The real religion?

[KevinM1]

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We're not denying anything.  What we're saying is that there needs to be something that corroborates the claim.

Appeals to popularity and tradition don't fit the bill.  That a religion formed due to a particular prophet's rise and fall doesn't speak to the truth of his divine nature.  Again, these people had a vested interest in keeping their cult going.  Whether it was because they were true believers, people who simply recognized the practical benefits of starting and keeping a revolution going, or some combination thereof doesn't really matter.*

Keep in mind, this happens every time Steve gets cornered.  He regurgitates WLC and Plantinga, then when that fails he falls back to the tired "These guys wouldn't perpetuate a lie (why not?) and look at how many people believe, and believed back then (so what?), and why don't you disprove this unfalsifiable thing (utterly illogical)?"

I mean, for all the shit Randy got (and deservedly so), he at least attempted to bring documents other than the NT and philosophical masturbation to the party.  

*Note that I accept that there's an incredibly remote chance that Jesus actually is the real messiah and performed a myriad of miracles.  The thing is, as a skeptic, I need to weigh that possibility against what I know of reality.  And what I know is that people don't come back to life after being dead for a few days.  They cannot heal others simply by laying hands upon them and demanding that the illness (or devil) leave.  They cannot walk upon water, nor alter/add to its chemical makeup simply on a whim.  And I cannot take the accounts of people trying to create/market a religion who say such things actually happened at face value.

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 And no, these impossible things aren't credible because of their impossibleness.

Why do you claim that they are impossible.

Okay, fine, I'll play your game.  They may not be impossible.  But they violate everything we know about how the universe works.  So, as a shorthand so I don't have to waste everyone's time, I'll stick with the "impossible" label.  It may not be as precise as you want, but, well, tough shit. 

Even with that caveat, there's no reason to believe those things happened, precisely because they violate everything we know about how the universe works. 

"But the messiah, by definition, can break the rules!"  Okay, now prove he's the messiah.  "The bible!"  No, the bible is the claim.  Where's the proof?  "The NT!  It's different accounts from different people!"  No, they're a coordinated set of documents that tell the same tale.  Written by his followers, who had a vested interest in building a religion.

I can write a short story about a real person doing amazing/impossible things.  Those things aren't more likely to be true than not because they're amazing.  Indeed, it's the opposite.  They're less likely to be true because they don't conform to what we know of the universe.  And thinking Jesus is somehow different/special/immune to skepticism or logic or anything else due to wish casting is ridiculous.  

A preacher named Jesus may have existed.  I'll grant that he did for the sake of argument.  But his magical aspects are incredibly unlikely.  And without multiple, independent sources describing his magic (or, at the very least, a single neutral observer rather than his devout followers), I see no compelling reason to believe those aspects of his tale.  Everything else - letters and documents written by his followers, the popularity of the early church - is merely a distraction, and a weak one at that.