Chapter 2- The skeptics Speak — Part 2
August 10, 2010
Hello:
When I posted Chapter 2- the skeptics speak – part 1, I mentioned an objection about the memories of eyewitness. The objection was that during the time between Jesus’ death and the writing of the first gospel the story was passed down orally and since modern research has shown that memory can be unreliable, the written gospels cannot be relied upon. This objection is based upon the work of Elizabeth Loftus PhD from Harvard who has done a great deal of research into eyewitness testimony. She published a book called “Eyewitness Testimony” in 1996. Skeptic Jeffrey J. Lowder cites this work in his review of CFC.
Dr. Loftus did several lab experiments in which she tested several components of memory. Some of the experiments focused on a short intense event while others focused on how questions were phrased after viewing a film of a traffic accident. These experiments had a great effect in legal circles. One of the effects was to expose the unreliability of recovered memories. Another was the creation of false memories through bad interrogation techniques. Another one was the length of time between the event and the recalling of the incident.
These problems are supposed to have impacted the historical reliability of the gospels.
Next time — my response to part 2.
Ron
