Atheists and Skeptics Have the Truth. Christians Do NOT. (religious leader, Old Testament, philosopher)

[mordant]

Originally Posted by fusion2

Yes there is untold suffering in life. That is without doubt, but I don't know if this a persuasive argument against the existence of god or gods. Pain, suffering, challenges, all these help to chisel who we are as beings.

If there was only good and god(s) were obvious, than the challenges we go through would not be required. We wouldn't earn anything, we would simply be granted it by default, and i'm not sure this is an existence a god(s), would want for us, at least not yet.

Be careful not to make arguments based on the inherent difficulty in imagining how life would progress absent pain and suffering. Pain and suffering is all we know.

When it comes to the topic of human suffering, which informs so much human yearning, art, literature, music, legend ... it SEEMS inherent in the very warp and woof of our society and culture, and therefore necessary.

But I prefer to think of it this way. Presently we are all somewhere on the following continuum:

Abject misery <========= Meh ===========> Utter bliss

Arguments about the necessity of adversity are based on the need for contrast in order to appreciate difference. But the above continuum is vast. Is this not just as sufficient to the question?

Meh <=================> Utter bliss

I can still tell the difference between, say, eating a middle of the road carrot and having great sex, even without all the baroque suffering at the "left" end of this continuum, no?

It seems to me that rationalizations about the regrettable necessity of human suffering, the normalization of it, the ennobling of it, are just failures of imagination. Understandable failures, but failures nonetheless.

[mordant]

Originally Posted by jimmiej

John, Peter, Luke, Paul, etc.

You are aware, are you not, that the authors of the gospels are traditional attributions and no one reputable claims they are the actual namesakes? That several of Paul's epistles have been demonstrated not to have been authored by Paul, despite traditional and even internal claims? That whoever Paul himself was, we have no certain reference to his existence prior to Marcion elevating him to the sole source of NT revelation apart from an abridged version of one of the gospels, sometime in the mid 2nd century? That he overall had a more distinctly spiritualized view of Jesus than the gospels?

[Michael Way]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

I never used the word "all" in reference to dishonest Christians. And I never used "300 years" in reference to Tacitus and Suetonius. More disinformation.



And I'll repeat in almost the exact words I said before: what's up with me is that I see red when I hear disingenuous Christians coloring the facts like crazy to try to twist the truth into a "truth" that is more palatable to them. Because the truth is that the real truth hurts the Christian narrative (and I have already provided examples of that with regard to the dating of the gospels and Tacitus saying "Chrestus" not "Jesus"). But Christians like yourself who are aware of this will go right on insisting Tacitus proves Jesus was real when he does no such thing and the gospels were written 66-95 CE when John was still alive when we know no such thing nor do we have the slightest bit of evidence John even lived much less was alive in 95 CE and wrote the gospel that bears his name.



If Christians were straightforward and honest and just admitted to what history already tells us about Christianity and their nefarious doings I wouldn't have to be sounding the alarm and warning lurkers not to believe what Christians are telling them. Because what they are saying is their polished sanitized version of events, not the truth. Which funny enough, is the subject of this thread.

No, not more disinformation. Not from me. From you. You know damn well that neither Tacitus nor Suetonius wrote three hundred years after Jesus, but you conveniently left that fact out when you make the statement ''because historians writing 300 years later about such events are completely useless when it comes to verifying such incredible things that don't happen in real life.''

And now here you go again denying that Tacitus doesn't prove that Jesus was real. What Tacitus does is independently verify the existence, the crucifixion of Jesus and that after his crucifixion, the movement that he started took off and spread.

And it was Suetonius, not Tacitus, who wrote about ''Chrestus.'' Chrestus is probably a misspelling on Suetonius' part. There is no other historical figure than Jesus that got the Jews so angry that they got kicked out of Rome because of their uprising.

Both Tacitus and Suetonius are legitimate historical sources for the historical Jesus (not for the portrayal of Jesus as God incarnate in the Bible, but for the existence of the man Jesus) and for the movement that he started.

Well, I'm not going to keep arguing about it because I think that you're divorced from reality on the matter and have an obvious agenda to smear both Christianity and Christians. You're not going to change.

[MPHJ7]

Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes

I does not, it shows he thought he was an angel. In other texts, Paul says he is the highest angel who created the universe. That is not history, that is mythology.

Even if we accept the materialist worldview where angels aren't considered to be real, that doesn't mean Jesus wasn't real. Under a materialist view Jesus may have just been a human mistaken for an angel.

We know Origen referenced Jospephus, that is not the argument.

It's the argument I made.

The point is that Origen did not find any reference to Jesus in Josephus, and the only reference he claimed was in Josephus is what we actually find in Hegessipus, a simple attribution error.

Did Origen say he was looking for references to Jesus?

So no notable debate would mean that the majority agree.

... No? Just because one side of the debate is larger than the other doesn't mean there is no debate. 51% vs. 49% is still a debate - not saying that's the situation but hopefully you get my point.

[MPHJ7]

After waiting a bit, I decided to post my reply to Thrillobyte. I had this waiting for a while but I think now is a good time.

Now, Thrillobyte, did you type your response as you were reading it? Because that would explain a lot about the general way you act on this forum.

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

There are more people who go from Christianity to atheism than there are for atheists who go to Christianity. Obviously. Because Christianity is declining while atheism and none's are increasing. I've already cited the statistics but here they are again:
In the US Christianity declined from 75% in 2011 to 63% in 2021--a 12% DECREASE while none's increased from 18% in 2011 to 29% in 2021. Europe shows similar statistics. [...]

I'm not disputing that there are more ex-Christian atheists than there are ex-atheist Christians. I literally did not dispute that. What I actually said is that your argument does not acount for Christian ex-atheists even existing.

It's also been found in numerous studies (dating as far back as the 1920s) that there is a direct correlation between the rise in intelligence and education with a drop in religiosity. Meaning it's highly possible that the reason for the steady decline of Christianity in America may be due to the increased knowledge and education in the American people.
https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/...ism-is-Growing

"Soapboxie" doesn't seem like a website I would cite. What the article you linked did was link to different studies and came to it's own conclusion from them.

The first study "Soapboxie" links is a Pew Research Center study on the decline of American Christianity. Interestingly, if we look at the Pew Resarch Center article, we see this section, whih pretty much says de-Christianization has nothing to do with education or lack thereof:

"The percentage of college graduates who identify with Christianity has declined by nine percentage points since 2007 (from 73% to 64%). The Christian share of the population has declined by a similar amount among those with less than a college education (from 81% to 73%)."

Though I will give "Soapboxie" credit, beause later on they cite a 2009 paper called "Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations", which does indeed say there's a negative correlation between religion and intelligence - but if you've ever taken a Logic course or went to a debate club, one of the first things you'll ever learn is that CORRELATION does not equal CAUSATION! Besides, if atheists tend to be smart, then I assume these posts are the exception.

>>>>>> For example, I could cite the Four Gospels as historical records
No, you couldn't. No serious secular historian believes the gospels are reliable historical records. Your own Christian Bible scholars in the Jesus Seminar composed of 49 esteemed Bible scholars studied the gospels over a 21 year period from 1985 to 2006 and concluded that Jesus said only 18% of the words ascribed to him and performed only 16% of the deed ascribed to him.
https://www.namb.net/apologetics/res...the-gospels-1/

1. Do you actually read articles before you link to them? Because the North American Mission Board (namb.net) article you cited is literally a response to the Jesus seminar and a defence of the Gospels as reliable. Your own article is literally a refutation of YOUR OWN ARGUMENT!

2. "Your own Christian Bible scholars ..." - has it ever dawned on you that, just as regular Christians disagree with each other, so do scholars? All the time? The stance of the Jesus Seminar is just one stance out of many that scholars - Christian and secular alike - stand with.

3. Literally every serious historian - by definition - needs to balance and assess sources. While very few historians take everything the Gospels say at face-value, they also recognize that they at least have some relevance. That's what historians do - they compare sources to see what really happened.

Not a single secular historian of the 1st Century recorded a single word that the supposed Jesus said. Not a single secular historian even mentions his name. Josephus is mired in controversy with evidence his two passages on Jesus were heavily tampered with by later Christian churchmen and cannot be reliably counted.

By "secular historian of the 1st Century", I assume you mean a Pagan or Jewish historian (given that "secularity" itself is a Christian invention). For reasons explained below, the fact that the only people who recorded the life of Jesus in the 1st century were Christians is not at all unusual. No kidding! The first people to mention this Palestinian peasant in the history books were also his followers? Wow, what a surprise - NOT!

Contrast that with Julius Caesar who lived even earlier than Jesus but for whom we have over a dozen volumes written by him and innumerable documents of others mentioning him attesting to Caesar's existence. If we had even a pinkie-tip of evidence for Jesus that we have for Caesar then Jesus' existence would be without question.

Using Julius Caesar as your standard for ancient historical records is, to be blunt, inane. Comparing Caesar to Jesus isn't comparing apples to oranges, it's comparing spaceships to oranges. Julius Caesar was a Roman patrician who lived 55 years. He had an active political and military career all over the known world. He was dictator of the Roman Republic, and thus had countless scribes and officials at his command. Given what kind of man he was, we should expect nothing less than countless records of his life. The fact that a Roman patrician dictator has countless primary sources testifying to him is the exact opposite of surprising.

Jesus of Nazareth, meanwhile, was a peasant from Palestine born to a peasant family who lived roughly 33 years. He spent around three years traveling around Palestine preaching about topics that other Jews of his time would have preached about. He was executed with the punishment society deemed fit only for wretches. Had it not been for his tremendous religious influence, we would likely not have any records of him at all. Seriosuly, if you're a historian, would you write about the life of some peasant who died in his 30s? The fact that we have records of Jesus from even the same century is remarkable.


Now on to your 2nd post:

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

They don't. They never mention "Jesus" or "Yeshua". What they mention is "followers of Chrestus" whoever or whatever that is. If we can believe Tacitus' text wasn't monkeyed by later Christians like Josephus' text were, then Tacitus says
"Chrestus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty...at the hands of one of our procurators, Porcius Festus"
Pilate likely crucified thousands of criminals and dissidents. What's the possibility one was named Chrestus? Christians, devious as always, even tried to change the name Chrestus to Christus by altering the "e" to an "i". We have historical proof:


Note how the 4th letter originally was an "e" and a Christian scribe whited out the horizontal parts to leave just the vertical "i". [...]

I expected Thrillobyte to parrot the typical mythicist script about "Chrestians"; it's yet another PRATT that the mythicist sphere hasn't gotten the memo on. Before you get too deep into this discussion, I would reccomend that you say "chrestianos" and then "christianos" ten times fast, just to get an idea of how pedantic this is.

"Chrestians" are just Christians but with their name spelled differently. Keep in mind that "Christ" (Christos/Χριστός) was a Greek word and the New Testament was originally written in Greek. The Christians/"Chrestians" of Rome, more likely than not, spoke Greek - and not Latin which is what Tacitus wrote in. He likely transliterated their name and spelled it slightly differently. There is literally only a 1-letter difference between the two. Heck, even the French word for "Christian" - "chrétien" - sounds an awful lot like "Chrestian".

There isn't any hint here that Tacitus is talking about some other religious group that existed supposedly named "Chrestians". There is no reference to the sect of "Chrestians" outside this passage. Some mythicists try referencing a passing mention made to a "Chrestus" in a work by Suetonius, but Suetonius never mentions a sect of "Chrestians", and it's likely he just misheard the Greek word for 'Messiah' - that is, 'Christos' - as mentioned by Jews. Use Occam's Razor for a moment; is it more likely that there was some whole other religious group that only Tacitus talked about, or that he just spelled "Christianos" differently? Meanwhile these Roman "Chrestians" sure act a whole lot like the 1st-century Christians, don't they? Well, as the saying goes, "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck".

As for the "e" in the manuscript being changed to look like an "i", well, let's pull out our friend Occam's Razor for a moment; is it more likely that a Christian scribe replaced "e" with "i" to cover up an entire other religion that there's no other evidence for, or is it more likely that he - reasonably - thought it was a spelling mistake and tried fixing it?

For further discussion see "The Chrestianos Issue in Tacitus Reinvestigated" by Erík Zara, Th.D. (2009), and also "JESUS MYTHICISM 1: THE TACITUS REFERENCE TO JESUS" by Tim O'Neill (2017).

[Lillie767]

To paraphrase the wonderful and sagacious philosopher Mr. Spock: I find these posts fascinating. Just fascinating.


Why would any believer care what someone else, especially a non-believer, believes or tries to prove?


By its very nature, belief doesn't require proof.

[mordant]

Originally Posted by Lillie767

To paraphrase the wonderful and sagacious philosopher Mr. Spock: I find these posts fascinating. Just fascinating.


Why would any believer care what someone else, especially a non-believer, believes or tries to prove?


By its very nature, belief doesn't require proof.

Many follow the Biblical command to "contend (argue) for the faith once (and for all) delivered to the saints". They see (their) orthodoxy as a tender little flower that will wilt at the slightest disparagement. They live in terror of their faith collapsing in a heap the first time someone doesn't buy into it, I guess.

[thrillobyte]

Originally Posted by Michael Way

No, not more disinformation. Not from me. From you. You know damn well that neither Tacitus nor Suetonius wrote three hundred years after Jesus, but you conveniently left that fact out when you make the statement ''because historians writing 300 years later about such events are completely useless when it comes to verifying such incredible things that don't happen in real life.''

And now here you go again denying that Tacitus doesn't prove that Jesus was real. What Tacitus does is independently verify the existence, the crucifixion of Jesus and that after his crucifixion, the movement that he started took off and spread.

And it was Suetonius, not Tacitus, who wrote about ''Chrestus.'' Chrestus is probably a misspelling on Suetonius' part. There is no other historical figure than Jesus that got the Jews so angry that they got kicked out of Rome because of their uprising.

Both Tacitus and Suetonius are legitimate historical sources for the historical Jesus (not for the portrayal of Jesus as God incarnate in the Bible, but for the existence of the man Jesus) and for the movement that he started.

Well, I'm not going to keep arguing about it because I think that you're divorced from reality on the matter and have an obvious agenda to smear both Christianity and Christians. You're not going to change.

And you never answered the photo I pasted TWICE that clearly shows the "e" in Chrestus being partially whited out to make it look like an "i" so that the world Chrestus would appear to look like Christus. Here it is again. What's your response to that?

[Horn of ‘83]

Originally Posted by mordant

You are aware, are you not, that the authors of the gospels are traditional attributions and no one reputable claims they are the actual namesakes? That several of Paul's epistles have been demonstrated not to have been authored by Paul, despite traditional and even internal claims? That whoever Paul himself was, we have no certain reference to his existence prior to Marcion elevating him to the sole source of NT revelation apart from an abridged version of one of the gospels, sometime in the mid 2nd century? That he overall had a more distinctly spiritualized view of Jesus than the gospels?

Even if that were true, you’re asking me to believe all these writers colluded on the fake Jesus story.

[Horn of ‘83]

Originally Posted by Lillie767

To paraphrase the wonderful and sagacious philosopher Mr. Spock: I find these posts fascinating. Just fascinating.


Why would any believer care what someone else, especially a non-believer, believes or tries to prove?


By its very nature, belief doesn't require proof.

My faith is not blind. I have considered our existence and decided Christianity explains it best.