That's impossible. Who knew him and wrote about him?

I already knew before anything was revealed to me that first hand accounts of Jesus don't exist. In addition it was revealed to me that he didn't exist. You don't have to believe me, I really don't care, just know you are definetly wasting your life in believing in him, because I know that he didn't exist for a fact.

John and Matthew.

And you know this how? It's true that we only have copies of the original texts, not the original texts themselves, but the evidence consistently and overwhelmingly points to John and Matthew having written, or at least dictated, their texts, and for the copies we have to be relatively faithful to the originals, with no more than a handful of passages in any kind of reasonable doubt.

Give me your evidence. If Jesus didn't exist, then I don't want to waste my time.

David

What evidence is there to show that John and Matthew wrote the original texts or dictated them? Even Christian scholars agree the gospels weren't written until around or after 80 AD, they would've been dead.

Why do you need evidence? Missing evidence hasn't stopped you from believing in God. You're wasting our time on God belief without evidence for him, I don't see why you need it from me. Like I said it was revealed to me and I know for sure, just trust me. Jesus didn't exist.

The universe's existence is only evidence that at some point, some process happened that caused to the universe to exist as we see it. It is neither evidence of God's existence or any other creator's existence. Could that process have been triggered by some sort of creator? yes. is that likely? no. As there is not sufficient evidence to support any sort of divine or even alien creator. Also keep in mind that the people of the day were very superstitious and easily led to believe almost any claim. Various cultures (including the hebrews) used to believe that being struck by moonlight could make a woman pregnant, these types of beliefs make it difficult to find any text describing "miracles" from that time period to be even close to being credible. Maybe he existed, maybe he didn't, but was he the son of god, or any other deity/alien/etc ? Most probably no.

Poor choices.

The gospel of 'John' is considered to be the last of the four gospels.... and we know that Mark, the first of the "four" (There were a lot more than four, by the way, and doesn't that bother you at all? ) wasn't written until after 70 AD, so that rules out the John author as an eyewitness.

As for Matthew, the Matthew author himself invalidates himself as an eyewitness. In chapters 27 and 28 he makes it clear that he is referring to events that occured well before the time he was writing in.

And Matthew chapter 21, verses four and five are irrefutible proof that the matthew writer merely took from the Markian source and from the Old testament to tell his story.

In those verses, he has 'jesus' riding two animals:

21:4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, "All this was done, that it might be fulfilled"
21:5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.

Based on his MISREADING of Zechariah 9:9

9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

Matthew misreads the original and has jesus riding TWO animals when the original writer only meant one!

This is proof that the matthew author took stories from the OT, and that he did NOT actually witness the events he wrote on!

Since the book of mark, the first gospel, is clearly a midrash of the OT - we can clearly see that most of the claims are simply stories taken from books of the old testament. So this refutes the idea that ANY of the gospels are eye witness accounts:

http://users2.ev1.net/%7Eturton/GMark/GMark01.html

And you know this how? What "evidence" are you pointing to?

Again, how can you know this without an original?

No, because I take any Gospel written well after the life of its supposed "author" to not mean much as far as evidence goes. All Gospels except for the four in the Bible were, by all evidence, written at least half-way through the second century, by people who couldn't possibly have been around during Jesus' ministry, or talked to those who were.

I'm not following you. Given that (per the evidence) John was alive when Jesus walked the Earth and lived until almost 100 AD, how could he not have been both a witness and the author of his Gospel?

And there's no evidence that Mark's Gospel couldn't have been written before 70 AD. Estimates I've seen for when it was written range from about 55-80 AD, with the most common dates being 64 or 65 AD.

Why does this invalidate him? Are people unable to write about things that they witnessed a long time before?

Since Matthew writes about a whole lot of stuff that wasn't in the Gospel of Mark or the Old Testament, then clearly he had sources beyond that...such as his own experiences.

At worst, it just shows that he misread the OT, not that the event he is describing wasn't witnessed by him. If he saw the two animals, and mentally referred back to Zech 9:9 (thinking it was about two animals), then I could see him deciding to mention it, believing (perhaps erroneously) that a prophecy was being fulfilled.

That's a presumptive and subjective argument that most scholars don't buy.

The fact that every authorship credit we see for those Gospels goes to John and Matthew. When scholars see multiple copies of a given text credited to a specific author, they assume the authorship credit is correct, unless there is evidence to the contrary, or other reason to doubt it. Also, we have confirmation of the authorships from Irenaeus, Diatessaron, Papias, and Theophilus, as I already mentioned.

I didn't say we "know", I said the evidence consistently and overwhelmingly points towards it. When weighing whether copies of texts accurately reflect what the original authors probably wrote, scholars use several criteria - the number of existing ancient copies, how geographically widespread those copies were, the length of time between the likely originals and the copies we have, the severity of differences between them, and references to the texts in other ancient works. They call the results its "manuscript support". The fact is that the NT writings have BETTER manuscript support than any other ancient non-Biblical texts. There isn't even a close second. Most ancient non-Biblical texts have only a few ancient copies surviving, and earliest copies average about hundreds of years after the likely originals. For the New Testament, we have about 24,000 ancient copies, some fragments within a single generation of their originals, and no entire copies more than 250 years after the originals. We also have 86,000 quotes from the New Testament in other ancient writings, and zero instances of severe differences between the various copies, only minor differences. Yes, that's very good evidence that the copies we have are relatively faithful to the originals.

Again, we can't "know", but the manuscript support certainly suggests that the copies are relatively accurate. You don't find true scholars questioning more than a handful of passages from Matthew and John. If a given passage appears in every single copy we have, it's safe to assume it was in the original text. Only if it appears in some copies, but not others, or is significantly different (something more than just different wording for the same idea) is there any justification in questioning it.

David

Then whoever or whatever revealed that to you is lying. Reject the evidence if you want, call the evidence unconvincing if you want, but don't pretend it doesn't exist.

Come to understand it how? Did someone tell this to you? Did someone present evidence for this? Or was it just a thought you had?

If something was revealed to you that is contrary to the evidence, go ahead and believe it if you want. But I consider faith that is contrary to the evidence to be illogical. Now, if this something or someone that revealed this information to you presented evidence to the contrary, then believing in it would not necessarily be illogical. If the evidence for Jesus' non-existence is stronger than the evidence for His existence, then it makes perfect logical sense for you to believe He didn't exist. And if it's stronger, then I would like to see it, also. I'd hate to keep believing in Him knowing that there is strong evidence for His non-existence, but not knowing what it is. But if all you have is that it was "revealed" to you and you're unwilling to tell me who or what revealed it, then I can only conclude that you're holding it back because you know I won't find your source convincing. And you're probably right.

And, by the way, I assume that you aren't being serious, but are just mocking those Christians who do the kind of thing that you are doing here - telling you what they feel God has revealed to them, and telling you that you simply MUST believe what they believe on faith alone, and not really giving you a good reason to do so (and often being surprised when their tactics don't work). I consider such people to be terrible witnesses, probably pushing those they witness to further away from Jesus instead of pulling them towards Him.

David

The problem with me is that I need to accept something in my head before I accept something in my heart. It's just the way I am. I would never have converted if all I had were arguments from Christians that were along those lines, so arguments along those lines certainly aren't going to deconvert me, either.

No, I said that the question "Is ice water?" can be interpreted more than one way, and a "yes" or "no" answer depends on which way we're interpreting it.

David

That is competely irrational. I guess its a form of spirtual felling, right? Yea, thats not a spirtual felling in your heart, thats called cadric arrest.

It was just revealed to me that ice is water!

You must have faith that god isn't real. You must believe in your heart that nothing exists outside nature, and that humanity is the only judge of morality!

And I'm not talking from a medical standpoint.

David

I'll gladly have faith that this is so, if you give me enough evidence to persuade me. Heck, just a little evidence would be a nice start. Do you even have just a little?

David

And of course, you only need evidence to prove something exists. Without evidence for existance, a rational person does not believe something exists. After all, if I claimed I invented an engine that got 1,000 miles per gallon, and asked you to prove I didn't, most people would laugh. It is up to the person that claims something does exist to prove it.

It's the evidence I've already been talking about. I really don't want to start the whole conversation over again this far into it.

I can't "prove" they wrote it any more than I can "prove" that Stephen King wrote "The Shining", but without significant reason to doubt a given authorship credit, it's most rational to believe that it is correct.

As I stated earlier, when every single copy of a text is credited to the same author, historians assume that the authorship credit is correct, unless there is some kind of evidence to the contrary. If there is evidence suggesting they didn't write it (such as copies credited to different authors, evidence that the texts were written before or after their lives, evidence that people from around that time questioned the authorship credits, or anything else), please feel free to provide it. As it is, the evidence consistently and overwhelmingly supports the authorship credits.

If you don't believe they wrote their Gospels, that's fine. But unless you have good reason to doubt their authorships, then it's nothing more than belief for the sake of belief, and certainly won't sway those who have considered the evidence and find the authorship credits convincing.

David

Actually plenty of us doubt Matthew and John wrote the text - these texts were written MANY years after Jesus supposedly lived, and the names were chosen arbitrarily. Apparently, even Bible scholars don't actually believe the texts were written by the actual apostles (some of whom were almost certainly illiterate!) Of course, why wouldn't Jesus have written it himself? An omniscient god certainly wouldn't be illiterate!

I'll never understand the argument that the universe follows no form or function and simply does whatever it feels like doing. The universe is governed by the law of science, plain and simple. To accept that and persist in saying that the universe is random is a simple error in logic (A equals A and A does not equal A). It's that backwards mentality that tells supporters of the design argument for a god that because there seems to be a method to the workings of the universe, it implies an intelligent designer. It does not imply an intelligent designer, it just implies that the way the world works follows some system, nothing more, nothing less. To assume that there had to be someone there to turn the light switch on or there had to be a beginning to everything is an unfounded claim by theists (some non-theists claim the same thing) that really carries no weight when your only real evidence to directly suggest it is that I can't DISprove it. I believe Sapient has already stated the end result of making assumptions (I'll give you a hint, it has something to do with ass).

YES! Prayer cannot be held to such silly prerequisites as to a specific god. Prayer transcends the idea of god. The revealed truth shows us the way, and we should all pray for the truth to be revealed to the non-believers. Prayer to whom you ask? Prayer does not answer to god! Those who claim we need a trifle thing such as a god to pray to do not understand that prayer to god is pointless, it is prayer to truth revealed that is the Way! Faith in the power of prayer is all we need to be granted its merciful and awe-inspiring benefits!

Say it with me now....

"Dear Water, I confess that I am a water drinker and am sorry for all the environmental destruction I've caused. I believe that your Son, Watery Christ, died on a cross for my water indiscretions. Please forgive me and I invite you, Water, to come into my heart (even though my heart is already comprised partly of water) and life as Lord and Savior. I commit and trust my life to you. Please give me the water to be what you want me to be and the water to do what you want me to do. Thank you for dying for my sins, for your free pardon, for your gift of life, and for hearing and answering prayer. Aqua!"

Yes, I know we don't have evidence for Watery Christ, but it was just revealed to me that he existed about 60 years ago.

Was it not the prophet Carlin who hath sayeth that prayer unto christian God, and prayer unto the Sun, bringer of light and life, doth yieldeth the same resulting rate of prayers being answered, about 50%? In fact, I prayed to the internet during a difficult period of my life, and the answers the INTERNET provideth, giveth hope and salvation!!! Ask Wiki and you shall receiveth wisdom in rich abundance!!!!

I agree that pray to the Holy Trinity we must ... the Water, the Ice, and the Holy Gas....

ahem... http://www.dhmo.org

I deny your watery deity!

And as a side note, this was one of the funniest moments on any Penn and Teller's Bullshit shows, one of the ones about the environment where they had a petition against dihydrogen monoxide at an environment rally and got a ton of supporters. Just goes to show the general level of acceptable ignorance in society :roll:

I remember hearing some kids got in trouble a few years back for leaving flyers warning people their water could be contaminated with DHMO at peoples doors. It said how many people died because of it a year (the # of drownings.)