(March 30, 2012 at 1:28 pm)NoMoreFaith Wrote: If you are taking a position that accepts the majority of the scripture, not in an effort to understand truth but an effort to convince others you are placing yourself on a debate platform built on conjecture rather than evidence, and as dismissible as any other conjecture on the 'meaning' of the bible stories.
I'm not doing this just to convince others - I just want to know, if we grant the existence of Jesus for the sake of argument, what is the most popular non-christian interpretation of Jesus?
Quote:If you want to convince, you need logic and evidence. There is no compromise. He's either divine or irrelevant.
I have plenty of both but my NT knowledge is by far my weakest area and I'd pefer to have an idea what explanations other than non-existence fit the evidence we do have. Is the majority opinion of non-christian scholars really that he never existed?
Quote:A theist who deconverts on a flimsy platform may well reconvert once the flaws are laid bare, and it will be next to impossible to bring them back.
I appreciate the advice but there's really no question of this being based on a flimsy platform. I'm not just trying to disprove Jesus's divinity I really do want to know what genuine explanations there are. I thought my hypothesis seemed to fit what I knew.
Quote:Changing a core belief based on a slight deception may very well be harmful.
There's really no question of my trying to convince anyone this is anything more than a 'possible explanation'. I don't see anything wrong with that.
