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There is undeniable proof where a person would be a madman if he denied the God of the bible. SEEK the kingdom of God. That is the point, a person has to be willing to commit and most people are not willing to commit, but God is not without proof to those who earnestly seek him, and what good would the struggle be if God just appeared to everyone to prove he exists? There is no light without darkness, no yin without yang, it is what makes us work, No Hannibal without Thrill
I mean, look how much good Thrill is for Christians, he gets them all worked up to start studying and thinking and such.
Its not even that. Its about what traits are we assigning? anybody looking at just our place in this system will see something. About the only one's that "see no creditable evidence" for anything are willfully denying the evidence.
That is NOT what I said, Raf. I said his existence is accepted DESPITE those miraculous claims but Christ is not.
That's because we have verifiable evidence that Alexander existed and absolutely none for your man-god.
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Clearly, we would EXPECT to find a great deal of historical evidence for such a leader as #1, not so much for #2 in that era. Yet, you expect to find the same kind of evidence from eras where recording insignificant people like #2 would not be expected to happen.
...and again you ignore the fact that, at a time when people were highly superstitious, even more than America is today, a man wandering around walking on water, raising the dead and healing the sick would have been big news and yet, when Philo of Alexandria wrote Gaius (Caligula) around c. 40 AD, and spent a whole paragraph complaining what a miserable prat Pontius Pilate had been, he never once mentions that Pilate may have killed someone who "multitudes" hailed as the Messiah. Even more amazingly, he never mentions that the man that Pilate killed supposedly "came back to life" which would seem to be a pretty clear indication that "god or the gods" were not happy with Pilate's action.
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BUT, as to who has more significance to our lives TODAY, #2 wins hands down.
No he doesn't because only 1/3rd of the world believe he even existed. For 2/3 of the world's population, your man-god is an insignificant nonentity, a character from mythology. There are far more people who accept the existence of Alexander that accept the existence of your man-god.
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You should ask yourself why that is after so many millennia. And don't insult my intelligence by claiming it is entirely the result of coercion across centuries, cultures, nations, generations and millennia!
It IS a result of coercion. Christianity was an obscure blood sect right up to the middle of the 4th century. It was only following Constantine making the religion legal (after constant ear-bashing from his mother) and Theodosius I making it the official religion of the Empire in the late 4th century, that it took off.
...but if you want to play that game, why don't you tell us why Hinduism has endured for 2000 years longer that Christianity and is still going strong today. by your logic, it must be because it's true huh?
This is simply making an exception for the gospels (likely for the sake of your agenda) that historians do not apply to history of that era in general.
Or not an agenda, but looking at how historians actually work.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
Within a generation or two of the events is considered fairly early, and most history isn't written by eye witnesses. Refer again to the biographies of Alexander the Great.
The gospels are not eyewitness accounts (even the title tells us this).
Although the accounts we have today were written over 400 years after Alexander the Great died, they still quoted people who actually served with Alexander the Great. People like Ptolemy (a general of Alexander who later ruled Egypt) and Aritobulus (an engineer who went on some of Alexander's campaigns). So they are using eyewitness accounts, something we do not have for Jesus.
I think someone said we have coins that prove that Alexander the Great lived. Show us a coin that has Jesus' head on it.
Not only coins, several cities built on his command, and eyewitness accounts quoted by later historians. For Jesus, we have stories invented out of the OT.
I have to ask myself why people keep on treating the two as if the evidence for one is as good for the other.
There are numerous surviving ancient Greek and Latin sources on Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, as well as some Asian texts. The five main surviving accounts are by Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, and Justin.[1] In addition to these five main sources, there is the Metz Epitome, an anonymous late Latin work that narrates Alexander's campaigns from Hyrcania to India. Much is also recounted incidentally by other authors, including Strabo, Athenaeus, Polyaenus, Aelian, and others. Strabo, who gives a summary of Callisthenes, is an important source for Alexander's journey to Siwah. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...nder_the_Great
That the church renamed a collection of documents "The New Testament" doesn't magically strip them of their reliability, at least on certain points.
True, THAT is not why the NT is regarded as unreliable.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
As Ehrman and others have said, there's more evidence that Jesus existed than most figures of antiquity. That's just the fact;
A 'fact' based on Christian apologetics and invented histories.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
That would be the man they call "Jesus of Nazareth". And we've plenty of evidence for him, far more than to stop at "Oh it's possible a man named Jesus existed"
Evidence such as Christian apologetics and invented histories.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
Yes! Sort of like the mythicists. They deny evidence and marginalize themselves unnecessarily, for the sake of an agenda that's actually harmed by their arguments (not helped).
Agenda? Well, if you would rather poison the well than actually look at the arguments. You have also destroyed the whole field of history, as several historians also accept Jesus did not exist.
Seems to me that was the point, that we should look at the evidence and not think that the presence of "supernatural stuff" undermines it.
Very true. So let's looks at the evidence for Jesus. What do you see?
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
And the fact that his biographies were written some 400 years after his death doesn't affect the reliability of those biographies.
Yes, it does. Why don't you sit down and try to write a biography of Peter Stuyvesant without using any reference materials. See how far you get before you start making stuff up.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
That the church renamed a collection of documents "The New Testament" doesn't magically strip them of their reliability, at least on certain points. As Ehrman and others have said, there's more evidence that Jesus existed than most figures of antiquity. That's just the fact; and it doesn't matter that the church later claimed that evidence as its own for the purposes of constructing "The Holy Bible".
Ehrman has a job to protect. His stand on Jesus is tempered by his desire to keep his professorship. He's been allowed by the Board to write about the unreliability of the gospels but that's about it. And doesn't the fact that the council at Nicaea picked and chose what to include in the Bible strictly according to what THEY wanted included in it bother you in the least?
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
You know that isn't what people normally mean by "Jesus never existed". I don't know why you keep wording it that way when you know it's misleading.
Jesus existed in two possible ways: as an ordinary man or as the unique son of God. We have no evidence for either outside the gospels. Ehrman argues an ordinary man named Jesus existed and was crucified. He has never argued the latter. I maintain it's possible an ordinary man named Jesus existed. In fact, hundreds of men named Jesus existed at that time. You tell me which of them is the subject of the gospels and show me some proof why you chose that particular one out of the hundreds of others who were claiming to be the Messiah at that time.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
That would be the man they call "Jesus of Nazareth". And we've plenty of evidence for him, far more than to stop at "Oh it's possible a man named Jesus existed"
Show me the evidence outside the New Testament.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
I would actually agree with this, with some minor alterations. I think it follows logically that if a god wanted us to believe now that Jesus was his son, etc., he would have left us evidence (well, actually, absolute proof) of that. But you can see that when we take that statement and make it logically airtight, you don't have much of an argument there against Christianity...
When the argument is airtight that's all you need to prove Jesus does NOT have God's stamp of approval. What else could you possibly need to prove to yourself Jesus is just an ordinary man?????
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
And of course, it's not being convinced that god exists and Jesus was his son that would save us (on the hell doctrine), it's coming to accept god and Jesus and follow them, etc. Some argue that it's possible the maximal number of people are coming to Christianity (and being saved) with the way the world is arranged now, and that making god's existence/Jesus' relation to god more obvious wouldn't increase that number. They don't have to prove that is the case, mind you, just that it's possible, and that draws out the failure of this sort of anti-theistic argument.
If people can live on possibilities and base their entire way of living on a possibility then God bless them. 50% chance they are serving God; 50% chance they are throwing their lives away. I play those odds in Vegas betting red and black on the roulette table and usually walk away losing all my money eventually.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
And naturally, if Universalism is true, there's no reason to demand that we know the full truth about Jesus before we die either way.
That's another argument. If God is deist then of course nobody goes to hell. We're all here not to serve God. That's just Christian hogwash. We're here to grow into better people. We get one shot and then go to a particular level in the afterlife where we live in communities of like-minded spirits who have grown at the same level as us.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
I agree that that's a bad (or "idiotic") argument. But I feel the same way about a lot of what the anti-theists have to say.
I'm not anti-theist. I am an agnostic deist.
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Originally Posted by Vic 2.0
Yes! Sort of like the mythicists. They deny evidence and marginalize themselves unnecessarily, for the sake of an agenda that's actually harmed by their arguments (not helped).
I dont classify myself as a mythicist. I can accept there might have been a Jesus upon which the gospels were based. But the gospels were written 100 years after this Jesus. Which one did they base the NT on, or did they just pick one out of the raffle wheel and go with him?
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