This is not a push poll question like some have done with their silly games. I dare ANYONE to prove jesus existed with REAL empirical proof!
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No takers? Quite telling!
The silence is deafening.
Shouldn't that be prove he exists? I thought the idea was that he's still alive, and surely that's the more important claim.
Honestly? Check out an author named Ralph Ellis.If you want proof of Issa's existence, check him out. It'll blow your mind!
Lol..wheres the rush of the faithful?
Networkangel ......
Nice find...... and proof that you need to be careful for if you keep too open an "open mind" your brain can actually fall out....
Random selection ...
King Jesus: From Kam (Egypt) to Camelot: King Jesus of Judaea Was King Arthur of England
Cleopatra to Christ: Jesus was the great grandson of Cleopatra VII
Mary Magdalene: Princess of Orange
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/64820.Ralph_Ellis
...... but it is true... there are some very odd people out there..... and some of them are writing "books".
Yep crickets just like I thought!
Can you prove Jesus did not exist
The burden of proof is on the claim. mykcob4 did not request proof that jesus did not exist, but that he did exist.
If I claim that Godzilla was presently living ten miles under the south pole in a huge bunker, is it more sane and logical to request proof, instead of me demanding that you must prove Godzilla does not exist?
Wouldn't you be able to track from the large amounts of radiation coming of him
Naw, the bunker would only have to be made of a few feet of concrete to block any radiation. :-)
Ali,
"Can you prove Jesus did not exist"
If you believe that Jesus existed and believe in him then you yourself can easily prove his existence this very minute. It's very easy to do. Simply walk outside and command the nearest tree to uproot itself and to jump into the nearest body of water. If the tree does as you command it to do without any outside assistance you will be well on your way to proving that Jesus is real. Now if you can't do that then Jesus doesn't exist, he lied when he said that you can do that, or you don't have any real faith in him. Now guess what? Not one single person in 2,000 yeas has ever been able to do what he said a true believer can do.
Therefore:
1. Jesus didn't exist
2. Jesus lied
3. No one has ever had any faith in Jesus
Luke 17:7 (MEV) = "The Lord said, “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you."
BTW, did you notice that not one person in that crowd passed the test and they supposedly were looking directly at Jesus when he said it?
@Ali
1) I didn't ask to disprove jesus or prove that he didn't exist. I asked to PROVE jesus lived.
2) The burden of proof whether or not jesus actually existed is not on me it is on people that CLAIM he existed!
You don't get away with shifting the responsibility!
Ali "Can you prove Jesus did not exist"
Can you prove Hercules did not exist, are you inclined to believe the legends of Hercules are real?
Rejecting a belief is not the same as making a contradictory belief.
I does not matter if he existed or not it is what he/she stands for and that they were willing to die for the sins of others
And that is the sickest part of all. If this dude jesus did exist he was a wandering con man who got crowds drunk and stoned, then fooled them into believing his tricks. He had no steady form of income, he was a malcontent, did not have a wife/girlfriend but instead hung around with other guys.
If there really is a god then he is part of the holy trinity, and he is "alive" right now. He never died, he just allowed his physical body to be abused, died, then took the Easter weekend off before he made a grand appearance and rode his magic bus to heaven. So how can one assert he dies for anyone's sins because jesus as you believe is still alive.
The part about jesus dying for our sins is a travesty in conduct. Laying a guilt trip on a baby the second it takes it's first breath is so low, so pathetic, so despicable it reeks of all the way from here to MACS0647-JD.
Ali,
"I does not matter if he existed or not"
If Jesus never existed then he never said anything. That means that con men made him up and used his character to convince the local yokels that they should believe what they were selling. In other words, if Jesus never existed then everything is a lie and people are stupid for believing it. And if Jesus never existed then Islam is also a lie. And why would anything be a sin if the whole story is a lie?
"why would anything be a sin if the whole story is a lie?"
Nothing is a sin, as sin is a myth. Humans decide what is rectitude and what is turpitude, and yes it is subjective and therefore imperfect, but it can be nothing else as we are imperfect evolved primates.
@Ali
I certainly DOES matter and here's why.
All of christianity hinges on if it is true that jesus was crucified and resurrected. If he never existed, then all of christianity is false.
I' not sure we could logically infer a deity exists even if they demonstrate that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. However you are correct, if he never existed that's pretty much that.
This question has been repeated so many times it’s no loger funny. Every time any Christian posts on here showing evidence that Jesus existed, all the evidence is simply waved away without much reason to wave it away.
Fact is, Jesus myth theories are fringe at best. Even atheist historians (see Bart Ehrman) say that Jesus most definitely existed. He asserts however that the miracles and all never happened. But a figure central to Christianity named Jesus did indeed exist.
@ JoC
Then try, please, to present credible evidence. .
So far everything you have presented has been discredited as evidence or is just wishful thinking. Perhaps if we redefined evidence to be "what I really want to believe" it would make it easier for you. Then we could also, as a corollary,empty most prisons of their populations.
We aren't even setting the bar at "beyond reasonable doubt" the bar is set to "reasonable probability" and Christians can not satisfy even that lowly criteria.
I would love some real, corroborated, incontrovertible evidence of the existence of your Yeshua bin Josef. The closest you have is the heretical Nag Hammani texts which your own church wanted destroyed.
Once we have real evidence of your 'Jesus of Nazareth" then we can start to explore the claims to his divinity.
.
Agreed on the idea that Jesus would need to exist before we talk about divinity.
But then again, you haven't actually given any reason as to doubt any of the sources I've mentioned. Josephus for example mentions him twice. You've admitted in a previous thread that one of the mentions was an interpolation not a forgery. Meaning, Josephus could have actually mentioned Jesus in book 18. in Book 20, he mentions a certain James. To differentiate this James from other James, he notes that this is the brother of Jesus. Now, which Jesus? He's made this qualifier earlier... "The one called messiah.".
Now, we have Josephus saying that this James did in fact exist. I wonder how then James could be a brother of a fictional character.
Oh BULLSHIT JoC!
Oldman more than disproved every single thing you posted as proof. He successfully debunked the Josephus theory and all others. You just dismissed it. Josephus only alludes to christian claims and it is quite possible that Josephus didn't actually write any of that stuff in the first place as it is highly probable that they were additions made by christian scribes later on. Anyway, there is no way that Josephus ever knew the jesus that you refer to as christ.
JoC,
"Now, we have Josephus saying that this James did in fact exist. I wonder how then James could be a brother of a fictional character."
When will people understand that there were no characters named "Josephus, Joseph, Jesus, James, Judas, Jerusalem" in ancient times? "J" names didn't exist until around 1600 A.D. So all of the "J" names used in the Bible are simply aliases for other characters to make them more user friendly. They were altered after 1600 A.D. That may seem like a small nit-picky thing but if you were writing a history book would you change George Washington's name to Zeorge Pashington?
So Jesus and James are both fictional characters. When you think of those names in biblical stories you are visualizing imaginary characters.
@ JoC
Are you a slow learner?
We have had at least 3 repetitions of this conversation. I shall recapitulate for you (and do try and look up the meaning if interpolation)
It doesn't matter how any times you say "Flavius Josephus" it doesn't make him a contemporary source, it doesn't make the entries in book 18 or book 20 references to any historical jesus of your choosing. Last time of telling, Go read my last thread "food for debate - history."
A lot of Josephus is pure garrulous self seeking, toadying bollocks. Do you even know who and what he was?
No I bet you don't until you rush to Wikepedia, Instead of regurgitating the half chewed catholic nonsense given to high schoolers and 1st year seminarians do some real research.
Lesson one remove fingers from ears and stop saying "lalalalalala, I cant hear you".
Produce some real contemporary evidence JoC, dating from not later than say 50CE. No? Why?
Because it does not exist.
Stop whining about "not accepting the 'evidence' You haven't presented any EVIDENCE. I wish you could and would then we could proceed to demolishing the whole sorry lot of Yeshua bin Yosef was god stories. .
Alright, then. Why no later than 50CE? Is this the new requirement proposed by you? No other historian actually asks for a source within 20 years. This is simply absurd. You pluck this 50CE date from out of thin air. I would say the gospels would be enough but then you’d simply wave that away.
I know myk would say this was all written in 325 whih doesn’t explain why the gospels were mentioned by early church fathers, the earliest of which (Papias mentions them around the year 125AD).
Let’s look at your 50CE requirement or at most 20 years. You know who else would be considered fictional by that standard alone? Practically everyone in antiquity save a few caesars and some generals.
Say I do produce a source who wrote before 50AD. Say 48AD. What stops you from moving this date back to 40AD? Now, say I produce even that. What stops you from moving the date back until 35AD? Or even moving it further back?Can you name a historian of the ancient world who says that we need a historical mention of a person within 20 years of their existence to prove they existed.
Ancient historians will always say that contemporary sources are nice to have but they’re not needed to prove someone in antiquity existed. If so, there goes practically everyone we know from the ancient world.
That is a superb rant to say, Joc, that you have no credible evidence. I said 50CE because it was within the lifetime of most of the alleged disciples, also news sometimes travelled slowly from the provinces, and there could have been a delay in reporting. I was being very very generous. 35 CE would be my personal cut off but I allowed you some latitude.
"I would say the gospels would be enough but then you’d simply wave that away." How can documents copied and recopied in a different language from one single source some 250 years after the events be evidence of anything? We have been through this argument as well. Look up the provenance of the gospels. Nothing , nothing referenced earlier than the 2cnd century.
I'm not "waving stuff away" on a whim.
Produce some credible evidence that the gospels are indeed contemporary and describe real events and we can start talking, until then we have to deal with your "I believe it, so it must be so" instead of some serious activity.
125CE? 80 years after the alleged earth shattering events of that Passover ? that is the best you can do?
Maybe instead of chasing very dodgy rabbits down impenetrable rabbit holes of dogma you should start afresh and have a look at the evidence. The lack of evidence and the role of the Roman Church in suppressing much of early christian practice and beliefs.
@Joc
Please refer to the thread titled "Food for Debate"!
"This question has been repeated so many times it’s no loger funny. Every time any Christian posts on here showing evidence that Jesus existed, all the evidence is simply waved away without much reason to wave it away."
Nonsense JoC, no atheists on here ever "simply waves evidence away" that's a very dishonest claim. You also showed in the EVIDENCE thread that you have a very low bar for what you consider evidence, and none of it was objective, mostly it consisted of logically fallacious arguments, and RCC propaganda claims for a miracle you'd accepted as true, but for which no objective evdience could be demonstrated.
"Even atheist historians (see Bart Ehrman) say that Jesus most definitely existed."
That's untrue as well, Bart Ehrman has never and would never claim Jesus DEFINITELY existed. He certainly believes the evidences leans in that direction. More significantly is the fact that his scholarly studies that make him think this have also eradicated his religious beliefs, so the fact you're championing him as an expert on Jesus and the NT here I fairly ironic. Like Breezy you want to cherry pick facts to suit your beliefs. If you think Ehrman is an expert here, then his atheism ought at least to cause you some pause for thought, though I doubt it does as this would be an example of you "simply waving evidence away" that you don't like.
As has been pointed out before there is far more evidence to establish Mohammed as an historical figure, than there is for Jesus. Yet you believe none of the supernatural claims associated with Mohammed.
If Jesus existed and was an omniscient omnipotent deity who made himself flesh to save all humans, and cares what we think about his existence, and wants us all to believe he was real, then why did he fail to convey conclusive evidence for this? If it was that important, then why was your deity so careless about evidencing this event he took so much trouble to orchestrate?
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