(February 9, 2015 at 5:00 pm)Minimalist Wrote:(February 9, 2015 at 3:36 pm)TheMessiah Wrote: I would not like to derail this thread;
I once thought he was nothing more than a myth before stumbling upon this.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christ...-t219.html
One of the users is called Tim O Neill, an Atheist himself who argues that Jesus must have existed due to the political atmosphere/effect he had on the Roman Empire.
Zeus had an amazing effect on the Greeks? Did he exist? It's just special pleading without actual evidence.
This exact quote is directly tackled and debunked in the link I posted, 2nd page.
Quote:There is sufficient evidence for historians to accept that Theudas, the Egyptian, the Samaritan Prophet and several others exist. Given that there is even better evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus existed, they accept the existence of him as well.
This part, I do reluctantly agree with.
Quote:No, Jesus is the one that suddenly needs a far higher level of attestation because Jesus is the main character in a modern religious story. In other words, an ideological desire to undermine Christianity drives certain non-believers to shift the level of evidence required to a higher level for Jesus because of a clear bias and prejudice.
That's not rational. The level of evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus should be no more or no less than that required for any other First Century Jewish preacher, prophet or Messianic claimant. As rationalists, we should be careful to avoid bias based on modern Christian ideas about who this particular Jewish preacher was. To do so is irrational.
