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Now I know you are being deliberately obtuse, there is nothing anyone writes that is not based on belief, just because someone does not use the words I believe or in my opinion does not mean someone is stating things as fact.
Here look at a couple of your own posts.
are you really claiming that as fact? or is it just your opinion?
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so is it really a fact that the James passage is speaking of Jesus son of Damneus, or is that just your opinion?
Fact or opinion?
This is the Santa, saint Nickolas thing all over again. When I read your statements of fact I have enough common sense to realize you are just stating your opinion or what you believe, you on the other hand do not seem to have enough common sense to be able to do the same thing. Get a grip Raf.
Your statement belief does not need proof is just plain idiotic. No one anywhere then needs to have the BOP. I believe what Tacitus wrote is authentic to the letter, you believe what Tacitus wrote is just hearsay. Good no one has to prove anything. debate over.
You seem to be under the impression that what Christians write and talk about is base on facts, well I got news for you Raf. Christians do NOT write and talk based on fact, everything the christian write and talk about is based on their belief, in other words it is based on faith.
Thus according to you the Christian NEVER has the BOP, thus will always come out the winner in any debate just as I showed with the Jesus walking on water scenario. Belief that has no BOP will always trump every argument raised against it.
You simply set all atheist points against the bible back to the stone age with your idiotic stance that belief does not need proof. All because you did not want to, and could not prove anything you wrote.
I must also point out that in this statement( below) you actually say what you believe to be FACT.
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They also loose sight of the fact that such a man as Jesus would not have warranted a trail by the likes of Pilate. Pilate had better things to do than conduct trails of common criminals...not to mention that only Roman citizens were entitled to a trail.
The historicity of Jesus is not an issue among academics irregardless of whether such historians and scholars are skeptics or not. Those who are adamant that Jesus did not exist or was a fictitious character are relying not on facts but on belief. A belief rooted in animosity which most often is used as a means to discredit Christianity.
"I don’t think there’s any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus …. We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period.-Prof Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina
"The information about Jesus which can be gleaned from sources other than the gospels – a few references in Josephus, one in Tacitus, and the information implicit in Paul’s letters, for example – does little more than confirm the historical reality of Jesus and the general time and place of his activity. …. He was a Galilean, and it is likely that his principal teaching and healing activity was in Galilee, but he was executed in Jerusalem. …. There are other facts about Jesus which are equally certain …."-WD Davies & EP Sanders, Jesus: from the Jewish Point of View,in The Cambridge History of Judaism Vol 3.
"Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E.”-Prof James Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary
"Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it [the theory that Jesus didn’t exist] as effectively refuted.”-Robert Van Voorst, Western Theological Seminary
"The historical evidence for Jesus himself is extraordinarily good. …. From time to time people try to suggest that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, but virtually all historians of whatever background now agree that he did”-NT Wright
The Apostle Paul did not say a lot about Jesus (an argument sometimes used by sceptics, but this is an argument from silence and therefore invalid without positive evidence). But Paul did know about Jesus, and was unlikely to write a lot of historical detail in letters.
The gospels are too early for invention (too many people would have remembered the real facts), and their accurate references to Palestinian geography would not have been possible if the stories were invented later.
The development of the early christians’ understanding of Jesus which can be seen in the gospels (another argument sometimes used) is not sufficient to justify the belief that they were inventions.
No early opponents of Christianity, whether pagan or Jew, ever denied that Jesus truly lived, or even questioned it.
Scholars are generally agreed that references to Jesus in the Roman historian Tacitus (early second century) and the Jewish historian Josephus (late first century) are both genuine, though some parts of Josephus appear to be later additions.
Most arguments that Jesus wasn’t a historical figure have come from people opposed to Christianity and thus not unbiased, whereas scholars of all viewpoints from atheists to Christians accept the historicity of Jesus.
Proponents of the mythical Jesus view have not been able to offer any credible hypothesis that explains the stories of Jesus and the birth of Christianity.-Jesus Outside the New Testament by Robert Van Voorst
Scholars who specialize in the origins of Christianity agree on very little, but they do generally agree that it is most likely that a historical preacher, on whom the Christian figure "Jesus Christ" is based, did exist. The numbers of professional scholars, out of the many thousands in this and related fields, who don't accept this consensus, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Many may be more cautious about using the term "historical fact" about this idea, since as with many things in ancient history it is not quite as certain as that. But it is generally regarded as the best and most parsimonious explanation of the evidence and therefore the most likely conclusion that can be drawn.
The opposite idea—that there was no historical Jesus at all and that "Jesus Christ" developed out of some purely mythic ideas about a non-historical, non-existent figure—has had a checkered history over the last 200 years, but has usually been a marginal idea at best. Its heyday was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when it seemed to fit with some early anthropological ideas about religions evolving along parallel patterns and being based on shared archetypes, as characterized by Sir James Frazer's influential comparative religion study The Golden Bough (1890). But it fell out of favor as the twentieth century progressed and was barely held by any scholars at all by the 1960s.
More recently the "Jesus Myth" hypothesis has experienced something of a revival, largely via the internet, blogging, and "print on demand" self-publishing services. But its proponents are almost never scholars, many of them have a very poor grasp of the evidence, and almost all have clear ideological objectives. Broadly speaking, they fall into two main categories: (1) New Agers claiming Christianity is actually paganism rebadged and (2) anti-Christian atheist activists seeking to use their "exposure" of historical Jesus scholarship to undermine Christianity. Both claim that the consensus on the existence of a historical Jesus is purely due to some kind of iron-grip that Christianity still has on the subject, which has suppressed and/or ignored the idea that there was no historical Jesus at all.
In fact, there are some very good reasons there is a broad scholarly consensus on the matter and that it is held by scholars across a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds, including those who are atheists and agnostics (e.g. Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Paula Fredriksen) and Jews (e.g. Geza Vermes, Hyam Maccoby)-Tim O'Neill (Tim O'Neill is a historian who also happens to be an atheist).
Your statement belief does not need proof is just plain idiotic. No one anywhere then needs to have the BOP. I believe what Tacitus wrote is authentic to the letter, you believe what Tacitus wrote is just hearsay. Good no one has to prove anything. debate over.
Well that's a relief then.
It's your beliefthat that Josephus and Tacitus are kosher.
It is my belief that they are not.
It is your belief that there was a HJ.
It is my belief that there was not.
The historicity of Jesus is not an issue among academics irregardless of whether such historians and scholars are skeptics or not. Those who are adamant that Jesus did not exist or was a fictitious character are relying not on facts but on belief. A belief rooted in animosity which most often is used as a means to discredit Christianity.
"I don’t think there’s any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus …. We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period.-Prof Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina
One doesn't need to go any further than this. False. We don't have ANY verifiable evidence at all. Evidence of Jesus
Now I know you are being deliberately obtuse, there is nothing anyone writes that is not based on belief,....
Au contraire. There are many things written that are based on verifiable evidence and not belief. We don't just believe that gravity makes objects fall, we have verifiable evidence to prove it.
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just because someone does not use the words I believe or in my opinion does not mean someone is stating things as fact.
Here look at a couple of your own posts.
Fair enough. Then everything written in this thread has been opinion yes?
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Your statement belief does not need proof is just plain idiotic.
No it isn't. A person can say that they believe that mermaids exist but they have no BoP to show that mermaids exist. It is simply a belief that is personal to them. If however, they say that mermaids certainly do exist and that they see them, interact with them or that mermaids have control of our lives then they have to show that that is true. They make assertions that they have to prove. If you accuse me of stealing your wallet, all I have to do is deny it, because the BoP is on you to prove the accusation. I have no BoP to prove the accusation false.
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You seem to be under the impression that what Christians write and talk about is base on facts, well I got news for you Raf. Christians do NOT write and talk based on fact, everything the christian write and talk about is based on their belief, in other words it is based on faith.
I would disagree strongly. You only have to read some of the threads here to know that most of them are not doing that. They are telling us that it's all real. They are telling us that their god heals them or helps them find a parking place They tell us that their gods speak to them and that if we don't believe in their gods existence we will have to pay for it in the end.
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Thus according to you the Christian NEVER has the BOP, thus will always come out the winner in any debate just as I showed with the Jesus walking on water scenario. Belief that has no BOP will always trump every argument raised against it.
You still aren't getting it are you. Oh well. Hopefully someone else can explain how it works better than I.
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You simply set all atheist points against the bible back to the stone age with your idiotic stance that belief does not need proof.
Au contraire. There are many things written that are based on verifiable evidence and not belief. We don't just believe that gravity makes objects fall, we have verifiable evidence to prove it.
Fair enough. Then everything written in this thread has been opinion yes?
No it isn't. A person can say that they believe that mermaids exist but they have no BoP to show that mermaids exist. It is simply a belief that is personal to them. If however, they say that mermaids certainly do exist and that they see them, interact with them or that mermaids have control of our lives then they have to show that that is true. They make assertions that they have to prove. If you accuse me of stealing your wallet, all I have to do is deny it, because the BoP is on you to prove the accusation. I have no BoP to prove the accusation false.
I would disagree strongly. You only have to read some of the threads here to know that most of them are not doing that. They are telling us that it's all real. They are telling us that their god heals them or helps them find a parking place They tell us that their gods speak to them and that if we don't believe in their gods existence we will have to pay for it in the end.
You still aren't getting it are you. Oh well. Hopefully someone else can explain how it works better than I.
It doesn't.
Have to do it this way, not my computer.
How do you know it is gravity that makes objects fall and not some god who does not like apples? Can you prove it is gravity and not some god.
Yes
It does send them back to the stone age Raf. because the atheist simply cannot prove anything that someone believes to be false if belief has no burden of proof. The atheist simply cannot win. Go ahead try my little experiment about Jesus walking on water, I will play the guy who has no burden of proof and you the guy who says it is a fact that Jesus could not have walked on water. Thus the burden of proof is on you because you say it is a fact.
So go ahead and prove to me that Jesus could not walk on water.(If you play this out with me you will see you cannot win)
You might strongly disagree Raf, but every point you bring up there is because they believe God did those things. Let me put it this way, I have a bad cold, pray about it and the cold goes away. I would say God healed me, Now why would I say that? because I believed it to be true. Everything the Christian speak about , write about is based on belief and it is because you do not understand that it is all about belief you see Christians talking about fact.
How do you know it is gravity that makes objects fall and not some god who does not like apples? Can you prove it is gravity and not some god.
Not worth an answer.
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Yes
Good. Then we can dismiss all the arguments in it.
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It does send them back to the stone age Raf. because the atheist simply cannot prove anything that someone believes to be false if belief has no burden of proof.
Some beliefs can be proven wrong. For example: If you believe that holding you head under water for 24 hours won't drown you, I could prove you wrong. If I asked you to prove it by holding your head under water you could say...it's just something I believe, you would have no BoP. OTOH, if you insisted that you could do it and told me that it's true becaus every night you sleep under water without the aid od breathing apparatus, then you take on the BoP...because you are stating that what you are telling me is a truth. By the same token, if you tell me as a 'truth' that everything in the Bible is true then you need to show that. Your problem is that you are still not grasping what the BoP is.
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The atheist simply cannot win. Go ahead try my little experiment about Jesus walking on water, I will play the guy who has no burden of proof and you the guy who says it is a fact that Jesus could not have walked on water. Thus the burden of proof is on you because you say it is a fact.
That would be easy. First, if you are proposing the existence of Bible Jesus, I simply have to ask you to show verifiable evidence for the existence of Bible Jesus. Existence is primary, what he did or didn't do is secondary. So the BoP falls on you to prove the existence of Jesus.
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You might strongly disagree Raf, but every point you bring up there is because they believe God did those things. Let me put it this way, I have a bad cold, pray about it and the cold goes away. I would say God healed me, Now why would I say that? because I believed it to be true.
Why don't you get it yet?? If you say that you believe that your god healed you then fine, I would have nothing to argue about. It is your belief. If you say the you know that it was your god that healed you then you will need to show that your positive assertion can be proven.
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Everything the Christian speak about , write about is based on belief and it is because you do not understand that it is all about belief you see Christians talking about fact.
Perhaps you don't know Christians. How many posts have you seen here asking Christians why they need 'faith' when they are making assertions that their god really does exists? How many posts have you seen where Christians are proclaiming the 'Truth' (with a capital 'T' because they think it has more effect)? They are not acting on a belief or faith. They are proclaiming that it is TRUE and when they do that, the BoP falls heavily on their shoulders to PROVE that what they say is true, actually IS.
Now fella. I have wasted enough time on trying to explain the BoP to you. The BoP falls on the positive claim of 'truth'.
If you say I stole your wallet, the BoP falls on you to prove that I stole your wallet.
If you say you sleep under water without drowning, the BoP falls on you to prove that you sleep under water without drowning.
If you claim that it's true that Jesus walked on water then you need to show that it's true that Jesus walked on water. All I need to say is that there is no verifiable evidence to show that people can walk on water and as such, the status quo prevails until someone can show verifiable evidence that people can walk on water. Sorry but that's the way it is. Perhaps someone else will waste a few days trying to get it into your head but I'm done with trying to explain it to you further.
You asked me if Jesus walked on water. I said I never say something is impossible, improbable yes, impossible no.
By your simple statement "belief does not require proof" I have had to re-evaluate my statement and now believe Jesus walked on water. Remember you said "belief does not require proof" thus belief trumps evidence every single time.
Let me give you a scenario about "belief does not require proof" from your question did Jesus walk on water.
How would science test whether Jesus walked on water or not.
One method would be try and replicate someone walking on water.
So lets say 100 scientist got together and had 2000 people try to walk on water.
What the scientist no doubt would observe is that all 2000 people failed to walk on water. Thus they conclude based on the evidence of the experiment that Jesus could not have walked on water.
Before I finish with it, I forgot to answer this. You simply do not understand science. The scientists would not conclude that Jesus could not have walked on water. They would conclude that there is no verifiable evidence that people can walk on water....and until someone came along and proved that conclusion wrong then people should conclude, based on the verifiable evidence available, that people cannot walk on water.
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So the secular world was very happy, they now had verifiable proof that Jesus did not walk on water.
Just like most atheist do not say 'Gods do not exist'(because it is something that cannot be proven), science would not say 'Jesus could not have walked on water' (because it is something that cannot be proven). As most atheist say... 'I have no belief that gods exist because I see no evidence that points to their existence', science would say 'we have no reason to believe that Jesus walked on water because there is no verifiable evidence that people can walk on water'
So your daft scenario is not true or even realistic.
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But............ Did they have verifiable proof that Jesus did not walk on water? Absolutely....... NOT.
Why absolutely NOT?
Of course not. You are arguing against a straw-man. What they would have is verifiable evidence that normal people do not appear to be able to walk on water. But you are introducing a 'supernatural' characteristic that only this Jesus character had because he was alleged to be the son of a god. So your problem hasn't changed...
Those that proclaim that it is true that gods exist have to show that it's true.
Those that proclaim that it's true that Jesus was the son of a god have to show that it's true.
Those that proclaim that it as true that Jesus walked on water have to show that it's true.
Those that proclaim it as their personal belief do not have to show that it's true.
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They tell us that their gods speak to them and that if we don't believe in their gods existence we will have to pay for it in the end.
