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Old 09-03-2022, 08:55 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,823 posts, read 13,361,179 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by QuakerBaker View Post
Thrillobyte is saying that he knows more than the expert historians on the existence of Jesus. The historians are vouching for Jesus as having existed, not necessarily that he was divine. Thrillobyte was claiming that Jesus did not exist.
Exactly, historicists are not arguing for or against divinity.

I have discussed this with professional historians and what you must understand about their methods is that they are not scientific (and that is not a disparagement, it is just a different methodology). They are simply trying to reach a consensus about what is most likely so / least likely not so, and in the case of the available documentation about Jesus and the Apostles and the early church, they are working with VERY thin evidence. The gospels themselves are not disinterested third party accounts; they have skin in the game and were produced precisely for the purpose of promoting their own narratives. So historians are working with a very few glancing independent statements and conclude that some guy named Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate (the latter being established quite well as an actual historical person way more than Jesus). Most of this hinges on Tacitus (who ironically was disdainful and slanderous of Christianity) and what he meant by Chrestus vs Christ and so forth.

So I do not think it accurate to say that historians are "vouching" for the existence of Jesus so much as they have a consensus view that he most probably existed. For them to truly "vouch" for that, they'd have to have far more evidence than they actually possess. Also, far fewer of them would have to directly or indirectly owe their tenure to vested interests of religious institutions.
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Old 09-03-2022, 08:56 AM
 
9,345 posts, read 4,301,683 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mountainrose View Post
[/b][

I appreciate all the time you spent on research and your commitment to logic and facts.
The inherent problem here is for many people historical facts don’t really matter when their
relationship to God/Jesus/Spirit is EXPERIENCIAL, not based on man’s accounting of it or evidentiary facts.

The closest I can come to a similarity is a biology professor in college I had spent weeks proving to us that LOVE was actually only a biological human evolution in protein synthesis that evolved for enhancement of survival. When we feel love, it’s just protein synthesizing.

Okay, for someone who has never EXPERIENCED the love of their child, their husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, their parents, their dog — then that FACT seems relevant. But for those of us who have EXPERIENCED profound love — well, the protein synthesis FACT doesn’t matter because we know that LOVE is EXPERIENCED on a different plane than the mind and the factual analytical level.

Sorry, That is as close to the God and spiritual experience as I can explain — it transcends religions, history, or facts.
But unless you’ve EXPERIENCED it, it doesn’t hold up to logic and facts.
As an atheist I roo have felt the love of a spouse, dogs and cats. No need for a God or a belief in a God to experience love. A few years back a Bible believing Christian told me I could not truly love my wife because I did not believe in Gid. Ibam still shocked and bewildered that any rheist could actually believe in that nonsense. The last time I brought that up I was told that am was still angry and upse but in reality it is just shocking that a person can believe that non believers do not hav human emotions.
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Old 09-03-2022, 09:03 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,823 posts, read 13,361,179 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by badlander View Post
... it is just shocking that a person can believe that non believers do not have human emotions.
Not really. They have no evidence with which to discredit us so they have to otherize us -- and what better way to do that than to dehumanize us by giving us an emotion-ectomy? Authoritarians everywhere will always begin with dehumanization of opponents.

It is also standard operating procedure for authoritarian believers to ascribe their personal qualities not to themselves but to god, so it is perfectly reasonable in between their ears that we cannot have those god-given qualities since we reject god. The irony of course is that they are ignoring their own scriptures, which say that god causes the sun to shine and rain to fall on the just AND the unjust. So nothing says god doesn't give all persons blessings such as the ability to love, and there's no basis to claim that he somehow removes that ability if they do not accept some random sect's asserted god-truths.
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Old 09-03-2022, 09:05 AM
 
18,228 posts, read 16,841,591 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by james112 View Post
All those Christians turning away from Jesus and the church... Yet I just checked a CHRISTIAN song on youtube from Hillsong: 454 million views. ONE Christian song. That praises Jesus.

If I added up all the views of all Christian songs it would be billions of views. Doesn't seem Christians are abandoning Christianity by this metric. Just the opposite the past 2 decades as contemporary Christian music exploded in popularity, with Christian music radio, and even replacing traditional hymns in many churches. That's what you call 'by popular demand'.

The Christian church changes through the decades. Some are closing many worship places. However, others are expanding. It's just change. Doesn't prove or disprove anything about the Bible.

Is Jesus of the Bible fictional? Jesus has been the most difficult to prove. But a lot of people and places in the Bible are real, for a fact. King Herod (born 73 BCE southern Palestine. —died March/April, 4 BCE, Jericho, Judaea) was real for a fact. The palaces, fortresses and cities he built have been identified by archaeologists. He rebuilt the Temple of Jerusalem (parts still standing today).

If the authors of the Bible made up Jesus just to form a religion, those writers were literary geniuses, writing some of the most profound stories and passages of beauty and inspiration in all human literature. And integrating a 'fake' character into real places with astonishing literary skill, that can fool the masses into worship.

James, the critical mistake you're making is to try to condense 500 years of church evolution into two sentences. The Christian church had a half a millennium to refine and mold the Jesus avatar into the kind of god they wanted as a mascot for their religion. Any group of devious men with the sole purpose of preserving and expanding their religious power could tamper with the scriptures thousands upon thousands of times over 500 years to get their god as pristine as they want.



That's why there are over 5,000 copies of manuscripts, no two exactly alike. Bible scholars can see changes scribbled in the margins on all of them. That's also why historians who are not Christians readily admit the Church was engaged in a rank conspiracy to alter and tamper with documents when they didn't like how the documents read. They had no guilt at all bending the truth into lies to suit their own ends. Truth meant nothing to them.



Again:

Atheists and skeptics have the truth on their side as I've just demonstrated. Christians have only lies.
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Old 09-03-2022, 09:13 AM
 
Location: Sun City West, Arizona
50,450 posts, read 24,044,107 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes View Post
Possibly the ultimate insurance scam.
I look at it as even simpler. Solar panel salesman says first you have our solar panels installed at your house, then I'll show you my evidence about why it's a good thing to do.

Last edited by phetaroi; 09-03-2022 at 09:37 AM..
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Old 09-03-2022, 09:16 AM
 
18,228 posts, read 16,841,591 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruithne View Post
I also think it is likely that a man called Jesus existed or maybe several prophets stories got rolled into one over time and were embellished. Christianity just became too big for it all to have been invented purely out of thin air.

It's not surprising there is no actual physical evidence he existed. What would we expect to find? He lived and died a peasant so no home or wealth to speak of.
There are numerous relics including his supposed foreskin LOL. All fake if course. Why would anyone expect anything like that to have survived for 2000 years?

Wouldn't we expect it because the Christian god who claims he loves his divine son would want all men to know him?



That's why I wrote TRUTH No 4:


Truth No 4: IF God had wanted us to believe Jesus is his divine son sent to earth to die for our sins, God would have left a mountain of evidence proving this that would be so compelling that no one in their right mind could argue otherwise.



But [the Christian] God left NO such compelling evidence. That would mean the Christian god, if he even exists, doesn't give a tinker's damn whether or not we believe in Jesus.


And that's exactly what we see in reality: no proof left behind by the Christian god to prove his son even existed, much less died for our sins.



The Christian god simply didn't give a damn whether we believed in his son or not. How did the dishonest Christians try to get around this? By inventing the doctrine of faith: "The just shall live by faith". The Church deviously turned a negative into a positive to suit their own ends. They twisted their dogma any way it was necessary to cover over the cracks and potholes that were harming the advancement of their religion.


Again


Atheists and skeptics have the truth on their side as I've just clearly demonstrated. Christianity propagates only lies.
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Old 09-03-2022, 09:19 AM
 
Location: Sun City West, Arizona
50,450 posts, read 24,044,107 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
See, this is what I mean about Christians? They simply don't read or study. In fact, I think most secular people outside Christianity would question their ability to even reason and discern. By and large, Christians are lower on the IQ scale than secular non-religious people, that's a fact. They have absolutely no desire to get beyond the propaganda they regularly consume either from the Bible or their pastors and televangelists. Here is TRUTH NO 1 from my OP NO 1 below. And I've stated it more than a dozen times here and elsewhere:


...
I may be an atheist, but for you to make that claim...now I want some evidence from you.
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Old 09-03-2022, 09:36 AM
 
Location: Sun City West, Arizona
50,450 posts, read 24,044,107 times
Reputation: 32778
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
See, this is what I mean about Christians? They simply don't read or study. In fact, I think most secular people outside Christianity would question their ability to even reason and discern. By and large, Christians are lower on the IQ scale than secular non-religious people, that's a fact. They have absolutely no desire to get beyond the propaganda they regularly consume either from the Bible or their pastors and televangelists. Here is TRUTH NO 1 from my OP NO 1 below. And I've stated it more than a dozen times here and elsewhere:


"Truth No 1: there is NO historical evidence for Jesus son of God or the apostles, period. Despite all the lies Christians put forth about there being so much evidence for Jesus in the historical record it is just more lies and half-truths disguised as truth to keep the Big Lie afloat. The truth is there simply is no historical evidence a god man named Jesus as described in the gospels ever lived nor did the 12 men he supposedly gathered around him and walked with them for 3 years before being crucified. NONE of this is supported by historical fact. No historian mentions all the supernatural events that the gospels claim occurred after Christ's supposed crucifixion, even though the Gospels claim Jesus' fame spread far beyond the borders of Israel. There may be a possibility an ordinary man who was a Jewish zealot was crucified by the Romans for sedition against Rome but again no historian mentions one."


I'm always careful to distinguish between the Jesus of the Bible AND an ordinary Jesus who was crucified like any criminal who ran afoul of the Romans upon which the Jesus legend Son of God miracles worker savior of the world legend was based upon. I readily acknowledge there may have been an ordinary man who died on a cross, was buried and turned to dust and it was this person or persons upon which the Jesus myth was based.



NO historian outside the biased Christian circle believes the Jesus of the Bible was a real person. WHY? Because NO historian of the period mentions a miracle working Son of God named Jesus.
Here's the problem, Thrillobyte...all the things that you propose have no more historical evidence than what the christians propose.
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Old 09-03-2022, 09:48 AM
 
18,228 posts, read 16,841,591 times
Reputation: 7528
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mink57 View Post
Skeptics say: SHOW me; THEN I'll believe!
God says: BELIEVE; THEN I'll show you.

Can't really get much simpler than that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Northsouth View Post
LOL this is too funny. I did believe, and that is exactly why I don't anymore. Atheism does not have different sects, denominations, groups, cults etc. It's just non-belief, there aren't different levels of that. You're either atheist, agnostic or agnostic atheist. Oh and gnostic atheist. But that's rare.

To some religious people, atheism is the devil's work and we're all doomed. I swear to you that someone said that in another thread. You are not taking many things under consideration when you make claims like this.

Ha religion is so simple, is it? An atheist doesn't have thousands of different type of beliefs, you know like because it's NON-BELIEF. Now THAT'S simple. There are other people in this thread who are Buddhist or any number of different religions so this is kind of a waste of my time. This is so flawed it didn't even deserve this response.

I forgot to warn you about Mink, North. She is our premiere God-whitewasher in here. Search the Bible in vain to find God saying anywhere, "BELIEVE; THEN I'll show you."



This is a typical example of how the Church takes a handicap that would ordinarily cripple a religion and deviously and dishonestly turns it into a virtue:

"You ask for proof of Jesus? That's a sin, my child. Good Christians NEVER ask for proof. God hates the word, "proof". He wants you to believe without seeing proof. When you ask for proof you commit a grievous sin against Jesus and God. You slap God and spit in his face when you ask to see something upon which to base your faith. BELIEVE; THEN I'll show you"
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Old 09-03-2022, 10:02 AM
 
18,228 posts, read 16,841,591 times
Reputation: 7528
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes View Post
Clearly the apostles did exist, Paul wrote about them, and no doubt some of them would have died for their belief. That does not mean their belief was true.

I presume you are referring to the traditional claims about the disciples, in which you are correct. None of the accounts of their deaths involve them dying for their belief in Jesus, and according to the accounts, some of them died 3 times.

I place the 12 apostles on the same level of no proof of existence as I do Jesus. If no historian even mentions them, given that Peter and Paul traveled to Rome, were put on trial and martyred and no Roman record even mentions their trial, then there's no reason to believe they existed. Because what you basing your belief on, Harry, if nobody outside the extremely biased Christian scriptures acknowledges they even existed?

Last edited by thrillobyte; 09-03-2022 at 10:12 AM..
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