The Binding of Satan

[nPeace]

That isn't going to be any more logical if you repeat it enough. It's like you have a chain or crank on your neck that, once pulled or cranked, causes you to say that.



The Bible exists in the same place the tablets do and can either one of these be tested and peer reviewed? I don't see why not, you tell me.

Both funny and true, so I rate it Winner.

 

[nPeace]

@Timothy Spurlin
I really am looking forward to hearing from you.
I'm only sorry it wont be today, but hopefully tomorrow.
Out.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

What? I mean... Pardon me?

What part is confusing you?

Do you not understand the difference between subjective evidence and objective evidence?

Consider measuring the tempurature of a glass of water.
Subjective would be someone putting their finger in it and then claiming hot or cold.
Objective would be putting a thermometer in it.

Consider a court case for a murder.
Subjective would be a person claiming to have seen the suspect at the crime scene.
Objective would be finding the suspect's DNA and fingerprints.


In short, subjective is when you need to "just believe" someone.
Objective is when it is independently verifiable.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Objective evidence for God - creation

To call the universe "creation", is an assumed conclusion and thus fallacious.
You need to demonstrate the causal chain, not just assert it.

Objective evidence for Satan - evil

How is evil objective evidence for satan?
Take the nazi holocaust - I think we can all agree that that was pretty evil.
How does that demonstrate satan?

Objective evidence for Jesus - historical records

Which historical records?
Also, such records, if they exist, would demonstrate that a human being named Jesus exists - not that he is a god or the son of one.

Just like objective evidence for Julius Ceasar didn't demonstrate that the was a descendant of the gods as many Romans (including himself) believed.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The same way you know anything else.

That makes no sense.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Proof? What proof do you have that life evolved from a common ancestor?

Observed speciation.
The fossil record.
Phylogenies.
Geographic distribution of species.
The genetic record.
Comparative anatomy.
Comparative genomics.
...
The fact that all of the above are independent lines of evidence that all converge on the exact same answer.

All of which is very independently testable and very independently verifiable.
Evolution theory makes loads of predictions spanning multiple independent scientific fields and every single time these predictions are tested, they are succesfull.

It doesn't get any better then that in science.

What proof do you have of that?

Science doesn't deal in proof. It only deals in provisional confirmation and evidence.
And evolution theory is as good as it gets in science. It's one of the best, if not THE best, supported theories in all of science.

If the evidence for evolution isn't enough for you to accept the theory as accurate, then I can't imagine a single theory of science that would be acceptable to you, unless you deal in double standards off course.

There is more and better evidence for evolution, then there is for gravity to be honest....

 

[Timothy Spurlin]

What is this?

I don't know.

 

[Timothy Spurlin]

Proof? What proof do you have that life evolved from a common ancestor?


What proof do you have of that?

Science has the proof of a common ancestors.
Each church has a leader and followers.

 

[Timothy Spurlin]

The same way you know anything else.

Such vague answer.

 

[Timothy Spurlin]

Aha! So why are papyrus scrolls, not objective evidence?

Do papyrus scrolls exist outside of the mind?

 

[Timothy Spurlin]

I don't hear her say that, but you are asking for objective evidence for God,Satan, and Jesus?
Objective evidence for God - creation
Objective evidence for Satan - evil
Objective evidence for Jesus - historical records

Ask me about these further. Right now, I can't go into details, because today I am off... no, not off my rockers. Off for the day.

First you have to prove there is a god before you can say it created.
You have to prove there that Satan is real.
What historical records.

 

[Timothy Spurlin]

Why do you say the Bible is a claim, not evidence?
Is the Bible in someone's head, or mind, and not tangible?
How do you view the history on Hannibal of Rome, or Cleopatra of Egypt, or the Incas? Do you view them as claims? What about the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus? What is evidence to you?
Is what is written in stone different to what is written on papyrus, or leather?
Do you believe the Cyrus cylinder, Moabite Stone, Babylonian Talmud, and Samaritan Pentateucht, etc., to be just claims, not evidence?
What are you really saying?

Limit it to a few questions at a time. I don't have a lot of time to waste on just you.

 

[Timothy Spurlin]

Uh, that it created evil?

The Bible is the best source. You say it makes claims, well, examine those claims. Just be aware that most of the explanations Jewish and Christian sources have to offer are not very good. They are confused by tradition which is heavily influenced by ancient Greek philosophy and pagan nonsense. Hell, immortal soul, trinity, cross, Easter, Christmas, the rapture to name a few. Which if you think about it, is the majority of their teachings.

That is all the Bible does is make claims without evidence.
Jews and christans took from older religions to make up theirs, that is how you get converts.

 

[Earthling]

I don't think so.

For example, this sentence will immediatly strike you as wrong:

"A loving and benevolent parent rapes his children".

Boy, you don't get it do you? A parent, or anyone else, doesn't rape a child because he/she hates it and wishes it harm. To them it isn't wrong, therefore it is subjective. To most of us it is wrong, yes, but not to them.

Sounds like you are just defending the obvious monstrocities.

No, I am not. I don't think that way. God did these things whether I approve of them or not. I certainly don't approve of the case of Job. It upsets me that God would allow that to happen.

I don't really care off course because, as you say, I don't believe any of this nonsense.
But I heavily object to calling such a monster "all loving" and "benevolent".

Well, the latter, the use of the terms "all loving" and "benevolent" are the issues here, as far as I'm concerned. It makes little difference to me if you believe it or not. If you don't believe it I would suggest you think of it in terms of us discussing what did or didn't happen in an alleged fictional account. We can establish the authenticity of the Bible through, not determining it's literalness, but rather first off, it's integrity or . . . just simply what it is saying rather than if it is real or not.

 

[Earthling]

Not in this context.

Good evidence is evidence that is independently verifiable.
Bad evidence is evidence that is not independently verifiable.

I'm not talking about "good or bad music" or whatever.
I'm talking about objective standards of evidence.

Okay. As far as the objectivity or subjectivity of evidence I think we've hashed that out enough and just have to agree to disagree. Let me just finish that with asking you the more important question, which is do you think that if there is no objective evidence of something it must be patently false?

Indeed. And the answer is "no".

All right, then, could you give an example?

No. Love and money objectively exist.
The rising of the sun does not require faith either, when you understand deterministic forces like gravity and the rotation of the earth.

All these things are based on very objective evidence.
No faith required.[/quote]

Okay. If Objective evidence refers to information based on facts that can be proved by means of search like analysis, measurement, and observation. One can examine and evaluate objective evidence. How can you evaluate something that is objective? Is there the possibility of objective evidence to be debated? Regarding love, recall the image I posted about subjective and objective evidence? One man said his back hurt, which was subjective and the other man said his back hurt and he had a knife sticking out of his back, that was objective. How do you know love exists? Do you know your money will be good tomorrow, or that the sun will rise a year from now?

Faith is what you need to accept something as true, when you have no evidence.

Faith is what you have based upon there being no reason to doubt. It's based upon things like experience and observation. Faith in the dollar, faith of a spouse or loved one.

What about it? Still have no idea what you are talking about.
Which tomb and how is it relevant to the point here?

How stupid of me. All of this time I was using the word tomb when I meant tome. Sorry, my mistake. I was talking about any secular history. Cæsar’s Gallic War, Livy, Thucydides, Herodotus . . . relevant because I'm trying to determine why you would think they are objective evidence and the Bible isn't.

No need for any such thing. Look, you insinuated that people are saying science is infallible. All you need to do to support that statement, is by pointing those people out. Can you? Or were you just making stuff up?

Again, I know of nobody who says or believes such a thing.
Do you?

No, and I'll say it again, I asked if science was infallible I didn't say that it was or that anyone said that it was, I asked.

Not "all" of them, obviously.
But sure, there are those that include such things. For example, quite a few of the records concerning Julius Ceasar depict him as some kind of demigod, or descendent of gods.
I don't think anyone believes that.
But we do accept that he invaded Gaul with his legions and conquered it.

So, why do you think it is, that we accept his conquest campaigns actually happend, but not his divinity?

For one thing many don't understand what divinity means. Divinity means to be divine. Divine means of, from, or like God or a god; excellent; delightful. A god is someone or something that is venerated, i.e. respected. That's probably not what Ceasar meant, but who's to say that he didn't believe that he was a decedent of mythological gods?

The point is that you can't dismiss the historical significance of the Bible while accepting secular history with integrity.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Boy, you don't get it do you? A parent, or anyone else, doesn't rape a child because he/she hates it and wishes it harm. To them it isn't wrong, therefore it is subjective. To most of us it is wrong, yes, but not to them.

So, does it immediatly strike you as wrong or not?
And how do you know that to them, it is NOT wrong?

Also, assuming that to them it is not perceived as wrong (which I really don't agree with when stated like that - I think quite a few of them really do know it's wrong, since I know for a fact that some of them have regrets and feel guilty afterwards), what makes you then think the entirety of the thing is really subjective?

Why for example not that in some humans, there are conditions at play that makes them unable to recognise right and wrong? I mean, we know for a fact that stuff like psychopathy exists.

Which is literally a diagnosable thing. To them, nothing is perceived as wrong OR right!

This to me seems a bit like saying that the color spectrum is subjective because some people are color blind.

Lacking the faculties to come to objective conclusions about something, does not make the entire thing subjective you know.....

No, I am not. I don't think that way. God did these things whether I approve of them or not. I certainly don't approve of the case of Job. It upsets me that God would allow that to happen.

Obviously, I am speaking about this as if it happened. I can speak the same way about the actions of Darth Vader.

That doesn't stop me from making moral judgements. And clearly it doesn't stop you either.
cfr your statement about Job. So you agree then, then this god engages in deeply immoral things?

Well, the latter, the use of the terms "all loving" and "benevolent" are the issues here, as far as I'm concerned. It makes little difference to me if you believe it or not. If you don't believe it I would suggest you think of it in terms of us discussing what did or didn't happen in an alleged fictional account.

That is what I am doing.
I can look at Star Wars and form conclusions about the morality of Darth Vader.
If someone would call Darth Vader "all loving" and "benevolent", I'ld object to that as well.
Clearly he isn't. Clearly Jawhe isn't either.

So when a christian tells me "god is love", I reply with "nonsense, the dude is clearly an evil monster because of this and this reason - loving entities don't do such horrible things".

We can establish the authenticity of the Bible through, not determining it's literalness, but rather first off, it's integrity or . . . just simply what it is saying rather than if it is real or not.

It terms of moral judgment of the character, it doesn't matter if this God exists or not.
Just like it doesn't matter if Darth Vader exists or not.

We can look at the story and come to conclusions either way.

 

[Earthling]

But the bible is just people writing down their claims.... Claims that when made today, you wouldn't believe for the reason you gave above.
So this is not a justification. You're basically just saying that you believe them, because you believe them.

No, I believe them because I have no reason to doubt them. If you take what you know about the Bible and stand that next to what I know about the Bible you would see that. For example, you probably think that the Bible says that God created the universe and everything in it in 6 literal days 6,000 years ago, that the earth is flat, that sort of thing. But it doesn't.

Add to this that supernatural claims can't be scientifically tested and then you unscientifically conclude that the supernatural can't exist when all supernatural really means is something we don't understand and so you then conclude the supernatural can't exist, which is unscientific. If you can't test something you can't conclude either way. Like I said, once whales and squid were supernatural. That doesn't necessarily imply that the supernatural in the Bible is real, but it is possible that we just aren't aware of it.

So to me, your approach to the Bible seems derived from ignorance, in the sense that you don't really know it very well at all, and it's unscientific in that you conclude something, sort of in the name of science, which can't be tested by science itself.

A lot. The difference is that there are no contemporary and independent records. No corroborating evidence. Such evidence is very important in historical science. Especially when it concerns extra-ordinary claims.

It isn't an extraordinary claim that Jesus existed. In the Bible Jesus historicity is established by clearly stating the time and place he existed in in great detail. By establishing the reign of secular rulers of that time and the meticulous record of Jewish chronology that points to only one possible candidate of all time. That is objective.

Sir Isaac Newton, often thought of as the "father of science" and an expert in historical texts of his time said of the Bible, "I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever." That is subjective.

The sheer volume of manuscripts meticulously made available of the Bible, compared to other histories is overwhelming. So you have all of these sources to be objective about with the Bible and comparatively speaking, almost nothing extant with secular histories and yet you dismiss the Bible. Objective or subjective approach?

Jewish historian Josephus referred to the stoning of “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ.” (The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus, Book XX, sec. 200) In his Book XVIII, sections 63, 64 there is a direct reference to Jesus that is doubted by skeptics as an embellishment by Christians, and yet they acknowledge that the style and vocabulary are those of Josephus and the passage is found in all available manuscripts.

Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote: “Christus [Latin for “Christ”], from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.” (The Complete Works of Tacitus (New York, 1942), “The Annals,” Book 15, par. 44.)

The New Encyclopædia Britannica states: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.” - (1976), Macropædia, Vol. 10, p. 145.

In the work of Suetonius, also a Roman historian, The Deified Claudius, Suetonius wrote: "Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome."

Referring to the miracles of Jesus, Justin Martyr wrote: "That these things did happen, you can ascertain from the Acts of Pontius Pilate."

No, they never were supernatural.
Just like the sun was never supernatural.

"The creature—likely the inspiration for the legendary kraken—has been said to have terrorized sailors since antiquity, but its existence has been widely accepted for only about 150 years. Before that, giant squid were identified as sea monsters or viewed as a fanciful part of maritime lore, as in the case of a strange encounter shortly before scientists realized just what was swimming through the ocean deep." Smithsonian (Link)

People might have believed that, but that doesn't make it so.
Another important point here, is that you can't know what is true until you actually know.
So when claims are made, like "pontius was real", such claims require justification.
Then when justification comes, the claim is accepted.

That's how reason works.

I know, and that's why I think you are being unreasonable when it comes to the Bible.

 

[Earthling]

So, does it immediatly strike you as wrong or not?

I said so. To us it's wrong. I'm one of us. Besides, why would you have to ask me if it was objective? To the perpetrator it likely isn't.

And how do you know that to them, it is NOT wrong?

Observation and experience. They often say so.

Also, assuming that to them it is not perceived as wrong (which I really don't agree with when stated like that - I think quite a few of them really do know it's wrong, since I know for a fact that some of them have regrets and feel guilty afterwards), what makes you then think the entirety of the thing is really subjective?

Because, like you said, quite a few of them know it's wrong, which I agree with, but quite a few of them don't. Like, for example, Papa John Phillips, as well as the grandfather of of a little 8 year old girl of a manager in a kitchen I worked in when I was young, and the wife of a friend's father I grew up with, and NAMBLA's vile propaganda.

Why for example not that in some humans, there are conditions at play that makes them unable to recognise right and wrong? I mean, we know for a fact that stuff like psychopathy exists.

Which is literally a diagnosable thing. To them, nothing is perceived as wrong OR right!This to me seems a bit like saying that the color spectrum is subjective because some people are color blind.

Sure, but you are the one who made the claim that it was objectively wrong, your own examples demonstrate the fallacy in that claim.

I think that your problem is that you think your thinking, no matter how uninformed, especially about the Bible, is right and so whatever evidence there is to support that must be objective. You are repeatedly demonstrating a biased opinion or misuse of the term objective.

That doesn't stop me from making moral judgements. And clearly it doesn't stop you either.
cfr your statement about Job. So you agree then, then this god engages in deeply immoral things?

Oh, man! I hate to say this, but . . . morality is subjective. Let's just move on from the objective / subjective argument, we've firmly nailed that peg into the ground.

So when a christian tells me "god is love", I reply with "nonsense, the dude is clearly an evil monster because of this and this reason - loving entities don't do such horrible things".

So. If God caused the flood to destroy the vast majority of mankind before they destroyed the entire race of mankind from the planet that would be a monstrous thing to do?

It terms of moral judgment of the character, it doesn't matter if this God exists or not.
Just like it doesn't matter if Darth Vader exists or not.

We can look at the story and come to conclusions either way.

Exactly.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

No, I believe them because I have no reason to doubt them.

You just gave those reasons in your previous post.....................

For example, you probably think that the Bible says that God created the universe and everything in it in 6 literal days 6,000 years ago, that the earth is flat, that sort of thing. But it doesn't.

No. I realise that some bishop in medieval times "calculated" that and that nowhere in the bible it is said that such is the case.

I'm well aware of the many ways that people read the bible.
I'm also well aware of the extra ordinary claims that are not in evidence and the superstition that is found all throughout it.

Add to this that supernatural claims can't be scientifically tested and then you unscientifically conclude that the supernatural can't exist when all supernatural really means is something we don't understand and so you then conclude the supernatural can't exist, which is unscientific.

Perhaps you should not be trying to say what I claim and don't claim and instead just ask me.
There is no reason to believe the supernatural exists.
If you say that it just refers to things that we don't understand, then the only thing to be said is that we don't understand it - not that it is real.

If you can't test something you can't conclude either way

And by extension - you have no rational reason to believe it.
The point.

Like I said, once whales and squid were supernatural

Yes. So was lighting, the sun, thunder, the tides,....
And now we understand all those things and realise that the superstitious explanations people made up for them was just that: made up.

Again: the point...................

That's what happens when one is afraid of those simple words "i don't know" and instead just make things up. They end up believing false things.

That doesn't necessarily imply that the supernatural in the Bible is real, but it is possible that we just aren't aware of it.

But considering the history of things claimed to being supernatural that weren't, it is far more likely that the supernatural claims of the bible will simply go the way of the squid, the whale, thunder, the sun, lightning, etc.....

See, this is the point...
No, we can't test for the supernatural. You can't test any unfalsifiable claim.
But EVERY SINGLE TIME when phenomena were tackled that once were called supernatural, it turned out to have quite natural explanations that don't require any gods or angels or spirits or ghosts or what have you.

Not a single time, did the supernatural explanation turn out to being the correct one.
And since, as per your own admission, the supernatural claims refers to things we simply don't understand, we can conclude that claiming things to being supernatural is no more or less then an argument from ignorance.

To paraphrase Neil deGrass Tyson: "if that is how you define the supernatural, then the supernatural is an ever-receeding pocket of scientific ignorance".

So to me, your approach to the Bible seems derived from ignorance,

You mean, my approach to the bible that you just invented, because I never told you. You just assumed. And as it turns out, you assumed wrong.

Also, by your own admission, it's the supernatural that is derived from ignorance (or "not understanding" as you called it).

in the sense that you don't really know it very well at all, and it's unscientific in that you conclude something, sort of in the name of science, which can't be tested by science itself.

You just said yourself that the supernatural can't be tested. This means there can't be evidence for it.
What is asserted without evidence, can be dissmissed without evidence.

It isn't an extraordinary claim that Jesus existed.

But it IS an extraordinary claim to say that he was/is a god, that he cheated death, that he resurected others, that he made the blind see, that he turned water into wine, etc etc etc.

In the Bible Jesus historicity is established by clearly stating the time and place he existed in in great detail

Marvel Comic's "Amazing Spiderman" does just that with Peter Parker.

By establishing the reign of secular rulers of that time and the meticulous record of Jewish chronology that points to only one possible candidate of all time. That is objective.

It's not. It's words in a book. Subjective by definition.
Amazing Spiderman mentions real places and real people as well.

All this proves is that the authors of the bible were aware of existing cities and people.
It does not prove that the protagonist was real, and most defintaly not that he is/was a god.
Just like Amazing Spiderman doesn't prove that Spiderman is real, eventhough it just as well mentions real places, people and events.

Surely you can understand that.......

I'll also add that we don't know those places and people were real because the book mentions them. We know they are real because of extra-biblical independent, contemporary evidence thereof.

The sheer volume of manuscripts meticulously made available of the Bible, compared to other histories is overwhelming.

Books about the bible, don't prove the bible.
The bible mentioning Jeruzalem, only proves that the authors were aware of the existance of Jeruzalem.

And we know about Jeruzalem for other reasons then the bible mentioning it.

So you have all of these sources to be objective about with the Bible and comparatively speaking, almost nothing extant with secular histories and yet you dismiss the Bible. Objective or subjective approach?

I don't dismiss the bible fully.
Obviously there are things in the bible that are true.

I'm just not naive enough to believe that because it mentions a few real things, therefor all the rest is true as well.

Jewish historian Josephus referred to the stoning of “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ.” (The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus, Book XX, sec. 200) In his Book XVIII, sections 63, 64 there is a direct reference to Jesus that is doubted by skeptics as an embellishment by Christians, and yet they acknowledge that the style and vocabulary are those of Josephus and the passage is found in all available manuscripts

Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote: “Christus [Latin for “Christ”], from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.” (The Complete Works of Tacitus (New York, 1942), “The Annals,” Book 15, par. 44.)

I'm well aware of all this.

None of it is contemporary though.
But anyhow, I already told you that I have no problems at all with a historical Jesus around which the religion was build. In fact I literally told you that I consider it quite likely. None of these passages give any credence to any of the extra-ordinary claims though.

"The creature—likely the inspiration for the legendary kraken—has been said to have terrorized sailors since antiquity, but its existence has been widely accepted for only about 150 years. Before that, giant squid were identified as sea monsters or viewed as a fanciful part of maritime lore, as in the case of a strange encounter shortly before scientists realized just what was swimming through the ocean deep." Smithsonian (Link)

I said that they never WERE supernatural.
People perceived them as such, but they never were such.

I know, and that's why I think you are being unreasonable when it comes to the Bible.

That makes no sense.
You literally just agreed to the idea that the time to accept a claim, is when the claim is properly justified.

The extra-ordinary (supernatural) claims of the bible have not been properly justified.
So there is no reason to accept them as true.

I'll also add that the more extra-ordinary the claim, the more justification is needed.

An example analogy I like to use is the following:

If you tell me that you saw a movie with Jenifer Aniston yesterday, I'ld probably just take your word for it. People watch plenty of movies. Jenifer Aniston is a well known actress. She made loads of movies.

However, if you tell me that at some point she crawled out of the TV, made love to you and then returned into the TV to finish the movies.... that's when I will be raising an eyebrow or two and no longer take your word for it.

That's the equivalent of the supernatural claim. It also works for non-supernatural claims.

You could say that you ordered a pizza when the movie started. And that during the movie, it was Jenifer Aniston that delivered it and then joined you for dinner and watched the rest of the movie with you. That too, I will not just believe / accept. That too, will require some evidence for me to accept it.

Even if you live in the same town as her.
Now, if your name happens to be George Clooney and you say that you watched a movie with Jenifer Aniston... then we're back in the more believable land.

See?

How much, and what kind, of evidence is required to reasonably accept a claim, is entirely dependend on the claim.

And the claims about Jesus are SO extraordinary that no amount of mere words would EVER suffice.

 

[Earthling]

Perhaps you should not be trying to say what I claim and don't claim and instead just ask me.

I don't have to ask you when you've already told me.

If you say that it just refers to things that we don't understand, then the only thing to be said is that we don't understand it - not that it is real.

And by extension - you have no rational reason to believe it.
The point.

Yes. The Point. That's why I kept asking you why you were asking me for it.

Yes. So was lighting, the sun, thunder, the tides,....
And now we understand all those things and realise that the superstitious explanations people made up for them was just that: made up.

Again: the point...................

But the writers of the Bible didn't. They knew the hydrologic cycle, the shape of the earth and tons of other stuff long before science. Like the reason for the division between night and day being the luminaries when science thought it was "earth vapors" and "sky vapors." Or that you should wash your hands after touching the dead, which medical science only figured out about 150 years ago. Or that the earth hung upon nothing when science thought it was resting on giant turtles which rested on giant elephants.

That's what happens when one is afraid of those simple words "i don't know" and instead just make things up. They end up believing false things.

I'll let you know when we get to the part I don't know. There's plenty I don't know, but I don't see you saying I don't know about God and the Bible. You don't.

But anyhow, I already told you that I have no problems at all with a historical Jesus around which the religion was build. In fact I literally told you that I consider it quite likely. None of these passages give any credence to any of the extra-ordinary claims though.

Of course they don't. If it's supernatural it isn't true. So not even the one that mentions the miracles of Jesus mentioned in The Acts Of Pilate?

I said that they never WERE supernatural.
People perceived them as such, but they never were such.

Which only means that at one time people thought that they were myth, folklore, not real, incapable of happening in nature. Supernatural.