The evolution of an atheist.

I can't agree. We are not talking about a transcription or copying error. This is substantial addition of new material made to appear as if original - that is a pretty good description of the word forgery.Personally I believe the 'destroyed original' theory. I think that Mark DID originally extend beyond 16:8, but that it was so different to other accounts that it was chopped. That is why the gospel ends so abruptly when it clearly was meant to continue.If you want to call it apocryphal addition like the religious do, then fine. I think that is needless euphamism.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

No, that is different. This was meant to deceive, even at the time, otherwise why do it in the way it was done? Why not just pamphlet or publish a separate apologia/credo/missive?Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Huh? The authors were absolutely important. They were (wrongly) considered to be the apostles and suggesting otherwise would have been very bad for you.
Likewise the words were important - people often learned them, especially if they could not read/write.
No, this is forgery. The fact that the religious like to use the phrase apocryphal addition doesn't really matter - that is THEIR problem.
forgery is meant to deceive. This was.

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Here's a surprise. I don't see it that way. Jesus was a subversive in every way. The Jews at the time were looking for a messiah to lead them militarily against the Romans or those like the Herodians made out very well by cozying up to them.

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There would be a risk attached to be seen to be supporting this new movement, and besides there was no appetite for a god that supported the idea of loving your enemy.

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That is just a red-herring.
Citizen 1: Have you heard - that guy they crucified a few days ago has been seen wandering around.
Citizen 2: geronwithya...are you serious?
Citizen 1: Yerrs, the neighbour Alfie saw 'im clear as day
Citizen 2: ee wait 'till I tell the missus
Citizen 3: ....... and so on.
It would spread like wildfire.

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As for the Romans they would be unlikely to write about it as in the first place they probably wouldn't believe it and secondly the followers of Jesus were preaching a message that Jesus is king and Caesar isn't. That was not a message that would endear them to the powerful people that they had to answer to.

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LOL...that is just daft - even using your own terms of reference.
The first thing they would do would be to check it out. If there is a zombie walking around they would want to know about it. The Jews were in day to day control anyway - the romans were little more than a token presence under Herod.The typical Roman centurian was like the typical squaddie - their feelings are not generally hurt by someone having a pop at the monarch or emperor. We know from the writings of the time that criticising the emperor was common. Besides Tiberius Caeser had withdrawn to Capri at this time (assuming >26CE) and rumour was rife about him.

This is just wrong on every level.
Have you ever read Seneca? Philo? Philo describes Judaism in fantastic detail. He specialised in writing about their beliefs and history. If he had even got a sniff of this he would have splashed it all over his journals - this is his specialist area. It was Philo who, as an ambassador, reported to the emperor about Jewish happenings, complaints, events, beliefs etc. The notion that he would have been either disinterested or scared is baloney.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

I suggest you need to do some more reading. A few things missing from your article (and one thing included that you glossed overr).
a) The time we are talking about is the reign of Augustus - the one sympathetic to Jews - not Caligula - that is later.
b) Philo's brother - Alexander - was one of (if not the) wealthiest men in the region. He had extensive dealings with Herod and paid for the doors of the Temple in Jerusalem to be covered in gold and silver. He was intimitely aware of the goings on throughout the region because of his role of Chief Tax official).
c) Although Philo had his home in Alexandria we know he spent some time in Jerusalem and he had intimite contact with the Royal House of Judea.
d) One of his nephews (Marcus) was married to Herod Agrippa's daughter. Another (Julius) was procurator of Judea. Herod Agippa (Herod the Great's grandson) was the REAL King of the Jews in 39CE (ie he was ruler of all Jewish lands except Judea).Yet there is nothing in his extensive writings about Jewry that mentions Jesus, or in fact ANY of the supposed events in the New Testament. That isn't just strange, it is actually pretty unbelieveable UNLESS Jesus was either a myth or a very small time rebel who was later blown up into the mythical Jesus of the gospels.The notion that Philo would have ignored this new 'King of the Jews' who makes a triumphant entry into Jerusalem, where the crowds worship him - well, that is not even remotely believable.What seems to be the case is that the Jesus story grew from almost nothing, cheekily referencing Agrippa, probably to wind-him up because he was universally hated, with the reference to 'King of the Jews', and was then built up over the following decades into the story you read in the gospels. This is entirely consistent with Paul's writings, and with the known inconsistencies in the gospels themselves. It also explains the otherwise inexplicable lack of any mention from Philo.Edited by Bikerman, : sp.

Philo did indeed write about the Jews. A Jew entering Jerusalem who was greeted by massive crowds worshipping him as the son of God is a pretty newsworthy event. Did Philo even mention it? Nada...not a single word. Conclusion - didn't happen.The rest - 'i can see no reason..;..' is simply an appeal to ignorance. Why did the Christians succeed where other similar cults failed? It just did. The reasons are numerous and complex. Probably the most important would be the Christian dogma asserting that anyone, including Gentiles, could be saved. That created a much larger target for the cult and allowed it to grow more rapidly than the more traditionally based cults which insisted that gentiles were 'not allowed'.

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He didn't write about newsworthy events according to what I read. He wrote about the Jews to the Romans in a way that was intended primarily to keep the Alexandrian Jews safe from persecution. He only visited Jerusalem once in his life, and that would have been at least a decade after the crucifixion. In his life time the early Christians were only a small part of the Jewish community, representing Yahweh in a way that the majority of Jews didn't want to hear. Philo had no reason to write about the resurrection as in all likelihood he wouldn't have believed it in the first place.

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Err..so if we assume you are right, and the Christians were so minor and insignificant, who exactly were the multitude described in the gospels? Eg John tell us

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John 12:11-19 "The next day a great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord -- the King of Israel!' Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: 'Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!' His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him. So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify. It was also because they heard he had performed this sign that the crowd went to meet him. The Pharisees then said to one another, 'You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!'"

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William Barclay tells us, in the 'commentary on John'

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"At such a time Jerusalem and the villages round about were crowded. On one occasion a census was taken of the lambs slain at the Passover Feast. The number was given as 256,000. There had to be a minimum of ten people per lamb; and if that estimate is correct it means that there must have been as many as 2,700,000 people at that Passover Feast."

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Doesn't sound minor to me....sounds like the sort of reception a King or conquering hero might receive, and certainly a noteworthy event...
but no notes...from ANY source...Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

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Part of what forms our acceptance or rejection of this is our belief in how we came to exist at all. I can't muster up sufficient faith to accept that we are here because of some huge cosmic good fortune that allowed for anything to exist at all, to have atoms form and then combine to form complex molecules, to have these combine by good fortune into incredibly complex living cells, to have these cells combine into the animal life that we see today, and then to continue to evolve into sentient beings with consciousness.

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There is no faith required. We know what is takes for atoms to form from physics. Chemistry describes how atoms combine to give complex molecules. Experiments show how those molecules form the precursors to RNA. The only 'leap of faith' is to suppose that the precursors to RNA actually combined to form RNA. Not a huge leap by any means, and far less so than presuming some complex intelligence, origin unknown and un-askable, did it all.

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The period when there were crowds greeting him were all before the crucifixion, and who knows how many people it takes to make up a crowd anyway.

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It was still a very significant event - thousands of people worshipping the new messiah; the officials of Judaism clearly extremely worried by the new phenomenon. Yet not a word about it in any contemporary record.

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Afterwards Jesus appears to have only met with His disciples, other for the one case where he met with 500.

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LOL...nice try, slip the important figure in at the end and hope nobody notices. 500 people see a dead man alive, yet not a word about it anywhere.
Let's look at those appearances:
1/12 The appearance of Jesus to Marry Magdalene. Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:9-11, John 20:11-18
2/12 The appearance of Jesus to the other women. Matthew 28:1
3/12 The appearance of Jesus to Cleophas and another on the road to Emmaus. Mark 16:12-13, Luke 24:13-32, John 24:33-35, 1 Corinthians 15:5
4/12 The news of the appearance of Jesus to Simon Peter. Luke 24:33-35, 1 Corinthians 15:5
5/12 The appearance to the astonished disciples (Thomas absent) with a commission Mark. 16:14, Luke 24:36-43, 1 Corinthians 15:5
6/12 The appearance of Jesus to the disciples the next Sunday night. John 20:26-31
7/12 The appearance of Jesus to seven disciples besides the Sea of Galilee. John 21:1-25
8/12 Jesus appears to the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee. Matthew 28:16-20, Mark 16:15-18
9/12 Jesus appears to about 500 hundred people on a mountain in Galilee. 1 Corinthians 15:6
10/1 Jesus appears to James his brother 1 Corinthians 15:7, Galatians 1:9
11/12 Jesus appears to the disciples with another commission. Luke 24:44-49 & Acts 1:3-8He is appearing constantly hither and thither and the idea that the apostles could hush this up is a non-starter - the whole point is to publicise it, hence the appearance to the 500.It is clearly a yarn and I'm astonished that you think it holds any water...Edited by Bikerman, : sp.

Nobody intelligent calls evolution 'random' - only ignorant people and creationists (if you believe the two are distinct). The only random part is the mutation of the gene(s).
I have already demonstrated in another thread how a process with a random element can produce highly ordered and highly complex outcomes, using just a couple of simple rules. In fact I showed that such a system could produce an infinitely complex pattern - a fractal called Sierpinski's triangle. Producing different species from a similar set of simple rules and including 1 random element is no big thing - the only part which is still unknown to any extent is the starting point - abiogenesis (which creationists wilfully conflate with evolution even though the two are distinct. Evolution kicks in when abiogenesis has done its work).
There are many proposed mechanisms for that first 'life' to appear. Good candidates (IMHO) are the clay hypothesis; the panspermia hypothesis; the deep sea volcanic vent hypothesis and the old 'soup' hypothesis (Miller et al). Any of these could account for abiogenesis - the trick is narrowing down the evidence and working out which is the most likely.Proposing some sky-fairy is not an answer, simply a cop-out.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : sp.

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I don't see how we can say that "Jesus Christ was real" if what was real was a man who wasn't named Jesus Christ, didn't perform miracles, wasn't king of the Jews, wasn't crucified by Rome, and didn't rise from the dead.

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What about one of many revolutionary Jewish 'prophets' who was perhaps called Jesus (I don't see any reason to invent that part since it offers no advantage to do so), didn't perform miracles, was perhaps crucified and didn't rise from the dead? That basically is my hypothesis...

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And most importantly I'd have this guy say what a bad person you were if you needed evidence to believe instead of "faith", and that if this whole thing sounded like nonsense it was you who were the idiot, not me.

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Absolutely - the important point being 'have this guy say...' in other words build it into the later narrative..no argument.

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After all where did all this shit come from, eh, smart guy?

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But none of that would be considered evidence. The only relevance is the inclusion of the name Killroy and that offers no evidence for the existence of an actual individual at that point in spacetime, nor does it tell us anything about that individual...
Smartguy? No, just a dumb guy trying to get a bit smarter...

It is simply inevitable given the underlying physical laws.Now you will probably say 'ahh...but who designed those laws?'.In other words classic argument from first cause - which is and always was a bogus one. We can solve it, say the theists. We can stop the infinite regress by positing a deity. Problem solved.It is dishonest. It 'solves' the regression by writing it out of existence. We don't need to regress further than the designer and ask who designed the designer, BECAUSE THE DESIGNER IS INFINITE.Spot the sleight of hand here? Introduce another step in the problem which actually doesn't help, then make it AXIOMATIC that the problem vanishes....

Well, let's see.
Josephus has:
47BC: banditry of Ezekias et al
37BC: banditry of Galilean cave bandits
37BC-4BC: (reign of Herod)
4BC: protest to Archelaus about taxes and prisoners
4BC: messianic claims of Judas in Galilee, of Simon in Perea,
and of Athronges in Judea
26AD: protest to Pilate about icons
c30AD: protest to Pilate about use of Temple funds
c30AD: prophetic claims of John the Baptist
35-55AD: banditry of Eleazar
36AD: prophetic claims of 'Samaritan Prophet'
40AD: protest to Petronius about statue in Temple
45AD: prophetic claims of Theudas
45AD: banditry of Tholomaeus et al
50AD: protest to Cumanus about soldiers' impiety
50AD: banditry near Beth-horon
c55AD: prophetic claims of unnamed prophets
c55AD: prophetic claims of 'Egyptian Prophet'
61AD: prophetic claims of unnamed prophet
61AD: banditry of unnamed bandits
65AD: protest to Cestius Gallus about governor
65AD: banditry of unnamed bandits
66AD: banditry of Josephus et al in GalileeNo King of the Jews entering Jerusalem or claiming to be son of God in Josephus then, but a mention of many others...
Remember Jesus is different from other messianic movements - he is SEEN by hundreds of witnesses, after being crucified. That makes this a whole different level of story - the biggest story you can imagine.Now, let us imagine for a moment that Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum is authentic. What does it say about Jesus:

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About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man...For he was one who performed paradoxical deeds and was the teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews [and many Greeks?]. He was [called] the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him...And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

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No mention of a resurrection. Isn't that strange? You would think it worthy of at least a couple of lines.
Of course there is a reasonable consensus that this is not what was written and that it was later added to/edited by Christian sources. Even more strange, then, that there is no mention of that central dogma of the Christians....

Penrose is talking about a speculative hypothesis on quantum consciousness. I know it well because I have read most of what he has to say on the matter. It is entirely irrelevant to the points in question - his hypothesis is simply that consciousness requires more than an algorithmic device and is dependent on quantum superposition within 'micro tubules' in the brain.
What that has to do with the historicity of Jesus escapes me....