(March 31, 2015 at 7:04 pm)Nestor Wrote:(March 31, 2015 at 6:51 pm)Cephus Wrote: 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.It doesn't make much of a difference to me either except that it isn't in the interest of critical thought to just say, "Oh, to hell with what experts think, I don't care. Thus, X." That Christianity falls apart if Jesus didn't exist isn't really relevant unless we want to go the other direction in understanding why there about six historians in the field who take that position; even so, one can be a Christian and believe the New Testament was inspired mythology or something, so it only falls apart for those whose investment in his historicity is essential to their faith, and that's not the case with me. Nor should it be the case with anyone interested in the truth, and while I agree that ideas are far more important than the person who espoused them, attacking faith going the mythicist route discredits the attacker.
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.
The "experts" are only experts insofar as they agree with what the evidence says. Someone with a Ph.D in physics is only valid so long as they say things in keeping with the evidence behind physics. This is why I've pointed out that all of the creationists with advanced degrees don't mean a thing because they are saying things that violate the understanding of and evidence for their sciences. If the experts have no evidence, it doesn't matter what their opinion is, they still have no evidence. The Argument from Authority is a fallacy for a reason.
There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide mankind that cannot be achieved as well or better through secular means.
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