Objective evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ?

[Brakeman]

And Gone With The Wind mentions Atlanta.  Does that make the novel factual?

Why? Is that the only book you have about the civil war? If it is are you going to deny the Civil war happened? Even fiction can tell is something about past cultures and people.

That's a non-sequitur, The intended comparison is that novel is not factual, not the background war. To compare the two you would have to say that the someone denies that shepherds tended sheep because the bible isn't true, a very silly preposition.
The "purpose" of a novel is to entertain with a writer crafted story and sometimes it contains truths as the writer sees fit. The bible writers' purpose was to con people that they had knowledge of an invisible god and their intention was to use as much knowledge of the times as they had to make it as believable as they could.

[Pizza]

"The bible writers' purpose was to con people that they had knowledge of an invisible god and their intention was to use as much knowledge of the times as they had to make it as believable as they could."
What are you a psychic now?

[Mudhammam]

"The bible writers' purpose was to con people that they had knowledge of an invisible god and their intention was to use as much knowledge of the times as they had to make it as believable as they could."
What are you a psychic now?

No, there's evidence for that! But the church burned it!

[robvalue]

Watchamadoodle: cool thanks, yeah it's interesting The other thing that concerns me is being reasonably confident that all these events are actually talking about the same person, and not several people who may have all been nutters spouting similar stuff at the time. Again, not sure how likely that is, I'd have to look into it more.

It's so hard to draw conclusions about this stuff!

[Cephus]

Remember, the discussion is not about Christian belief. I think that has been repeated about a dozen times.

It's always about Christian belief because the only ones arguing that Jesus must have been real are Christians.  It's their blind belief that makes such a discussion necessary in the first place.  If nobody thought this mythical character was real, we wouldn't be talking about it.

---

LOL. First, nobody said "all information it contains is factually accurate." So, what are you talking about? Second, those other examples aren't relevant. There is no historian who treats those events as historical per biblical criticism, for one, because we know the creation and flood stories went through thousands of years of development and second, the documents were written much, much later than the events they purport to describe. And miracles can't be judged on the basis of the methods employed by historians. Everyone knows this. Literally. Go buy a book on history or spend about five minutes on the internet doing research so I don't have to explain common knowledge, please, and thank you. Third, as everyone also knows, the Bible is not one document. It's a collection of manuscripts, of various genres, by various writers. There's your multiple, independent sources, not including Josephus and Tacitus or extra-biblical material. Anything else?

Then it  doesn't matter how much of it is factually accurate if you're not making the claim that one part's accuracy affects our view on the accuracy of the rest.  If that's the case, why did you bring it up in the first place?  It's funny how you keep making claims, have those claims shredded and then pretend you never made those claims in the first place.  We proved that Josephus and Tacitus were not credible sources.  Which other ones do you want to pretend are valid?  You want to claim Pliny the Younger?  Suetonius?  Julius Africanus and Thallus?  You want to pretend the Talmud mentions Jesus?  I'll save you the trouble because all of them can be entirely discredited, just like Josephus and Tacitus were.

So please, stop waving your arms around like anyone is going to be impressed.  You've got nothing.  You've got less than nothing and everyone here knows it.

---

"The bible writers' purpose was to con people that they had knowledge of an invisible god and their intention was to use as much knowledge of the times as they had to make it as believable as they could."
What are you a psychic now?

No, there's evidence for that! But the church burned it!

And where is your evidence for that?  While it is absolutely true that the church purposely burned a lot of evidence against their beliefs.  We know, for example, that Pope Alexander VI ordered all copies of the Talmud destroyed, with the Spanish Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada (1420-98) responsible for the elimination of 6,000 volumes at Salamanca alone.  Solomon Romano (1554) also burnt many thousands of Hebrew scrolls and, in 1559, every Hebrew book in the city of Prague was confiscated. The mass destruction of Jewish books included hundreds of copies of the Old Testament and caused the irretrievable loss of many original handwritten documents.  We do have written quotes from early church fathers proudly admitting that non-Christian sources have been forever eliminated.  The only reason we have any of these sources today is that some distant churches, particularly in northern Europe and the pre-UK refused to follow the orders of the Vatican.  We do not, however, know what was in those writings that were destroyed and therefore cannot declare them as evidence for anything.  Neither can you unless you can produce the evidence, which it is painfully obvious that you can't do.  For anything.  Ever.

[Mudhammam]

Then it  doesn't matter how much of it is factually accurate if you're not making the claim that one part's accuracy affects our view on the accuracy of the rest.  If that's the case, why did you bring it up in the first place?  It's funny how you keep making claims, have those claims shredded and then pretend you never made those claims in the first place.  We proved that Josephus and Tacitus were not credible sources.  Which other ones do you want to pretend are valid?  You want to claim Pliny the Younger?  Suetonius?  Julius Africanus and Thallus?  You want to pretend the Talmud mentions Jesus?  I'll save you the trouble because all of them can be entirely discredited, just like Josephus and Tacitus were.

So please, stop waving your arms around like anyone is going to be impressed.  You've got nothing.  You've got less than nothing and everyone here knows it.

Have you been following? Why did I bring what up in the first place? You're right that I never made "the claim that one part's accuracy affects our view on the accuracy of the rest." That's been the claim I'm (partially) arguing against. Got it? 

Funny, I haven't seen you shred any claims. Maybe you're just warming up to it? You did say,

You have to remember that for most believers, "fact" means "what I believe".  They don't really care if their beliefs are true, they'll just desperately twist and turn things to try to justify believing in it.  They always have a double standard in play.  I've pointed out that credible historians demand multiple independent accounts for historical tales...  There are standards for a reason, they cannot meet the standards, but neither can they admit that their belief system fails in any test.

I guess by "believers" you meant "mythicists because---shit, the irony is gold---"credible historians" with "standards" unanimously agree with me here (sorry if that is difficult to accept, though I can't see why it should be). There is no universal dismissal of Josephus and Tacitus. In fact, most historians accept those as authentic (minus the obvious interpolations in the Testimonium). So, maybe if you want anything you say to be taken seriously, you should stop making unsupported assertions at me and take your argument (if you have one) to the academics who spend their lives combing through the texts and teaching others how to do so (but you might want to first set aside your blind faith in Richard Carrier and Robert Price or whoever of the six serious mythicists you're trying and failing miserably to parrot).

And where is your evidence for that? 

Sorry, allow me to clarify for those with poor reading comprehension skills: What Cephus is referring is called blatant sarcasm.

[downbeatplumb]

I would really like to hear from fellow atheists about this. Is there any objective evidence for the existence of JC? By objective I mean evidence that is NOT from sources that have anything to gain or lose from proving or disproving the existence of JC. The research I have done all brings up... well.. nothing. Any evidence that IS out there comes from church websites or Christian "scientists" or something of the sort. I have HEARD of evidence for Jesus but have been told the evidence is shaky or there are multiple reports of Jesus' existence throughout history but the chronology of such reports does not match up. I still have not even seen this evidence. 

As I understand it his birth was very much linked to a census.

So shouldn't we just find that!

It should have all the info we need on it.

Name: Jesus (otherwise known as god)
Mother: Mary
Father: Joseph
Place of birth : Bethlehem
Witnesses: Donkeys and shepherds

[watchamadoodle]

Watchamadoodle: cool thanks, yeah it's interesting The other thing that concerns me is being reasonably confident that all these events are actually talking about the same person, and not several people who may have all been nutters spouting similar stuff at the time. Again, not sure how likely that is, I'd have to look into it more.

It's so hard to draw conclusions about this stuff!

That's true. Usually the more famous historic figure absorbs incidents and quotations made by less famous figures.

[robvalue]

Hmm, yeah.

If I had to place my life on the line (what kind of sick idea is that?) I'd bet that jesus is a mix of at least 2 people, maybe more. Even if the things we can pin him down on are just 1 guy, other stuff in the bible we can't confirm happened at all may have actually happened, and been nicked from someone else. Just we can't tell what exactly. Well, we know some of his mythological stuff was stolen but that doesn't count I suppose.

[Tonus]

It depends on what you mean by Jesus.  Are you talking about a regular guy upon whom the mantle of godhood was posthumously draped?  Maybe, although we have absolutely no contemporary eyewitness accounts.  Are you talking about some man-god with magical powers?  Absolutely not.  Unfortunately, this is a game that Christians play all the time, they try to get people to admit that maybe, just maybe, the regular guy might have been real, then they leap to the conclusion that it proves the man-god must have really existed.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is similar to the arguments about whether or not god exists.  Although they are speaking of a specific version of a specific god, they fall back on trying to show how any type of god could exist.  The difficulty in determining if there was a real person on whom the Jesus of the NT is based is in itself a mark against the likelihood that he was the incarnation of god and that he walked about performing great supernatural feats and giving awe-inspiring speeches and did so many amazing things that John says that "if every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."

Instead we get a few letters written decades after he died, and the occasional reference from people who apparently weren't the slightest bit moved at the thought that god himself had only recently walked the Earth.