challenge to skeptics: Explain why the early christians believed in a historical Jesus
Posted on: September 26, 2008 - 7:40pm
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challenge to skeptics: Explain why the early christians believed in a historical Jesus
my contention is that skeptics cannot adequately explain away the belief of 1st and 2nd century christiansin a historical Jesus without a historical Jesus.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
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Well, since the story starts with: "Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?" spoken by a ghost... you tell me.
"Preachers and prostitutes earn their money on bended knee using mouth and hands. I much prefer the company of the latter." - Me
There is a difference between a history of claims being made, and those same claims being factually provable.
For over 3 thousand years Egyptians claimed that the sun was a thinking entity, just because they recorded that claim in stone didnt make the sun a being.
So you claim that a man named Jesus existed? BIG DEAL, my name is Brian but that doesn't mean I can fart a Lamborginni out of my ass.
Deities do not follow a "method" because imagination is a whim, not a method.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
however, your comparison between the historicity of Jesus and "farting a lambo out of my ass" made me laugh and at the same time made me want to punch in my computer screen.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Do you preach to the lost or the saved? Duh!
You have answered your own question. "No evidence that non-christians believed"
I find it rather humorous that you have asked us to combat ignorance in the 'atheist community' when there is so much sitting in the chair at your computer.
Put down the crack pipe and re-read your assertion.
Is that the christian thing to do?
Bear the fruit of the spirit through longsuffering or else you chance the sins of the flesh entering into thy pure self.
"Preachers and prostitutes earn their money on bended knee using mouth and hands. I much prefer the company of the latter." - Me
What? Ok, So if RRS battles claims of Thor and Vampires and Ouji Boards, thats ok? If they Battle Uri Geller and Scientology, that's Ok? But pick on Jesus then we are automatically wrong?
Could it be that Jesus was RETROFITED after the fact, that a splinter sect of a Jewish sect didn't like the current belief and marketed their own motif? Was there a man or group that inspired the Jesus myth? YES, otherwise it wouldn't exist.
But how anyone would conclude that a disimbodied being knocking up 9-14 year old girls and human flesh surviving rigor mortis is as as absurd as if I claimed I could fart a Lamborginni out of my ass.
Ignorance is incerting whims and magic where none exist.
Deities do not follow a "method" because imagination is a whim, not a method.
I am still confused on what you are asking and I have written 3 responses, only to erase them because I reread your posts and get a different thought about what your point is!
To ask someone to explain away a historical Jesus, when that is part of the description, when that defines what I am trying to explain away, creates a circular response.
EX: Prove that the green grass is not really green!
Is that what you mean? AGain still confused!
You really haven't read many threads if you are of the opinion that RRS posters even if atheist are not shown the errors of their positions when posting erroneous information.
No writing supporting or refuting Jesus by pagan writers in the first century does nothing to support or refute the position that Jesus was real or not real. You cannot make a claim that lack of information criticizing Jesus shows he was real or not real. It may be he was so insignificant no one even noticed him or it may be he was a fictional character and there was no need to criticize.
Your desire to punch in your computer screen over Brian's farting a car out of his ass shows little progress in the violent nature of Christianity has occurred since the Inquisition. Jesus told you to turn the other cheek not to force conversions, murder those who don't accept, or kill those who leave the fold. In fact he specifically says that God is the judge not man.
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Simple. Vampires have been claimed for hundred of years and never been proven to exist. People have also claimed that Bigfoot and Loc Ness exist. A history of claims doesn't make a myth real, it just means that humans have a history of believing a myth. Just like humans for milinia believed that the earth was flat.
Jesus is most likely a conglomeration of multiple regional sacrifical motifs and merely a name that the movement incorperated to draw people away from the old mysticism and polytheism.
But in any case, even if atheists were to concede that an individual named Jesus lead a new Jewish movement, the claims of magic would be no more believable than the first Egyptian to claim that Isis fucked the severd penis of Osirus to concieve Horus.
Deities do not follow a "method" because imagination is a whim, not a method.
Do you believe in Psychic abilities? I will assume, for the sake of argument that you don't.
Now, I have met people who believed about someone else that they were psychic. That is, someone they had actually met in person, they believed something supernatural about.
Now let's start moving from first person, to second person accounts.
Imagine that I would tell you: "I have an friend who once went to a psychic called Frank, and he told him so and so."
Now you too believe in the Frank the psychic.
You tell the story to someone, maybe you forget some of the details, and maybe call him Fran because you have a cold, and aren't pronouncing Frank correctly.
The person you told it to tells the story to someone else, describing Frank as a women called Fran, and also with minor details of what was told by the psychic to my friend changed, because the person forgets or adds some details for effect.
And so on and so on.
Now, transport all of this back 2000 years, were people generally had a completely different understanding of reality (they thought the Earth was flat for one), and imagine how warped a story can become when the first written records of Jesus show up over 70 years after his death, far away from Palestine. Add to that the point that Paul saw a ghost, not Jesus, and he's now telling stories too, that he combines with not firsthand, not secondhand, but maybe fortieth-hand or hundreth-hand accounts, and others do the same, and it's all going on 1900 years ago, covering a large geographical area, many different cultures and languages, and involves thousands of people.
So was there a guy called Jesus? Maybe.
Or maybe there was a girl caled Jesse, a guy called Jim, a guy called Yusef, and many others.
Jesse stood on a plank that floated over a lake and some people saw it. They told the story to some that told it to some that picked up on it, and Jesse's gender and name had since been warped, so when the followers of Yusef hear it, they believe that it is their profet Yusef that is being talked about, because they have some amazing stories about him too, so walking on water? That must be him.
Now, I remain skeptical when people I know personally gives me firsthand accounts of psychics they have themselves met, so you can imagine how I feel about a gigantic game of chinese whispers going on thousands of years ago. Especially when there is a huge political, emotional, and cultural stake in all of it from the very beginning.
The Catholic church were in charge of all the accounts of Jesus throughout the middle ages, and they had a huge political interest in those stories, and that alone is enough to make the bible a less than trustworthy source of history.
But even so, the Catholic Church's political interest in how Christianity was conveyed is still just one of thousands and thousands of links in a huge chain of Chinese Whispers, a chain that becomes increasingly less credible as hard, immutable fact the further you move along it.
And that makes the current form of the accounts of Jesus something that any reasonable person ought to stay very skeptical about, regardless of wether they believe in God or not.
Or, alternatively, they ought to believe in many many many things that they are told, lest they be very inconsistent in what they are naturally skeptical about, and what they aren't.
For example, my ex-girlfriend met a psychic once, that told her she would one day fall in love with a red-headed guy. I could call up my ex now and ask about the psychic, so that I could even seek out this person myself. Now, are you going to believe my second-hand account of a psychic with real supernatural powers?
If not, then you'll forgive me if I remain skeptical of millionth-hand accounts of Jesus' reserection and similar stories.
P.S: I just made up the fortiesh-hand and millionth-hand expressions. I'm not sure you can actually say that, but I pressume you know what I mean, regardless.
historical Jesus
Makes zero difference to me , as all earth life is simply carbon based life, as we are all so the same. Do aliens exist ?
ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE:
"There are some hundred billion (1011) galaxies, each with, on the average, a hundred billion stars. In all the galaxies, there are perhaps as many planets as stars, 1011 x 1011 = 1022, ten billion trillion. In the face of such overpowering numbers, what is the likelihood that only one ordinary star, the Sun, is accompanied by an inhabited planet? Why should we, tucked away in some forgotten corner of the Cosmos, be so fortunate? To me, it seems far more likely that the universe is
brimming over with life. But we humans do not yet know. We are just beginning our explorations. The only planet we are sure is inhabited is a tiny speck of rock and metal, shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost." ~ Carl Sagan
Jesus is me .....
I can simply respond to ALL points made by everyone on this board, and that is that all of you commit one giant false dichotomy. I am not saying "explain this without God existing" but rather "explain this without Jesus existing".
However, my point was that all the Christians (including the heretical sects) believed in a historical jesus, and pagan and Jewish critics of Christianity (Celsus, Trypho) all accepted that Jesus existed. There is no evidence that any critics of Christianity used this argument (That Jesus never existed) against christianity when this should have been one giant ace up their sleeve.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
The ancients thought many wrong things .... and today we still do ....
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
If you'll notice, I say I remain very skeptical about the supernatural claims about Jesus, but there is also good reasons to believe that a non-supernatural Jesus never existed (but rather that a non-supernatural Jesse, Jim, John, Jamie and Jack existed).
You see, I don't say: "there couldn't possibly have been a non-supernatural historical Jesus", I am quite willing to accept that it might be the case, I'm just saying, noone can know that for sure.
If I read a text from 1800 where someone said they had seen a wolf in the forests of Judland (a part of Denmark), then I would remain skeptical, because wolfes have been extinct in Denmark alot longer than that.
Sure it is not at all impossible that there were a few wolves left in 1800. I mean, it's not exactly a supernatural claim, it's just a claim that the wolves stuck around longer than is generally believed.
But it would be prudent to remain skeptical, because not every single claim that people in the past have made is completely certain.
So to a historical non-supernatural Jesus I remain skeptical, but really I remain completely agnostic, and don't care much either way. Prophets were a dime a dusin back then, and the possibility that Jesus was real just proves that one of them got alot more famous than most. We all know fame has as much to do with being at the right place at the right time as with there being something special about you.
Umm, I'm not a historian, but today wrong creationism ideas exist ....
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"- Ravi Zacharias
Umm, All traditional religion is rediculous as it implies a master, a beginning, and says I am not 100% god. Religion is the antichrist, to the principle of Oneness .....
*
How about basic human stupidity? In modern times people have swallowed whole obvious nonsense as mormonism, scientology, the people's temple (jim jones), branch davidian-ism (david koresh) and the hale-bopp cult.
This was all in modern times. Just think how much more ignorant and gullible people were 2,000 years ago.
Ontological Argument: Imagine something that exists.
again, we simply should not find such a universal agreement that Jesus existed in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuriesif Jesus didn't exist, but rather we should either see droves of heretics saying that he existed in a heavenly realm (which would make orthodox christians the real heretics BTW), or droves of Jewish and pagan critics responding to the apologists like Justin Martyr or Origen by telling them "Jesus was your messiah? HA! he never even existed!".
so once again, I ask the skeptics here to give a plausible explanation as to the rise of belief in the historical Jesus in spite of the non-historicity of Jesus.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
Why not? Your life is ruled by groping at insufficient data.
In the case of Trypho the information is from the works by Justin Martyr in around 150. Justin Martyr clearly was biased in his position and that is the written information we have, not anything by Trypho. I do not know of books written by Trypho, do you? Then of course Trypho could be just an invented character Justin used couldn't he?
What of the following in Dialogue with Trypho in chapter 8? "But Christ—if He has indeed been born, and exists anywhere—is unknown, and does not even know Himself, and has no power until Elias come to anoint Him, and make Him manifest to all. And you, having accepted a groundless report, invent a Christ for yourselves, and for his sake are inconsiderately perishing."
Here Trypho does not seem to know that Christ exists does he? He also suggests he is invented.
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
The hate of life , fear
Neale Donald Walsch - Who is God - 5 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCeSlAvzvCQ
Neale Donald Walsch Discusses The Emotion Of Fear - 8 min.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA4HwFHiYyA&feature=related
HEY you christians, I AM JESUS, I AM ATHEIST, i am god ....
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
Folklore is real, so jesus is real , but folklore is full of bull shit .... so traditional jesus is bull shit ...
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.