Jesus liked a bit of the ole Judean sausage!

[fishjie]

Thread kinda got derailed… You’ve got to be a complete idiot if you think Jesus the human being never existed. So how did the Jesus-myth start? 12 random-ass Jews from different walks of life (uneducated fishermen to tax-collectors) made up some son-of-god story and duped everyone? The much more logical explanation is that some charismatic human being named Jesus started proclaiming himself as the Son of God. (Perhaps misled into believing it by his psycho-mom, Mary, who got knocked up pre-wedding and had to think on her feet to avoid getting stoned to death.) Now whether he WAS the Son of God or not depends on your own personal belief (I personally think he was full of shit) but with the overwhelming evidence on the contrary, you can’t say Jesus the person never existed.

Atheists who claim Jesus never existed are as blind as fundies who claim there’s no such thing as Evolution.

^_-;

You should read up on cargo cults. They cropped up this century around New Guinea. They sprang up as the primitive tribes interracted with advanced white people. The most prominent is the John Frum cult. The islanders believe that he will return some day and usher in an age of peace and prosperity. Sounds familiar? So how did the cargo cult start? A bunch of random ass new Guineans from random walks of life made up some god story that duped everyone? Seems pretty likely.

A simple explanation is that Paul, when he invented christianity, based jesus off many other religious figures in Israel at the time (and there were quite a few performing healing miracles). Do I think jesus really never existed? I just think the evidence is kinda inconclusive. Do I think Joseph Smith of the mormons existed? Yup, plenty of evidence there.

[Kix]

II won’t respond to later posts.

Let me get this straight. I sit there and give you the undeniable historical consensus on Jesus and specific details surrounding the crucifixion and then you turn around and show me that you are the historian, against the entire historical community? So even those people like Ludemann and Erhman that oppose the resurrection hypothesis that completely accept these things must have not have been considerate as you of the historical facts.

Regarding Alex, there is plenty of archaeological evidence, which kinda offsets the lack of contemporary written evidence. For example, the city of Alexandria, Egypt, which he founded. Or the fact that the Persian empire was brought to its knees.

So yeah, the written evidence and details regarding his life by themselves which are considered authentic are still considered historical outside of those things.

So you’re saying that Alexander left a mark? Jesus clearly didn’t - look at early Christianity (you know, the huge amount of conversions and such). What else did you expect from Jesus, given who he was?

Then there is the consistency of the accounts. The gospels on the other hand, lack this consistency (I’m not even taking into account the miracles either). Their accounts contain factual errors, and their accounts also conflict with one another in a serious manner. Quirinius is but one example. The death/resurrection is another. I’ll have to dig the essay, but basically trying to harmonize the events of Jesus crucifixion and resurrection is a hopeless task (the common argument that its just differing eyewitness accounts does not apply, as the “eyewitness” accounts are so ludicrously different).

I’m sure that you’ve given the same critical eye to the Alexander accounts as you’ve given to the gospels. I mean you are the best, unbiased historian in town! Even if the gospels do lack consistency in regard to details of certain events, the events themselves might have very well happened. There’s no need to even address that. Since you’re obsessed with Quirinius and would no doubt change your mind since you are open minded if you got a change in view about it based on new evidence, I’ll certainly need to come back to that one!

Also, in addition to the three criteria I mentioned (contemporary references, contemporary references by enemies, archaeological evidence)

You’re so well aware of historical criteria.

there’s also contemporary writings by the person in question.
There are obviously no canon gospels written by jesus himself. And AFAIK, there are no non canon gospels written by jesus either. that’s yet another strike. Paul for all intents and purposes, is the inventor of christianity, and he never even met jesus (while jesus still lived anyway).

Do you see this folks? Jesus should have written a book. Those disciples with him just made him up, oh, I’m sorry, I mean PAUL the convert to the religion that he invented. You’ve completely baffled historians. They’ll rethink their more complex criteria based on how you think things should be.

Strike number 2000 for the historians and their bad scholarship!

Lets grant that Mark was written earlier,

Yeah, let’s grant that. There’s obviously a huge debate about it among historians.

it still wasn’t a record of things as they happened.

Listen guys, things are bullshit if the historian himself wasn’t involved in a situation and took eyewitness accounts. Back then there were video cameras and much better ways to see what really happened than pathetic human testimony from a culture that had a very highly developed system of transmission (which was ignored). With that in mind, it was even easier to pull the wool over the Jews eyes because they knew what was going on!

After all, Mark was not even a disciple. So his info is already second hand source, and would have happened long after the fact. We’re talking at least years later.

Yeah, like seven when everyone was still alive during the time that Jesus would have been alive.

Ditto Luke. Matthew and John were written much later, and its not at all clear that those were truly the authors of the gospels, its just church tradition to attribute it to them.

Well historians got it wrong yet again looking at Luke’s book of Acts. The eyewitnesses and Paul and Luke and the whole family being together must be BS because then it would seem more accurate and they had access to the eyewitnesses.

the points 1-4 are only documented in the gospels, which again were either written decades later or by non eye witnesses, or both. But lets grant them as historical records, you still have to deal with the problem that the accounts of death/ressurrection are ridiculously contradictory (still looking up essay). as for point 3, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Muhammed allegedly ascended into heaven as well. Big deal.

We all know how the Islamic sources are the same as the Gospels! They are equal in historicity (I’m being sarcastic as I often am in this response, for those that didn’t notice)!

Well, what kind of evidence does one need in the situation? I mean from the time period, what would we expect?

So to recap, if we are generous and accept that Mark was based upon an earlier source, his would be the only contemporary account. But it wouldn’t be by an eyewitness, in fact it’d be based on an earlier source, so the information has already been diluted. All the accounts are either internally inconsistent, or contradict each other in ways that are difficult or impossible to harmonize. Admittedly, I’m not too familiar with the non canon gospels, which there are quite a few, but I’m pretty sure none of those were contemporary either. Feel free to provide evidence to the contrary.

Well considering the eyewitnesses were directly interacting with people, I don’t see why you’d think it’s so diluted.

I don’t think you realize that some of the criteria you put forth is actually satisfied in different ways between Alexander and Jesus and that the kinds of complaints you have are all over things that you wouldn’t question that are considered historical. Just remember: Roman and Greek history have got to be bullshit, too!

Dude, honestly. Who are the people running away from philosophy, science and history?

[Kix]

To define is to make finite. God is infinite. He can’t be defined.

“God is the greatest conceivable being.”

Okay, done.

Maybe you should think of it as that we can’t fathom the extent of God’s limitlessness. You can still know he’s limitless. Does that make sense?

His properties are qualified as infinite. He is not just Good not just powerful, he is infinitely good, infinitely powerful. Such qualifications render him ineffable, since we have no frame of reference for such qualifications. It is just metaphor, poetry, and word games at this point.

We say this in that these things are without limit. Got is limitless. We don’t actually think God’s power is a certain number of things and that he has an infinite amount of them.

Science breaks down at the singularity. The singularity has infinite energy of some sort. It didn’t “come into being”.

I’m well aware of this; hence philosophy. In the Big Bang, it might be a surprise, but it literally does come into being. All matter and energy. Maybe this might convince you towards theism.

As far as I’m concerned the universe is the totality all that exists.

Well have fun accounting for its existence because it wasn’t always there. Have fun also accounting for meaning, etc.

Contingency and non-contingency don’t apply to it. If all that existed at one point was a singularity, then that was the universe.

Well, the universe began with a singularity. So, the universe is not always there in ‘some form’. There is no universe.

Where are you getting these probabilities? We only observe one universe, and it has life. Seems to me like the probability of life is 100%. If we observed 100 other universes with our exact physical laws and yet had no life, then we could say our universe has a 1 out of 100 chance to permit life, which is still good.

Well, there are certain things that are known about the initial conditions. That’s where it comes from. These conditions don’t necessarily go here. I might go get the numbers and from where because they are ridiculous. Like 10 to the 10 to the … So in this way it can still be said what could happen. The constants aren’t written on the universe.

Look at the universe as a whole, or earth, it isn’t very life permitting, at least not our form of life. It doesn’t look very finely tuned for us. In fact it looks like we adapted to our environment instead of having our environment finely-tuned for us. And we still are adapting.

That’s optimality though. A car can be shittily designed and that doesn’t at all mean it isn’t designed.

Nope. Being resurrected doesn’t validate all your claims about yourself. You can’t know if it was supernatural since you don’t know all the phenomena of the universe that could account for resurrection.

Okay, let’s say you’re basically a bloodless, slashed up piece of rotting meat. I’d like to hear the explanations. If Jesus makes claims about himself and says he’ll be raised from the dead (let’s assume he did), would you believe his resurrection?

Supernatural doesn’t make sense and there is no way to distinguish a supernatural event from a natural one.

A natural event occurs with the natural laws.
A supernatural event occurs when something happens that isn’t based on natural laws.

It could be out of the ordinary, very rare, and amazing, but since we don’t grasp all the mechanisms of nature and all that is possible, we can’t rule out what is natural. For all we know Jesus might have been resurrected by aliens, by trans-dimensional beings, by himself due to some amazing biological mutation, by a group of super-beings, etc…Even if we say he was resurrected it doesn’t validate his claims, it doesn’t lead to one necessary conclusion. It still fails miserably.

Mutations occur in dead organisms? So do you think one wouldn’t be rational to believe him if that happened? What if his body did things that a normal body can’t do?

No, because in platonism particulars are at a lower level of existence than the general forms. The greatest conceivable being would be Being itself, the form. Not a particular substantiation of it. Not a unicorn or mario or a perfect island.

If being is a something. If you say that there are differences between men and women, does something called “differences” exist?

Existence isn’t a property of an object.

It is because existence is having a nature. Object have a nature and are thus existent.

Existence is a correspondence between a concept and something in the world. You can’t define things into existence.

The ontological argument doesn’t do that. It is deducing the existence through logic. It is just a realization of something that exists. The nature of an existent thing has attributes.

Existence doesn’t add to an object new info to an object: Kant argued that existence cannot be a predicate because it does not add any new information to an understanding of the subject. To be told that John is bald, that he is eating, and that he is angry is to add three things to the stock of information about him. However, to be told that he exists does not genuinely communicate anything about him. Likewise with ‘God’.

Let’s look at Aristotelian metaphysics for a moment. We would say that it is incidental to John to be a human being (human being is…a rational animal, etc.) but the accident of John is that he is white, male, becomes bald, etc.

For any thing, or being, it exists in a certain way or it does not exist. So for God to exist, yeah, it doesn’t say who he is, but we add incidents of his nature, that he omnipotent, morally perfect, etc.

[spudlyff8fan]

Antitheism:

A popular alternative to intelligence.

[Cisco]

I like how Cisco adds “scholarly” and “academic” in his assertions and arguments, as if those adjectives are enough to make a point.

Ah, yes… You see, making a claim that Jesus never existed is an academical debate, you can’t just make up silly arguments that he never existed and the rest isn’t academically credible. In thesis and research, you must have a reputable academic support to back up the case, and in reality. Any assertion that Jesus never existed is academically annihilated, and i can quote from 1st rank Atheist scholars and historians who say it.

the bible has no scholarly references, and appealing to authority is a type of fallacy.

And you just assume this.

[Netology]

Ah, yes… You see, making a claim that Jesus never existed is an academical debate, you can’t just make up silly arguments that he never existed and the rest isn’t academically credible. In thesis and research, you must have a reputable academic support to back up the case, and in reality. Any assertion that Jesus never existed is academically annihilated, and i can quote from 1st rank Atheist scholars and historians who say it.

And you just assume this.

I wasn’t arguing about a historic jesus anyway, who cares, I was pointing out flaws in your reasoning and your silly criteria for academic credibility.
You said

“In Scholaraly,*** any source that dates with in 150 years of the person’s lifetime is solidly academically credible*.”.

ANY source? really ANY? Anything that is written during my lifetime about 9/11 is solidly academically credible. Anything? So I can write: 9/11 was carried out by aliens who were paid off by Bush. And this would become an academic source because I’m writing it within 150 years of 9/11 ?

Lol.

[Cisco]

I wanted to take time to craft a less troll like reply, so it took a while. unfortunately the thread has exploded. I won’t respond to later posts. At least the thread hasn’t been closed yet. Also, I won’t really take any time to address cisco’s posts because as others have pointed out, his posts are atrocious as usual, and as a result, nobody takes him seriously.

At what way was my posts atrocious? Quit trying to impress yourself. You caught my attention and got me into this thread with an argument about the Gospel being historically questionable due to it being “decades” after. What really is atrocious here was actually your posts, because you where making up assumptions that where academically invalid. Please get your facts straight. Next, what was also ironic from you, is that you go about the dates of the gospels, yet seem to be unaware about documentations for other historical figures such as Alexander, who’s most valuable documentations (that inform us the places he conquered, his life, etc) are only 5 in quantity and 400 years after in time, is still academically reliable. So why is Jesus supposed to be questioned here when he has 42 writings about him all dating with in 150 years of his lifetime, some of those writings being with in ten years after his death? Have you read any of Alexanders documentations? There where some inconsistencies there, and of course these where written by men who were not eye witnesses yet it is still not discredited. Lastly, the inconsistencies of the gospels are just assertions made by people who misread.

Next, your questioning of the Gospel authors is also problematic.
The Book of Acts itself is not denied by scholars (not matter what their beliefs) to be a Historical Reliable document; and as i said before in my post to you, the Book of Acts is the second book of LUKE, there is no denying that Luke wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Much importantly, Luke was a historian himself and he used Matt and Mark as a guide to write his gospel, and none of them date “decades” after 33 AD as you say they do. You can not raise any question to the authorship of the Gospel Luke, likewise, why is it that the authorship of the gospels are questioned yet not the authorship of the documentations of Alexander, Tiberius, etc. Why is it that the “what evidence is there to show that Matt, Mark, Luke, and John, where the actual authors” question is not used for other documents?

A simple explanation is that Paul, when he invented christianity, based jesus off many other religious figures in Israel at the time (and there were quite a few performing healing miracles). Do I think jesus really never existed? I just think the evidence is kinda inconclusive. .

And this explanation is baseless, with no credible academic support. It’s like you guys think Paul was the only existing Apostle who believed/Taught Jesus to be God. Why this explanation of yours is totally wrong is shown with what i gave about Luke’s Acts. Clearly, those men did believe in Jesus only and the book talks about their ministry about him, as shown in that gospel. Yes Paul was in there but he wasn’t the only man preaching this new word… so you mind trying to make sense of that explanation?

Lastly, the Cargo Cults you just brought out here is an old refuted argument.

One of the main reasons is because there are academicians of early AD such as Lucian all of have attested that the Christian Faith came from a man who was crucified in Palestine. And seeing their Hatred for christianity, and their timeline - having greater reach to things with in early AD - they had every right to make a controversy against their leaders historical existence if so the amount of evidence was that shitty.

From Greco Roman Atheist Historian Michael Grant:

To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has ‘again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.’ In recent years, ‘no serous scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.

[Cisco]

I wasn’t arguing about a historic jesus anyway, who cares, I was pointing out flaws in your reasoning and your silly criteria for academic credibility.
You said

Well we can only talk about the historical Jesus because theological talk will get this thread locked.

ANY source? really ANY? Anything that is written during my lifetime about 9/11 is solidly academically credible. Anything? So I can write: 9/11 was carried out by aliens who were paid off by Bush. And this would become an academic source because I’m writing it within 150 years of 9/11 ?

Lol.

No, not everything. There will always be details of the person or the event that can be questioned, some of those 42 Jesus Writings do question and rebuke the theological details said about him. the details are not the matter of my point/argument, i didn’t mean to include it when i said any, but i meant any of the main subject itself.

If that main subject has documentation that dates with in 150 years, it is too early to consider it a legend or a myth by scholars. Sherwin White proposed that it takes more than 2 generations to whipe out a core of truth. This is why i brought up the 150 year thing. It’s basically sociology science, myths and legends do take generations to evolve and have truth wiped out, yet this myth managed to have documentations and an incredible impact with in just decade.

[Netology]

If that main subject has documentation that dates with in 150 years, it is too early to consider it a legend or a myth by scholars. Sherwin White proposed that it takes more than 2 generations to whipe out a core of truth. This is why i brought up the 150 year thing. It’s basically sociology science, myths and legends do take generations to evolve and have truth wiped out, yet this myth managed to have documentations and an incredible impact with in just decade.

Well that isn’t true either. Myths can start very quickly. For instance, people in latin countries having visions of Mary or Angels and spreading superstitions about them. Like cult leaders who make myths about themselves and gain tons of followers very quickly. Like L.Ron Hubbard (scientology) started a whole bunch of myths about himself and aliens which many people believed even in his lifetime.

It’s best to look at the claim* itself* and the evidence around it when trying to see if it is a myth or not. Nothing is “too early” to be considered a myth. A myth always has a beginning and has some believers, otherwise there isn’t anyone to spread it…simple.

[Lebowsk1]

Ask yourself if that’s really necessary. If God spelled out “I am God!” in the stars, would it lead more people into a relationship with him? Sure people would know he would exist, but I don’t think this is God’s goal for salvation. It’s a relationship between God and a person. In fact in a world where God did do something like that, couldn’t you see people becoming resentful of how God was smashing himself in everyone’s face?

I have thought about this before. There are problems with God making himself known to exist. As you say, people might resent it. Or people might have such confidence in the afterlife that they would rush to commit suicide. But at the end of it all, I can hardly imagine that our reaction to such a world would be in any way more absurd than our current predicament. People are full of resentment in this world. Hell, I resent God (if he fuckin exists) for NOT explaining himself.

And besides, because this is God we are talking about, I could say to you that He could find a way of making his existence known without causing resentment. If He couldn’t do that, then that would challenge his status as omnipotent.

I mean if you need help being convinced, have you considered the cosmological arguments, the teleological argument, the resurrection argument, the ontological argument, the moral argument, the argument from personally experiencing God, etc?

Oh yes. Believe me, I have tried. Especially the teleological arugment, that was my big thing. I had a Youtube channel for videos on Intelligent Design, I had a closed thread on the subject successfully re-opened on appeal (claiming it was a scientific and not religious subject), etc.

I had my series of ‘gaps’ into which God would fit. Cosmological argument (unmoved mover to create existence from non-existence), intelligent design argument (to create biology from physics, and further refine it), also I believed in the Soul by exploiting the hard problem of consciousness (how to go from a brain to a mind).

But the turning point came ironically when I was reading ‘The Edge of Evolution’, an ID book by Dr Michael Behe (a leading ID proponent). He used malaria as a good source of proof for intelligent design. Now, it was more to do with the fact that its reproduction and mutation rate were so high that it illustrated what evolution could NOT do. But at the same time it just triggered all my thoughts about the philosophical ‘problem of evil’.

For something like malaria to be a part of God’s plan, in any way shape or form (even if to disprove the naturalistic alternatives to His existence), well that became unnacceptable to me. The thought of the millions of people who have died to malaria simply because their country is hot enough to support the damn thing… and the problem of evil in general. I mean, I’d read the newspaper and see cases of tremendous evil in this world, and all of this emo stuff just outweighed the purely rational arguments in favour of God I had constructed up to that point.

Like: what is the point of believing in a God who is an asshole? He’s not answering a single question I have of him. So I just canned the whole thing. I’m now trying to make sense of life from a more existential perspective, and have settled on ‘absurdism’ for now.

(also, I’m someone who used to believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories, so the collapse [no pun intended] of that belief system sort of prepared me for my loss of faith. Now I’m trying to learn a skill [computer programming] and it is reassuring because the knowledge I gain on that subject is much more concrete than all the stuff I’ve learnt of philosophy over the years. Still love threads like this though and continue to think about this stuff).

[Cisco]

Well that isn’t true either. Myths can start very quickly. For instance, people in latin countries having visions of Mary or Angels and spreading superstitions about them. Like cult leaders who make myths about themselves and gain tons of followers very quickly.

No, you are missing the point. First of all, the things you gave here are not yet labeled as myths, generally speaking. Regardless, this is just what i meant about details and the main subject.

There is only one known event in where a vision of Mary that is said to be witnessed and that is the event in Fatima, which was in 1917 i believe. The main people involved in that story, those 3 kids, where factual historical people and it is factual that some abnormal shit (whether you believe it to be intended or not doesn’t matter) was going on with them is factual… and that event is not considered a Myth. I’m not saying that it is true that they actually saw Mary or any heaven related apparition, i don’t believe that they truly had visions of Mary or any heavily being. But all i can say is true are those kids and the fact that they were really acting abnormally.

Like cult leaders who make myths about themselves and gain tons of followers very quickly.

I think you are confusing the definition of Myths/Lie and Deceiving… Deceiving is the right word to use and it is not synonymous with Myths. Regardless, that Cult leader is indeed a true existing person, because the lie roots from him. Next, I think you can also say it is logical for a Cult leader to have shown something that convinced others to follow him, strongly. I mean, lets say you for example - will you manage to convince others that you are God with just words? Of course, a cult leader’s will not gain success by getting people to believe that he was divine with just words alone. It’s absurd to think so. The question is, what did Jesus do that managed to convince his followers that he was divine; convince them to the point that they would shit away their lives and rather suffer such violent deaths instead of denying what they believed their leader to be? In the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if people still want to disagree that these disciples went to martydom for the truth, but because of their martydom it is much more illogical to suggest that their leader never existed.

Like L.Ron Hubbard (scientology) started a whole bunch of myths about himself and aliens which many people believed even in his lifetime.

Is L.Ron Hubbard a myth? Next, how many people actually believe the sudden stories said about him? Do you have any sources of his believers seriously attesting to the untrue stuff he preached about himself? If you don’t, then it isn’t suitable to be a myth therefore your talk of people believing his myths is a baseless argument.

It’s best to look at the claim* itself* and the evidence around it when trying to see if it is a myth or not. Nothing is “too early” to be considered a myth. A myth always has a beginning and has some believers, otherwise there isn’t anyone to spread it…simple.

**A.N. Sherwin White
**
**First of all, this view fails to take into account the fact that it takes more than two full generations for legendary traces to wipe out the hard core of historical fact. There is good evidence that Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts were written within one generation after Christ, but even if all the Gospels were written after 70 AD, as proponents of the legend theory suggest, this is still within the two generations that are needed before mystical tendencies can prevail over the historic core.
**

[ThePurpleBunny]

A thread about something Elton John said turned into this.

It could have been filled by links to videos of Elton’s songs. Mostly from The Lion King. Nope.

It could have been filled by pictures of the flamboyant outfits Elton has worn, with or without him sitting at a piano. Nope.

It could have been filled by fanfics of Elton and Eminem having sex after they did a duet that one time, with subsequent posts making jokes with “no homo” at the end. Nope.

This is what we got instead. I hope we’re all proud of ourselves.

[Irennicus]

Yeah it’s true. I was talking to Jesus and he was totally like, “Yeah dude, it’s pork and beans all day long for me”. Or at least he said he was Jesus.

[Netology]

I think you are confusing the definition of Myths/Lie and Deceiving… Deceiving is the right word to use and it is not synonymous with Myths.

Ok. But you can’t have myth without deception. It’s just a more elaborate lie about a powerful being or event, maybe supernatural, etc.

Regardless, that Cult leader is indeed a true existing person, because the lie roots from him. Next, I think you can also say it is logical for a Cult leader to have shown something that convinced others to follow him, strongly. I mean, lets say you for example - will you manage to convince others that you are God with just words? Of course, a cult leader’s will not gain success by getting people to believe that he was divine with just words alone. It’s absurd to think so.

It is absurd to think so, but sometimes they do even less and their followers believe them to be supernatural, manifestation of God, etc. Look at the cult leader Osho, all he did was lecture and his followers thought he had supernatural powers, psychic abilities, had many pastlives, was enlightened and divine. They bought him expensive gifts (over 90 cars) and many went broke to support him.

The question is, what did Jesus do that managed to convince his followers that he was divine; convince them to the point that they would shit away their lives and rather suffer such violent deaths instead of denying what they believed their leader to be? In the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if people still want to disagree that these disciples went to martydom for the truth, but because of their martydom it is much more illogical to suggest that their leader never existed.

Cult leaders don’t have to do much. They just have to weave a nice story and capture ignorant and desperate people. Look at Japan, Shoko Asahara. He made a religion, claimed himself to be the new Jesus, new Lamb of God. Told some nice stories, brainwashed his followers with his words. They fell in love with him and his philosophy and believed him to be the second coming. In return they did his bidding because he “knew what was best” and they bombed a subway with nerve gas killing and hurting innocent people. He was tried and sentenced to death, his close followers and “apostles” were also sentenced to death…etc…they dont have to DO any magic, they just have to convince people by using good psychological techniques.

Is L.Ron Hubbard a myth? Next, how many people actually believe the sudden stories said about him? Do you have any sources of his believers seriously attesting to the untrue stuff he preached about himself? If you don’t, then it isn’t suitable to be a myth therefore your talk of people believing his myths is a baseless argument.

Look at how the church glorified and made his death mythic.
“The fact that he willingly discarded the body after it was no longer useful to him signifies his ultimate success: the conquest of life that he embarked upon half a century ago.” Now he “was off to the next phase of his spiritual exploration” http://slate.msn.com/id/2122835/

Former member says: “It was announced that L. Ron Hubbard had moved on to the next OT level, the one where his body had become an impediment and he had to discard it… There was a huge picture of Hubbard and everyone stood and applauded, literally for 15 or 20 minutes non-stop”

They cheered his success, he conquered death by reaching that OT level. The higher your OT is the more powers you get, eventually you control diseases, health, space and time, life and death…What proof do they have? Good speeches, brainwashing, hope, faith…

[Cisco]

Ok. But you can’t have myth without deception. It’s just a more elaborate lie about a powerful being or event, maybe supernatural, etc.

Yes you can’t. You are right about the description of myth… maybe i mixed up myths with legend. Anyway, the point of the matter is that the documentations plus the impact concerning Jesus is way to remarkable in terms of time line. If you read my post to Fishjiz concerning the book of acts. Another thing that my point for you is, what was that effective deception Jesus had on his followers. forget about your opinion on his followers just being deceived and focus first as to how they where deceived. Jesus didn’t just talk, because it is illogical for any Man to get people to believe in him that seriously with just words.

There is a difference to a liar and some one who is deceived. For example, those radical Islamic terrorists who kill other innocents; are they deceived, yes… but are they liars, no. Jesus’ followers seriously believed that he was the Son of God - and that he rose from the dead. If you read the reports of Plinny the younger, he gave instructions as to how to identify the real christian from a fake one (meaning a non serious one). And the guide was to severely life threaten the person into denying and the ones who didn’t where the real christians. Then his followers suffered other fates for refusing to deny what they believed such as being tortured then beheaded by nero, crucified upside down, beaten and then dragged through town on a horse, walking in boiling oil… So what did Jesus do that actually deceived his followers, forget first about judging them as being deceived and believing in a myth, and focus first on my important question that fills the hole of that argument. How did Jesus manage to deceive his followers that he was God and that rose from the dead.

. Look at the cult leader Osho, all he did was lecture and his followers thought he had supernatural powers, psychic abilities, had many pastlives, was enlightened and divine. They bought him expensive gifts (over 90 cars) and many went broke to support him.

The only cult leader who’s name is Osho that i know is Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who died around 1990. He never made any teachings that he was divine. He even gave commandments, one of them being about there being No God. He was a very controversial spiritual leader and even known as a sex-guru in India. He never gave any teachings about him being divine nor where their people who believed that stuff about him.

Cult leaders don’t have to do much. They just have to weave a nice story and capture ignorant and desperate people. Look at Japan, Shoko Asahara. He made a religion, claimed himself to be the new Jesus, new Lamb of God. Told some nice stories, brainwashed his followers with his words. They fell in love with him and his philosophy and believed him to be the second coming. In return they did his bidding because he “knew what was best” and they bombed a subway with nerve gas killing and hurting innocent people. He was tried and sentenced to death, his close followers and “apostles” were also sentenced to death…etc…they dont have to DO any magic, they just have to convince people by using good psychological techniques.

He claimed himself to be the new Jesus and the Lamb of God to actually emphasize the his influence and his “greatness”. That declaration is identified as boastfulness… trying to give an emphasis to himself. his teachings was based on the original Buddhist sutras… as i said to you in an earlier post, the only way a cult leader can get followers is if he was using an old doctrine to support him. It’s called twisting. He influenced his followers by twisting the words of the original Buddhist sutras. Just like Fred Phelps does when he uses the Bibles words and twists it to influence the motives that Southern Baptist Church. That Southern Baptist Church is a cult, and the teacher is twisting the words and poising the minds of those who listen to him. You are right that it is possible to create a cult just by words if so this cult is based on a doctrine from an original religion. Doctrines are to religion as Theories are to Science. In order to make a theory you need to have a explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis this is the same thing with creating a Doctrine. Those cults are doctrine based which is why there is no need for a show case, just the psychological word play as you said.

The actions of Jesus’ followers could not have been from just words, because his career was only 3 years so being able change and influence the lives of people in such a way (getting them to believe he was the living God) isn’t logical to say that it just from words. There had to be something very convincing. Jesus is the only leader so far who’s followers seriously believed that he rose from the dead… this belief made them that hard core that they would follow his teachings with no benefit in the end, but instead a cruel fatality. And the question comes, how did the leader of Christianity manage to do that?

Shoko did not make a new religion, he made a new doctrine that influenced a twisted belief system. Him calling himself the new Jesus or the Lamb of God is out of his arrogance, giving himself an own image to emphasize him… but it wasn’t a statement that he was actually an eternal god. He was just being a douche. His followers did not worship him, they just followed and where influenced by his doctrine. Their minds where “poisoned”.

Look at how the church glorified and made his death mythic.
“The fact that he willingly discarded the body after it was no longer useful to him signifies his ultimate success: the conquest of life that he embarked upon half a century ago.” Now he “was off to the next phase of his spiritual exploration” http://slate.msn.com/id/2122835/[
Former member says: “It was announced that L. Ron Hubbard had moved on to the next OT level, the one where his body had become an impediment and he had to discard it… There was a huge picture of Hubbard and everyone stood and applauded, literally for 15 or 20 minutes non-stop”

They cheered his success, he conquered death by reaching that OT level. The higher your OT is the more powers you get, eventually you control diseases, health, space and time, life and death…What proof do they have? Good speeches, brainwashing, hope, faith…

hmm, interesting. However this is not as powerful enough. Reason why is because did Hubbard make this statement about himself, reaching OT level? Next, the Apostles’ faith are based on what they have claimed to see, they believed and preached that he was the Son of God because they say the saw him rise 3 days after he was crucified. You see, the followers of Jesus are rooted from what they believed to have seen done from him. and they have shown to be serious because of the fate that happened to them. Next are you sure that this page you gave here from Xenu.net is actually a true article/testimony from a Scientologist? Because Xenu.net is a very harsh anti-Scientology site.

[Lebowsk1]

Can’t believe I nearly missed this gem from Cisco…

my reply on this part of the quote isn’t about Jesus being God, but just to show how flawed your argument for this demand of this type of evidence is. Yes, that was immature and stupid. It just shows your lack of knowledge concerning the belief of the Christian God because the so called evidential requirements is contradictory to the Christian god’s personality and what you listed as to what God should do for evidence is similar to the test given by Jesus from satan in the desert which was about the physical proving of his divinity.

No, I’ll tell you what’s immature and stupid: the concept of having knowledge of God’s “personality” (and this is inherent in Christian beliefs).

It is tough enough to go about making arguments for the existence of God. It is entirely another to go claiming to know what his ‘personality’ is.

And yes, the hilarious thing about your beliefs is that if God appeared on earth and said “I am God!”, half of you people would be screaming “do not listen to him, it is Satan!”

And besides, where do you stand on the second coming? Are you not a believer in the rapture?

There was a reason they believed in him so strongly.

Yes, and that reason was that they were delusional humans.

And this statement is academically ridiculous. You only say this because of what you, being an Atheist, learned in school about the ancient world and read about the many religions that existed therefore you make some hypothesis that religion was much more easier because you think people where that gullible back then. Your hypothesis is ridiculous and baseless.

What, my hypothesis that people were generally less well educated, and that technology was inferior?

You probably think that if you traveled back to that time with just drags on and started saying you or who ever is God that you probably could bag about 15 + followers and have a religion centered on you.

I’m not a deceptive or delusional person so, no.

Well, you are.

Fabulous argument.

[runaround]

I agree that the historical documentation for Jesus is good enough for us to say he actually existed. I used to think I was a pretty smart guy, and that the points made by Christian apologetics like C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell were good enough to make me give Christianity a chance.

Actually, the historicity of Jesus is a fascinating question, but I feel that even if we have a long drawn out debate where we decide what it is we can reasonably agree or disagree on, we’ll still come to an impasse. I’ve researched the question and attended services enough to realize that most churchgoers are actually indifferent about these topics; the people who are the most passionate about reading the apologetics literature aren’t people like me when I was in college, who had personal crises in their lives and wanted to see what Christianity has to offer. Actually, it’s raging atheists and Bible thumpers who obsess over debates like this the most. (Fortunately, since the promulgation of the internet, I’ve seen very enlightening discussions as a result of these people.)

As to Jesus: imo, he probably existed, but the same kind of historical documentation that works in his favor when we are debating his existence works against him when we’re debating certain events that happened in his life. The steady progression in supernatural phenomena described for the resurrection increases as we move from Mark (acknowledged as the earliest gospel) to the other synoptic gospels and John. What Kix derisively refers to as “pop-atheism” has, imo, persuasively argued that this attribute of the NT is indicative of hagiography and forces us to take what is said in the NT with a LARGE grain of salt if we are going to be using it as a historical text.

Also, WLC has to be one of the oiliest apologetics debaters out there–his support of the creationism/ID movement has seriously damaged his credibility in my eyes, and the scientifically dishonest arguments he has paraded around in these debates make me question his reliability outside his area of expertise (philosophy and theology.) For example, correct me if I’m wrong, but WLC is not an expert in textual hermeneutics. Many of the quotations upthread from Kix are culled from his website and I seriously doubt whether we can trust him (that is, WLC) to have preserved the nuanced contexts from which they were taken.

So yes, I think that Jesus has largely become a mythical (or legendary, whatever) figure by today, primarily because of the way churchgoers themselves choose to present Christianity. (At least, this is my personal experience.) I was brought up in a Chinese family where old relatives enjoyed telling folk tales culled from pseudo-historical medieval fiction and the like, and the parallels I found between my childhood and my college experience with Christianity were striking. (The historical truth doesn’t matter to these people as much as the fact that these stories and narratives become a way for communities to identify themselves and place themselves in a larger historical and philosophical context.) Online, I have been fortunate to meet accomplished debaters who were more interested in discussing the facts, and after having followed these discussions for several years, I have found nothing in the apologetics literature that would be “good enough” to convince a nonbeliever through rational arguments. Sorry, but none of it withstands scrutiny. The historical documentation is either contradictory or not there. (For example, the fate of the apostles is even more poorly documented than the martyrdom of Jesus, so the “the apostles wouldn’t die for a lie” argument, while compelling, is wholly inadequate for the kind of historical revisionism Christian apologists try to use it for.)

What do I think about the crucifixion and resurrection? I don’t know. There are historical documents that confirm the martyrdom of Jesus but disagree on the manner of his sentencing (sorry, I don’t have the exact references.) The empty tomb? Okay, if we can trust the gospels, sure. But in the earliest versions of Mark, there are some scholars (I’m thinking of Bart Ehrman specifically) who believe that the gospel of Mark actually ENDS when the women find the empty tomb; the brief passage about a walking, talking Jesus after his crucifixion at the end of Mark might actually be a later addition made by scribes. What do I think about this? As I said, I don’t know. The evidence cuts both ways. (The prophecies that the NT says that Jesus fulfilled are indefensible however. Biblical passages from the OT are either misquoted or fabricated outright in the NT’s use of them. Here I can provide references, so I can give them if you ask.)

I actually think, however, in spite of the Bible, (rather than because of it,) the Christian faith does have some redeeming aspects, but THAT is a whole 'nother ball game folks. For those who still care and are still reading, I’m an atheist who nevertheless happens to respect the religious faith of other people. Personally, I feel that if there IS a god that created the universe and can be “proved” with clever philosophical arguments, I don’t think (correct me if I’m wrong) that he will at all resemble the Judeo-Christian deity in way, shape or form. Sure, the Bible MIGHT be right about the creator of our universe… but really? Where’s the evidence? (Really, show it to me. I still haven’t seen it. And I have seen a lot. So surprise me here.)

I’m sorry, but the Christian deity works in ways too mysterious for any rationally thinking human being, which makes precluding the possibility of his (that is, the Judeo-Christian god’s) existence an intellectually defensible position. As for the philosophical and theological arguments used by apologists, they result in a “God” so ontologically ill-defined as to be incomprehensible. (A father, a son, and a holy ghost? All powerful, all knowing, AND all good? I don’t want to get into it here, since this post is already long enough, but these ideas don’t stand up to scrutiny either.)

Let’s just talk about Judean sausage again already.

[Netology]

Those cults are doctrine based which is why there is no need for a show case, just the psychological word play as you said.
You are right that it is possible to create a cult just by words if so this cult is based on a doctrine from an original religion.

Jesus didn’t just talk, because it is illogical for any Man to get people to believe in him that seriously with just words.

So the only way Jesus could get people to follow him is either if he did some miracles or if he used psychological techniques of persuasion while working with a doctrine of an original religion.
I think it’s uncontroversial that his message was grounded in a previous religion. Specifically Judaism. He modified it, but it was his foundation. I’m sure we all agree that he didn’t simply create a new religion out of thin air…

So now it remains, did he perform miracles or was he just a good speaker? In most cult cases, lets say 100% the cult leader has no magical powers, yet he gets plenty of followers simply because he is persuasive. Why should Jesus be an exception? Of course you will be biased, every genuine cult follower believes their leader is authentic while the others are just fakes.

[Irennicus]

I don’t think anyone has created a religion out of thin air. You have to start with a basis that people already believe in or what’s the point? You can’t just get people to believe in invisible elephants that can recite shakespeare, but you can get them to believe in doing good towards their neighbor.

[G.O.T]

Okey-Dokey.