Babble About Baba

 I got into a discussion with a Christian playing devils advocate. I've been in the game awhile, these Jesus doubles are anything but new. 

Jackson

He basically just repeating Hume's Argument

Although, in his argument that other religions have miracles, I don't think you should just concede that. I think each miracle has to be looked at on its own merit. Christianity's main miracle is unique because it was extremely unexpected.

Lucas

I pretty much agree. However, I grant it for sake of the argument because it is true it’s not a problem for Christianity. He also didn’t give a specific miracle for me to analyze.

Jackson 

Well, someone can make the argument that they could also be performing miracles in God's name, Which would make Jesus' statement that he is the "only way "apparently false. One could argue That if God raised Jesus from the dead to show his divinity, He could do the same for other people doing miracles.

I think the best argument in this would be Sam Harris's example of Sai Baba, who is a modern Indian gurus. He had millions of followers, and thousands of eyewitnesses to his miracles. He was said to be able to make things appear, To raise the dead, to read minds, to be in two places at once, etc. We could do the "liar, lunatic, Lord" trilemma, Although I don't think many would argue that all of his thousands of followers are all just lying.

Anyway, Harris's point is that the evidence for Sai Baba as far as better than Jesus, and that we literally have thousands of witnesses who are still alive, and these accounts are modern and not written decades later. But, according to Harris, If we were to reject Sai Baba's Miracles based on insufficient evidence, then how much more should we reject Jesus's miracles that are less attested

I think that's a much more robust way of articulating what counter apologist probably would have wanted to say. I guess I'm just a better spokesman at it than he is

Lucas

We have the criteria for false prophets in Deut. 13 & 18. Pace Gathercole (2006), Bauckham (2008), Hengel (2007), Loke (2019) et al, the Biblical case for Jesus being God is good. Swinburne (2010) argued, imo, successfully that Jesus behaved and taught how an all loving and powerful God would (treatment of women, Romans/gentiles, and Samaritans, radical love for the weak and forgiveness).

As for Sai Baba, there’s quite a number of issues.

1: Harris is not an historian. You know how well he treats the Bible, not sure you want to cite him here.

2: The evidence is good that Baba was a fraud. Let’s hear what an actual historian by trade has to say. Commenting on Modern Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba, a Modern-Day Prophet by Erlendur Haraldsson, reviewer Brian Steel makes the following observation:

“One aspect of the parapsychological phenomena that might have rewarded investigation is the increasing tendency in the past three decades, under the intense scrutiny of larger and larger darshan audiences and of camera zooms and videocameras, for SSB’s public materialisations to be largely confined to vibhuti, small items of jewellery, and necklaces, as well as the occasional dubious Shiva lingam (and the aborted lingam session caught on camera by the BBC in their 2004 documentary, Secret Swami). Also, is it not worth consideration that there have been no reports of spectacular phenomena like trances, bilocations, or ‘Lazarus-like resurrections’ in SSB’s final decades of life?” JSPR Volume 79.2 Number 919 April 2015.

This sounds an awful like the typical fraud/charlatan to me. Plus, we’re dealing with 2 entirely different cultural contexts here.

Kyle

Well, I think more to the point of Baba is that people can be fooled by a charlatan and not know that's what he was.

Jackson

And they say the same thing about Jesus. Make it argue that people weren't skeptical and were deceived

Lucas

1: I’m fully aware of the argument he’s making. The movement wouldn’t have even gotten off the ground if Jesus was a fraud. Baba (supposedly) had a lot of followers, but did the movement spread like Christianity? Plus, none of that discounts the evidence I presented. You need to factor that in as well.

2: We have evidence for what kinds of miracles frauds or mere magicians performed in the Greco-Roman world. Jesus doesn’t match that. Consult Keener 2011, 68-75

3: Someone like Sabbatai Zevi or Apollonius of Tyana. They are actually used by historians, not hacks like Harris.

Jackson

to be fair, they could argue that if we had biographies That were only written by followers of Sai Baba, They would try to portray him enough more positive light, especially if they were written decades later

Lucas

Then it would be a meaningless hypothetical vs. real world evidence. I think this also would bring us into a discussion about Gospel reliability, which is beyond the scope of this post.