(January 28, 2015 at 10:54 am)SteveII Wrote: To save you all time, I know you are going to say some version of: the gospels were written 30-50 years later, my favorite crackpot historian that says Jesus never existed, it is fact that all of this was a big hoax. Yeah yeah yeah. Those are all opinions. There are plenty of modern secular historians who believe that Jesus existed.
Jesus? Maybe. But Jesus Christ? Since your position hinges on Jesus Christ having existed, and since contemporary secular historians, by definition, don't believe in Jesus Christ, your appeal to authority falls flat.
You're not interested in a charismatic Rabbi who gained a following, died a shameful death, and became an object of evolving folk lore. You're interested in the alleged miracle-working God-man who was resurrected, etc. -- the 'Jesus' of the NT. Saying that we can't disprove the Bible's silly miracle stories and so have to grant the possibility that it's all true is just a weasel tactic you believers trot out to deflect the true burden of evidence. You don't hold yourself to that standard of willful idiocy when reading accounts of miracles outside your religious tradition (e.g., The Quran, The Gita, The Iliad), so why would you expect anyone here to make an exception in your case?
