Is it true that Suetonius and Josephus "identified" Vespasian as the Jewish Messiah, and Tacitus reported on miracles that Vespasian performed? Wouldn't that indicate that it was Vespasian, and not Jesus, who is really god? After all, we have ancient writings from his contemporaries making those claims. Are their claims any different? How would we know which claims are legitimate?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
