Jesus Christ of the Gospels Never Existed. He's a Myth and I Can Prove It (Part 1). (Moses, influence)
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Even when I was homeless, I didn't see this life as "ugly."
Are there ugly things that go on? Of course. The media doesn't talk much about the good stuff. Heck, even the average 'Joe' often doesn't talk about the good stuff.
I've known too many people who seemed to have "had it ALL", yet they only focus on the ONE THING that they don't have...
...as if we all "deserve" to have this great life, simply because we exist.
You've complained mega-times before about how there are people who are missing limbs...and how "horrible" it is that they are. But have you ever asked THEM how they feel?
Bethany Hamilton comes to mind. Lost her arm in a shark attack. Is she wallowing in pity? No. She's Christian, and happy as a lark. Going on to win surfing events even after a shark severed her arm.
How about Nick Vijucic? One born without arms or legs. Went on to marry...and have 4 children...AND, to become a prominent motivational speaker?
Or, Helen Keller? Blind and deaf, almost from birth?
And what about the people who have had these tragedies happen who aren't famous? Do you REALLY believe that ALL of them are wallowing in self-pity?
Hamilton, Vijucic and Keller are only a few who have relied on GOD to get them through. And really thrill, who are YOU to deny their personal relationship with God, and YES IT IS a personal relationship!
Sorry thrill, but just because *you* haven't had much of an experience with God--or denied that it was with God--doesn't mean that others haven't had that.
The kind of love and peace that *I* felt with my own experience, wasn't some "hallucination." It was BEYOND what we call "love." And just because *you* never felt it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's really a shame that you're so jaded by life, and your prior experiences that you just can't understand that others have had experiences beyond your own.
There's a popular saying goes, "God, SHOW ME, and I'll believe. And God says, "BELIEVE, and I'll SHOW YOU."
Seems that you're the former, and even if God SHOWED you, you STILL wouldn't believe...
Actually, God has probably ALREADY showed you, and you didn't believe.
Well, Mink I believed for 60 years and I don't recall God showing me anything. And it's not just me, Mink. As I'm sure you're aware, millions of Americans are ditching Jesus for freedom from religion.
In a new study out today, Pew projects that in 2070, Christians will likely make up less than half the US population.
Clearly, the vast majority of these people dropping out of Christianity have "been there, done that, didn't like the results".
So At this point in my life I have very little reason if any to "believe and I'll show you." God had his chance. He's not getting a second one from me.
But about your pep talk, I'll say: it's good that you're an optimist. I don't pin any metals on myself for being a realist, it's just the...heh heh...the way god made me.
It's a pretty ugly world out there, Mink. Atrocities of the worst kind are taking place by the tens of thousands every second of the day and night. A good percentage of these people are doing what you are suggesting--"believing" God will deliver from and the only thing the get delivered from is life--in some of the cruelest and most brutally painful ways. Some God! Do you really want to suggest the kid below and millions like him simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a university education and become ambassadors or something?
I plan to do a thread on this subject at some point but I'll give you a preview: it wasn't the fact that there isn't any historical evidence for Jesus ever living that convinced me to leave Christianity. It was the fact that Yahweh originated as a man-made pagan small god among the Canaanite people before the Hebrews even existed. He was a minor god of metallurgy and as Canaan began to absorb the Hebrews who moved into the neighborhood, the Hebrews adopted Yahweh as their god along a with a few others. The Hebrews originally were polytheist--they believed in many gods.
Christians like to say this is why Yahweh was constantly punish them, for their harlotry but real history doesn't see it this way. History sees it as the Hebrews gradually eliminating all the other gods and keeping Yahweh as their monotheistic god. This was long before the Bible was written. So naturally when Genesis 1:1 gets written the god referred to there is Yahweh, the Canaanite pagan god, naturally.
So Jesus' father in the New Testament is a pagan Canaanite god. And if a pagan Canaanite god is in reality a false god according to Christianity then Jesus is a pagan deity just like Osiris, Zalmoxis, Romulus and Hercules. It's not Christianity's fault they have been praying to a pagan deity all these millennia. Civilization didn't have the tools back then to research and uncover this fact.
What you seem to be missing is (prehistoric) ancient culture and evolution of cultures since the first tribe(s) formed, in your argument. Their world was flat --- that in itself gives to me the understanding they are not going to describe their world in the same context that we would. They didn't go get their pottery from the pottery barn (store). Every thing went dark --- what does that look like in their eyes? Just because we call it a solar eclipse, doesn't mean it was one.
Yes, irrelevant arguments are missing in my response. And you are still ignoring the fact that this 3 hour darkness is only mentioned in Mark and 2 rewrites of Mark.
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Originally Posted by Ellis Bell
Invented text? Well I guess then (before written words) the cave drawings that told stories about, the previous cultures and societies inhabitants experiences, that the leaders (high priests) would interpret were bogus too, huh? The common man was not allowed into the 'sacred' caves, so as to draw their own conclusions about what was drawn on those walls. (common man was not sovereign) The logic? Is in understanding the evolution of humanity and humans have an origin story and within that story is how (the law) all these nations today were formed over the span of 10s of thousands of years ... In the beginning, they didn't write their words, their stories were told and spread by word-or-mouth throughout the lands, until the days of (in evolution) Latin and Armenia, do their stories appear on cuneiform ... they worshiped (first centuries B.C./A.D.) who and what they were told to worship without question to authority.
Cave men are irrelevant to the fact we know the gospels were most probably invented out of the OT, and texts such as Homer.
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Originally Posted by Ellis Bell
Tacitus and Suetonius were high up within the Roman Empire government, that right there calls for me to take whatever they may have produced with a grain salt. I don't know about Philo and Eusebius and I'm sure not going to do a quick study of them --- cause to be frank, I do not rightly have the time for a deep dive --- but if you want to take what they wrote as a truth --- knock yourself out. See, no spanking of me required. I can only take intellectual conversations so far, before I just pull the plug and say okay --- enough already. But I'm thinking if you look into the politics of the day, you might come away with a different understanding.
Except you are now posting irrelevant arguments, not engaging in an intellectual conversation.
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Originally Posted by Ellis Bell
Says, you. They sent out to all the regions requests for what they had in written form ... it was a process that was very long and drawn out over centuries. By the time it all came about a lot of the social culture had changed, but the one constant --- If the pharaohs told them their god was the sun, so be it and they followed. Word of Christ began to change that (origin stories of humanity) while the people were/are not sovereign, questioning leaders, while risky business in doing so --- that process began.
People today get inspired (that little something inside) they want to be a lawyer, a doctor, a fireman --- or whatever that that is within them calling them to do what they do. Whatever we call that today --- in the first centuries of man, that was God. imo, people today in order to carry their argument against the Biblical stories truths, they have to give the people of ancient cultures, freedoms (more modern lives) that they didn't have.
More irrelevant arguments. Pharaohs and cave men are irrelevant to what we know about how the classically educate Roman citizens wrote texts.
Your response is what Ehrman is saying to atheists.
In short, the majority of scholars, whether religious or secular, accept the historicity of Jesus. This is regardless of the objections raised about the true authorship of various parts of the Bible, its historical accuracy, etc.
Yes, but the majority of scholars are not trained or do not study the relevant time period. We also have Christian apologists who are not actually scholars. that is why you need to address the actual evidence, not rely on argument ad populum and argumentum ab auctoritate.
And when you look at the evidence, including what Ehrman says, the first Christians thought Jesus was a divine being. Historical people are not made out of the same material a god is, nor do they create universes.
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Originally Posted by hd4me
I'm not alone when I say a good many of us read the "Gospels" and view Jesus as a young man who moved around with ease among women whether they had a tarnished reputation or not. Among those who were cast out as sinners and those who considered themselves untarnished. And he did it in a way that he was the somebody that made others feel like somebody. No pretense. no sentimentality, principled loving and forthright. Someone who did not seek fame, riches, power, or the next thrill but was not shy about attending dinner parties or weddings. A patient teacher. A loving son. A loyal friend. Someone who was very much in contrast to the various gods or half gods that he's supposedly modeled after.
Someone most definitely human. Someone most definitely believable. Just my opinion.
Perhaps if you read Paul's letters and Hebrews without reading the later gospels back in to them?
The darkness is a complete fiction. No culture in any part of the world records a strange darkness that filled their land in the middle of the day. Certainly Philo of Alexandria who was the greatest Jewish scholar and historian of that time and was in Jerusalem when all these events were supposedly taking place would have said something about the earthquake, the darkness and especially about the zombies rising out of their graves and marching on Jerusalem. He doesn't say a word about any of it. Come on, Ellis--you can't be that naive that you can so easily explain away such a glaring omission in Philo's writings.
You may have noticed the switch from a select few people who actually wrote texts (with Pliny the Elder actually searching for stories of miracles) to talking about the Polloi. One must ask if this is deliberate evasion, or an inability to understand your point.
You can't be that naive to believe the world was really that small, that everyone everywhere would know everything going on, all over the world at any particular time in one spot.
Philo of Alexandria would not be interested (imo) in recording that that you think he should have. Damn they should have had a crystal ball to know what would be important to people 10,000 years into the future.
btw: you do know that at the time of the event, the written word was not common place among people.
You can not be that naive to believe no one else would have mentioned a three hour darkness and stories about zombies, especially as we knew Philo went to Jerusalem at least once in his life, AND lived in the city with the greatest population of Jews outside of Judea, many of whom would have visited Jerusalem annually for Passover.
Sure, we get stories about earthquakes and eclipses in the Turkey, but something so special mentioned in the gospels is completely ignored?
You may have noticed the switch from a select few people who actually wrote texts (with Pliny the Elder actually searching for stories of miracles) to talking about the Polloi. One must ask if this is deliberate evasion, or an inability to understand your point.
Certainly it is an evasion. It is reality crashing into their consciousness so hard that it causes the worst case of cognitive dissonance leading to complete denial of the facts. This is a truth. Religion and belief in Jesus is so powerful a part of Christians' identity that to lay all this newly-uncovered evidence on them about Jesus being a myth and not a real person is so traumatic it can lead to a total mental breakdown. I recall a fellow who used to post in here back circa 2010 who actually admitted he had a nervous breakdown over the church's dogma on eternity in hell. His only salvation, so to speak was a hard adoption of universalism. He found enough writings on it to become one of its strongest proponents and it was obvious this doctrine saved him from total lunacy.
There's another fellow in here--probably lots of people in this dilemma--who has said in the Christian forum that he is old and alone in the world and that there is really nothing he looks forward to more than being with his Lord and savior in heaven. When I read that I was so sad for him. I mean here is a fellow--a good human being at heart I have no doubts--who has probably given his entire life over to service to Jesus, probably at the expense of having a wife and children and career and now on the last leg of this journey we call life this is all he has to look forward to--being in a mythical heaven with a mythical savior. Truly it makes me so sad I want to break down and cry for him, but this is the hard choice a person makes when they get so wrapped up in blind faith that when reality comes crashing in there's no way a person in this predicament can be persuaded their god is not real.
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Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes
Jesus may have been an invention based on historical authenticity.
With what we know there can be no doubt. Christians' solution is to deliberately blur the line between the gospels Jesus and a historical person that the gospels Jesus may have been based upon. That's how they say, "No Jesus? Preposterous. Every scholar admits to Jesus having existed. (wink wink) What they're deviously doing is merging the historical figure with the mythical figure and then referring to the mythical figure. More and more, people are catching on to this scam.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 12-11-2022 at 09:05 AM..
In the biblical flood story only eight people (Noah and family) survived the flood by riding it out on an ark. But again, it was only a story and never happened.
No. Not true. In fact the opposite is the case. According to NASA the earth is slowly moving away from the sun due both to the fact that the sun is slowly losing mass which means the gravitational pull on the earth is getting weaker and because the earth's gravitational pull on the sun creates a tidal bulge on the side of the sun facing earth. This results in a sling shot effect on the earth as the earth is tugged ahead in its orbit in the same way that earth's moon is being tugged ahead in its orbit and is slowly moving away from the earth.
No, I don't know your thoughts on either of them. I haven't read your other posts.
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Originally Posted by Michael Way
Some of the smaller ones did. They evolved into the birds that we see today.
It wouldn't hurt you to do some studying on the subject.
Fossil fuels are everywhere, there is a reason for that --- the asteroid that left a crater that spans 93 miles and 12 miles deep off the coast of Mexico destroyed all the dinosaurs globally. In order to have that theory fly, that had to reach for the sun and say that the sun was blocked due to the fallout. Good on you for the birds though. (which means the sun could not have been blocked if the birds survived) If I was on that side of the argument, I probably would have pulled that one too. However, it is a theory --- not a fact, but people will believe it as fact and Biblical oral traditions of history are fairy tales.
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Originally Posted by Michael Way
It wouldn't hurt you to do some studying on the subject.
Or you ...
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Originally Posted by Michael Way
No. Not true. In fact the opposite is the case.
I have no reason to doubt Mr. Lively and the school room class discussion on Newton's Laws of Motion in conjunction with earth's orbits around the sun from almost 50 years ago. I do have a reason to doubt scientist for political reason today, though.
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Originally Posted by Michael Way
No, I don't know your thoughts on either of them. I haven't read your other posts.
It's a good thing then you can get my ideas on it from the post you just read.
It's great that person wrote a book, however, that person will never get through to the person, who has experienced (like Martin Luther) the Holy Spirit, personally. The church began loosing their power (to create laws) over people's lives when people like Martin Luther challenged them. And people like the author you brought to the argument, will never gain power over those who have a personal relationship with God.
We are at an impasse.
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Originally Posted by thrillobyte
I can say without any rancor or vitriol: if a person gets off hallucinating about Jesus and finding some fulfillment in the pleasurable brain chemicals that flood their brain, that's well and good. Life in this miserable world is hard enough without getting some sort of pleasurable experience to get us through to the end of a very difficult day. My philosophy: use whatever you can get your hands on whether it be sex, drugs, rock-n-roll and yes, even Jesus to help you get through this difficult, often ugly life. Getting to the end of a day with your sanity intact is a miracle in itself. Use anything at your disposal to accomplish this.
"I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it" indicates brain priming IMO.
It's a good thing the Great Thinkers existed back in the early B.C. and A.D. centuries. In today's social mayhem, they wouldn't be able to catch a break from the quick wit that would get thrown in their direction.
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In order to have that theory fly, that had to reach for the sun and say that the sun was blocked due to the fallout. Good on you for the birds though. (which means the sun could not have been blocked if the birds survived) If I was on that side of the argument, I probably would have pulled that one too. However, it is a theory --- not a fact, but people will believe it as fact and Biblical oral traditions of history are fairy tales. 
