(August 30, 2010 at 11:30 am)tackattack Wrote:(August 27, 2010 at 6:57 pm)Quest of knowledge Wrote:
I did not say atheists don't believe Jesus existed, I thought you were speaking specifically of those that don't. There are some who do and some who don't, agreed. Believing is not accepting something as factual without evidence, belief is accepting something as true. It commonly is accepted that truth requires objective evidence therefore belief would have objective evidence supporting it. Faith is accepting something as true without objective evidence. Blind faith would then be accepting something as true despite of evidence or with zero evidence.
While I agree on your researching guidelines the rest of the post smacks of just as much bias as asking a theist if Jesus exists. Comments like "silly" , "of course", "fool" are not as unbiased as you're attempting to appear to be. Your generalizations of all theists also are a detriment to any objective thinking. I accept religious documents as indicative evidence, without a body or burial site or effigies to great men. I claim it's likely that a man named Jesus existed, if he did there are stories about his life. I hope this helps
Tackattack,
My statement that atheist do not “believe” Jesus existed, or not exist is because atheist by definition do not “believe”. If they are atheist they will simply accept or not accept the evidence.
On the other hand the above is the essence of a religious argument because religious arguments are purely philosophical. The religious arguments always evolve on the semantics because the arguments end when the substantive issues begin.
There is no historical evidence that the Jesus of the Christians existed. The name is not Hebrew, Greek, Palestinian, or Roman. It is a Spanish construct. The Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castilla took Christianity from near extinction and turned it into an effective tool of repression, control, and dictatorial government, which they spread around the world with their conquests.
Jesus is a fairly common Spanish name. I have a cousin, and an old great friend with that name, but neither of them is Jewish. The name Jesus is as foreign to Hebrew as Francisco. From the onset, the story makes no sense. Then, there is the fact that no contemporary Hebrew scholar ever wrote about “Jesus” or any other man with some of the attributes that Christians attach to “him”. No Roman or Greek historian wrote one sentence about the alleged self proclaimed son of god.
The more recent the Christian “scholar”, the greater the “evidence” that Jesus “must have” existed at least as a man. It is much easier to reinvent the news that “took place” 2010 years ago. That said, the date of the alleged birth of the fictional Jesus must be wrong because Herod died in the year 2 B.C. He could not logically have ordered the Jewish babies killed when he was dead. There is another detail. The Hebrew scholars forgot to mention anywhere that their children were ordered dead by the Romans in year 1. Maybe they didn’t mind?
What do you think about the fact that Christianity was reported by Romans to exist in Greece decades before the alleged birth of Jesus and that the Greeks did not use the name Jesus, but Kristós? What do you make of the fact that Greeks not Jews were specifically addressed in the NT? What do you make of the fact that Messianic Jews were converted to Christianity by non-Jews and that no Christian Jews descend from the “original” Jesus character, or his alleged entourage?
There is the issue that the earliest Gospel was written in the 2nd century and that the Gospels contradict one another on their Jesus tales. Who said that if you tell a lie long enough, people will believe it?
