RE: Christians - What would you do if it were discovered Jesus never existed?
September 6, 2015 at 12:20 pm
(September 4, 2015 at 3:49 pm)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:That's the thing I'm pointing out. Even in a hypotheitical I'm not willing to surrender my reasoning ability to some unnamed expert. I would like to see the evidence and decide from there. Which again I point to the impossibility of said evidence.(September 4, 2015 at 1:02 pm)Drich Wrote: 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.
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.
I did a thread like this some time ago:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-11941.html
If you want to know what I think read the OP