleaf tries to address this in one of his last paragraphs, but he contradicts himself by doing so. He lists "the absence. . .of all anxiety to be believed,. . .of all marks of wonder, or of desire to excite astonishment". Earlier he notes that in Matthew's writing "Every circumstance is noticed which might conciliate [the Jews'] belief, and every unnecessary expression is avoided which might obstruct it." Luke is "particularly careful to specify various circumstances conducive to the information of strangers", and he gives "particular and even professional attention to all our Savior's miracles of healing." Greenleaf characterizes John's Gospel as having a "studied om
Bravo! Don't be surprised if that becomes someone's sig in the next week or so.
Well then, you're wrong. You can either tell me that the Christian Biblical canon was more or less assembled at the time of the Council of Nicaea, or you can tell me that the Roman Catholic Biblical canon was formalized at the Council of Trent, but it wasn't on the agenda at Nicaea. Or the second time, either.
Yes, including by most Christians, so far as I know.
By studying the other evidence that we have from the appropriate times and evidence within the Bible itself.