Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Abaddon_ire]

I work in courts all the time. I cover them for a major metropolitan newspaper.
From a court of law perspective, no, you cannot prove that Jesus existed as a figure in history.

Certainly not "beyond a reasonable doubt," and likely not "by a preponderance of the evidence."

Courts do not allow "hearsay" testimony, and ALL the evidence about Jesus' historical existence is hearsay.
I'm including Tacitus, for whom Jesus was a throwaway line in a comment about a different subject entirely.

I'm including Josephus, whose most famous reference to Jesus is a fraud and whose second-most famous reference is incongruous with the legend we're discussing.

I'm not saying Jesus never existed. I think it's likely he did: but the evidence requires us to accept second, third and fourth hand accounts as reliable.

That can happen in history.

It cannot happen in court. There's more proof that the South American caravan has Middle Eastern lepers headed to the USA than there is that Jesus existed, as far as courts would be concerned.

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

I did not say an american court did I?

Irrelevant.

At Christ's trial the court (The only suitable court that could be used to judge him) ordered him executed because they recognised him as the Son of God..

Outright lie.

But because they had not power to execute him (the priest took him to the roman authority) Pilate point blanked asked him if he was who the claimed and Jesus said I am but my kingdom is not of this world..

Lie.

Pilate then responded I can find no fault with this man...

Imaginary made up bullshit.

I did not realize theists were welcome on this site.

Not that I'm complaining. I just didn't know the ground rules.

Thanks for being here and being willing to "dialogue," if that's the right word for it.

honest question=honest answer.

foolish challenge/gottcha questions= me being put on your ignore list.

You can't ignore reality, drich. Reality doesn't ignore you. My ignore list has nobody on it because unlike you, I am honest.

Your sky fairy is not real. I think you know it and I think that really scares you to the core.

[TwoCultSurvivor]

I work in courts all the time. I cover them for a major metropolitan newspaper.
From a court of law perspective, no, you cannot prove that Jesus existed as a figure in history.

Certainly not "beyond a reasonable doubt," and likely not "by a preponderance of the evidence."

Courts do not allow "hearsay" testimony, and ALL the evidence about Jesus' historical existence is hearsay.
I'm including Tacitus, for whom Jesus was a throwaway line in a comment about a different subject entirely.

I'm including Josephus, whose most famous reference to Jesus is a fraud and whose second-most famous reference is incongruous with the legend we're discussing.

I'm not saying Jesus never existed. I think it's likely he did: but the evidence requires us to accept second, third and fourth hand accounts as reliable.

That can happen in history.

It cannot happen in court. There's more proof that the South American caravan has Middle Eastern lepers headed to the USA than there is that Jesus existed, as far as courts would be concerned.

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

I did not say an american court did I? At Christ's trial the court (The only suitable court that could be used to judge him) ordered him executed because they recognised him as the Son of God.. But because they had not power to execute him (the priest took him to the roman authority) Pilate point blanked asked him if he was who the claimed and Jesus said I am but my kingdom is not of this world.. Pilate then responded I can find no fault with this man...

---

I did not realize theists were welcome on this site.

Not that I'm complaining. I just didn't know the ground rules.

Thanks for being here and being willing to "dialogue," if that's the right word for it.

honest question=honest answer.

foolish challenge/gottcha questions= me being put on your ignore list.

Hey, pal, could you hold that goalpost still? Because it's hard to work when you keep moving them.

You talked originally of whether Jesus' existence could be proved from a "court point of view." That was what I responded to. You then argued that the only thing that matters is the court that ordered his execution. Well, duh. obviously the court that ordered his execution believed he existed, just like the gunman that shot Spider-Man's uncle believed Spider-Man's uncle existed. The problem is there is precious little evidence that either incident (Jesus' condemnation and the murder of Spider-Man's uncle) ever actually happened.

You can't use Jesus' execution as proof of Jesus' execution. That is circular reasoning. It is begging the question. 

There is no evidence Pilate ordered Jesus' execution outside the second-hand reports of historians whose only evidence was the testimony of Christians who lived decades after the alleged events happened The truth that Plate's habits were grossly misrepresented (he NEVER released prisoners out of respect for Passover) are a strong indication that the entire story is a fabrication. 

It may well be that Pilate ordered Jesus' execution. But beyond a reasonable doubt? Hardly. By a preponderance of the evidence? Not really.

At BEST, it fits with what we know about the timeline and what Pilate would have done to a man who called himself King in 30AD or so.

Decide for yourself if that's enough evidence, but using the gospel to prove the gospel i kind of dunderheaded. I could prove the authenticity of the Koran using the same standard, if you would stand for it.

[Minimalist]

At Christ's trial the court (The only suitable court that could be used to judge him) ordered him executed because they recognised him as the Son of God..

Only if you accept at face value the horseshit that they wrote later.

I will not do that.  The gospel account ( there is only 1 ) is later propaganda.

[TwoCultSurvivor]

And now we get to this guy:



We saw some interesting accounts on Adam, Noah, and some others, but they all seemed rather mythical and distant. With Abraham, things start to feel different. Abraham, compared to the aforementioned figures, is more human and more realistic. In fact, he is the first person in the Bible about whom you could reasonably say has good character development in his accounts (relatively speaking). You get to know a lot more about him than you do about Adam and Noah, and perhaps even feel for him as he experiences all sorts of struggles and joys in life. We also see him in action as he negotiates with people and fights his enemies and pleads for his friends. And there are quite a few moments with him that are arguably pretty powerful, and we will get to them eventually.

So to anyone who's interested, pick up your Bible and let's (section by section) get through the next several chapters in Genesis on Abraham. We can start first with the remaining passage in Genesis 11.

I'm on a similar project in another forum. Be happy to see what you come up with.

TCS

[Minimalist]

In fact, as Julius Wellhausen demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, the Pentateuch is a complilation (at the earliest, in the fifth century BC or later, i.e. about a thousand years after the supposed lifetime of Moses) of four earlier narrative and legal sources, collections of legends and laws.  It is fairly simple to tell the sources apart even in English translation, once you know what to look for.

Robert Price - Holy Fable  Vol. 1

Wellhausen, a respected 19th century scholar, was writing at a time when it was safe to do so.  He did not have to worry about torch-waving mobs of morons like Dripshit tying him to a stake and setting him on fire.

[Gwaithmir]

Calm down Min, I'm just saying let you guys reflect over the Bible, because I think reflection over the bible will lead to the truth. I think he agrees.

One of the biggest reasons I'm an atheist is because I read the Bible (six version) with the idea of understanding it.

[GrandizerII]

Abraham in the Beginning
Genesis 11:27-32

Well, this passage is really about Abram's father Terah, but it naturally leads into the accounts of Abraham starting next chapter.

Terah had three sons: Abram (later to be called Abraham), Nahor and Haran.

Haran was the father of Lot, which means Lot was Abram's nephew. Unfortunately, Haran died relatively early, in the land of his birth: Ur [of the Chaldeans]. His father Terah was still alive when he (Haran) died.

Abram was married to Sarai (later to be called Sarah), and try to have kids as they may, they failed time and time again. Turns out Sarai herself was childless.

Nahor was married to Milkah, the daughter of Haran, who was the father of both Milkah and Iskah. This means, unless we're talking about a different Haran, Nahor was married to his niece ...

Anyway, happy they all were living in Ur. Then Terah made the decision to move to the land of Canaan (with Abram, Sarai, and Lot), but on their way, they settled in Harran (with a double 'r'), possibly named after Haran.

Then Terah died, at the age of 205 years.

Nothing much to comment on here. You could say it's a brief account of what Abraham's early life was like. He grew up in Ur, and was just a normal human person like any other at the time, relying on his father during his early life and just going with the flow. But when his father dies, that's when things start to get real for Abraham.

[The Valkyrie]

In the beginning god said, "Let there be light!"

And he waited...

And waited...

And waited.


Then he realised he had put fuel in the generator and was really embarrassed.

[Bucky Ball]

There was no trial (of Jesus). Galilean wandering peasant preachers were never brought in front of Roman aristocrats. They did not involve themselves with local religious squabbles. Jerusalem was an occupied city. In the Pax Romana, trouble-makers in occupied cities were routinely executed with no trial, per "standing-order". The notion that somehow anyone "recognized" someone as *the Son of God* is utterly preposterous. First of all the Romans didn't buy that Yahweh was a god, so obviously they couldn't. For Jews, being called a "son of God" was a general honorific title, given to many men ... righteous men, politicians, generals, public heroes ... etc. It never meant *the* son of god ... in terms of the specialized nonsense that Christians hijacked the term to mean. It's not what Jews meant by it. Claiming equality with Yahweh was not something a Jew would even recognize. The Christian story was totally invented ... and falls totally apart under scrutiny.

[Drich]

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

I did not say an american court did I? At Christ's trial the court (The only suitable court that could be used to judge him) ordered him executed because they recognised him as the Son of God.. But because they had not power to execute him (the priest took him to the roman authority) Pilate point blanked asked him if he was who the claimed and Jesus said I am but my kingdom is not of this world.. Pilate then responded I can find no fault with this man...

---

honest question=honest answer.

foolish challenge/gottcha questions= me being put on your ignore list.

Hey, pal, could you hold that goalpost still? Because it's hard to work when you keep moving them.

You talked originally of whether Jesus' existence could be proved from a "court point of view." That was what I responded to. You then argued that the only thing that matters is the court that ordered his execution. Well, duh. obviously the court that ordered his execution believed he existed, just like the gunman that shot Spider-Man's uncle believed Spider-Man's uncle existed. The problem is there is precious little evidence that either incident (Jesus' condemnation and the murder of Spider-Man's uncle) ever actually happened.

You can't use Jesus' execution as proof of Jesus' execution. That is circular reasoning. It is begging the question. 

There is no evidence Pilate ordered Jesus' execution outside the second-hand reports of historians whose only evidence was the testimony of Christians who lived decades after the alleged events happened The truth that Plate's habits were grossly misrepresented (he NEVER released prisoners out of respect for Passover) are a strong indication that the entire story is a fabrication. 

It may well be that Pilate ordered Jesus' execution. But beyond a reasonable doubt? Hardly. By a preponderance of the evidence? Not really.

At BEST, it fits with what we know about the timeline and what Pilate would have done to a man who called himself King in 30AD or so.

Decide for yourself if that's enough evidence, but using the gospel to prove the gospel i kind of dunderheaded. I could prove the authenticity of the Koran using the same standard, if you would stand for it.

what a moronic thing to say..

first you claim I'm moving the goal posts, but I never assigned a ourt to judge Christ. you did. you assumed your experience was indeed what was being discussed and when you found out it was wrong, you claim the failable logic was mine. in fact you simply jumped the gun. then you create a straw man example of circular reasoning which I never pointed to or used, You are saying using a court ruling is circular reasoning to affirm the ruling when in fact a court's ruling is the only legal way to affirm the ruling. what you failed to take into consideration is the authority of the court or in this case pontius pilate... 

Meaning even you do, or at least did not doubt his existence. even with only 1 historical reference found on an authenticated piece of stone found in 1961.. such is true for most figures of that era.. all except ceasar who has a few thousand points of reference and then there is Jesus with 25,000+ manuscripts. now how is it the testimony 1 greater than that of25K?