The Jesus is a Myth, Myth

[MrEmpiricism]

Let’s narrow things just a tad, then.

Whether God exists or not has tons of verifiable evidence which can be used either for or against the affirmative proposition.

It doesn’t take much to “verify” evidence. That merely entails that the evidence is known to exist.

Take the Shroud of Turin, for example. It is clearly verifiable as a piece of evidence. It exists, it can be analyzed and subject to all kinds of verification tests. It is indisputably evidence that can be verified.
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Arrrgh :banghead:, it is not the existence of the evidence that has to be verifiable, it is whether the evidence supports the claims that needs to by verifiable. With all due respect this would be a much more meaningful conversation if you would first study the importance of verifiable evidence and what verifiable evidence even means.

It is pointless for me to even address the rest of your post, which is wrong BTW, until you understand what we are talking about.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Arrrgh :banghead:, it is not the existence of the evidence that has to be verifiable, it is whether the evidence supports the claims that needs to by verifiable. With all due respect this would be a much more meaningful conversation if you would first study the importance of verifiable evidence and what verifiable evidence even means.

It is pointless for me to even address the rest of your post, which is wrong BTW, until you understand what we are talking about.

Well, actually the word “evidence” means a body of information or facts which indicate whether a propostion or belief is true. If the adjective “verifiable” (to ensure the truth of something) is applied to evidence then “verifiable evidence” refers to the truth value of information or facts, i.e., the evidence, NOT the hypotheses or inferences those facts might suggest or indicate.

It is you who are incorrect.

If you want to talk about the validity of a truth claim, proposition or theory, THAT is another matter. WE, however, were discussing the notion that evidence needs to be verified or shown to exist and be factually correct.

Now, if you want to continue to insist that you are correct because, well… because you happen to be you, that is a whole 'nuther matter.

I will accept your apology for being unapologetically smitten by your own thoughts, as charming as they are, along with your admission that you are in error. Then we can proceed with the discussion, yes?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Actually it was Eratosthenes of Cyrene that DEMONSTRATED the earth was round and even worked out the circumference, and guess what method he used . Hint it was not philosophy.

That would be mathematics bolstered by a few philosophic assumptions and logic.

You weren’t going to say “science,” were you?

 

[DCNBILL]

Well, actually the word “evidence” means a body of information or facts which indicate whether a propostion or belief is true. If the adjective “verifiable” (to ensure the truth of something) is applied to evidence then “verifiable evidence” refers to the truth value of information or facts, i.e., the evidence, NOT the hypotheses or inferences those facts might suggest or indicate.

It is you who are incorrect.

If you want to talk about the validity of a truth claim, proposition or theory, THAT is another matter. WE, however, were discussing the notion that evidence needs to be verified or shown to exist and be factually correct.

Now, if you want to continue to insist that you are correct because, well… because you happen to be you, that is a whole 'nuther matter.

I will accept your apology for being unapologetically smitten by your own thoughts, as charming as they are, along with your admission that you are in error. Then we can proceed with the discussion, yes?

I hope that you are not holding your breath.

 

[Randy_Carson]

You are content with drive–by skepticism, then?

I’ll leave that temptation dangling.

As you can see, Peter, the answer to your question is, “Yes.”

 

[Randy_Carson]

Billions know there was such a person?
I wouldn’t use that wording. I’d say perhaps billions believe there was such a person…that would be more accurate.
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[Randy_Carson]

Don’t be a smart aleck. We know that Jesus existed because the Creator has spread knowledge of his Messiah across the whole world. God Has spoken. Try using your nit picking on Judgment Day, if you’re such a hot shot. See how far that gets you.

If your logic is valid, then would it be okay for us to say that we know that Jesus died on the cross and that he rose from the dead on the third day?



I suspect that you’d only be willing to say that Christian believe those things to be true.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Many Jews are about as interested in Jesus as your average Catholic is interested in Mohammed or John Smith.

A few, however, seem fascinated and hang out in this forum regularly. For years.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I think the cumulative case for Christianity relying solely on the internal evidence is very strong but requires a great deal of knowledge on the subject. Kaninchen is correct that trying to argue the case on the Internet with those who are largely unfamiliar with how the internal evidence fits together to build the case is largely a waste of time. Most atheist interlocutors (and Jews, apparently) aren’t very interested in looking into the details that solidify that case.

Having spent a fair bit of time arguing with Kaninchen ON an atheist forum, I can confirm this to be true.

 

[Randy_Carson]

The problem with this as I see it is that while it’s interesting to speculate, there is no historical evidence for Jesus’s existence outside the Bible, and the Bible is a religious text not a historical one. But that’s not an obstacle to faith, of course.

There are at least half a dozen non-canonical references to Jesus, James and/or Jesus’ followers from ancient sources.

 

[Randy_Carson]

But did Matthew, Mark, and John actually write those gospels? The names of their authors are not mentioned in the texts themselves with an author’s name not being attached until the 2nd century. It is not at all clear which James wrote the Epistle of James. Only the authorship of some of Paul’s epistles seems beyond doubt.

For skeptics of the traditional authorship of the gospels, some questions:

Why would copies of gospels circulate anonymously all over the Roman empire for decades and then suddenly be ascribed to the authors we know today unanimously without dispute in the second century?

When the gospels were being read in the liturgy, how would they have been distinguished one from another if they did not have names such as “The Gospel of Mark” or “The Gospel According to Luke”?

Why attribute a gospel to someone who had a somewhat dubious track record (like Mark who abandoned Paul on a missionary journey) unless it was true that Mark wrote it?

Why attribute a gospel written for a Jewish audience to Matthew, a man who would have been hated as a Roman collaborator by that audience, unless it was true that Matthew wrote it?

 

[Randy_Carson]

dupe

 

[Randy_Carson]

Utter nonsense, one can practice science without ANY understanding of philosophy. You clearly have NO understanding of science. Do you honestly think that when scientists analyse their data they get out the philosophy books???

What does the “Ph” in “PhD” stand for?

 

[Randy_Carson]

Right now I would say I do not agree, the only evidence I have ever seen is “every historian says so”, I have tried to find out why the all say so but it never seems to get more explanative than that. However, I am open to the idea that a man named Jesus may have existed. What I am not open to, given our understanding of the universe, is that he was a miracle working god, born of virgin etc.

Let’s begin with whether Jesus existed as a historical figure.

As you may know, there are numerous references from non-canonical sources that suggest that he did.

Ehrman actually treats all four canonical gospels as well as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter as evidence for the existence of Jesus.

Atheist Tim O’Neill cites both Josephus and Tacitus in support of the existence of Jesus.

Are you familiar with these references?

 

[Randy_Carson]

I agree that, as a matter of gentleman’s agreement, a person making a novel claim bears the onus for establishing the plausibility of the claim. That has nothing to do with whether anyone else should accept truth of the claim or not. The truth of a claim doesn’t hinge on whether the original claimant satisfactorily met the burden or not. The fact that the original claimant was or was not successful meeting the burden does not, by itself, prove the truth of the claim.

The proof is still in the pudding, so to speak, not in the chef preparing it.

Where burden of proof as a logical fallacy occurs, is when it is used to try argue that a claim is false BECAUSE the one purportedly carrying the burden couldn’t prove the proposition true.

In other words, the fallacy is in claiming that because the one shouldering the “burden of proof” couldn’t prove the claim, the claim is, therefore, false. That is what logically doesn’t follow.

In other, other words, the fallacy occurs when …

1. …you claim that you will consider what I say false until I fulfill the burden of proving it to you. It doesn’t follow that my proposition is false merely because I fail to meet the burden of proving it to you. Or
2. …you will consider something true unless and until someone else meets the burden of proving the proposition false. It doesn’t follow that merely because someone hasn’t proven something false that it is, therefore, true.

Do you NOW see how that works?

Or as some wag put it: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

 

[Randy_Carson]

Arrrgh :banghead:, it is not the existence of the evidence that has to be verifiable, it is whether the evidence supports the claims that needs to by verifiable. With all due respect this would be a much more meaningful conversation if you would first study the importance of verifiable evidence and what verifiable evidence even means.

It is pointless for me to even address the rest of your post, which is wrong BTW, until you understand what we are talking about.

Mr. E-

Would you agree that historians not able to PROVE that some event occurred in the past in the same way that a scientist can PROVE that water boils at a certain temperature?

Would you agree that while direct evidence is often (usually?) unavailable to the historian, indirect or circumstantial evidence often is?

Would you agree that historians are able to draw reasonable and accurate conclusions about what PROBABLY happened based upon the evidence that they do have to work with?

For example, you wrote:

Actually it was Eratosthenes of Cyrene that DEMONSTRATED the earth was round and even worked out the circumference, and guess what method he used . Hint it was not philosophy.

Can you prove this to be true about Eratosthenes, and if so, how would you go about convincing me?

 

[MartinJordan]

This has been an interesting thread, of which I didn’t expect it would take this avenue so to speak.

The question I’d ask here is regardless of the technicalities of whether it can be proven Jesus existed, how is it that there can be so many believers of a historical figure so important and dear to Islam and Christianity?

In other words, there is no doubt in my mind, Jesus did exist and no matter how hard one wants to prove against him and his influence, it would be a futile exercise to deny His place in History.

MJ

 

[DCNBILL]

This has been an interesting thread, of which I didn’t expect it would take this avenue so to speak.

The question I’d ask here is regardless of the technicalities of whether it can be proven Jesus existed, how is it that there can be so many believers of a historical figure so important and dear to Islam and Christianity?

In other words, there is no doubt in my mind, Jesus did exist and no matter how hard one wants to prove against him and his influence, it would be a futile exercise to deny His place in History.

MJ

Very much agree. I would also point to the Church and the writings of the Early Fathers and their beliefs and practices compared to the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church today.

 

[Thorolfr]

Why attribute a gospel written for a Jewish audience to Matthew, a man who would have been hated as a Roman collaborator by that audience, unless it was true that Matthew wrote it?

If the attribution to Matthew didn’t happen until the 2nd century, the people who made that attribution would not have considered that gospel to have been written for a Jewish audience nor would they have thought of Matthew as a hated Roman collaborator.

 

[Peter_Plato]

If the attribution to Matthew didn’t happen until the 2nd century, the people who made that attribution would not have considered that gospel to have been written for a Jewish audience nor would they have thought of Matthew as a hated Roman collaborator.

Except that the first attribution to Matthew was by Papias writing in the late first century and quoted by Eusebius, where he clearly states Matthew wrote it in the “Hebrew dialect:”

Therefore Matthew put the oracles (λόγια) in an ordered arrangement (συνετάξατο) in the Hebrew dialect (Ἑβραίδι διαλέκτω), and each person translated (ἡρμήνευσε) them as best he could.

This means the Matthew Gospel would have been written prior to 80 AND given the little said on the destruction of Jerusalem where the Gospel (24) only barely reports what Jesus said regarding the Temple being destroyed.

Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

If the Gospel were written later than 70, the perennial question is why wasn’t more said to connect Jesus’ words to the Temple being destroyed?