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Glad to see that you admit your position is really based on your bias against Christianity.
Look...there is much we accept without "hard evidence"..."we", including you.
Your claim that you, "require proof to believe in something"...is, of course, bogus. Then, after stating that about yourself as an argument...you threaten to cry to the board officials if those you are debating with critique that statement. Wow!
If you "require proof" before you can believe in something....I'd hate to be behind you at a 4-Way intersection during rush hour!! Hey...after all...you don't have "proof" whether the others will wait their turn and let you pass without crashing into you...and that's a potential matter of life and death. So, certainly you would "require proof"" before you would believe you could safely proceed into the intersection, right?
See? Most decisions in life...even those with your life, and the lives of others, hanging in the balance...are decided, and acted upon, with nothing more than common sense, intuition and perception, indirect evidence, weighing the "odds", etc...and believed void of "proof".
Well, Rule, you go to your church and I'll go to mine. You're quite the Christian apologist for a "pantheist". You're NO more a pantheist than I am the Queen of Sheba.
People should note that when a Christian has absolutely nothing of value to add to a discussion they resport to Ad hominem attacks.
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Ad hominem attacks can take the form of overtly attacking somebody, or more subtly casting doubt on their character or personal attributes as a way to discredit their argument. The result of an ad hom attack can be to undermine someone's case without actually having to engage with it.
BaptistFundie and GoldenRule fit that definition like a glove. They have absolutely NOTHING to bring to the table to show Paul was real so they resort to attacking me. It shows their awareness of the complete bankruptcy of Christianity.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 07-22-2017 at 08:55 AM..
I think some historians also believe that Mathew, Mark, Luke and John were only pen names
They are pen names. The gospels simply were not written by the persons who's name they bear. They are anonymous. They are not eye-witness accounts nor were they written by anyone that ever met any Jesus character. They were probably given the names by which we know them in the late 2nd century by Irenaeus of Lyon.
One of the great mysteries of early Christian history is that we know a fair amount about Paul and we know that James, the brother of Jesus, was a real person. Yet neither of them is a member of the Twelve. So you have these 12 people who were the first followers of Jesus, yet there’s nothing about them in any secular source.
One could build a case that Paul or Saul or whatever name this man went under began the Christian movement with a legend of a man named Jesus who was an ordinary man reputed to have performed magic and got crucified by the Romans. He then shaped this ordinary man into a Messiah and promoted him around the empire using only his word and no tangible proof whatsoever. He claimed he got his information from visions. Seers were a dime a dozen in those days. Frankly, there is nothing concrete about any of this and the truth is lost to the sand of time.
I require proof to believe in something, fundie. Christianity just doesn't supply that proof as I've amply demonstrated. It's a corrupt religion with a checkered past. I'm only interested in bringing the truth of that corruption to light. If you have no problem believing in a religion with no foundation then go right ahead. But others should know the truth before they waste their short lives following a man who likely never lived.
Prove to me that Alexander the Great really lived and was not just the stuff of legends.
^Just for fun, Why Caperneum, the Essene center there was around Mt Carmel? Heck, even the one in Egypt was touched on in legend and John the Baptist's base on the Dead Sea is obvious.
Lessee, that would be one fisherman, one tax collector, one physician and the disciple of another fisherman just to pick nits
It is tempting to take Matthew (who at least is the more sound of the synoptics on geography, if nothing else) 9.1, followed by the paralytic, Jairus' daughter and calling Matthew/Levi identified as events in Capernaum as signifying that was Jesus Own city, nut too much might be hung on that.
Bethlehem is Out, it was not Joseph's "Own City' nor that of Jesus, and you will probably be aware of the debate about whether Nazareth even existed at the time. Aside from that, I am struck by how much is based in Capernaum. He does nothing in Nazareth. The synoptics have the locals amazed and incredulous and Jesus couldn't work many miracles there, more as an excuse for him doing everything in Capernaum. Even in John all he does in Nazareth is leave for Capernaum. Note too, that damn near all his disciples were from there and they were with him before the Baptism, let alone calling.
We can probably discount the Johannine account of Jesus teaching in the synagogue as much as we can reject Luke's anachronistic, socially incredible and geographically unfeasible Nazareth assassination -attempt, even without being debunked by Luke and Mark having the 'Is this not Joseph's son' (var.) remark with not a hint of Luke's improbable fantasy.
So it's really what's more probable when Nazareth becomes improbable. It isn't important for the story, but if the gospels are wrong about as simple thing like Nazareth, how can we trust them on the dubious stuff?
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Lessee, that would be one fisherman, one tax collector, one physician and the disciple of another fisherman just to pick nits
Yes, that is indeed a nitpick. The point is that with a grand of Pilate's Auxiliaries and not just a few "White -faced temple police" as one apologist put it in skipping over this point as quickly as possible. Whether he had three fisherman and a tax collector, one fisherman, one tax collector, a physician and the disciple of another fisherman or four fishermen, two Kana zealots, one quite important brother, one doubting Thomas, one other Judas, one tax collector and a polemicist up a gum tree, if he hadn't 5,000 Bethsaidan rebels with him, plus whatever hotheads he could pick up at John's old recruiting -ground, he might have saved himself the time of knotting his little whip and seen about ordering a dozen coffins instead.
Prove to me that Alexander the Great really lived and was not just the stuff of legends.
Alexander never threatened people with eternal hellfire if they didn't believe in him, jeff. That's the difference.
I think if a person is going to make claims they are speaking for Jesus they'd better have damn good evidence they really lived. There should be so much evidence for them that no atheist could ever refute they existed. That would include Roman records of his trial AND records of his execution. For someone as notorious as Paul these certainly would have survived and would be in the Vatican vaults somewhere. No such records exist.
But for me here's the single biggest piece of evidence Paul's epistles were being written by several indivuals:
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1 Timothy 4:10 For to this end we labor and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.
then this:
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2 Thessalonians 1:9 taking vengeance with flaming fire on those who...shall be punished with everlasting destruction
So in the first Paul promises salvation for ALL men and in the second he promises eternal burning fire and destruction for those who don't believe in Jesus. Paul is either a Liar, a Lunatic or....a Legend. Reading those two verses together I used to believe he was a lunatic. Now I believe he was just a legend concocted by churchmen to led credibility to their dying/rising god Jesus.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 07-22-2017 at 10:36 AM..
Prove to me that Alexander the Great really lived and was not just the stuff of legends.
How many countries does your man-god have named after him. Alexander's actions and movements are fully verifiable. We have thousands of accounts verifying his existence from both his allies and his enemies regarding, his travels, his battles and the countries he conquered - as opposed to one reference to your man-god...a source that has been proven over and over again as not much more than fable, fiction and fraud. There is verifiable archaeological evidence for Alexander's burning of the palace at Persepolis. His conquests left dynasties.
For your Jesus, on the other hand, there is no verifiable evidence to back the literal interpretation of the Bible. One would expect that zombies wandering through the streets of a major city of the Roman Empire would have excited some comment other than by one single gospel author.
Assuming that Jesus did exist historically, he didn't do a lot that affected the world. he was at best, the leader of an obscure religious sect. On the other hand, Alexander commanded tens of thousands of men and conquered countries stretching from Corfu to Karachi....and all historically verifiable.
Also, if Alexander didn't exist, why do you apologists love to claim a fulfilled prophecy for Tyre by insisting that Alexander not Nebuchadnezzar fulfilled the prophecy for the destruction of Tyre?? You yourself have actually argued on this very forum that it was Alexander that fulfilled the prophecy.
Do you want to go down that road? We can say that Alexander fulfilled the Tyre prophecy and therefore he must have existed or we can say that Alexander didn't exist and therefore the Tyre prophecy was about the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar.... and he failed to destroy it - so the prophecy was a dismal failure.
How many countries does your man-god have named after him. Alexander's actions and movements are fully verifiable. We have thousands of accounts verifying his existence from both his allies and his enemies regarding, his travels, his battles and the countries he conquered - as opposed to one reference to your man-god in a source that has proven over and over again as not much more than fable, fiction and fraud.
Still. I suppose if you want to claim that Alexander didn't exist, it's sure going to screw up the apologetics that insist that it was Alexander rather than Nebby that fulfilled the prophecy of Tyre...huh?
Plus as I said about Aristotle , who was Alexander's teacher, it does not affect our lives if he did not exist. It seems like one of the tactics of some , and by some I mean some not all, Christians is that instead of showing proof that Jesus lived they instead just ask for proof for a whole slew of historical figures as a deflection. Personally I don't care if they can or cannot prove that Jesus existed as a person as his existence would not prove him son of God. I thought that it was faith in him that they have but they wish to use their faith as proofs.
For myself I couldn't care less if a Christian chooses or doesn't choose to have faith in someone who never lived. It's a free country. What I speak out against are the gullible youngsters who have been hoodwinked by conniving churchmen and pastors who convince them to join Christianity on an emotional and psychological high. These conniving conmen make the kids believe this is the Holy Spirit affecting their lives when it's really just a surge of evolutionary emotion. They say, "Look at the tears you shed. That's the Holy Spirit convicting you of your sins. Now join us. We have the answers to all you seek." It's a power-trip for these religious conmen. They love having complete control over a young gullible person's life so that they can manipulate them to do their will.
My high school girlfriend fell in with Children of God who used bullying, scare tactics of hellfire, guilt and shame to try to keep her with them after we ran into them on the streets of Hollywood back in the 70's. Self-righteous screwed-up scum, the bunch of them.
. I thought that it was faith in him that they have but they wish to use their faith as proofs.
They always have done. They also seem to think that 'faith' is something to be applauded and held up for respect when in fact, it is the most idiotic reason for belief that one could ever imagine... and should be ridiculed not respected.
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You're NO more a pantheist than I am the Queen of Sheba. 
that is indeed a nitpick. The point is that with a grand of Pilate's Auxiliaries and not just a few "White -faced temple police" as one apologist put it in skipping over this point as quickly as possible. Whether he had three fisherman and a tax collector, one fisherman, one tax collector, a physician and the disciple of another fisherman or four fishermen, two Kana zealots, one quite important brother, one doubting Thomas, one other Judas, one tax collector and a polemicist up a gum tree, if he hadn't 5,000 Bethsaidan rebels with him, plus whatever hotheads he could pick up at John's old recruiting -ground, he might have saved himself the time of knotting his little whip and seen about ordering a dozen coffins instead.
