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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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@John 61X Breezy
[[So now, if the claim is made that both Jesus and the disciples are fabrication, we are left with the following gap: __, __, C, D, E. That's the informational gap, its the question of how Christianity originated, and how is dispersed, once the traditional view is displaced. --Breezy]]
Are you claiming that the first two slots must be filled by "A" and "B"? If so, then you are the one who should be presenting some evidence. Burden of proof. If not, then what is the purpose of your whole dialog? What are you trying to get at? If you are just curious, then why are you addressing your question to us? Do we look like experts in the origin of Christianity? You owe us an explanation!
"So what"—the killer of conversations; "
Disingenuous as ever, I suppose this duplicitous quote mining of my post is easier for you than addressing my point. We also can note you're doubly dishonest as you are allowed to express indifference to salient questions you dislike, but assert others are killing conversation when they reject your irrelevant loaded op.
Breezy "So, I'm not necessarily interested in the supernatural claims,"
Hypocritical I'd say....
John 6IX Breezy,
If the Yeshua character had been depicted as being a Roman, an Egyptian, a Syrian, Persian, or Ethiopian would you worship him?
Yes to all except Persian.
John 6IX Breezy,
"Yes to all except Persian."
But the Yeshua character believed in the Persian religious beliefs.
I find it funny how the OP was never addressed. I’ll take a stab at it as if I were a skeptic.
I’d venture that Peter and Paul came up with the stories. I’d say that has some weight to it as Mark was a companion of Peter and Luke was a companion of Paul. We even see Peter and Paul in leadership roles in the church in Acts.
This might be closest kind of counter theory I could come up with which explains Christianity existing at all without a Jesus.
JoC,
"I’d venture that Peter and Paul came up with the stories."
The Paul character was the first one to write and preach about the Yeshua character. According to his story he had been hunting down members of the Way cult when he had his delusion. So he created a religion based upon a zombie as its foundation. That ran counter to the traditional Jewish religion at that time. He went around the area gaining converts, primarily Gentiles. Then the Jews got in on the action and there was friction between the sects. So today Christians are Gentiles and they and the muslims honor the Jewish zombie while the Jews tend to disregard him as a religious figure.
As Joseph Smith proved, you don't need a real person to serve as the basis of a religion. You just need a good idea.
Atheists in my experience prefer the intellectual integrity of admitting they don't know something, to the wild speculation many theists prefer. Rejecting the claim that Jesus was a real person as improperly evidence is not the same as making a contrary claim.
JoC "I find it funny how the OP was never addressed. "
That's hilarious fair play. http://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/evidence
"I’d venture that Peter and Paul came up with the stories."
This implies they are both historical figures themselves of course, I can reject any claims either make for anything supernatural, or that Jesus was a deity, without troubling myself as to whether they made them up or someone else did. Since no one can demonstrate proper evidence for those claims.
"This might be closest kind of counter theory I could come up with which explains Christianity existing at all without a Jesus."
It doesn't matter anyway, since even if the evidence were more than dubious that Jesus was real it still doesn't in any way evidence he was anything but human. Why Breezy thinks we can play these games where he pretends 99.99% of his beliefs are irrelevant to the 0.01% he thinks he can prove by asking people to disprove it, I don't know, it's absurd though.
Even if you could prove Jesus was a real person, all your work as a theists would still be in front of you, so why waste energy on a claim that ultimately doesn't validate your religious believes one iota. As mykcob4 says, it smacks of a game, where he again tries to shift the burden of proof, and focus on anything but the fact no one can demonstrate objective evidence for their deity's existence.
JoC,
Yup, that's basically the kind of response I'm looking for.
Right? And some other posters even reject that theory. The question basically asks to give a rival theory to how Christianity even came about.
Wild speculation? Why would anyone look for that? It's meaningless...
I would postulate that the very notion that the strongest theistic arguments for a God, is that of logical arguments in the form of the Teleological and Kalam Cosmological, is quite damning in itself.
Especially when you consider both are awful arguments.
So the evidence to support a god or any character of a similar ilk is rendered moot.
Hmmmm..
John 6IX Breezy
"Hmmmm.."
That's quite a conversation starter. Or is this another example of that esoteric allegory you theists love?
Are you disagreeing that both the cosmological and teleological arguments are woefull, filled with logical fallacies no objective person can miss?
It gets worse too, not only are they awful, they're not even wrong.
If you look at Kalam, the 'transcendent cause' no proof, no explanation and no justification,
That is why you will never see or hear transcendence causation described in any physics class!
It is just an attempt to pile on metaphysical explanations that are not necessary in the slightest.
It is far more reasonable to assert eternal or multiverse models (again, theist offers no testable model at all),
For example Multiverse Andrei Linde chaotic inflation theory or Hugh Everett and Bryce DeWitt's “many worlds” formulation of the multiverse.
Then for the teleological argument, it literally has no evidence to support it, just bold faced assertions.
Furthermore, a naturalistic approach better understands the universe without the need to add on unprovable premises.
Christianity needs to have confidence in its knowledge about its origins because otherwise it would be like a house built on sand. It would know it wouldn't be able to assert absolute authority on moral matters. It would make its threat of damning those who are unable to believe this stuff seem palpably absurd and immoral to all.
The truth is not best ascertained when you are emotionally invested in any particular outcome. It is bizarre that an ideology could make its view of history a benchmark of moral character.
That's the point in a nutshell, Jesus being real wouldn't alter my disbelief he was deity as there is no evidence to support the claim beyond anecdotal texts. Not being able to offer unequivocal evidence he was even real hardly helps the claim his life was the most significant event EVER, and orchestrated by an omniscient omnipotent deity at that.
I think you’re confusing what breezy is trying to point out in this thread. Christ’s divinity is not being discussed in the slightest in the OP. We’re focusing on the man Jesus and if he existed.
Like asserting that the founding fathers never existed and simply accepting that the USA came about by some other mechanism yet not providing any rival theory. In either case, we’re not affected by them existing or not existing but one cannot deny that they either existed or did not exist.
There is no credible evidence that a man called Jesus as described by the gospels existed.
We do know that many Yeshua's existed in the time frame. Some were important leaders of the Temple.
We do know from contemporary accounts that the near and middle East had several prophets, warlocks, wizards and magicians, some with sizable followings.
How christianity spread is entirely uninteresting given the first three bits of knowledge. That's why the only cogent response to this ridiculous thread is from a fellow religionist because it is important for them to have some connection with the early christians. Even though it is false and based on unprovable stories.
Breezy's post is only a poor attempt at one of his games. By speculating how the Jesus myth spread he can twist it to admitting that for christianity to exist that there must have been an historical basis which is absolute bollocks and deceitful as usual.
Oh ffs....are you being obtuse deliberately, or is this a windup?
Read the thread please....
"yet not providing any rival theory."
Jesus wept. No JoC not like that at all.
1. Do we have objective evidence for the founding fathers?
2. Is anyone making any supernatural claims based on that evidence?
3. If they were and couldn't evidence it I'd reject it.
4. No one is obliged to offer alternative explanations to ANY claims improperly evidenced.
If you have objective evidence Jesus was real, and I dont particularly care either way, then demonstrate it. If you don't then we're done. Asking for alternatives is argumentum ad ignorantiam. I have encouraged you to look this up and understand what it means, I now do so again.
One can accept that Jesus existed while rejecting the supernatural claims about him. We have supernatural claims for some other historical people. The idea of this thread is not to prove or evidence the divinity of Christ. It's that he existed at all. Which is why the analogy works!
No supernatural claims are made. Just that Jesus founded Christianity. That doesn't sound very supernatural.
@ JoC
Except there is not a skerrick of evidence for a 'founder figure' Jesus/Yeshua bin Josef in the first place.
So no, by definition it cannot be 'reasonable'
Everything after that is just idle, foolish speculation to help Breezy swoop in with a supercilious "aha, but you now admit to the possible existence of Jesus"
Nobody is playing that game except you, because you still want to believe in face of all the contrary evidence.
JoC,
"Just that Jesus founded Christianity."
Technically Yeshua didn't found anything, the character Paul did. It was Paul who established the Christian doctrines and rituals. Christianity is based upon 1 Corinthians chapter 15. It was Paul who convinced the mob to believe that a Jewish zombie will give them eternal life.
As Paul said in Galatians 1:8-9 (NKJV) = "8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed."
You've missed the point yet again, deliberately?
You believe Jesus was a living deity. That his very existence in human flesh was an essential intervention orchestrated by an omniscient omnipotent deity. Further that this event was the most important event ever, and so it logically follows that this deity quite clearly would not have taken this trouble, and then not bothered to properly demonstrate evidence for it.
So it is reasonable to infer that if the evidence for Jesus's existence falls below what we'd normally accept to establish an historical figure existed beyond any reasonable doubt, then this is very significant. More pointedly we can reasonably expect an omniscient omnipotent deity to establish this most important fact with objective evidence commensurate with the importance you claim that deity is obviously attaching to the fact.
Since all anyone can offer is posthumous anecdotes either from unknown authorship, or from people who knew nothing of Jesus and never met him. Then this is quite obviously nothing but selection bias by you and Breezy. In the hope you can squeeze the smaller claim past muster in order to prop up the greater supernatural claims for which you can demonstrate no evidence.
It doesn't matter how many times you try to insist his claimed divinity is irrelevant to this discussion, as it remains an essential component of any such discussion.
**UNLESS** of course like Uhrman you're claiming he existed but was nothing but human and attach no supernatural claims to his existence.
I don't see how my religious beliefs would affect the evidence needed to prove a man existed in the past.
Like you said, if like Bart Ehrman I accept he lived as a man, then he should be treated as such. As to his divinity, we look at a different set of evidence for that. You do this a lot though. You force me or any theist to use a certain argument/evidence to prove a point the argument/evidence wasn't made to address.
You can actually look at it from this persepective.
Did a man named Jesus central to the founding of Christianity exist?
-For this, all supernatural claims are put to rest and we simply consider him a man.
Did this man claim to be God?
-Again, his divinity need not be considered at all.
Did he prove his divinity?
-This is where we start looking at his claims of divinity. Rising from the dead is Jesus' penultimate miracle. If he could do that, then his claims to divinity might be possible.
Sapporo,
"Christianity needs to have confidence in its knowledge about its origins because otherwise it would be like a house built on sand."
The bottom line is that most Christians don't know Jack Shit about their favorite religious fairy tale.
Why do theists think they can pretend their belief that Jesus was an omnipotent omniscient deity made flesh doesn't have a direct influence on how much evidence we'd need to find it a compelling reason to believe he was a real person?
These absurd games where Breezy tries to ignore salient facts in order to build a shaky house of cards for his beliefs one dodgy card at a time are not going to pass muster with the average atheist.
Like his multiple thread trying to claim the bible condemned slavery where he refused to discuss any biblical text that actually mention slavery.
Absurdly silly, and now JoC's at it, telling me the belief Jesus was a living God and his existence the most important event that will ever happen, isn't relevant to a discussion about how much evidence we'd require to believe he was real.
If Jesus was an omniscient omnipotent deity, and his existence the most important event that will ever occurr, with eternal torture waiting for those who fail to believe he was real, and this deity who orchestrated this wants us to believe this and has limitless power and knowledge and is perfectly mercifull.
Why isn't there evidence for his existence more conclusive than posthumous anecdotes from largely unknown who couldn't have known him at all? Not one single word by anyone during his entire life?
The evidence for Alexander the Great is reasonably compelling and there's nothing at stake either way. The evidence for Mozart or Napoleon even more compelling and again nothing at stake either way.
So why the incompetence by this deity with limitless knowledge and power, in making this most important claim EVER properly evidenced after allegedly taking the time and trouble to make itself flesh and blood?
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
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