Can those who assert that Jesus did not exist present the best argument they can that Jesus did exist?

Can those who assert Jesus did exist present the best argument they can that Jesus did not exist?

I'll bite. The best argument for the nonexistence of Jesus is the lack of contemporary references to him. That is a red herring though because his followers lived in an oral society and probably were illiterate and he wasnt important enough in his own lifetime for important witers to take notice and even if they had,most ancientbwritings didnt survive.

bona dea unregistered Wrote:
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> I'll bite. The best argument for the nonexistence
> of Jesus is the lack of contemporary references to
> him.

Ouch! That is an insult both to mythicists and your knowledge of them. Why don't you read up on the Rank-Raglan hero-type then come back with a better answer? I will give you a reference: Page 229 of "On the Historicity of Jesus" by Richard Carrier.

To answer the OP's question, if I remember correctly, the assumed oral traditions which the gospel authors assumably reproduced without too much bias is the best evidence for Jesus according to Bart Ehrman.

I have read it, thank you very much and find it unconvincing.

Wow, so you don't think Jesus fits the criteria for a Rank-Raglan hero? Or do you think that Rank-Raglan heros were all historical people? Whether you are convinced that Carrier is right or not, he assigns a very high 93.75% prior probability in favor of mythicism on the basis of the Rank-Raglan categorization, making it one of the strongest arguments for mythicism. Yet you chose the "lack of contemporary references" as the best argument for mythicism, which would be expected on both minimal historicism and minimal mythicism, and is therefore of no consequence.

I dont place much credence in the theory. Real people have been assigned a high probability of being mythical .Google it. There is a lot of info out there. Besides it is easily manipulated.

Also this intuitive approach:

The miracles that Jesus was said to have performed are not credible. If that part of his story is fictionalized, why not the rest? I think this, and I lean toward his non-existence.

Tha is also a red herring because miracle stories were added to many famous people. You would need tosnconsider Alexander fictional too because of the fantastic stories about him.People then believed stuff like this.

you mean there is no evidence that Alexander was a real person ?

You gave your opinion, and then I gave mine. Did you notice how I called your opinion a red herring, which signifies deliberate misdirection? No, you didn't. When you call my thoughts deliberately misleading, you have attacked my character.

Is there any other reason for your behavior than truculence?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 03:51AM by donbagley.

Dont be so sensitive. I disagreed with you. I didnt insult you character. Perhaps red herring implies that you wrte deliberately being misleading. A didnt intend it that way

What, you don't like that? Don't be so sensitive. I didn't intend it that way.

Gaslighter. I know your kind.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 04:28AM by donbagley.

I used a poor choice of words and admit it. I think you are wrong but apologize for implying that you were being deliberately misleading.I dont think you were. Now maybe youshould get over it.

Is that what lying is called these days ?

It's really frustrating to be gaslighted on this board. That's one of the things that drove me away from the Mormon culture.

People who insult others and then say they didn't mean it are bullies, and all they need is our silence to get away with it. Even when it's happening to someone else, you refuse to stand by and let it go. That's character (and you're brutally honest as well, which I like).

--Don



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 02:07PM by donbagley.

You and Dave are basically calling me a liar and I do not appreciate it. I explained and apologized.I used the term as erroneus information rather than a deliberate attempt to deceive. That was sloppy writing and I apologized so get over it.

But I don't read "Now maybe you should get over it" as an apology.

I think our friend Bagley has a different interpretation of "red herring" than I do. It is not a common term these days. I have always understood it merely to indicate that something was incorrect and out of place, not indicative of any intent of any kind.

That was my intent. He can believe me or not.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 02:19PM by bona dea.

Bona says;
What I said is not what I meant and vicey versy.

I' m gonna wait for the essay, that should clarify the matter.

Imagine my relief.

I'm not even close to well-read on the pro/con arguments, but here is an additional wrinkle:

If Jesus existed, and if he was a Fully Realized, Enlightened Master Avatar, many of the teachings attributed to him in the NT are pure BS or have been distorted beyond recognition. Some examples:

o Virgin birth? Mary was a Goddess of Fertility: "I figured out how to conceive a baby without having sex with my fiance'."

o Crucified and rose from the dead? Lotsa theories about a drug-induced coma, waking up, escaping to the South of France and dying at age 80? I don't know if any of these tales might be historical. Knights Templar? I don't know.

o The Atonement. More BS. Nobody "pays" for our "sins" and no accountants are keeping score in preparation for a Judgment. We accrue unto ourselves the natural consequences of our very own constructive and destructive choices and earn retraining experiences (Karma) as needed ... in this life or future lifetimes. This all happens naturally of its own accord with no help needed from anyone.

o The Second Coming: More BS. Ain't gonna happen. If anything, the Second Coming only makes sense as a metaphor for the dawning of higher consciousness in each individual. No chariots from the sky with Harold and the Angels singing.

o The Future Resurrection. Pure BS. Corpses popping out of the ground in cemeteries to go meet Jesus? Never gonna happen.

o Religion/Church? More BS. Enlightened Masters do not found churches or religions - some of the most dangerous and destructive institutions in human history. Tens of millions of people have been killed in the name of Jesus. An enlightened Jesus would not have participated.

My opinion on whether Jesus existed?

The NT Jesus never existed as depicted in the NT. If a Jesus person existed, he would not accept blame for many of the teachings attributed to him in the NT. The Golden Rule and love your enemies stuff makes sense, but ALL of the supernatural crap is beyond credibility. God incarnate would not impersonate David Copperfield and perform impressive magic stunts to impress people to come follow me.

I'll give you the almost complete summary as follows.

Pro: The ridiculous length the gospel writers go to get Jesus to be born in betlehem, and similarly trying to downplay or explain away that he was a follower of John the baptist shows that the gospels were based on some guy from galilee that was a disciple of John the baptist.

Con: You call that evidence? The gospels are just as likely to be based on a fictional character that happened to come from galilee and so on.

The arguments in favor of probable existence are the criterion of embarrassment and the greater embarrassment of inventing a supposedly recent and close figure. The gospels go to great lengths to explain unfavorable information about Jesus - his humble background, his lack of stature relative to John, his lack of success as a preacher, his execution, and betrayal by followers. Why would people invent such unheroic attributes for a mythic leader? Also, early followers of Jesus in the decades after his death are said to be friends and relatives of his. Wouldn't it have been embarrrassing to invent a mythic leader that contemporaries knew had not existed, and what purpose would it have served?

I think that some people think of events in our own time, rather than in the times that these happen.

Here's an example:

There was obviously not a three hour period in which the sun was blacked out, as well as thousands of dead zombies coming alive. If fear of embarrassment were a driver of the writers, why wouldn't the writer of the gospels been embarrassed that he was writing about events that obviously hadn't happened, and that were easily disproven by people who were alive.

WestBerkeleyFlats Wrote:
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> Also, early followers of Jesus in
> the decades after his death are said to be friends
> and relatives of his. Wouldn't it have been
> embarrrassing to invent a mythic leader that
> contemporaries knew had not existed, and what
> purpose would it have served?


What happened to all the people who would have heard about him or experienced him in some way?

Interpolations were Rome's strong point. Decades later it was taught far, far from Judea and contemporaries were dead or so distant that the news didn't reach Judea until more decades later. I think it would have been embarrassing if they actually cared. Paul didn't even see Jesus in Judea, that's the lengths they took to make sure their story wouldn't get back to Judea who had no knowledge of this guy.

What purpose would it have served?
The Roman and Grecian purposes were always to Romanize and Hellenize the Jews.
Plus, get a religion of their own. Every super power needs their own religion. They didn't have it. Greece did. They did indeed get one, which is still in play today.

....just my thoughts. :)

Why does it matter whether a man named Jesus existed whose life was the basis for the NT?

I really don't care.

Whether he actually existed or not, as far as I am concerned, the religion that developed around his story is just another man-made religion, regardless of whether he actually existed or not.

Only believers in some form of that religion are so determined to demonstrate that he existed, because, if he didn't, their faith is no better founded than the Hindu's belief in Krishna or the Roman's belief in Zeus and Apollo.

Pack-man, you're excessively simplifying the matter. Plenty of people believe that Jesus existed in some form because it's a more plausible explanation than non-existence. For example, Schweitzer, whose views you have mischaracterized, believed that Jesus was a first-century Jewish apocalyptic with belief in an imminent eschatology. That belief is based on an examination of the available evidence, not confirmation basis.

It matters to me because history is important and Christianity has been an important part of civilization for 2000 years. Whether it is true or not does not make it any less important re

bona dea unregistered Wrote:
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> It matters to me because history is important and
> Christianity has been an important part of
> civilization for 2000 years. Whether it is true or
> not does not make it any less important re

I agree with this...the impact of Christianity on the world for the past two thousand years has been enormous (both for good and for evil), and---if it is at all possible---this HUGE historical force needs to be understood...for the benefit of all of us who live on this planet.

Whether Jesus (a solitary, Jewish, male human being) ever lived IS important...and whether he did or not, the process by which "he" (either human being, or as a mythic figure) became a global force needs to be comprehended.

and nobody knows less about history than you.

WestBerserkeleyFlats Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Pack-man, you're excessively simplifying the
> matter. Plenty of people believe that Jesus
> existed in some form because it's a more plausible
> explanation than non-existence.

Yes, of course it matters to a lot of people. I said that myself. And it's mostly those people who then also want to believe that he rose from the dead.

famous last words of a con artist

The fact that Christiantiy had a tremendous influence on civilization has nothing to do with whether Jesus existed or not.

The influence of ancient Greek culture on civilization does not depend on whether their myths were based on facts. The Iliad's influence did not depend on whether there was actually a Trojan war. That influence was there even before Troy was uncovered by Schliemann.

SO what? The questionn I was answering was why we should care.

Of course he was a mythical figure.

Young Ziller woke up early as usual, but this particular morning it took him a few moments to realize where he was.

The smell of potpourri, the steady tick-tock of the ancient clock on the wall, the antique dresser in the corner all quickly reminded him.

Grandmother’s house.

Ziller made his way up the darkened hallway. It sounded like a medium-sized dragon with metal lungs was huffing and puffing in the kitchen, but it was only the old percolator style coffee pot performing its magic.

“Good morning, Ziller.”

“Good morning, Grandmother.”

Grandmother was seated in her usual spot. Her cup of coffee and open Bible were set on the white tablecloth in front of her.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Really good, Grandmother. Thank you.”

Grandmother turned again to her Bible. Ziller poured himself a glass of milk and selected a piece of toast and several strips of bacon.

The streetlamp outside was taking its last peek through the window blinds before the sun came up. Ziller studied his toast and organized its crumbs on the little china plate with his finger. Every now and then he would stop to listen to the sound of a car driving past the house carrying people somewhere they needed to go.

“Grandmother, do you think Jesus was real? Did he really exist?”

“Well of course he did, baby,” she said looking up. “He is real. He lived. He died for us and he rose from the dead and he lives today.”

“Yeah. But how do you know that?”

Grandmother closed her Bible, took Ziller’s hand and sighed deeply while Ziller prepared himself for a loving lecture or gentle scolding for asking such a question.

She opened her mouth and, instead of scolding, she began to softly sing a song that Ziller had heard many times at her old Southern Baptist church:

“I serve a risen Savior
He’s in the world today.
I know that He is living,
Whatever men may say.
I see His hand of mercy;
I hear His voice of cheer;
And just the time I need Him
He’s always near.”

“He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today!
He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way.
He lives, He lives, salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives?
He lives within my heart.”

And that made more sense than anything Ziller has ever read in a book.


ziller

I don't get on here much anymore, but I see that people are still debating the existence of Jesus. The post below is from a couple of months ago, but since people are still asking...

There is plenty of evidence that Christ existed. I know that I am going to get ridiculed and attacked here, but there is plenty of evidence. I'm not saying that you have to accept it, but there is plenty of evidence. I also understand that we were all duped by the BofM, Book of Abraham, D&C, Nephi, Lehi, etc, but that was all Joseph Smith and his band of brothers. But just because people like Nephi and Lehi were made up does not mean that The Bible and Christians did the same thing and made up Jesus. There is simply more historians and scholars that agree there was a historical Jesus versus those that don't think there was one. Here are some quotes and evidence for everybody to consider.

Quotes from people much smarter and more qualified than anybody on this forum

Non-Christian Scholars

Jay Lowder (Ran The Secular Web)
- I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed.

Robert Price
- Robert M. Price (an atheist who denies the existence of Jesus) agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars: Robert M. Price "Jesus at the Vanishing Point" in The Historical Jesus: Five Views edited by James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy

Maurice Casey (Agnostic - Professor at University of Nottingham)
- This view [that Jesus didn't exist] is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice, which holds all the main primary sources, and Christian people, in contempt. .... Most of its proponents are also extraordinarily incompetent.

Michael Grant (Vice Chancellor at Queen's University of Belfast)
- Wrote more than 70 books mostly on Roman history including books on Caesar, Herod, Cleopatra, Nero, etc...)
- we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned... In recent years, 'no serious 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." in Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant

Bart Ehrman ( James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
- In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart Ehrman (a secular agnostic) wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees" B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged : writing in the name of God
- I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus .... We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period.
Prof Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina in an interview by The Infidel Guy

Geza Vermes
- [In answer to the question, did Jesus exist?] I would say it is much more likely that he did than he didn’t. To believe that he had been imagined or invented is a much harder task than to rely on the available evidence, which is obviously not as clear-cut as one would like, but is sufficiently good to say that somebody by the name of Jesus existed around the time when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea in the first century AD. (Geza Vermes, Oxford University, in A new church is born, History magazine)

Contrary to the claim that nobody but Christians wrote about Jesus doesn't seem to be true.

Non Christian References to Jesus
Taticus (Senator)
- Annals written in AD116 but talking about The Great Fire of Rome
- Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind".

Pliny the Younger Written in AD 112
- They were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves to a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, adultery, never to falsify their word, not to deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of a meal—but ordinary and innocent food.

Josephus
- Book 20, Chapter 3 (Most Historians Validate)
- "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James"
- Book 20, Chapter 9 (James the brother of Jesus) (Most Historians Validate)
- Josephus refers to the stoning of "James the brother of Jesus" by order of Ananus ben Ananus, a Herodian-era High Priest who died c. 68 AD

Book 18, Chapter 5 (Most Historians Validate)
- John The Baptist
- Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man... Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion... Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod's suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death.
- Book 18, Chapter 3 (Most Historians Validate, Yet some are concerned that the phrase (if indeed one ought to call him a man) might have been added or changed later)
- About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he . . . wrought surprising feats. . . . He was the Christ. When Pilate . . .condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared . . . restored to life. . . . And the tribe of Christians . . . has . . . not disappeared.

Lucian of Samosata (2nd Century Greek)
- The Christians . . . worship a man to this day--the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. . . . [It] was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws.

Suetonius (41-51 AD)
- Life of Claudius 25:4
- "Because the Jews at Rome caused constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Christ), he (Claudius) expelled them from the city (Rome).”

Do your research, there is a lot of evidence to support the historical Jesus. I do understand why we would all want to "throw the baby out with the bathwater, but the fact is though there is no evidence for the BofM, PofGP, Nephi, Lehi, etc, there is plenty of evidence that there was a man in Jerusalem around 30 AD and his name was Jesus. Whether you believe that he was divine and God is a different question. For me, I threw out Mormonism, but I kept Christ as my savior. I would just ask that if your don't believe that Christ existed that's fine, I just don't understand why people think that they have to spend all day attacking those of us the still believe in him.

so put up or shut up.

Where's your so called "evidence" ?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 01:46PM by Dave the Atheist.

On a related item: (Mindful that mormons believe JC did exist) JC was Jewish, his followers/'apostles' were jewish (they worshiped at the temple long after JC died), Paul was definitely Jewish. so if JC ever "established" anything it wasn't something new, it was a variety of Jewish worship, hence a true "restoration" is a sect of Judaism no less. Hence Mormons should be jewish! The so called apostacy should be rather a claim by the Jews: THE CRHISTIANS CECEDED, sometime early third century; maybe earlier.
Just a thought.

That's right. That's why in your patriarchal blessing, you get to know which Israeli tribe you come from.

Also all non-mormons are called gentiles, what all Jews call non-jews.

IT;s just that the jews haven't accepted the mormons into their family yet.

Can't imagine why not ;P

One sure way to get the last word is with a sincere apology.

<3