[Jesus sits on a rock, speaking]
A new command I give you:
Love one another
[an angry character talks back to Jesus]
What if they’re something bad like gay, trans, brown, or communist though?
[Jesus is facepalming on his rock]
I don’t want to be a messiah anymore
Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible, with near 100% certainty never existed. He was no more real than Harry Potter.
The absolute lack of evidence of existence for a person claimed to be the most significant person that ever lived, and who performed numerous miracles, means that the only reasonable conclusion is that he never actually existed.
It would be like if we had zero evidence for the existence of Cleopatra, outside some scriptures written by a superstitious sect, where the earliest were written 2 generations after her death, by anonymous authors, and based only on hear say, and written in a place that it would take weeks to travel to or even months. With zero contemporary or first hand evidence.
And then imagine Cleopatra performed miracles regularly too.
AND Cleopatra lived 1 generation before Jesus, and 3 generations before the first “books” of the new testament were written.
But in difference to Jesus, there are loads of historical evidence that Cleopatra lived. When she lived, where she lived, and who she was. But not only her, also her family, like father and brother are well documented, and several events Cleopatra was part of are also very well documented.
Add to that that the search for evidence for the existence of Jesus is probably the by far biggest historical and archeological search in history. Spanning almost 2000 years, with massive financing from wealthy Churches especially the Catholic and Mormons have spend insane amounts of money searching for evidence, but not only that, also traditional historical institutions have participated, because they too, despite the absolute lack of reason for it, thought that there ought to be evidence for the existence of Jesus.
This search we know for sure started already in year 200!! And it was pretty intense for more than 1500 years!!! And the search often included scholars, because they too were deluded.
And their combined efforts have turned up nothing but fakes created after the fact. Zero actual historical evidence.
The few pieces (about 3) some claim are evidence are heavily refuted as obvious fakes too.
Very few serious historians doubt the existence of Jesus the person.
The theory that Jesus the person was himself a myth turns up in the 19th century, whereas skepticism and disbelief about the claims in the Bible about Jesus etc, (which are referenced in it) are older than the book itself, which iirc was begun tens of years after his death.
Clearly you can believe whatever you want to believe of course, and I don’t think for a minute wikipedia is going to convince you that Jesus was a historical person, (you don’t strike me as someone who would take a detailed look into it having already decided it’s proposterous), but for the record, I have to tell you that your assertion that there is no evidence is just factually incorrect.
WTF are you quoting??? Quoting without a source is nonsensical.
Because over centuries of Christianity dominating western teaching, historians have been indoctrinated and even paid to accept or prove if they can that Jesus Christ as a historical person, exclusively based on the stories in the Bible, that are 2 generations after the fact, and by anonymous authors and based on hearsay at best, or rather they are simply made up. The bible is in no way a trustworthy historical document.
If you point to scholarly consensus, you also have to be able to point to evidence that scholarly consensus is based on, and the fact is you can’t. This scholarly consensus is 100% based on a circle jerk, where scholars conclude according to their own beliefs in Christianity without evidence.
My beliefs on the issue are based on the evidence, if you want to believe based on superstition and group pressure your beliefs are not equal to mine.
Beliefs without evidence are generally false as in near infinitely unlikely to be true, and false beliefs that are a central point of your world view are demonstrably harmful, exactly in the way Christian beliefs can be shown to be harmful.
I already said: wikipedia.
Forgive me for trusting the scholarship of the majority of historians rather than some random on the internet who wasn’t aware what the consensus of historians was that Jesus was a real person until a few hours ago, and just assumed there was no corroborating evidence because you didn’t think there would be!
Historians, as their day job, what they’re best at, and expert in, is evaluating historical documents, taking into account the bias of their authors and drawing appropriate conclusions. I’m going to trust them over you ranting.
Feel free to doubt the religious claims of the Bible, but it’s silly to base your whole argument against the church on the one thing that historians, with a few exceptions, agree on.
You’re behaving like a vaccine skeptic or climate change denier. There is a field of experts. There was controversy. There was a lot of examination of the evidence and now there is a consensus. You are disagreeing with the consensus on the basis of your instincts and your preexisting beliefs.
No they aren’t! You had no idea there was any, you haven’t even begun to look into it, you have no intention of looking into it in any serious way, and you just today claimed that there couldn’t be any on the grounds that it wasn’t true! It’s a circular argument only supported by it’s conclusion!
Of all the things to disagree with the Bible on, you pick the physical existence of Jesus as the one you most ardently dispute? There’s so much that’s easy for you to argue is implausible in the Bible, but you pick the very existence of some guy going round preaching to a bunch of religious folk that they should be nice to each other?
Why is it so hard for you to accept that Jesus might have been a real person? Do you disbelieve in Mohammed’s physical existence, or the Buddha, just because you disbelieve their religious claims? It’s irrational. You disbelieve me; am I therefore non-existent?
It’s so illogical, and you have your eyes so tightly shut to the possibility that something slightly less simple than “it’s all complete nonsense” is true.
Those who will not listen can never learn new things.
Jesus was real.
I absolutely were.
You can’t just quote “wikipedia” you have to give the link to the page, so others can see the context. For all I know those quotes could be from a page about things stupid people believe.
No the exact opposite, because they deny the evidence, while I draw my conclusions based on it, or in this case rather the lack of it.
Without evidence there is no reason to believe in the existence of god, and saying that a number of anonymous cultists writing stories about him is proof, is the same as saying a number of Harry Potter books is proof of the existence of Harry Potter.
No that would be the existence of god. A belief that is even more insane, because it’s even more crazy to believe in a god without evidence whatsoever.
All the arguments of the existence of god in the bible are based on ignorance, just like you show here.
You are making a string of false assumptions here based on ignorance of the actual facts, exactly like you are on the existence of Jesus.
This is a silly denial. I was the one who told you. You are the one who claims I’m making it up and are disbelieving in the existence even of a wikipedia article without lifting a finger to check for yourself. And you expect me to believe you’ve given any serious look into this historical question of existence when you didn’t even google?
This also is a silly thing to be skeptical about or debate, when google exists. I knew (from having looked it up in the past) that the consensus of historians was that Jesus was a real historical figure but that the claims about him in the Bible were religious rather than historical. So I googled “Is there evidence that Jesus was a real historical person” or something like that, scrolled past the religious links and clicked on the wikipedia entry which was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
I might be wrong, but I’m not so sure there are any arguments about existence in it. I think it’s just a bunch of stories told with that included as an assumption. All the arguments about existence or not are from the philosophers, mostly much much later on. And I think they’re silly too.
Like I said, feel free to doubt the religious claims in the Bible, or any other religious text you have negative feelings about, but it’s silly to disagree with historians about the simple existence of Jesus the man, once you know you’re on the wrong side of that question compared to the experts whose day job it is to examine and more to the point, evaluate historical evidence!
You present yourself as the scientific mind who decides on the basis of evidence, whilst dismissing, with obvious prejudice, those who have examined the evidence. You clearly believe what you believe because it feels right to you, not because you learned anything about it.
I notice that you didn’t answer whether your (presumed) disbelief in Islam caused you to disbelieve in the existence of Mohammed, or your (presumed) rejection of Buddhism caused you to think that the Buddha himself was invented?
Yes because you can read my mind. 🤣🤣🤣
I have known this since the 90’s, where in philosophy at University we debated whether religiosity is a kind of insanity.
You are a fool that base your opinions based on insufficient information and lack of evidence, so no wonder if you are religious.
Again a claim based on ignorance. The Bible claims the 10 commandments are from god, and that god created the world, essentially making the claim that the existence of the world is evidence for god.
There is very little logic rationale for this, since the two situations are very very different, Mohammed is an actual historic figure with lots of evidence. The god however is the same, and no matter how many new books are written about Harry Potter does not make it a reason to believe he exist without evidence. The same goes for god.
No, it was a silly (and ungrammatical) denial, not because I can read your mind, but because it was clear from the evidence of the text of your claims to me today, right here in this thread, that you had no idea that there was independent evidence and that historians largely agree that Jesus was a real historical person.
Hehe. Unlike you, I admitted I might be wrong when I hadn’t checked (and I have no intention to read the whole Bible just to check if you’re wrong).
On the other hand, you didn’t even believe there was a wikipedia page about the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus! And you claim I was arguing from ignorance?
Sounds to me like “essentially” is doing all the work in that sentence. I think this is yet another silly philosophical argument about the existence of God that someone else wrote that’s just based on some Biblical text that it’s trivial to doubt and is therefore pointless because it can’t convince anyone either way who isn’t already convinced.
I don’t believe you can link me to where the Bible says that because the commandments came from God (for which you already have to believe the story), and because God created the world (for which you also already have to believe the story), the existence of the world proves God exists (which I believe isn’t even in the story, unless you can prove me otherwise. Right back atcha with the “link or it didn’t happen”. Again, there’s so much in the Bible that youth might have chosen to criticise and yet you pick something that isn’t really there?! There’s still much in the Bible that you might have chosen to claim was invented and you pick the simple existence of Jesus the person?!)
And even if that silly argument came from the Bible instead of some silly philosopher trying to prove via silly logic the existence of God, it was such a weak argument with so many logical holes I’m surprised your philosophy teachers gave it the time of day to teach you it.
At least I see where you learned to make circular arguments where you have to believe the consequent before you can accept the antecedent. You argued that Jesus never existed because there’s no evidence, and also you argued that there can’t be any evidence because he never existed. Surely if you’ve studied any philosophy at all, you must recognise that this is about as far from a syllogism as it’s possible to be.
I’m well aware that some philosophers regularly dismiss Christianity and Marxism in the same sentence as deluded nonsense, but I think that you have adopted that prejudice wholesale, and that prejudice has led you to lack knowledge about the historical evidence and consensus for the bare existence of Jesus the historical person.
Can I advise you in the future to (a) check your facts, (b) argue where you’re strongest rather than weakest and © be prepared to admit you didn’t realise something. It undermines your position otherwise.
So you knowingly made an argument from ignorance? And didn’t even bother to check!
Romans 1:20: since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made”.
That’s it I’m out, you just continue to talk nonsense on things you know nothing about, and I honestly don’t care to waste more of my time on you.
I mean, the idea that a guy made a weird sect, telling people to throw away all of their money (to who?) and performing tricks to pass them as miracles isn’t so absurd. There’s been a lot of scammers throughput history, he could have simply been one that happened to have a long lasting effect.
It’s far from being the most significant person or whatever, more of a butterfly effect of some dude that wanted to have his own cult.
Isn’t that him the romans were describing it, as a cult gathering people fast? That’s probably all it was.
There is still no evidence of that. It’s just moving the goal post, but in reality it doesn’t make a difference.
There are also communications between Christian groups where the personification of Christ is debated, to make it easier for people to understand Christianity.
Again you are completely missing the point, because according to Christianity Jesus is clearly the moist significant person to ever live, and if the bible was true, that would be a fact, as his existence is claimed to be the salvation of billions of people through 2 millennia.
So saying he is not, is actually the same as supporting my claim that he never existed.
No, Christianity was insignificant until the Romans themselves adopted it for political reasons.
I’m not saying that there is evidence, and I’m not sure what goal post I’m moving. My whole point was that the way Jesus is depicted by Christianity is as a weird sect leader that was promoting peace and frugality, and that it is ironic considering that the religion itself is quite the opposite.
I wasn’t debating the proof of existence of Jesus and to be honest, I don’t really care if he ever existed or not (and I would argue that most people don’t, because most Christians would absolutely ignore anything that would prove that he didn’t exist). My point was just to insist on the fact that Christianity has been for a pretty long time a religion of violence and greed, and that it is ironic.
That’s false Jesus is depicted by christianity as the son of god, with supernatural powers that allowed him to perform miracles, including rising from the dead, and ascending to heaven after.
On that we agree 100%. But the Bible is full of contradictions, and even the new testament has different books about Jesus that try to deliver very different messages about him, when telling the same basic story.
Same way as it could work with Harry Potter if we didn’t have copyright, and everybody could write their own story about him. And a century later a fan club makes a collection of the best 100 year old stories about Harry Potter that are decided by everyone to be canon. And they call it the Holy Bible of Harry Potter, and for 2000 years people actually believe it to be true, and that Harry Potter was a guy that really existed who could do magic.
Eh, I don’t think there’s much merit to whether or not Jesus was a real person. The focus should be on the obviously fantastical claims because Christian apologists tend to get all caught up in the idea of Jesus being a “historical person” rather than the wild claim of Jesus being a literal god. I don’t reject the validity of Christianity because I’m unsure if Jesus really did exist or not, but rather that the supernatural claims fall embarrassingly short of such tall claims.
Nono that’s not how it works, the burden of proof is on those that claim he existed. Without such proof, there is no reason to believe he did.
But why quibble over the murkier “did he exist” ground when you could engage on “was he a miracle working guy who came back from the dead” and make them find more evidence for that!
This is my point exactly. Thank you for putting it more concisely than what I’m apparently capable of.
What do you mean? More than zero? There is no evidence, and “more” evidence will never be found, because there is no reason to believe it ever happened. And if you mean evidence that it didn’t happen, then again that’s not how it works. You can’t prove a negative.
@Buffalox @Semjeza technically there is textual evidence of him coming back from the dead. From multiple authors even.
It’s readily available in every version of the Bible.
(Now if that evidence is worth a rats ass is another question altogether)
No those are just stories, and none of the “books” are reliable historical evidence.
Exactly, I already mentioned that the bible isn’t a valid source. First because it is written by anonymous authors, second because it isn’t contemporary, thirdly because it’s based on hearsay, and finally because crucial details do not line up among them.
The books of the Bible is exactly what could be expected to happen when you don’t have copyright. Someone picks up a story, and changes it to be more to his liking.
@Buffalox this discarding of the Bible as a source always sounds like an agenda in itself. Sure, it’s mythologized, but it’s a corpus of texts written by a multitude of authors corroborating at least some things between them.
I gave the reasons for why the bible is discarded as historical evidence for Jesus.
The earliest book is written 1 generation after the fact, in an area quite some distance from where the events allegedly took place, by anonymous authors, and with no first party references, and the book contradict each other on key events.
How is that an agenda? Using it as a source however is clearly an agenda.
OHMYGOD, THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT.
What? To give them more time to not be able to prove a negative?
Or to give them more time than 2000 years to still not be able to prove anything?
You are not making any sense now?!
Or were you being sarcastic about the more time thing? Because if you were, it’s very stupid to not use the /s regarding sarcasm, when we are debating stupid beliefs billions of people actually hold.
In any case, you are not making sense now.