The Existence of Jesus Christ

I'm not a part of this discussion, but I am an evolutionist and an atheist, so I hope you'll find it significant when I tell you that I do believe the historical person Jesus probably really did exist, though perhaps under a different name.

In our times, and in every time. When have wars or rumors of wars not troubled the human race? When have we been free of hunger and famine? Iniquity is the very essence of the human condition, and your religion has been preaching the Gospel for 2000 years.In other words I'm not impressed by a list of "predictions" that turns out to be the things you could count on being true at literally every point in history.

How popular is Christianity in the Middle East these days?

So is Time Magazine. But a claim in Time Magazine that something happened in 33 AD isn't evidence.The Bible is a historical document, to be sure, but it's not a contemporary document to the events that it claims to describe.That's its critical weakness, and the reason that it can't reasonably be taken as evidence for any of the events it describes. So let's discuss the evidence for the existence and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which you led us to believe was "overwhelming." You accepted that the resurrection of Christ would surely be an "extraordinary" event. Doesn't such an event require extraordinary evidence to support it? To say that Jesus Christ existed is not at all the same as saying Julius Caesar existed, because nobody claims Caesar as lord and savior, or claims he did miracles on the floor of the Roman Senate.But there's mountains more evidence for the existence of Caesar than for the existence of Jesus. For instance, Caesar's face is on the money printed during his reign. His name appears in all manner of records and contemporary writings, just as Obama's name appears all over the news, now. That's what it looks like when revolutionary, influential figures actually exist - the overall curve of "name-checking" is highest during the period where they're alive, active, and prominent, and then drops off as they fade from the public eye. That's true now and it was true in AD 33's largest bureaucratic society.But for mythical figures, it's exactly the opposite. During the time they're supposed to have lived there's nothing - because they didn't exist yet. It's only at a decades'-remove from the supposed time of their existence that word begins to spread. And that's precisely the pattern we see with Jesus - the earliest accounts of his ministry are decades after he died, and years after any potential disconfirming witnesses have fallen into obscurity or death. The earliest accounts of his miracles are eight decades after he supposedly did them.That's not a historical pattern that supports existence. It's a pattern that is most consistent with mythical figures, like Merlin and the knights of the Round Table, the Greek heroes of myth, or Kilroy, of the famous "Kilroy was here."

Not everything is evidence, GDR, and repeating the same lie twice doesn't corroborate it.It's about sources. If someone repeats a claim they heard from someone else, they're not a source for that claim - the person who they heard it from is. But if you trace a claim back through everyone who repeats it and arrive at a single source, you've been had. You've been took. And the fact that a bunch of people found a claim worth repeating isn't evidence for the claim. That's how urban legends are passed along. Indeed. Decades after the fact. Suspicious, no? Again - actual historical figures leave contemporary historical records. Mythical figures appear in no record until decades after their supposed period of activity.For instance, Jesus was contemporary with the invention of two-column accounting. Many of those records survive to this day. Wouldn't there be one set of books, at least, that said "couldn't do business today; some guy named Jesus kicked us out of the temple with a whip." Embracing a less rigorous standard of evidence isn't something you should do without thinking about it. You shouldn't agree to be convinced by less evidence than you normally would, without thinking long and hard about the falsehoods you're suddenly going be at risk of falling for.Would you trust your money to a bank that publically agreed to stop asking for ID to make withdrawals? Would you trust yourself to a hospital that suddenly said it wasn't going to require medical licenses or degrees? Personally, I can't imagine why you would think it would be reasonable to insist on a less rigorous standard of evidence. Don't you think Christianity can withstand even the most pointed inquiry? That's certainly what you were saying before. Now you're acting like the evidence for the existence of Jesus, which you previously described as overwhelming, is a house of cards that will collapse if you let us so much as glance at it too hard. The bulk? Is there, in fact, anything you have that isn't ultimately sourced back to the Bible? Yeah, and there was literally nothing there. Wright just takes half the stuff in the Bible as a given, and then asserts that it wouldn't make sense for only half the Bible to be true.Ok - but what if none of the Bible is true? What if Jesus didn't just "swoon on the cross" not because he actually died, but because he didn't actually ever live? Wright doesn't even consider the possibility. I don't get the impression you ever have, either.

Wow.Post of the month material. Utterly devastating to the Case for Christ.