[Serious] Time to embrace Islam!

[maxolla]

My belief is more carefully chosen based on logical conclusions.  I have been given two options belief in a deity or disbelief in a deity.  After weighing the evidence I have chosen to belief in its existence.  Yes beliefs are chosen, not randomly but by weighing evidence.

---

Good points.  Do you believe then that Jesus existed? Why?

I don't, for several reasons:

-There are no contemporaneous mentions of Jesus (please don't bother to list those that you think qualify.  They don't.)

-We have nothing written by Jesus.

-The later accounts of Jesus are internally inconsistent, and inconsistent with each other.

-The miracles attributed to Jesus in those accounts are re-worked versions of miracles from other religions.

-A very good case can be made that Christianity would have proceeded as it did without an historic Jesus.

Boru

This is where the discussion gets interesting.  You’ve just made five unsupported claims.  Actually six with “please don’t bother to list those that you think qualify.  They don’t”.  I’m perfectly willing to talk specifics with regards to evidence but wouldn’t a starting point be a willingness to at least weigh the evidence on the merits?

I’m curious how the "Jesus myth" was perpetrated.  This claim seems to be the most outrageous.  One of the, arguably, most written about figures in human history has been made up?  The idea that Jesus never existed is as much a fantastic claim as to say Abraham Lincoln didn’t exist.  The story of Jesus of Nazareth is one that has been corroborated many times over and repeated for over two thousand years.  If Jesus did not exist then we have one of the biggest conspiracies ever perpetrated?  Perpetrated by generations of individuals with a oneness of purpose in the perpetration.  I wonder what the purpose would be for a conspiracy spanning over two thousand years of a phantom named Jesus.

There are certainly contemporaneous mentions of Jesus but you have deemed them unqualified by your standards I assume.

Max