The evolution of an atheist.

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Ok, so what's the evidence that a Jewish prophet called Jesus was crucified by the Romans?

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There is some. We have a disputed passage in Josephus, and we have a passage in Tacitus:

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Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

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I think that most scholars think this is genuine, though there are obviously some who say otherwise....
Then there is more tenuous reference in Mara's letter

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For what benefit did the Athenians obtain by putting Socrates to death, seeing that they received as retribution for it famine and pestilence? Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, seeing that in one hour the whole of their country was covered with sand? Or the Jews by the murder of their Wise King, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away from them?

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Is the 'wise king' Jesus? Dunno....

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I'm not trying to bust your balls, and I think you've largely come over to my position, yes? I think we agree that there's just no real evidence for anyone who could be the "historical Jesus Christ."

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Bust away. No, I'm not convinced of that. I have no doubt at all that if he did exist he didn't rise from the dead or perform the supernatural acts credited to him. Nor do I think the gospels are anything other than later PR. But I still think there is sufficient grounds for thinking that someone of that name existed...on the balance of probabilities....There are other snippets here and there which could be said to add some support...Lucian, Calcius, Justin Martyr etc
Historicity of Jesus - WikipediaEdited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

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When you asked the question of who created God I agreed that there is no answer, however, any answer to that question, if there is one, would have to involve our concept of time or the way that we experience change.

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But Penrose is talking about the human perception of time flowing. This is a different question to the one of cause-effect. It would take some time to explain in detail - basically Penrose is a mathematical realist who thinks Relativity is a good model. If you extend the model then all spacetime events are fixed - past, present, future - they are all simply a matter of perspective. That is what he means by no flow of time.
I think he is wrong on this, but regardless, it doesn't have any bearing on the 'first cause'. If you want to know what Penrose thinks about that then you need to read up his hypothesis on cyclic time - Sites-whsmith-Site

Tacitus is hardly nothing. He is telling it from a Roman perspective and the Romans had no vested interest in manufacturing events. It cannot be said to be Christian reportage - he is damning about them...It is quite likely that the source is Roman, not Christian and it could be from since lost documents like The Acts of Pilate...PS - not that Tacitus' account doesn't have its problems - it does.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Yes, the bits about the resurrection are widely accepted to be later forgery by Tektonics.
The evidence is quite compelling - this passage is mentioned in two later documents - including Origen's Against Celcus:

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"For in the 18th book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless-being, although against his will, not far from the truth-that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ),-the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice. Paul, a genuine disciple of Jesus, says that he regarded this James as a brother of the Lord, not so much on account of their relationship by blood, or of their being brought up together, as because of his virtue and doctrine"

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No mention, as you see.
I think there is a large measure of consensus behind the forgery theory, because of other records and because of work on the textual analysis.

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I'm not saying Tacitus made it up. But it's clear that he's merely reporting the claims of early Christians, not corroborating them.

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But I don't think he is. I think he is using other sources as I said. We know that there is a lot that got lost over time, including the Roman records of the time (the Romans were pretty beaurocratic and there would have been records of crucifixions. I'm suggesting that the style of comment from Tacitus makes it much more likely that he is referring to Roman source than Christian. At the time he is writing the Christians are only just getting their act together - circa 115 CE and a lot of the legend is still under construction...

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Josephus did write on Jesus though and also on His brother James. The court is out on whether or not he wrote about the crucifixion, but we can't definitively say that he didn't.

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We can't definitively say anything about anything so that argument leads nowhere.
Even apologists accept that the crucifixion reference is just too pat and is almost certainly a later addition.
For example:
The Jewish Roman World of Jesus - Under Construction
The Logos: Examining Ehteshaam Gulam's Deceptive Use of Josephus
http://www.christianorigins.com/zeitlin.htmlAll sympathetic sources and all clear about the later forgery...there are many more if you need convincing..

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I believe that God created this world and all that is in it, but I don't believe that the Bible is to be read like a science text.

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Directly? It seems to me that you accept evolution and the age of the universe/earth (13.7 and 4.55 by) - or have I misread?

I think the wiki article leans too far over in an attempt to be impartial, and ends up implying that the case is evenly split. It really isn't. Very few actual scholars think that

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for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him

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could possibly be genuine. Why would Josephus, not a Christian himself, talk in such flowery terms...doesn't scan, even to someone like me who is no scholar of texts of that period. I don't think you will find many genuine scholars (as opposed to apologists) who would say it was genuine...Pines case is very tenuous, and Goldberg even more so (and even if you believe Goldberg, his conclusion is not really helpful to those hoping for some confirmation of the resurrection:

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The conclusion is that the account in the Antiquities is almost entirely the work of Josephus, based on a Christian proselytizing document that was in circulation circa the year 90.

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It depends which branch of philosophy. Philosophical logic doesn't generally require evidence since it is tautologous in nature. Since the primary concerns of Philosophy are human - mind, existence, knowledge, values, reason, language - then evidence is bound to be of a different quality than in the physical sciences.Science long ago did away with common sense as a guide to good theory. It was so often wrong that it proved not only useless but positively counter-productive. As I keep pointing out common-sense is based on the experience of a limited sub-set of conditions, filtered through a perceptual system which junks much of the data coming in and imposes subjective processing on the rest, and processed by a brain designed to hurl insults and warnings to other apes. It would be astonishing if the universe DID correspond to any notion of 'common sense'.
My favourite was to summarise is 'common sense in science is often neither'.

I suffer from insomnia quite frequently. Actually tonight wasn't bad for an insomnia night, I did get some sleep.
Hits me about 1 day in 6 or 7 normally and always been that way....

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Theology has the exact same problem. All the interesting questions are about the human phenomenon of religion, which is more properly a question of anthropology.

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But philosophy has SOME rigour and there are branches that can be falsified (not really refuted, more errors in logic). If something has no internal consistency (in most branches of philosophy) then it doesn't stand.
Theology, on the other hand, has no rigour at all. Any statement containing an infinite entity cannot be falsified and the appeal to the supernatural is always available if things get sticky.
(I studied theology for 2 years a while ago so I know a little of which I speak). It is almost entirely self-referential (justfy any proposition by reference to a likely looking passage from the bible, ignore logical cons and arrive at the conclusion you started with - QED.

The Romans were beaurocrats as well as builders. They invented the registry filing system and there would have been daily records containing details of crucifixions, as well as more mundane diaries, records of meetings/agreements etc.
50 years later much of this was probably still available, and Tacitus was a Roman Historian so consulting records and archives was all routine for him.

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The truth is that the world around us is what is real, our notions about it slightly less real, and our notions about notions the least real of all. For whatever reason many philosophers are keen to promote the fiction of the exact opposite.

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Sure about that are you? What do you mean by 'world' and 'real'? Is a virtual photon 'real'?
How do you assign the term 'real' to superpositions, when we cannot really describe the concept in anything other than high level maths?
Is a table 'real' or is it simply a set of disturbances in a non-material quantum field, given mass by the interaction of that field with the higgs field. Can we touch things or is that simply a sensory illusion of touch which is actually an electromagnetic interaction of the fields?

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The thing is though, that statement pretty much assumes that all religion is strictly a human invention. If you are wrong and there is a god or gods then the end result of perfect theology is just as true as is perfect science, and certainly worthwhile studying.

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Leaving aside the unattainability of perfection in any human model, the notion is not true. A very good theology, since it cannot be tested, cannot be defined. There is no way to tell whether a particular theology is better than another one, let alone how far along a notional scale to 'correctness' it might be. You may as well throw dice with no numbers and hope to score double six.....

Because he was writing specifically about the history of post Augustine events (in the annals). He manages to mention other notable events in Judea but misses this one. There seems to be a view that it was minor and therefore easily missed, but I still maintain that this is incompatible with the gospels. Thousands and thousands of people greet Jesus as he enters Jerusalem. He is the King of the Jews, not some ordinary tin-pot rebel. Then he is arrested, tried and crucified and then appears back from the dead to appear before hundreds of witnesses and give them a lecture.
I cannot go along with the notion that this would have been anything other than MASSIVE news.