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I see you continue to take the Christians' side on this, phet. I'll ask you what I ask everyone who does: show me a single historian who mentions Jesus in the 1st century, beside Josephus who as I have explained countless times his passages are so mired in controversy with Christian interpolations and tampering are not worth the paper they're written on.
No, I'm not taking the "Christian side". I looked up the topic, did a little reading, and concluded that your rants are simply rants. I just cited a well documented article which disagrees with you.
You error in assuming, and demanding, that historians must live at the time of the person or event they are writing about. Most of ancient history was not written by historians who were first hand witnesses to the person or event that they record. By your argument, most of ancient history must be thrown out.
Nevertheless, the Roman historian Tacitus did live in the first and second centuries (c. AD 56- C. AD 120) and he did mention Christ, that he was executed by order of Pontius Pilate in Judea, and that the movement of which he is the cause did not die with him but ''broke out'' again.
It is a simple fact that most historians today, including those who are not themselves Christian recognize that a historical Jesus, without regard to the issue of whether or not he was as portrayed in the NT, did exist.
Those who deny the existence of a historical Jesus, known as Jesus mythicists, simply parade their ignorance.
Your constant unreasoning rants against Christians and Christianity and Jesus suggest that something is going on with you.
I see you continue to take the Christians' side on this, phet. I'll ask you what I ask everyone who does: show me a single historian who mentions Jesus in the 1st century, beside Josephus who as I have explained countless times his passages are so mired in controversy with Christian interpolations and tampering are not worth the paper they're written on.
Well...if you end up standing before Him, ask.
And you might even get a chance to tell Him what you think of Him. You know...get it off your chest.
Jimmi, can you explain to us why in the face of all the evidence I have presented against Jesus of Nazareth existing, you continue to believe in him? What do you base your faith on, or do you just base it on faith?
I do not discount the biblical evidence. You are asking me to believe all those writers were talking about a made up figure.
You error in assuming, and demanding, that historians must live at the time of the person or event they are writing about. Most of ancient history was not written by historians who were first hand witnesses to the person or event that they record. By your argument, most of ancient history must be thrown out.
Nevertheless, the Roman historian Tacitus did live in the first and second centuries (c. AD 56- C. AD 120) and he did mention Christ, that he was executed by order of Pontius Pilate in Judea, and that the movement of which he is the cause did not die with him but ''broke out'' again.
It is a simple fact that most historians today, including those who are not themselves Christian recognize that a historical Jesus, without regard to the issue of whether or not he was as portrayed in the NT, did exist.
Those who deny the existence of a historical Jesus, known as Jesus mythicists, simply parade their ignorance.
Your constant unreasoning rants against Christians and Christianity and Jesus suggest that something is going on with you.
Now again, I have to qualify a lot of what you said.
First of all I have said countless times that there may indeed have been a real person named Yeshua who lived in that time upon whom the "Jesus of Nazareth, son of God who died for the sins of man" mythology was based. When you say "most historians today, including those who are not themselves Christian recognize that a historical Jesus did exist" you are referring to the person I described frequently who I acknowledge could have lived who was an ordinary man, a zealot who was crucified for sedition against Rome. But the historians you refer to, if they are saying that Jesus the divine son of God was a historical figure, then they are biased Christians masquerading as impartial historians. Because no way are they secular and impartial if they are writing that the son of God who died for their sins as exemplified in the gospels was a real person. No way.
Secondly, this common refrain among Christians that "there is more evidence for Jesus than there is for Julius Caesar" must cease. I've said before that for Caesar we have his voluminous writings, we have busts, we have reliefs, we have other historians and writers mentioning "Julius Caesar" by name--we have NONE of that for Jesus. To claim otherwise is a bald faced lie. But that is what this thread is all about: the lies Christians have to tell to defend their god and the truths atheists and skeptic have to tell to counteract the lies.
Thirdly, the gospels themselves say Jesus was well known throughout the region far past the borders of Israel. He was working miracles that supposedly spread along with his name; at his crucifixion the whole earth darkened, Douay-Rheims Bible there were great earthquakes, the veil of the temple ripped, a whole army of zombies rose from their graves and went into Jerusalem and appeared to many of the inhabitants. And not a single historian of the time, including Philo of Alexandria who was the most prominent Jewish historian of that day and likely was in Jerusalem during that time, not a single historian mentions a single word of Jesus or those events????? Come on, Michael. You've become a pretty reasonable fellow lately but even you have to admit it's pretty unbelievable that no culture on earth would have recorded such an unnatural darkness.
Fourthly, Tacitus may have been born in the 1st century but his writings which have been preserved don't occur until roughly 125 CE almost fully a century after the event and so could not have been anything more than hearsay that he had heard from stories floating around the Mediterranean for all that time. And Tacitus doesn't say, "Jesus the Christ" he says "Chrestus" and we know because we have written proof that later Christians tried to change the text saying Chrestus to Christus by whitening out part of the "e" to make an "i".
So in a nutshell what's up with me is that I get soooooooo tired of Christians coloring the facts to slant the facts toward what they want the facts to say, rather than what the facts do actually say. Tacitus is a perfect example of this deceptive technique, Michael. You know fully well that Tacitus was writing in the 2nd century and that he never said "Jesus Christ", he said, "Chrestus" which may or may not have been a reference to "the Christ", whoever that might have been since there were numerous individuals claiming to be the Messiah at that time, and that everything Tacitus was saying was hearsay he had heard from unknown sources. You know all this and yet you STILL choose to color the facts to support your biases.
Everything I have said is the honest truth. You cannot catch me saying anything that is less than the absolute truth. But I have shown the same cannot be said of you.
No, I'm not taking the "Christian side". I looked up the topic, did a little reading, and concluded that your rants are simply rants. I just cited a well documented article which disagrees with you.
Nobody said that you can't find articles that sort of agree with your position. But there are plenty of articles on the other side of the issue, as well, and I would hardly call Wikipedia biased in favor of atheism. You think you're entitled to call your position the ONLY accurate position. Well, I'm entitled to say, "Baloney", and I remind you that I am atheist.
It's an enjoyable discussion with you. I"m happy to continue it until you don't reply anymore.
I'm aware this is "as far as we know". There are no certainties about extra-terrestrial life. As a former Christian turned atheist I stopped believing in miracles when I saw that they never occur. I only know of one bonafide "miracle" and that is the presence of 8 billion people occupying an incredible civilization that is about to go extinct because of man's greed and irresponsibility. And I firmly believe whatever god might inhabit this universe will not step in and save us because this god if he does exist is a deist god, He doesn't interact with us in any discernible way so why should he save us from ourselves. Which is why i say I have no idea what created us or how we came about. The furthest I can go is to think that possibly a higher entity seeded the earth with the spark of life and dumped us. Maybe it has saved us from an extinction-level asteroid because the odds are we should have been hit by now. That's the best I can do on my end. But if there was more advanced life out there it would have contacted us by now just as we would have contacted it if we had the capacity. But if this life is no more advanced than us and in another galaxy then it might as well not even exist for all the good it does us. And that putsus right back to the beginning of the conversation.
Thank you. I'm enjoying it as well!
God would seemingly be a remote one if he exists. I'm speaking on macro terms here. Any intervention would have to be subtle. Maybe creating the platform or just having a part in it, even remotely is how it was intended. Perhaps ensuring an asteroid that could wipe us all out does not at the time our species would be vulnerable to it, or that a gamma ray burst doesn't annihilate us, is good enough intervention for him. He intervenes, we don't know and he is happy with that. It is left to the devices, largely of the inhabitants of the worlds who benefit from it to, determine their own collective destiny for things they can control at the moments they can.
These are macro level arguments, on a personal level, there are plenty of individuals whose personal experiences have given them compelling enough reasons to either passionately believe or to question not believing. Concomitantly, there are those whose experiences sway them to passionately disbelieve. None have evidence, its personal and for them, it is enough.
Admittedly, this is all speculation of course. Not just by me, by all of us! The nature of existence is speculation. Science can only go so far with our level of advancement and indeed, the universe may never reveal all her secrets to us scientifically to sway the argument definitively one way or the other. I think this is what bothers me more than anything, the possibility I may never know, that we may never know.
As for why we haven't found life out there and why they haven't yet communicated.
1) They are simply too far away. There may be only 1 or 2 advanced civilizations capable of such in each galaxy, and they may not even be around at the same time as the only other that they could or could have possibly communicated with.
2) There are more and are able to but they have no desire to communicate with us, given where we are at this point. We are still a young species, and we are not yet far into interstellar travel let alone intergalactic. We may simply be not interesting enough for them right now.
3) We are truly alone in the cosmos. Life and specifically intelligent life is so rare we just happened to be the only species with this level of awareness and our place in the cosmos.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
We don't have the time to further progress. As a species we've run out of time. By 2100 this world will have undergone an extinction level event comparable to the Permian-Triassic extinction that wiped out 90% of life 253 million years ago. We're already in it. Look at the extreme heatwaves that are hitting the world right now--many breaking long-standing records. I'm in the western US and here in California we just came off the longest sustained heatwave ever recorded here. Look at all the fires that are decimating the forests around the world. Look at the trillions of tons of Co2 and methane being released into the atmosphere that is melting all the glaciers and poles. Look at all the lakes and rivers drying up. Look at food prices skyrocketing because famines are occurring all over the world. Food and water are scarce and growing more scarce by the day. And this is only at a temperature that has gone up 1.1C since the Industrial Age. We are on track in the next 30 years to hit 3-4C. Think of what that jump will do to the earth if 1.1C is causing all the mayhem we are experiencing now. Is God going to save us? Not a chance. To do so would break a billions-of-years-long tradition he has of not getting involved with earth.
Well we don't know if god hasn't intervened. We are here even after multiple mass extinction events. I have a bit more hope than you that although things are going to change drastically in the future, i'm not convinced we are going to be in an extinction level event by 2100 that will wipe out 90 percent of earth's inhabitants. I think the population will decrease but I think we will as a species be able to weather it with advances in technology. Would I bet the farm on god intervening. Not a chance and perhaps he wouldn't want us to either! In other words - tough love big boy - get your act together! We may go extinct as many others have for reasons; we could have prevented but did not.
God would seemingly be a remote one if he exists. I'm speaking on macro terms here. Any intervention would have to be subtle. Maybe creating the platform or just having a part in it, even remotely is how it was intended. Perhaps ensuring an asteroid that could wipe us all out does not at the time our species would be vulnerable to it, or that a gamma ray burst doesn't annihilate us, is good enough intervention for him. He intervenes, we don't know and he is happy with that. It is left to the devices, largely of the inhabitants of the worlds who benefit from it to, determine their own collective destiny for things they can control at the moments they can.
These are macro level arguments, on a personal level, there are plenty of individuals whose personal experiences have given them compelling enough reasons to either passionately believe or to question not believing. Concomitantly, there are those whose experiences sway them to passionately disbelieve. None have evidence, its personal and for them, it is enough.
Admittedly, this is all speculation of course. Not just by me, by all of us! The nature of existence is speculation. Science can only go so far with our level of advancement and indeed, the universe may never reveal all her secrets to us scientifically to sway the argument definitively one way or the other. I think this is what bothers me more than anything, the possibility I may never know, that we may never know.
As for why we haven't found life out there and why they haven't yet communicated.
1) They are simply too far away. There may be only 1 or 2 advanced civilizations capable of such in each galaxy, and they may not even be around at the same time as the only other that they could or could have possibly communicated with.
2) There are more and are able to but they have no desire to communicate with us, given where we are at this point. We are still a young species, and we are not yet far into interstellar travel let alone intergalactic. We may simply be not interesting enough for them right now.
3) We are truly alone in the cosmos. Life and specifically intelligent life is so rare we just happened to be the only species with this level of awareness and our place in the cosmos.
Well we don't know if god hasn't intervened. We are here even after multiple mass extinction events. I have a bit more hope than you that although things are going to change drastically in the future, i'm not convinced we are going to be in an extinction level event by 2100 that will wipe out 90 percent of earth's inhabitants. I think the population will decrease but I think we will as a species be able to weather it with advances in technology. Would I bet the farm on god intervening.Not a chance and perhaps he wouldn't want us to either! In other words - tough love big boy - get your act together! We may go extinct as many others have for reasons; we could have prevented but did not.
Enjoyed reading your thoughts, fusion2. Strikes me that everyone has a story or a fairytale or a mythology to tell themselves about Divinity. Depends on which one brings comfort. Is it my imagination or does it seem atheists are VERY ANGRY with god and the stories that they were told? Why does their non-belief make them so grouchy.
Of all the fairy tales and stories and mythologies I find the JW story of Armageddon and the coming big ass whip for the unbelievers the most scary. Right next to that is The Atheist agony over We Are All Going to HELL IN A HANDBASKET!!! except i dont believe in hell, i have non-belief, the most sad.
I do not discount the biblical evidence. You are asking me to believe all those writers were talking about a made up figure.
What writers? All I said was there are no historians of the period who mention Jesus, considering how famous he was in the area and all the astonishing things that happened at his death. 2000 years from now it'd be an impossibility not to find some historians who mention Donald Trump. And that it stands to reason that if God really wanted us to believe in Jesus he would have seen to it that every historian in the period would have written having heard of Jesus and all the miracles raising people from the dead and all the supernatural things that happened at his death. Historians would also have written of the thousands of people who had witnessed the risen Jesus. All that should have happened....IF God had wanted us to believe in Jesus.
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Come on, Michael. You've become a pretty reasonable fellow lately but even you have to admit it's pretty unbelievable that no culture on earth would have recorded such an unnatural darkness. 
