John 6:44 (NASB)
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him

So, it is not your choice, but God’s whether you shall believe or whether you shall be condemned.

and in the end we will know the truth…when we see god.

Okay first off even though the bible is continually being made; doesn’t mean that it’s not unique. How it is unique is the fact that there are no other books out there quite like the bible.

Then saying how Christians pick out what they want to believe and not that’s bull if you say that you’re a Christian and only believe have of what the bible says just because those are what you agree with than you are not really a Christian.

Then there is all this stuff about religion I hate to tell you, but Christianity is not a religion though many people see it as that way it’s not it’s a relationship with God.

About the magical power deal where do you think magic comes from? There are only two kinds of powers in this world good and evil, where do you think they originate from? God and Satan. How can this be proven you ask me well I’ve seen it both ways and have experienced them both ways, then you ask well why haven’t I? Then the answer for that my friend is because you don’t believe you have no reason to and you do not want to. Jesus knocks at the door and waits for you to open it and Satan well he certainly is not going to worry about you because he already has you.

Oh and as for the reason why not many historical books other than the bible mentions Jesus is because of mankind’s stupidity. They didn’t like the way that Jesus portrayed himself obviously Korinthian hasn’t read the bible. The way that they treated him was lower than dirt I mean they hung Him on the cross, why on earth would they want to admit there mistake they were very powerful people, they don’t want to let there subjects know that they were wrong.

Diz that is very nice about what you said about Korinthian, but the matter of the fact is that you’re not helping Korinthian to get to heaven that way. I hate to tell you Korinthian, but although our God is a very loving and kind God He is also a very vicious God, and He will not hold back His anger forever. Think about the story of Noah and the ark did you know that they actually found the ark, but all evidence of the research was destroyed because other people didn’t want us to know.

You know when it all comes down to it I would rather be living a Christian life with the belief that there is a heaven and a hell and when you die you go to either one or the other. My reason for this is simple because in the end if you find out that this is not true and you end up just not existing any more, as a flower, or just floating off into space it wouldn’t have mattered how I believed in the first place. But then you find that there is a heaven and hell and you only go one place or the other when you die then there is nothing that you can do about it.

Here is a site which I had found that compare the bible to facts that have been discovered through the years after the bible had been written – http://www.creationists.org/foreknowledge.html.

post, nor will I. If you want to have a serious debate, don’t jump in the middle of someone else’s just because you

can’t handle one on your own. Thanks for reading though.

It regards your comparison of Lincoln to Jesus as historical figures. You said “like we didn’t have photographs of him, letters written by him, and living relatives” and obviously pointing out that we don’t have the same evidence that Jesus lived.

However, the fact remains that we cannot know for certain that Lincoln lived either. In other words, there is nobody living today that can say, “Yeah, I know Abraham Lincoln. I can show him to you right now”

With regard to your line of reasoning regarding whether Jesus lived or not, and then using that same line of reasoning for Lincoln, I think it might play out like this:

1st Person: “Who is this a picture of?” (shows 2nd person a picture of Lincoln)

2nd Person: “That’s Abraham Lincoln.”

1st Person: “How do you know that?”

2nd Person: “Because it looks like all the other pictures of Lincoln I have ever seen.”

1st Person: “How do you know those are Lincoln?”

2nd Person: Well, because everyone else thinks these pictures represent Lincoln.”

1st Person: “And how do they know it is Lincoln?”

You see how this can go round and round and round?

Yes we have pictures, letters and documents indicating Abraham Lincoln lived. However, anyone could question whether those pictures, letters and documents are authentic or fakes.

Do you see where I am going with this?

The only thing we have for certain to know if anyone in the past has lived is by people who will document their existence. And plenty of people documented the existence of Jesus Christ, both in the Bible and out of the Bible. Josh McDowell’s book – “More Evidence That Demands a Verdict” has a chapter entitled “Jesus, Man of History” that shows several historians of that area that had no doubt that Jesus Christ was a real living person.

In summary to say that Jesus Christ was not a historical figure simply because there is not “the evidence you would like to see” to confirm is to say that anyone who has been dead for over a hundred years may or may not have existed. No one can know for certain except to trust what historians and others have written about these people, including Abraham Lincoln.

tycho: “I wonder how a sect of zealots, following a lunatic named Jesus, could access & add “prophecies” to one of the Holiest objects revered by those persecuting them & eventually killing their leader.”

(1) Who ELSE would have access to the book but people who wanted to propagate the religion? The “followers” of Elvis has made up all kinds of stuff about him and written books about it. We know there several “saviors” with alleged magic powers wandering around this part of the world at this time, did they all possess magic? Hardly, rather people made stuff up.

(2) And tycho, before I go on about the stuff you wrote about going into every synagoge, changing the tanak, etc. I think I should clarify: I meant the fulfillment of the prophecies, not the original prophecies (sorry about being unclear about that). As an author I could fulfill any “real” prophecy found in the OT in any book I wrote. I hope that made more sense to you.

“Now if they were concerned enough about this invented “fictional character” to have killed him why would they not
have removed the bogus “added wisdom””

(3) Did I say that the wisdom was bogus? Religions throughout the history have actually had good things to say, so good, in fact, that christianity borrowed from most of them. And if you do not see the point in having a religion without it being based in truth, you have not been paying attention to the history of religion (in the western world for instance) and the current political situation in the united states. Religion gives someone the moral high ground to do whatever they choose, it creates a “us vs them” mentality (which demontrably strengens the morals of the “us”) and does not require amy kind of critical thought to believe whatsoever. The saying “opium of the people” is old, but accurate.

(4) Regarding the Tanakh, I do not know enough about it to comment, but I will make sure to find out more and get back to you. Making uninformed statements about things like that will only come back and bite me in the ass.

Feel free to supply me with a link or two that you think would help. If you had particular chapter and verse numbers pointing to the text in question it would save me a lot of time.

“I wonder if 2k years from now there will be any convincing evidence of Bill Gates existence.”

(5) Do you really? I really don’t as there are people all around the world that knows about him instead of just a patch of land and a few shepherders in the middle east. Also Bill could raise a statue of himself and the teachings of Microsoft that would last longer than that, if he wanted. That is more than you could say about Jesus who went remarkably unnoticed despite his swine-killing magic powers and lectures among the people.

“according to your view, nothing necessarily counts as evidence if it lacks rigorous scientific scrutiny of the facts & then drawing out their logical implications.” -

Don’t put words in my mouth. Thanks. You have to consider the actual amount of evidence, as you should. Yet again, the most important man in the world (according to you) left so little contemporary evidence behind? Let me quote something:

(6) “The most remarkable thing in the evidences afforded by profane history is their extreme paucity; the very existence of Jesus cannot be proved from contemporary documents. A child whose birth is heralded by a star which guides foreign sages to Judaea; a massacre of all the infants of a town within the Roman Empire by command of a subject king; a teacher who heals the leper, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the lame, end who raises the moldering corpse, a King of the Jews entering Jerusalem in triumphal procession, without opposition from the Roman legions of Caesar; an accused ringleader of sedition arrested by his own countrymen; and handed over to the imperial governor; a rebel adjudged to death by Roman law; a three hours’ darkness over all the land; an earthquake breaking open graves and rending the temple veil; a number of ghosts wandering about Jerusalem; a crucified corpse rising again to life, and appearing to a crowd of above 500 people; a man risen from the dead ascending bodily into heaven without a concealment, and in the broad daylight, from a mountain near Jerusalem; all these marvelous events took place, we are told, and yet they have left no ripple on the current of contemporary history” —

“You cannot know that 2k years from now, any facts testifying to Bill Gates existence will not be questioned. You assume they could not.”

I assume no such thing. Stop with the strawmen, christian. Anyone could question anything, like christians have proved by questioning science they don’t understand.

(7) And then you go on comparing Jesus to Lincoln, like we didn’t have photographs of him, letters written by him, and living relatives. Do you always ignore the amount of evidence in favor of a position or do you only do that when religion is involved?

“One fact is as easily denied as a thousand when the mind is not open to facts.”

(8) Yes, I am aware of this. This is the very basis of religion. Religion (faith) is not based on facts, but
believing things despite of facts. But both christians and atheists alike can count.

“I remind myself that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

(9) You would have to, wouldn’t you? But the burden of proof is still on you. Absence of evidence might not be evidence of absence, but it also is a single mustard seed away from being nothing.

“You suppose that if you were God you would have revealed yourself in such a manner that there would have been absolutely no doubt what so ever”

(10) So why are you even trying to prove that anything in the bible is true? If God didn’t want to bother leaving enough proof (how dare you try to understand God’s mind, btw? Shame on you) that would (as it is) be quite an uphill struggle. God could have (according to you) provided solid unambiguous evidence of Jesus’ existance, but he didn’t even do that.

(11) Your whole argument is kind of amusing since every christian will *Pounce* on anything that even resembles of proof of anything in the bible. Suddenly faith is not enough! It is only when there is a lack of it that you make excuses for an incompetent god (well, you make it at other times too, but let’s keep to the subject).

“It does not follow that because God did not do it your way he did not do it”

(12) But I bet lots of people would agree that it would make me appear smarter than the christian god. Why is he so insecure about people’s belief in him? What entity would be so starved for attention?

“So, you have no empirical reason to reject them. All you have is generalizations founded upon your ordinary personal experience of a regular concurrence between particular causes & effects. You have offered no rational or logical argument for rejecting them.”

(13) If this is how you think, which it is not. Why do you not believe in all religions? Why wouldn’t you believe everything anyone told you? Do you believe that David Copperfield used real magic to make the statue of liberty turn invisible?

There is no reason to believe in magic, and every kid knows that. Common sense and lack of extraordinairy evidence win again. Next.

Then you go on about an argument about how I have faith in things (like gravity) and how that is somehow similar to imaginary friends. I am sorry, but I have seen one work, not the other.

“I ask you to consider this question, is empirical evidence complete?”

(14) Nothing is certain to 100%.

“Therefore, Science & the inductive scientific method is that which cannot fully disqualify natural anomalies (Miracles) as regular events.”

(15) So the logical conclusion is that every ghost story, every UFO-sighting, every prophecy about the end of the world and every religious miracle ever supposedly observed is true? Do you live in such a world? Because I sure don’t. I feel silly answering this point because it feels like I have answered it a few times already, but I’m a patient guy.

(16) How is your religion any more true than another religion?

As a Christian, I appreciate your criticisms. They force me to dig deeper into what I profess to believe. Yet, when you say things like

“Oh, and fulfilling prophecies? That’s easy to do as an author after the fact. I too could invent a fictional character based on Mithras and give him the wisdom of previous religions and have him fulfill whatever I wanted in my book. Hell, I’d even make it more spectacular (light shows, stars writing his name and the moon turning to cheese), but I would leave out things like giving the thumbs-up to slavery and eternal torture.”

Non sequitur. Does not follow.

I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not. Because . . . I wonder how a sect of zealots, following a lunatic named Jesus, could access & add “prophecies” to one of the Holiest objects revered by those persecuting them & eventually killing their leader.

I mean . . . did they sneak into each & every home & Synagogue & add in these “prophesies.” Did the Pharisees, who loathed Jesus & his followers, assist them in adding these additions to their TANAKH, was it a small band of sympathizers?

In any event these “prophecies,” this “wisdom of previous religions” added “after the fact” to give evidence to an invented “fictional character” remain in the TANAKH . . . the Hebrew Holy bible . . . the Holy Book of the people who are alleged to have killed by crucifixion said invented “fictional character” named Jesus.

Now if they were concerned enough about this invented “fictional character” to have killed him why would they not have removed the bogus “added wisdom” which was designed to allow “him fulfill whatever” & rise in notoriety & fool the Jewish people.

Me personally, If I were one of the High Priests, I would of definitely stopped the presses & recalled all the TANAKH’s these nutty rebels & their crazy leader had corrupted. Maybe I would have even destroyed these bibles removing any memory of this malignant cult’s poisonous propaganda . . . yet, they have not.

You do not seriously believe that these two religions, set aside the question of if what they espouse is true or not, right now I am asking if you are suggesting that early Christians convinced Hebrew scholars to add heretical text to their holy bible just so it could lend credence to a fringe movement & make its leader appear to be the son of God. Which these scholars would then persecute & kill for making claims supported by extra biblical texts they permitted in the first place.

It’s kind of weird. Jesus says . . . “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God. Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. I and the Father are one.” And then just as the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God, Jesus winks & says under his breath remember the deal. Oh yeah! They reply.
Anyway, you also say

“. . . but the proof of Jesus as a historical figure are quite slim when considering extra-biblical sources. One would think people would have noticed him and written about him more if he was the son of god and could do raise the dead. Then if you find actual proof of a guy named Jesus living in the middle east 2k years ago, then there is still the chore of proving he had magical powers. Not that easy, is it? I don’t envy christian apologetics one bit.”

I wonder if 2k years from now there will be any convincing evidence of Bill Gates existence. Now, according to your view, nothing necessarily counts as evidence if it lacks rigorous scientific scrutiny of the facts & then drawing out their logical implications.

Now, you will not deny that in any court case each side has its scientific experts to interpret, support, & question the veracity of the facts presented by the other to the jury.

This is because all facts & data are open to interpretation. Even the best evidence does not provide certainty that is not subject to error, but which is only highly probable at best . . . which beyond a reasonable doubt or by a preponderance of the evidence.

You cannot know that 2k years from now, any facts testifying to Bill Gates existence will not be questioned. You assume they could not.

Even now, all it would take to create a conspiracy theory questioning the existence of Lincoln is a relentless questioning of the facts surrounding him, their sources & their purpose.

If the veracity of these facts, their sources & their purposes are denied as being biased by a connection to a mysterious & powerful group, who meet together to perform secret rituals & whose goal it is to control the minds of Americans, then any evidence supporting the actual existence of old Abe will be not considered as such.

Sound familiar.

One fact is as easily denied as a thousand when the mind is not open to facts.

I remind myself that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

You say “One would think people would have noticed him and written about him more if he was the son of god and could do raise the dead.”

Why? Why would one think that?

You suppose that if you were God you would have revealed yourself in such a manner that there would have been absolutely no doubt what so ever . . . “light shows, stars writing his name and the moon turning to cheese.”

This is a non sequitur! It does not follow that because God did not do it your way he did not do it

You say “. . . there is still the chore of proving he had magical powers.”

You would agree that inductive reason rests on the assumptions that natural events will occur in the future as they have occurred in the past, that the future will be similar to the past & that no logical, necessary connection can be empirically observed to exist between a cause & its effect.

In other words, logical necessity is not matter or force which can be measured by scientific instruments. All that can be observed is one event being followed by another without any logical necessity. Therefore, cause & effect connections in natural events are based upon psychological states such as habit, custom, convention, expectation &/or hope.

The only ground you have for dismissing miracles is your unprovable, untestable, unverifiable & unrepeatable belief that all scientific laws will hold in the future as they have in the past; or more accurately, in this case, that the past should resemble the present & the future.

I’m assuming you haven’t done any experiments conclusively ruling out anomalous biblical events. You personally, were not there to observe, to test, to attempt to replicate or falsify Christ’s alleged miracles.

So, you have no empirical reason to reject them. All you have is generalizations founded upon your ordinary personal experience of a regular concurrence between particular causes & effects. You have offered no rational or logical argument for rejecting them.

As I stated above, if your rational argument is that today modern science has proven through the scientific method that all events are natural (effect) and are preceded by other events natural causes . . . all A’s are B’s, & that since all A’s cause B’s today, it is necessarily the case A has always preceded B in the past, then you assume, by faith & not by logical-empirical or demonstrable reasons, that things are now as they were in the past, also implying that the universe is ordered & contains a natural regularity or uniformity.

Yet these assumptions, as well as the underlying propositions . . . all A’s are B’s, any thing A (Natural event) is what it is and is not something else Non – A (Supernatural event or Miracle); No thing A (Matter) can be both what it is & not what it is at the same time and in the same respect (Non Matter); & any thing A (verifiable) is either A (verifiable) or it is not; cannot be subjected to the rigorous methods of science that you impose on Christians.

I ask you to consider this question, is empirical evidence complete?

If so, then all knowledge is certain. If not, evidence is only partial & its knowledge only probable.

Scientific evidence is incomplete & its knowledge uncertain . . . consider Induction, Conscience & Cosmology i.e., dark matter, & string theory.

The history of science has shown it to be advancing, progressing & developing . . . Scientific evidence is therefore incomplete & its knowledge only probable.

1. That which can only provide a partial & merely probable account of the universe & what are regular natural events is that which cannot fully disqualify natural anomalies (Miracles) as regular events.

2. Science & the inductive scientific method are that which provide only a partial & merely probable account of the universe & what are regular natural events.

3. Therefore, Science & the inductive scientific method is that which cannot fully disqualify natural anomalies (Miracles) as regular events.

Was there a time in the long history of the universe when contradiction did not exist, or has it always?

Now, I assume you hold that there are no transcendent, nonmaterial causes. The universe, not derived from, dependent upon, nor containing any supernatural, transcendent entities or beings, is the result of the chance motion of matter. It goes without saying, there are no souls, spirits, immaterial minds or forces to violate suspend or interfere with natural phenomena. The universe or nature being self-activating, self-existent, self-operating, self-dependent & self-explanatory is therefore all there is to reality.

I’m also guessing that you must also hold that all phenomena can be explained only by scientific methodology. In fact, knowledge, all knowledge is obtained only by logical-empirical methodologies of the sciences and that all understanding, prior to and independent of sense experience such as intuition is rejected.

And thus you must hold that mind is matter & therefore mental events (comprehensions, concepts & propositions) like ‘all men are mortal’, ‘a triangle is a three sided enclosed plane,’ and ‘there are no nonmaterial causes,’ are motion of matter, identical with neural physiochemical responses of the brain or mere effects of the body/brain.

1. If all mental events are that which are motion of matter, identical with neural physiochemical responses of the brain or mere effects of the body or the brain.

2. And all knowledge obtained by logical-empirical methodologies of the sciences including contradictions are that which are mental events

3. Then, all knowledge obtained by logical-empirical methodologies of the sciences, including contradictions, are that which are motion of matter, identical with neural physiochemical responses of the brain or mere effects of the body or the brain.

1. All brains are that which are necessarily subject to continuous random change in the course of natural novel rearrangement & reorganization.

2. All knowledge obtained by logical-empirical methodologies of the sciences, including contradictions, is that which is motion of matter; identical with neural physiochemical responses of the brain or mere effects of the body or the brain.

3. Therefore, All knowledge obtained by logical-empirical methodologies of the sciences, including contradictions, is that which is subject to continuous random change in the course of natural novel rearrangement & reorganization.

1. All that which is subject to continuous random change through novel rearrangement & reorganization is that which excludes necessity (what occurs by chance cannot occur by necessity).

2. Contradiction is that which is transcendent and by necessity false (not that which excludes transcendence & necessity).

3. Therefore, Contradiction is not that which is subject to continuous random change through novel rearrangement & reorganization (what occurs by chance cannot occur by necessity).

Or –

1. All that which excludes transcendent necessity (what occurs by chance cannot occur by necessity) is that which is subject to continuous random change through natural novel rearrangement & reorganization.

2. Contradiction is that which is transcendent & by necessity false (not that which excludes transcendence & necessity).

3. Therefore, Contradiction is that which is not subject to continuous random change through natural novel rearrangement & reorganization.

Anyway you look at it, in order for the proposition, ‘the bible is that which is contradictory,’ to be considered truthful, the terms must be meaningful.

You can provide no meaningful foundation for the term contradiction.

Now, you have already defined the bible as ‘that which is contradictory.’ And out of the hundreds of contradictions contained in the Bible, you have provided just a few examples to prove your argument which goes like this I am assuming . . .

‘Two propositions contradict each other when the truth of either one necessarily means the falsity of the other, and the falsity of either one necessarily means the truth of the other.’

First, I would like to point out, that if no part of the Bible is that which contains truth, then, it cannot be self contradictory.

A self contradiction, by definition is any statement or concept that both affirms and denies its basic meaning . . . ‘self caused,’ ‘causeless event,’ uncaused event, or ‘Jack is the only pathological liar you can trust to tell the truth.’

If the Bible is that which has no meaning, then it is not that which can meaningfully either affirm or deny its basic meaning.

Jack, who can utter nothing but meaningless, falsehoods, cannot be said to contradict himself unless he speaks a meaningful truth. Until then, all Jacks utterances are in fact, consistent & non contradictory.

This is true of the Bible as well. If the Bible is nothing but contradictions, in order for it to contradict itself, it must not . . . contradict itself.

So, in essence, what you are saying is either that some parts of the Holy Bible are true & others false or it is all false.

If it is all false it cannot contradict itself. Yet, if only some of it is false then, some of it is true. If some of it is true, then it is possible that the part, the only part which is true, could be the part that says . . . “They (those who deny the truthfulness of the Bible) are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”

If this were the case, then once again the Bible could not be said to contradict itself. Only that man contradicts himself when he says there is no God.

But, I think what you are arguing, is that the Bible is that which contradicts logical-scientific methodology, though your examples cannot establish this assertion.

The difficulty for you now, however, is the term contradictory/contradiction. As shown above, if you claim & stand by your claim, that it is true that the Bible is that which contradicts itself, you must admit that some knowledge, intuition, understanding &/or comprehension is that which is transcendent, necessary & therefore prior to and independent of sense experience which is subject to continuous random change through natural novel rearrangement & reorganization.

However, if you deny that contradiction is that which is transcendent, necessary & therefore prior to and independent of sense experience, then your claim, ‘Bible is nothing but contradictions’ is merely motion of matter in the brain, a mental event subject to continuous random change through natural novel rearrangement & reorganization.

You therefore, both affirm and deny the basic meaning of contradiction. Possibly necessarily false!

You affirm its transcendence & necessity to refute the Bible, as in . . . the revelation contained in the Judeo Christian Bible is now, has always been & will ever be that which is necessarily false. While at the same time denying the existence of universal & necessary, transcendent truths (contradiction), thus making all knowledge only probable, & your proposition a self contradiction.

Contradiction, at least as I understand it, is a proposition which asserts something as being either true or false, but not both at the same time, and in the same respect.

If, for example, one witness claims that Jones spent the night with his girlfriend & another says Jones went to a party, this cannot be a logical contradiction. For it is possible that Jones was somewhere else entirely say . . . Wal-Mart or with His family.

1. Some (witness A) is that which claims Jones was at his girlfriends apartment before work
2. Some other (Witness B) claims Jones was at a party before work & his girlfriend’s apartment after work.

Now, if 1 is false – that Jones was at his girlfriend’s apartment before work, then 2 must be true – that he was at a party before work & his girlfriends after work.

However, both can be true. Their inconsistency is not a contradiction but only contrariness or sub-contrariness because a contradiction requires a universal denial or affirmation. And as we can see according to this law of thought, the contradiction to 1 is . . . No (witness A) is that which claims Jones was at his girlfriend’s apartment before work.

Proposition 2, in relation to 1, is logically positing some (witness A) is not that which claims Jones was at his girlfriends apartment before work. The logical contradiction to this proposition would be . . . All witnesses are that which claim Jones was at his girlfriend’s apartment before work. We know this is false on the face of it because there are other witnesses denying this.

While working in social work, it was routine during investigations to receive two or more seemingly incompatible or inconsistent accounts of an event or series of events. It was a common mistake for new staff to assume these contrary reports were contradictions. They would get very excited thinking they had a slam dunk case. However, they had to be reminded that their case must protect the rights of the accused & stand up to rigorous examination in court.

In order to do this, they could not rule out other possibilities or commit the error of false alternatives which derives from neglecting to differentiate between contradictories & contraries. It was vital during investigations to remember that contradictions exclude gradations & rule out any middle ground between two opposing testimonies &/or facts.
To assume that when given two apparently different set of facts one must be true & the other false eliminates the possibilities of both being true or both being false. You don’t want the defense asking ‘Do the explanations you’ve provided exhaust all the alternative explanations?’; & poking huge holes in your case because you viewed the facts only as either black or white &amp, and assumed, without justification, too few alternative explanations for those facts. Facts are just simply facts until meaning & explanation is given to them.

A credible witness is one who is competent to give evidence, and is worthy of belief. In deciding upon the credibility of a witness, it is important to consider whether the witness is capable of knowing the thing thoroughly about which he testifies. Was the witness actually present during the events or series of events? Is the witness honestly describing the events as accurately as he/she knows? Does the witness have any reason or desire to deceive, or suppress or add to the truth?

For example, these are the snapshots of a day in the life of Homer Simpson recieved & reported by Kent Brockman, Bill & Marty of KBBL, Reverend Lovejoy, Arnie Pie, Lou & Eddie as described by the witnesses named below

1. Marge reports that Homer is at work because she witnessed him leave the house as he does every weekday morning. Contradicts 2, 4, 5, & 6.
2. Grimes reports that Homer, whose office is right next door, did not show up for work at the plant. Contradicts 1?
3. Burns & Smithers report Homer was at work. Contradicts 2 & 6?
4. Apu reports Homer picked up Lenny & Carl at the Kwik-E-Mart before the Duff man made his promotional appearance. Contradicts 1, 3, 5, & 6?
5. Barney reports he saw Homer pick up Lenny & Carl at Moes after the Duff mans appearance at the Kwik-E-Mart. Contradicts 4?
6. Otto reports he saw Homer with Fat Tony, Legs & Louie in Shelbyville. Contradicts 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5?

Do these accounts all contradict one another? Are they mutually exclusive or can they be compatible & logically related?

What if each witness provides a limited or incomplete snapshot that focuses on just one moment of a much larger series of events? Are the apparent inconsistent quality of these vignettes a sufficient condition to prove that no cohesive or unified panoramic can be formed by their combination?

Absolutely not!

Homer left for work as he always has (1 True). When he stopped at the Kwik-E-Mart for his doughnut & coffee, he picked up Lenny & Carl who told Him there was going to be a surprise party for him in Burns’ office when they got to the plant (3-4 True). Grimes remained in the control room next to Homers office diligently working away during the party (2 True). In the middle of the party Fat Tony, Legs & Louie persuade Homer, Lenny & Carl to sneak away for some fun in Shelbyville (6 True). Lenny & Carl picked up Moe in Homers car & followed Fat Tony, Legs, Louie & Homer to Shelbyville, passing Otto on the way. Some time later, they arrived back at Moes. After the Duff man made his promotional appearance, Barney arrived to see Homer honking his horn & Lenny & Carl exiting Moes to get into Homers car (5 True).