Why can't Christians Verify Exactly Where Jesus Was Buried?

[Aractus]

lol, now writing is evidence? No wonder you believed that claptrap for so long.

Of course writing is evidence, how else do you think we know about the ancient beliefs and cultures of the ancient world? How would we know what deities the Egyptians worshipped without writing? How would we know what Copernicus had to say without writing? Rely on an oral tradition? You are creating the same fallacy as Firefighter: that is you ignore what the experts tell us is evidence, and thereby create impossible conditions for anyone to prove anything in the ancient world. You can question whether we can truly "know" anything, this is an age-old philosophical question that was the basis for The Matrix for example. But once you have established we can know things about the world, then you must accept what you find. Would you dig up a Tell and say absolutely nothing is of historical value because it doesn't meet your arbitrary standards for "evidence"? What about the ancient cities named in Joshua that were successfully discovered during excavations in the 1800-1900's? Obviously the Bible (and in some cases Egyptian writings as well) must have provided some evidence for the existence of these cities, otherwise why would archaeologists have looked for them? And how would they have discovered them if not for their ancient descriptions?

As I just mentioned you are intentionally creating a false dichotomy. The book of Joshua is excellent evidence for the existence of these Canaanite cities, and that has now been proven beyond doubt. But it's terrible evidence as a history book for the inception of the ancient Israeli nation. So it can be good evidence for one thing, and insufficient for something else. This is true of everything in the Bible. Paul's epistles are particularly good evidence - for his theology and what he was preaching during the mid-first century. It doesn't tell us what the Gnostics were preaching, nor can it tell us if the Gnostics had an apostolic lineage, and if it did what it was. In fact it doesn't tell use precisely of the apostolic lineage of Pauline Christianity either. So it's great evidence for some things, and it's not great for other questions we might have about the ancient world and early Christianity.

Your appeal to my lack of intelligence is simply evidence of your own ignorance. Religious beliefs do not indicate people are less smart, or that they are more intelligent than their agnostic peers. I have not seen you, or Firefighter, or Min use any level of critical thinking. None of you have quoted from any distinguished scholar, and you all seem to believe that you can be the ones to decide arbitrarily on what you will accept as evidence, and ignore what academics have to say. You know the "Big Bang"? That's a purely theoretical theory with no empirical evidence whatsoever. If you were going to ignore the consensus of astrophysicists, as well as their peer-review (and other academic) literature, then you could very well say "look there's no evidence of the Big Bang - go find me hard evidence". And you would be creating the same impossible conditions you are creating with the historicity of Jesus.

I want you, by your own standards of evidence, to support that.

I already showed how small the Mythicist movement is, from an academic source. If you want to refute it go right ahead and provide your own evidence.

Or, alternatively, you could simply admit to engaging in hyperbole ... not that I expect that sort of frankness from you.

I already quantified it. Holocaust Denial is a bigger movement. There is a museum in USA - Psychiatry: An Industry of Death - which has an exhibition on WWII dedicated to spreading Holocaust Denial. That exhibition would be illegal in several European countries. Nothing like that exists for Jesus Mythicism. That's my evidence, and I don't need any more.