(February 4, 2015 at 8:04 pm)SteveII Wrote: I'm sorry. There was several posts in a row that more than suggested I back up my position that believing Jesus never existed is a minority view.This gets tiring, this disingenuous appeal to scholars who agree that there was a man on whom the Jesus myth was based. How many of those scholars believe that he was a normal human being who died and is dead, and how many of them believe that he was god incarnate, and now sits on his heavenly throne? It's painful to watch you guys trot out "evidence" that amounts to "someone agrees that these people saw something, but it's clear that their memories are pretty fucked up."
We know Elvis Presley existed. If a cult grew around a myth where he became the almighty god of the universe, the fact that he existed as a human at some point wouldn't be evidence of the claim that he became god. It's just evidence that some people will believe whatever they're told and that there isn't a lie so audacious that you can't suck in a shitload of gullible newbs.
"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
