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Re: Evidence that Jesus was real?
July 7, 2013 at 9:58 pm
Gah. There is no historical evidence for Jesus's existence at all. Not that we have found so far, at least. The fact that many of the stories about him are simply retellings of older religious stories suggests an entirely fictional Jesus.
Even the later mentions of Jesus are just hearsay. Hearsay from a time when most people couldn't read or write, and the sources we do have are from much later and not from the same place, so by the time these guys had even heard about "this Jesus bloke" the story had been through many years and thousands of miles of bloody "Chinese Whispers."
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RE: Evidence that Jesus was real?
July 7, 2013 at 10:32 pm
If there was any solid evidence of a historical Jesus we'd have it. So all that we are left with is conjecture and speculation. There are varying methods to coming to a conclusion on the historicity of the past, it just depends on which scholar or historian you are listening to.
I've heard excellent arguments for both sides. Fact is, we'll never really know.
But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret is as though it had an underlying truth.
Umberto Eco
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RE: Evidence that Jesus was real?
July 7, 2013 at 11:16 pm
Was there a Yeshua bar Yosef? There had to be 100 of them just based on how common both names were.
Did any of them come back from the dead? Of course not.
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RE: Evidence that Jesus was real?
July 8, 2013 at 9:31 am
It doesn't matter if Socrates or Jesus existed. It's what is written about these supposed men that will stand the test of time. We still have the choice of accepting what they supposedly wrote or said as valid points to discern over the human condition. I guess I don't care if Jesus existed or not. His writings still have about as much worth to me as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter.
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RE: Evidence that Jesus was real?
July 8, 2013 at 10:26 am
Quote:The historical Jesus Christ has more evidence for His existence than many other figures from the ancient world whose existence we take for granted.
The one thing that needs to be pointed out is that those other historical figures are not typically assumed to be gods-made-flesh who performed supernatural feats and who reward believers and punish non-believers. When a Christian puts forth the argument that "a man named Jesus existed in that time" he isn't trying to convince me that there was just another man who lived during that time, preached to masses of people and was crucified for sedition. It's a big leap from "
a guy named Jesus existed at the time" to "
he was the living god of the universe made flesh, performed miracles and committed suicide by cross."
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: Evidence that Jesus was real?
July 8, 2013 at 11:13 am
Xtians do not worship the man. They worship the god.
