(July 16, 2015 at 8:05 pm)Napoléon Wrote:(July 16, 2015 at 11:12 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Do you guys believe that Mohammad, Cleopatra, Aristotle were real people?
You know, this kind of question really does betray your own ignorance.
What is a question like this supposed to imply? The answer to such a question should be pretty obvious to any person who has done the least possible amount of research besides none at all IMO. But when a question like this is asked it only serves to muddy the waters between actual historical figures that have multitudes of evidence for their existence, and religious figures who have barely any at all besides the testimony of their respective religions.
“As a historian, I think evidence matters. And the past matters. And for anyone to whom both evidence and the past matter, a dispassionate consideration of the case makes it quite plain: Jesus did exist. He may not have been the Jesus that you mother believes in or the Jesus of the stain-glass window or the Jesus of your least favorite televangelist or the Jesus proclaimed by the Vatican, the Southern Baptist Convention, the local megachurch, or the California Gnostic. But he did exist, and we can say a few things with relative certainty about him.” (Ehrman, Bart, Did Jesus Exist?, 5-6.)
