Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Aractus]

I'm not asking for it both ways. Charlatanism is a means to gain, not just a means to gaining money. It is possible for sincerely believing Christians to justify using a charlatan's tactics to gain believers; I used the example of faith healing because I know this exact thing goes on amongst their ranks. Some of them are in it for the money, sure, but some of them are in it because they actually believe that their god exists, and they are willing to drive people toward that god through whatever means will convince them, even if the means themselves are dishonest.

Just as faith healers can be motivated to use conjuring tricks to convince everyone else of something they themselves are convinced of, the early church scribes could have been motivated to bend and/or fabricate text to support a conclusion that they themselves were convinced of. Like I said before, if people believe something to be true so insistently that they're willing to die over it, then they're willing to lie over it, too. Science isn't even immune from this problem; history provides various examples of scientists who were so convinced of a foregone conclusion that they were willing to misinterpret and even fabricate evidence to support it.

Well that argument is just bullshit - it's completely refuted by the evidence. Why would Paul be writing to the other Christian churches in the first century telling them specifically not to behave that way if that is in fact how you think the Gospel spread? Furthermore is there no evidence at all that Paul and the others did any conjuring tricks of their own - the only so-called conjuring occurs from Jesus and perhaps slightly after his death. Paul, Luke, James, Peter, and the other apostles are not performing any miraculous signs to the early believers, but Paul's epistles demonstrate that he was indeed witnessing his faith to them and we can surmise the other apostles were doing likewise.