A Jesus debate suggestion
Offline I watched a couple short religious debate videos today. I saw what always happens when the atheist denies or even suggests
that Jesus may have not existed at all. The christian side boos and even some of the atheist side can't help but to sigh.
Automatically you are put in the conspiracy theorists category. Even if you believe it you can't really prove it to either side. So
no matter how bad you want to plug it in there, just leave it alone. Just when they get some momentum going, they can't seem to
help themselves and just put it right out there. And every time I get that same feeling of "Man, why did you have to go there? You were
doing so good." I personally think Jesus was a real human and all the bullshit about him is just that-bullshit! And bullshit seems to catch
on pretty good with people. So remember, if you wanna win people over in your debate, don't throw people more shit than they can handle.
Just do your best at discrediting the bible and use a little tact. But hey, that's just my fucking opinion.
"...but truth is a point of view, and so it is changeable. And to rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force." -Hypatia
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It is not rational to pretend some one existed when there is no evidence that they ever existed. The Jesus charactor is a conglomeration of several itinerant roving preachers and a whole lot of pre-existing myths. One of which will take 2 minutes of your time; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSm7YPMQOSo based on research done in 1983. Julius Caeser wrote about devout Judeans who lived in his mothers apartment building who would, to avoid trubble from the Roman religious police, go around the corner to the temple of Mithras on Vatican hill to make offerings. When you mix Mithras with devout Judeans you end up with 'christians'. The beginnings of the Jewish Massiah cult dates to before 90 BCE. 150 years later Saul of Tarsus is persicuting these isolated massiah cults when he has a ceasure and joins them. The earliest Messianic Jews didn't even have a name for their annointed savior of god, they just refered to their son of god has "gods saviour annointed" which in Hebrew is 'Joshua Massiah' , in Greek 'Jesu Cristos' and Latin 'Jesus Christus' .
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
I hear ya Jeffrick, but my point here is practicality. I simply don't care if he existed or not because he means nothing to me.
And I know that messiahs are fairy tales and that is good enough for me for now. The majority of people who we confront will never research his existence
to the depth you have. And if the debate was solely about his existence of even being a real human, then that would be a
different story and I would agree with you. But almost all debates are covering a much broader spectrum and you will never
win that aspect of your debate with the small window you have to try and prove it. In my view you are just throwing the
audience off and discrediting yourself to them, whether you are absolutely right or not. Look at it as if you were discussing
cosmology to 6th graders and you simply wanted to get them to see that the universe is expanding. You don't just come in the
middle of the story and say you can absolutely prove that black holes exist when you only have 12 minutes for your whole discussion.
"...but truth is a point of view, and so it is changeable. And to rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force." -Hypatia
How's it going?
Yeah - look. The trouble we face with this is that the 'scholarly' literary historical method is tied to a couple of eye witness sources at best. Plenty of historical figures are mentioned only a couple of times third hand yet we don't doubt they existed and leveraging this tolerance in the historical method, christians claim they have a multiplicity of first hand books about jesus so on the basis of the literary historical technique jesus must have existed or many accepted figures of history are also dubious.
The key thing for me is this. Jesus is meant to be the son of god and to be supernatural and the literary historical method is not optioned to prove the supernatural. I'd go so far as to so it's a failure of intellectual integrity to accept jesus on the basis of the cult's own sources, old though they may be. When christians accept that this method proves every other god claim in mythical literature, including Beowulf and Scientology, then I'll be more tolerant of it and not before.
Nevertheless, I do get what you are saying. I've fought this out with my big brother many times. He is immovable. The literary historical method proves jesus probably actually lived. This is a gap that has always bugged the utter shit out of me. And for the record, I agree with Jeffrick. I think jesus is a mythical variation of the classic personality cult - a wondrous hero of the people who can be worshipped by followers yet who poses no threat to those odious political maggots wielding the material power.
Worth getting grounded on during a debate in real time? Probably not...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck