(March 31, 2015 at 6:40 pm)Nestor Wrote:(March 31, 2015 at 6:21 pm)Cephus Wrote: Because you haven't actually presented any objective evidence yet. All you've presented are unsupported claims. Just because lots of people believe these unsupported claims doesn't stop them from being unsupported claims and thus unimpressive to skeptics. Try harder.
See, considering the present situation of the data we possess for any ancient figure, and the qualifications and methods of those who examine what is historically reliable or not, your rejection of the consensus for what instead is apparently nothing less than an elaborate conspiracy which often involves otherwise mundane and quirky claims about the central figure's background and life, contained in numerous primary sources written within a context of 20-80 years after the alleged person's death, an event that the entire movement is basically founded upon, the burden isn't on me to do your research and cite why alternative possibilities are less probable, that is if we are working with the evidence. And the fact that you are making a positive claim, that there was a conspiracy of people who talked as if a man had recently dwelt among them, and died, for which they had to actually stretch their religious prophecies to fit a narrative they desperately wanted to believe in, you're not being skeptical at all, nor is it merely an obligation of mine to justify the claims made thus far.
But I have no problem saying that we don't have good evidence for many people from antiquity. Some have suggested that Socrates was just an invention of Plato, others have suggested that Plato and Aristotle might not have been real. It doesn't matter because the ideas that have come down to us today are important, no matter who actually came up with them in the first place. However, that isn't the case with Jesus. For Christianity to matter at all, Jesus had to physically exist as a man-god. You can take whatever lessons you want from the Bible, some are good, some are really awful, but without a real Jesus, the religion based on him falls apart entirely.
If you want to deny the existence of Aristotle or Alexander the Great, knock yourself out. It really doesn't make a bit of difference to me.
There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide mankind that cannot be achieved as well or better through secular means.
Bitch at my blog! Follow me on Twitter! Subscribe to my YouTube channel!
Bitch at my blog! Follow me on Twitter! Subscribe to my YouTube channel!