Atheists being asked about the existence of Jesus

[Acrobat]

The thing is, I don't have to recreate some alternate explanation. I'm saying that yes, the writings exist, they're there in history. But so is the Bible. That doesn't mean that the words in the Bible are all historically accurate. Granted, Josephus was a historian! Great. However, we have to ask, how did Josephus learn of the existence of Jesus? After all, he was not alive when Jesus was alive and never met anyone that knew Jesus. And strangely enough, all of the "historical" writings about Jesus came to be after the Bible was written. Is the Bible the source that these historians are using to claim that they know Jesus was real? Okay, then once again, I'm simply not convinced. A historical writing based on a book that is anything but a record of history means very little to me.



Actually the passage regarding James death, wasn’t writen about in the Bible. But Josephus describe the death, the various political players involved, and indicates his relationship with Jesus. It’s a fairly detailed historical account, that’s pretty banal. Josephus was aware of variety of things happening locally, he was a historian chronicling a variety of things happening in that area.

Secondly we have a first hand account of someone who met his brother and his disciples. 

Now, you say you don’t have to recreate some alternative ahistorical explanation, but why? If you feel that these elements can just as easily be explained by ahistorical explanations as they can by historical explanations, than you should be able to prove it, by doing just that. I know that once you start going down that line you start to border on the ridiculous, unlike if I were to start explaining Hercules as ahistorical.

You can forms all sorts of reasonable historical explanations, but I bet you can’t form a reasonable ahistorical explanation, that doesn’t border on the credulous.

This is a testament of the strength of the historical arguments, that one can be as confident about Jesus exists, because the alternative borders on the mother of all conspiracy theories.

There’s a multitude of pieces here that make little to no sense in any conceivable ahistoricist conclusion, like the idea of non-historical person being considered the Jewish messiah, or even being crucified by the romans.

Is it more likely that this messiah claimant met his untimely death at the hands of the Romans, or that some early Jews would have invented a non historical a messiah that died at their hands in such a humiliating fashion?

If you think you can make a non-credulous ahistorical conclusion, by all means try, I bet you can’t.

The fact that you can’t, is a pretty good indication why we can be pretty confident that the data supports historicity not ahistoricity.

There is not enough evidence to compel me to say, with confidence, that I think Jesus was definitely a real man.


At best, it's possible he was real. If you feel the need to insult me and call me an idiot based on that, then I'd suggest you probably need to grow the fuck up.

It’s because folks like yourself operate on a very silly way to think of these questions. What you should be doing is looking at the various data and say what’s the best explanation that I can form based on them? Can I form a ahistorical explanation just as good as a historical one? What you should be doing is actually putting that brain of yours to work, and start drawing out reasonable conclusions here, in this process you’ll quickly see why historicity is held with a good deal of confidence, and a-historicity is seen as ridiculous. Instead you and other opts for a lazy mans agnosticism.