Hi, I'm a Christian. Help Me Disprove My Religion!

[Randy Carson]

Yes, I watched the Ehrman-vs-InfidelGuy video you linked to. Ehrman speaks of Paul's writings as indicating that Paul's "throwaway" comments about James the brother of Jesus indicates to him that Paul knew the friends and family of Jesus. That may well be the case, but it is nevertheless an inference. Again, and I want to make this plain since you seem to be arguing as though I think Jesus didn't exist: I am convinced by the totality of the circumstantial evidence that Jesus was a real person. [emphasis added]  The place where he says it's "hard" evidence seemed not to be a statement of fact, but exasperation at InfidelGuy's aggressive and repeated claim that Jesus never existed, an emotional retort rather than a statement of historical fact, if you will, which is why Ehrman launched into discussions of things like the existence of Julius Caesar and the Holocaust.

As a believer, I'm often appalled by the things which some Christians say and do thereby causing God's name to be blasphemed among non-believers.

As a non-believer, do you ever cringe upon reading the stupid things that Jesus Mythicists say in this forum and elsewhere which bring the credibility of atheism into question?

[downbeatplumb]

Yes, I watched the Ehrman-vs-InfidelGuy video you linked to. Ehrman speaks of Paul's writings as indicating that Paul's "throwaway" comments about James the brother of Jesus indicates to him that Paul knew the friends and family of Jesus. That may well be the case, but it is nevertheless an inference. Again, and I want to make this plain since you seem to be arguing as though I think Jesus didn't exist: I am convinced by the totality of the circumstantial evidence that Jesus was a real person. [emphasis added]  The place where he says it's "hard" evidence seemed not to be a statement of fact, but exasperation at InfidelGuy's aggressive and repeated claim that Jesus never existed, an emotional retort rather than a statement of historical fact, if you will, which is why Ehrman launched into discussions of things like the existence of Julius Caesar and the Holocaust.

As a believer, I'm often appalled by the things which some Christians say and do thereby causing God's name to be blasphemed among non-believers.

As a non-believer, do you ever cringe upon reading the stupid things that Jesus Mythicists say in this forum and elsewhere which bring the credibility of atheism into question?

All this time here and you still don't know what atheism is.
I won't tell you again, it tires me to repeat the same things to the same people over and over again.

[Randy Carson]

As has been pointed out to you by others, if I found a letter saying you had a friend named Trevor who died at age 17 in 2000, I would tentatively accept that as genuine because I had no reason to argue with it, and I would believe in Trevor's existence only to the degree that I had evidence for it. It's a low claim, so not much proof is required, nor is much belief required. It comes down to a "why not?"

If you were not already aware of this, I have posted thoughts by Prof. Richard Swinburne in another thread of this forum saying the same thing. We believe what others tell us in the absence of good reasons to reject their statements.

For this reason, it is not unreasonable to accept the accounts of the gospels as historically reliable in the absence of trustworthy evidence to the contrary. And this contradictory evidence does not exist, does it? Consequently, we give the gospel writers the benefit of the doubt regarding what they claim to have seen and heard.

But if that letter said that Trevor was a miracle worker sent by God, killed in Birmingham after a public trial for treason against the Crown, and that angry mobs had demanded his death, I would probably look for additional proofs of this much higher level of claim. If I then saw no news articles about a trial of that sort in Birmingham, and found that despite it being "public", only you and your circle of friends ever seem to have written about it... I'd probably be pretty skeptical of your claims about Trevor. Might I believe you had a friend named Trevor? Sure, why not. Miracle worker and executed in public for treason? Mmmm, no. Evidence is weak, and unconfirmed.

I see that you slipped in the bit about "your circle of friends"...and that's the problem. Once you have multiple, independent eyewitnesses for the claims that Aractus is making about Trevor, then the evidence for his story becomes stronger...not weaker.

"In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence." - David Hume

“To say that uniform experience is against miracles is to implicitly assume already that miracles have never occurred. It seems almost embarrassing to refute so sophisticated an objection by such a simple consideration, but this answer nevertheless seems to me to be entirely correct.” - William Lane Craig

[Randy Carson]

Provide a scholarly reference please.

No thanks. Have fun in church on Sunday.

And now we come to it...

Backed into a corner and pressed for scholarship proving the claims of Jesus Mythicism, the mythicist takes his ball and bat and goes home...because he has nothing to offer.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Yes, I watched the Ehrman-vs-InfidelGuy video you linked to. Ehrman speaks of Paul's writings as indicating that Paul's "throwaway" comments about James the brother of Jesus indicates to him that Paul knew the friends and family of Jesus. That may well be the case, but it is nevertheless an inference. Again, and I want to make this plain since you seem to be arguing as though I think Jesus didn't exist: I am convinced by the totality of the circumstantial evidence that Jesus was a real person. [emphasis added]  The place where he says it's "hard" evidence seemed not to be a statement of fact, but exasperation at InfidelGuy's aggressive and repeated claim that Jesus never existed, an emotional retort rather than a statement of historical fact, if you will, which is why Ehrman launched into discussions of things like the existence of Julius Caesar and the Holocaust.

As a believer, I'm often appalled by the things which some Christians say and do thereby causing God's name to be blasphemed among non-believers.

As a non-believer, do you ever cringe upon reading the stupid things that Jesus Mythicists say in this forum and elsewhere which bring the credibility of atheism into question?

Yes, I do sometimes cringe. But that's why we have discussions about these kinds of things. And I don't expect them to change their minds except in the face of solid evidence (or at least, a more-coherent argument to the contrary)... but I do expect them to change their minds, because that's what intellectually honest people do. 

Atheism isn't a coherent group, so it's not really possible to "bring the credibility of atheism into question", as you suggest. If an individual atheist bases his ideas on something that's not solid, as one  of the reasons they reject religion, that's on them. But as we have been pointing out, here, it doesn't particularly matter whether or not one accepts that there probably was (and even then that's as far as I'll go in saying it) an apocalyptic Judean rabbi who went around preaching in/around the first 30 years of the first century. I'd say the reason (as has just been pointed out) the James account dovetails with the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, is that there probably was a Sermon on the Mount, or something very much like it. Accepting the magical claims, like the darkness, the earthquakes, the zombie infestation, and the tearing of the veil... yeah, very unlikely, other than as a series of stories passed among the faithful like a game of Telephone/Rumor, which is also a perfectly valid reason to think any of the gospels or other writings agree.

Even if we accept the earliest date of James, and accept the earliest date of the Gospels, it doesn't follow that because they agree (especially given the "filtering process" of the meetings you describe) it means that it really happened the way the story goes. It wouldn't even take a month, let alone a year, let alone 20 years, for people in their circles-of-believers to tell stories that wound up meshing into something like a cohesive set of tales, and forming an original document (proto-Mark), which spelled out the core of what they came up with, and which formed the basis of all that was written thereafter... until enough time had passed for the variants like John and the "heretical" versions/gospels to emerge.

It's not something that requires proof, as it's just a simple hypothesis which is as explanatory as the usual versions. The point is that, as a thought exercise, it shows that the arguments that "well ____ agrees with ____, therefore Truth™ can be proved!" is a bunk conclusion.

---

No thanks. Have fun in church on Sunday.

And now we come to it...

Backed into a corner and pressed for scholarship proving the claims of Jesus Mythicism, the mythicist takes his ball and bat and goes home...because he has nothing to offer.

No one here (that I can see) is arguing for Jesus Mythicism. Why does this strawman keep popping up?

[Randy Carson]

---

The documentary was by Bethany Hughes for the BBC not a production for the "history" Channel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettany_Hughes


The basic idea is that writings by other people are not evidence for the person but evidence that someone was writing. So for example it was possible that Plato was writing about a "type" of person and Socrates was a gestalt entity made of the figure and similarly the figure parodied in a play which mentions Socrates could be parodying the figure invented by Plato.

Personally I think there was a Socrates and so did Mrs Hughes BUT the lack of direct evidence for him makes it possible he was a fiction, this is a valid argument that was addressed in the documentary which covered all of Socrates life, research into him and debates about meanings of his work.

I also think there was a David Koresch type charistmatic charlatan who the "jesus" character was based on. But this my own opinion and the historicity of jesus is far from proven.
By the way is aligning of writings proof for or against a historical jesus? you are arguing both ways at the same time.

---

Bethany Hughes has written books on Socrates, she doesn't doubt his historicity:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/be...62/?no-ist

I already pointed out to you there is evidence don't be disingenuous and say there isn't. Ancient writings by other people are evidence for the existence of the person they're writing about. You can build a strong case from such evidence.

In any case, the case for the existence of Jesus is much stronger than that for Socrates. As I've pointed out to you, scholars such as Ehrman and Hurtado have both said on multiple occasions there is direct evidence for the existence of Jesus. That's because Paul know the family of Jesus. It's one thing to say that the gospel writers didn't - but Paul did. He couldn't know the family of someone that isn't real.

By the way is aligning of writings proof for or against a historical jesus? you are arguing both ways at the same time.

Then perhaps you should understand the argument. James is, in my opinion, THE earliest Christian writing that exists in the New Testament. It is written before 50AD. Paul's writings begin around 52-54 AD, AFTER the Jerusalem Council. We know from both Paul and Luke that the council discussed theological matters - in particular whether Christians would need to keep the custom of circumcision, and they decided against it. James is writing before this - his Epistle is so Jewish that it could almost pass for being a Jewish text instead of a Christian text. Paul's theology is less directly based on Jesus's teachings, and for that reason it's more evolved. It started in 29AD with Jesus's teachings - by the time James writes his epistle it's clear from the content that the church is still following his theology quite closely. Paul's theology is different and moves further away from the church's theology of the 30-40's as the non-Jews have begun being converted, and after 50AD they are main people being converted to the religion.

So as you see the chronology agrees perfectly with a real Jesus who delivered the teachings recorded in the gospels. There are at least 16 direct parallels between James and the Sermon on the Mount (), and there are at least another 10 direct parallels to other teachings of Jesus. Sometimes what James says is nearly word-for-word identical to what Jesus is quoted as saying in the gospels. Yet the gospels hadn't been written yet - even by the earliest reckoned date - and James never directly quotes Jesus.

So the Sermon on the Mount already exists in 49AD for James to learn from. And not just that, but the other things Jesus said as well.

So again, how is this possible if someone simply invented what Jesus said in 85 AD? How does James have specific intimate detailed knowledge of the teachings of Jesus before they're written?

If Jesus didn't exist then who came up with the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable of Good Samaritan, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son?

Aractus-

Do you think it is possible that Matthew, who was a tax collector, and possibly one or two other apostles may have been taking notes contemporaneously during Jesus' ministry?

Obviously, none of this has survived, but when Jesus sent out the 70, were they preaching merely from memory? Or did they have a few written notes or "talking points" taken from Jesus' own sermons that they took along with them?

[Randy Carson]

As a believer, I'm often appalled by the things which some Christians say and do thereby causing God's name to be blasphemed among non-believers.

As a non-believer, do you ever cringe upon reading the stupid things that Jesus Mythicists say in this forum and elsewhere which bring the credibility of atheism into question?

All this time here and you still don't know what atheism is.
I won't tell you again, it tires me to repeat the same things to the same people over and over again.

Are you ever embarrassed by stupid arguments made by people who don't believe that God exists in their efforts to disprove theism?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Are you ever embarrassed by stupid arguments made by people who do believe that God exists in their efforts to prove theism?

[Randy Carson]

As a believer, I'm often appalled by the things which some Christians say and do thereby causing God's name to be blasphemed among non-believers.

As a non-believer, do you ever cringe upon reading the stupid things that Jesus Mythicists say in this forum and elsewhere which bring the credibility of atheism into question?

Yes, I do sometimes cringe. But that's why we have discussions about these kinds of things. And I don't expect them to change their minds except in the face of solid evidence (or at least, a more-coherent argument to the contrary)... but I do expect them to change their minds, because that's what intellectually honest people do. 

Your honesty is refreshing. I wish more members of this forum posted as thoughtfully. You're wading in a very shallow pool.

I often take a moment at CAF to correct a newbie Catholic apologist who is either overstating the Christian position - or simply has something wrong. I think you would agree that if we're going to make a case for our respective points of view, we ought to do it well, eh?

Atheism isn't a coherent group, so it's not really possible to "bring the credibility of atheism into question", as you suggest. If an individual atheist bases his ideas on something that's not solid, as one  of the reasons they reject religion, that's on them.

Agreed, but have you noticed how often the forest is mistaken for the tree(s) when it comes to Christianity in this forum? Westboro Baptist. Pat Robertson. A pedophile priest. ALL Christians...and Christ Himself for that matter...are tarred and feathered because of the actions or words of these few individuals or small groups. Just this past week or so, Christianity has been mocked because of the Rapture - an 19th century Proestant novelty. And if I take pains to point out that Catholics do not believe in the rapture, then I get cries of the "no true Scot" fallacy thrown at me.

No one here (that I can see) is arguing for Jesus Mythicism. Why does this strawman keep popping up?

Redbeard is a mythicist. So is Minimalist. And a large majority of the forum members are ambivalent or agnostic on this subject, at best. It's intellectually lazy...if Jesus never existed, then there is no reason to think more deeply. If he did, then there is much more work to be done. No one wants to do that. Like Jenny's assertion that the Shroud is a forgery. Or the idea that there is no tomb of Peter under St. Peter's in Rome. Folks read articles (well, one at least) that presupposes what they already want to believe, and that's as far as their knowledge goes.

Aractus, Ehrman, and O'Neill aren't afraid to admit that scholarship favors Christianity - at least as far as Jesus' historical existence goes.

We can't ever seriously discuss what Jesus said and did until we have first agreed that Jesus even existed. Otherwise, we invariably get to the point at which the believer's debate victory is at hand...only to have the mythicist play "Jesus never really existed anyway" as his "get out of this hot seat free" card.

[Randy Carson]

Are you ever embarrassed by stupid arguments made by people who do believe that God exists in their efforts to prove theism?

All. The. Time.

See my post above.