Christians - What would you do if it were discovered Jesus never existed?

[Pyrrho]

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Hypothetical here.  I'm sure some don't want to answer with anything other than "That would never happen,"  I'll get to that in a moment.

Say that some evidence surfaced that strongly suggested that Jesus never existed.  Evidence that was so strong that even many Apologetics accept it.  The Historical Jesus didn't exist, and most historians accepted that as a fact.

What would you do?

Would you convert to Judaism?
Would you ignore the evidence? (I'll assume this is your answer if you say "That would never happen")
Would you stop believing in god altogether?

I'm curious as to what people would think they would do.  Other Atheists can say what they think people would do.  Personally I think a few would convert to Judaism, and many would ignore the evidence.  I'm curious about what their logic would be behind their choice if such strong evidence surfaced?  I mean many people deny that the world is billions of years old despite all evidence suggesting otherwise.

I unlike most of you, do not like others doing my thinking for me. I don't take an expert at his word, simply because he is deemed an 'expert.' An 'expert is so because generally speaking, they make their living doing what they do, and can be swayed with the right motivation. I would ask to the 'evidence' and make my own conclusions.

I would also have a lot of questions as in:

What does the evidence of someone not existing look like?

Any testimony can be dismissed, or cancled out by contrary testimony.

The lack of records would only be valid if ALL records of that time were accounted for.

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So Im logically at a loss at how one can establish how a specific indivisual in the sea of human History can be proven to never existed. At the very best all that can be said is this person existence has not been confirmed. And if we are talking about Christ, then everyone else of that time frame is also suspect, because their is more data on Him and anyone of that period.

What nonsense.  There is not a single document mentioning Jesus that was originally written in his lifetime.  But there are documents mentioning important people of that era written during the time they were alive.  So the evidence for them is far greater than the evidence for Jesus.  Yet you ignore such facts now, so we can be pretty sure you will ignore facts in the future as well.

On a related note:

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That seems to be the criteria of the atheists. As part of your list you forgot Socrates. No one doubts that he existed, but there's much less evidence for his existence than Jesus.

What nonsense.  I have posted on this before at:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-34720-po...#pid993540

Here is some of it copied over:

Generally speaking, the more recent the person, the more evidence that there should be.  And generally speaking, the more important the person, the more evidence there should be.

In the case of Homer, I would not be confident that he was as described, but we can be sure that someone wrote The Illiad and someone wrote The Odyssey, or some group of people did.  But whether they were written by someone named "Homer" or not is not really known.  We don't have any proper documentation on that, but given the era in which he lived, that is hardly surprising.  So Homer is, at best, semi-mythical.  There is no real confidence that he actually existed, but he might have.  I am nearly a pure agnostic on Homer.

In the case of Socrates, we have the testimony of three contemporaries (Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes), which puts him in an entirely different class than Homer.  We can be reasonably sure that he existed, and lived in Athens, and was a philosopher who inspired a play by one (which is not complimentary, and makes fun of him), and many of the writings of the others, and Socrates likely said some of the things in some of their writings (though not all of things which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates).  What adds to the value of the testimony is that they do not attribute miraculous properties to Socrates.  So we have a rough idea about him, and can be reasonably certain he existed.

With Jesus, we are in a different situation still.  He is supposed to be supremely important, and yet we have nothing written during his lifetime.  And unlike the case of Socrates, the earliest writings are all propaganda pieces for a religion, in which miraculous things are attributed to him, which detracts from their value as testimony.  And we also have known cases of fraud, in which Christians have tried to alter texts to support the claim that Jesus existed, which further detracts from any trust one might have otherwise had in writings purporting to support his existence.  Some of the stories (in the Bible) seem like they are adapted from seeing magicians, but this does not tell us whether they are based on a particular one, or on having seen various magicians and making Jesus fit the type.  So we really have no good reason to believe that the stories of Jesus are really based on a particular person, and is, at the very best, semi-mythical, though given his supposed importance, one would expect better documentation if he were real.  I am inclined to think he did not exist at all, but, of course, such a thing isn't likely to ever be provable.  He might have existed, though certainly not as described, and we really don't have any good reason to believe he existed at all.

As for the fact that most people, who have addressed the question, believe Jesus existed, most who enter into the question do not do so without bias, as they generally start out with the belief he existed and conclude, after looking at the evidence, what they already believed before looking at the evidence.  I find this very unconvincing, and am not inclined to alter my opinion based on the opinions of others.


So, I would say that one of the three existed, and the others are uncertain at best, and likely did not exist at all.  Of course, one cannot prove they did not exist, at least not based on any evidence I have seen.


Edited to add:

I forgot to mention the fact that the oldest writings of Christianity are the most vague, and the later ones are more detailed, which strongly suggests that the details are all fiction.  This is obscured to many readers of the Bible, who falsely assume that the books of the New Testament appear in the order in which they are written.  But even most Christian scholars say that that is wrong, and that the earliest writings are ones that lack detail, just as I say.

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[Minimalist]

Drippy, you get a special dispensation because  stupid people can continue to believe in nonsense.  Keeps you quiet.

[Longhorn]

[Christian]
Not today Satan!! Not today!!
*covers ears*
[/Christian]

[robvalue]

Religion isn't about facts. It's about dispensing altogether with the logical part of your brain, at least while thinking about this subject.

The whole thing is already entirely unsupported nonsense. It's particularly bad regarding Jesus because without the later added forged extra ending, even the original account of Jesus did not demonstrate he had ressurected. It ends with some guy spreading a rumour that he has resurrected. Yes, I'm serious. If you're prepared to take the word of a probably fictional character, even within the context of a story written entirely on hearsay, you have taken leave of your senses.

So really, the only thing that is going to deconvert people is them making a choice to properly evaluate their beliefs. This could be in terms of how well they are supported by evidence, or by looking at the huge moral issues involved with the kind of character they are worshipping, and the way it promotes bypassing your own morality.

[dyresand]

jesus more than likely never existed but the myth was made up to control the poor more than likely.

[loganonekenobi]

I have Chritians stand strongly by their evidence of his existence. I'm curious how they can? Other than the bible can we find anything that points to this extremely important person in our world or is it all just overblown hero worship?

I know that the christian mind set wont ever change and they will stand on non proof instead of proof but still as an atheist i want to be sure that as of today there is no solid evidence of this figure.

Is there any proof that the Bible isn't just a well written historical fiction?

[Pyrrho]

Bold emphasis is added:

Religion isn't about facts. It's about dispensing altogether with the logical part of your brain, at least while thinking about this subject.

The whole thing is already entirely unsupported nonsense. It's particularly bad regarding Jesus because without the later added forged extra ending, even the original account of Jesus did not demonstrate he had ressurected. It ends with some guy spreading a rumour that he has resurrected. Yes, I'm serious. If you're prepared to take the word of a probably fictional character, even within the context of a story written entirely on hearsay, you have taken leave of your senses.

So really, the only thing that is going to deconvert people is them making a choice to properly evaluate their beliefs. This could be in terms of how well they are supported by evidence, or by looking at the huge moral issues involved with the kind of character they are worshipping, and the way it promotes bypassing your own morality.

Exactly.  If someone will not properly evaluate their beliefs, then they will be apt to believe all sorts of nonsense.  This is also why religion is corrosive of morals, as an unwillingness to subject ideas to proper scrutiny leads to nonsense in morality just like it does in ordinary matters of fact.

[downbeatplumb]

There is nothing that could convince a dedicated Christian they are wrong.

This is not a good thing.

[KUSA]

Drippy, you get a special dispensation because  stupid people can continue to believe in nonsense.  Keeps you quiet.

The fuck it does. He never shuts up.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Hypothetical here.  I'm sure some don't want to answer with anything other than "That would never happen,"  I'll get to that in a moment.

Say that some evidence surfaced that strongly suggested that Jesus never existed.  Evidence that was so strong that even many Apologetics accept it.  The Historical Jesus didn't exist, and most historians accepted that as a fact.

What would you do?

Would you convert to Judaism?
Would you ignore the evidence? (I'll assume this is your answer if you say "That would never happen")
Would you stop believing in god altogether?

I'm curious as to what people would think they would do.  Other Atheists can say what they think people would do.  Personally I think a few would convert to Judaism, and many would ignore the evidence.  I'm curious about what their logic would be behind their choice if such strong evidence surfaced?  I mean many people deny that the world is billions of years old despite all evidence suggesting otherwise.

I unlike most of you, do not like others doing my thinking for me. I don't take an expert at his word, simply because he is deemed an 'expert.' An 'expert is so because generally speaking, they make their living doing what they do, and can be swayed with the right motivation. I would ask to the 'evidence' and make my own conclusions.

I would also have a lot of questions as in:

What does the evidence of someone not existing look like?

Any testimony can be dismissed, or cancled out by contrary testimony.

The lack of records would only be valid if ALL records of that time were accounted for.

So Im logically at a loss at how one can establish how a specific indivisual in the sea of human History can be proven to never existed. At the very best all that can be said is this person existence has not been confirmed. And if we are talking about Christ, then everyone else of that time frame is also suspect, because their is more data on Him and anyone of that period.

We're talking hypothetical here, Drich. It's a hypothetical situation with a hypothetical piece of smoking-gun evidence. We've asked you to play pretend long enough to answer a question, and your answer is basically, "I don't have enough imagination to pretend that, so I can't answer the question." Nice one.

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To answer the OP, I used to be a Christian (yes, a True Christian, fuck you people), and I encountered evidence that convinced me Jesus of Nazareth most likely did not exist as a historical person, and when I did I immediately de-converted to atheism. While a lot of Christians are prone to sticking their fingers in their ears, they're not all beyond hope. I wasn't.