The term is utilized insofar as Jesus expected the imminent appearance of a cosmic judge from heaven, but for him this divine figure was to be the Son of Man anticipated by the prophet Daniel (unlike Paul who attributes the title to Jesus himself). Mark 8:38 is a good example of a quote which passes the Criterion of Dissimilarity because Jesus differentiates between himself and the Son of Man.
Perhaps, but that's also a rhetorical device for speaking of one's self.
You're projecting your own beliefs onto the text at this point. Jesus is being used as the sacrificial lamb, there's not even one reference (unless you want to make a huge leap of, dare I say, faith on this) where the text connects Jesus and God as one; this is why the Comma Johanneum stands as the only explicit reference to the Trinity in the entire New Testament and curiously only comes centuries after that epistle in which it appears in is written.
Jesus claimed to forgive sins.
He knew that everyone believed that only God could forgive sins.
Therefore He was claiming to be God.
That's very plain in Mark.
No, no, no. One -- and I'll even concede for the sake of argument that you're entirely correct -- doesn't advance an assertion of actually being true. This in no way validates another that does. Absolutely not. That you are convinced by mere assertions, that's your priviledge. But when you are arguing against my definition that faith is the feeling of truth sans evidence (which is why they call it "faith" and not "knowledge") you have the onus of demonstrating what is false about the statement and then presenting here for all of us the so-called evidence that validates your beliefs. Thus far you have presented zero evidence beside things and events that you personally experienced and happened to convince you. These are anecdotes, not evidence. Try again or I'm going to have to terminate this discussion because we're getting nowhere.
My question was, given a Creator, what do we have that looks like a communication from him? The Greek gods don't cut it; they're really little different from what can be found in Marvel comics. So with the evidence of the materials themselves, one ends up with the Bible.
That's my point, no matter how much you try to stretch it to something else.
Exactly, and the only thing you'd be able to demonstrate based on the documentation that we have is that there probably was a man named Jesus, that he was a moral teacher of some sort, and that he asserted a bunch of stuff. The gigantic leap that you make is that he must be right because no other person does this (which is false, except when maybe comparing it to Greek mythology). The things we can conclude based on these documents have limitations. You're making unwarranted leaps based on what we have on record.
From what we have -- and we have with a high degree of certainty the actual words of Jesus -- he couldn't be "a moral teacher of some sort". On that, the "Lord, lunatic, or liar" crowd (I believe that trichotomy comes from C. S. Lewis, BTW) is quite right: no one who claims the things Jesus did is sufficiently sane to be considered a moral teacher.
And in fact no one else does make the claims He did: to forgive sins, to raise the dead, to return from the dead himself.
And in truth, what we would expect in a communication from a Creator would be claims no one else dared make -- indeed, claims no one else really considered before.
Yes, it is. Witnesses go to court to "offer evidence", a term used virtually interchangeably with "give testimony".
Not only do paranormal explanation fall under turf of being more improbable than not (as most "evidence" offered tends to be anecdotal; this may change but only when sufficient and rigorous evidence is produced), they're unverifiable.
This is a matter of faith, right here, when you assert that paranormal explanations are more improbable. They may be unverifiable, but that doesn't make them more improbable -- after all, the probability of a hole in someone's roof being due to a rock falling from the sky didn't change suddenly when scientists finally realized that rocks do fall from the sky; it remained what it was before.
Now you might perhaps respond with 'Oh but I happen to have witnessed it myself so I verified it' but this is also problematic. Human perception is too prone to interpretation for us to rely on them, which is why scientists do things like double-blind studies to prevent biases and beliefs from being projected onto the thing being examined. I know you won't click this link, but I strongly recommend reading this article:
Why We Need Science: “I saw it with my own eyes” Is Not Enough. The part about George Washington's death should give you at least some pause. The video on anecdotes can also be found
here -- for what it's worth. If all you have is anecdotes about spooky experiences or whatnot, then we're done here.
Yes, people can be fooled. That's why Paul says to have every interpretation of a 'speaking in tongues' verified by confirmation, and if there's no confirmation, to reject it.
That doesn't mean that everything has to be reproducible. Prophecy isn't reproducible, but when there are dozens upon dozens of prophecies made before someone comes along, and every last one of them matches that person's life, the result is evidence. Miracles aren't reproducible, but when millions of people testify of them, and a great many of those match a pattern set down before, the result is evidence.
No, it isn't laboratory evidence, but it's sufficient evidence that jurists who have set out to prove that Jesus never lived, or at least couldn't have been what is said of Him, have turned 180 from that position.
(And I do mean that in jest!)
