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For you are committing the very "circular" error of which you accuse me: building your premises on your conclusions.
True. Which means we are both guilty of it. But I look properly abashed.
I would of thought though, that you would realise at a skeptic's message board the burden of proof lies with you.
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For isn't your objection in this case nothing more or less than the assumption that God did not do it?
No.
My primary objection is that as an apology it stinks. How god did it was because god did it.
So why are you trying to use logic, translation, reason or anything else in the vast majority of your posts when you could just say 'god did it because god did it'. Because it is weak & adds nothing to the validity of the bible.
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But one of us has Matthew's testimony on his side, namely me. Whose first-century testimony do you have to the effect that this event did not occur?
Whoa! You mean you have an original testament written by Matthew, untranslated, unculled by religious orders or otherwise edited.
It more likely you have something that is most likely written after Matthews death, copied errently, translated errently, copied again errently et al, edited by people with more than pure motives, and much more before your mass produced and annotated book is next to you.
Besides I doubt you have any first century evidence that all this wasn't caused by the spaghetti god, so does that mean s/he did it?
I strongly doubt that people would of written much about what didn't have with fish & coins in a time when literacy was rare, writing materials expensive & copying work laborious.
Finally, your interpretation of god doing it isn't in the text Matthew 17. That was your reasoning why it was there.
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Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the
quality of results than with the purity of motives. - Eric Hoffer
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the
quality of results than with the purity of motives. - Eric Hoffer
