There is more historical evidence for Jesus Christ than there is for Alexander the Great
This is a Xian talking point which is completely baseless. We have busts of Alexander the Great which date from the time he was alive, we have records that are reliable, non-contradictory and sourced. We don't have convenient 30 year gaps in between his notable appearances, for example.
Nobody can find Jesus Christ in history. Nobody can say where he was on any particular date. Or what he did. Nobody outside of a particular cult testifies to his existence. There are no articles, no letters, no papers, nothing which actually says that this person existed in the real world. He was a carpenter, but nobody can find an artefact of something he built. Nobody has any names of any of these throngs of witnesses.
And this isn't even in dispute among bible scholars.
“In the entire first Christian century, Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet. His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!”
– Bart Ehrman
The primary document, the bible, is completely inconsistent about this person. It says conflicting things about where he was, what he did, his motivations, who supposedly saw him.
"More historical evidence" is unambiguously false. Nobody ever points to this mountain of evidence, without gesturing vaguely to people who were not even alive at the time this supposed person was supposedly alive.
Women were the biggest growing force behind Christianity because it encouraged marrying for love rather than to expand tribal families.
This is the same bible that said that rape of a virgin was a property crime against her father, and to be addressed by paying 50 shekels and marrying her off to her rapise?
The one that says that women are to be silent, they are not to teach, their hair is to be covered or else shaved?
You haven't read the bible, have you?
Poor people have always been uplifted to better standards of living by Christian charity, and still are to this day.
Yes, Xianity does indeed exploit the vulnerable, the desperate, by convincing them that they'll be better off after they're dead.
This isn't the argument you think it is.
Didn't I see this movie? What was it called? Dimlo? Dambo? Hmm...
I noticed that you switched from "my religion is true" to "my religion is useful." This is an admission. If it was true, you would have said something like, "even the poor have access to the evidence for my savior and god." Instead, you justified by, well, if it helps someone, then that's good enough.
Whenever the flood happened, the societies we see today would have to have been born after it. Simple.
Someone who thinks that the Genesis Flood actually happened is like a grown adult who thinks Santa Claus is real. It didn't happen.
Geologists agree that the sedimentary rock all over the world was formed by flooding, but they dispute that all of the world was flooded. It's weird.
It's not that weird. Local significant floods happened all the time, but they do not qualify for a worldwide, global disaster. The people in China with an unbroken record of history and culture would like a word with you.
If there was a global flood, we would expect to see evidence of it in the strata. We do not. Pointing vaguely to isolated flooding does nothing to bolster the claims of the bible, and undermine it drastically. If you have to point to local floods, you're admitting the bible isn't correct; worse, your god got it wrong.
You must also be unaware that the flood myth is stolen, like most of the bible. In this case, it's uncontroversial that it's lifted from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which also influenced the Creation myth, by the way.
You should read about the origins of the bible some day. It's not the book you think it is.
The gospels were absolutely written (or at least dictated) by people who met Jesus, and there are several Roman sources that mention Him too.
No, they weren't. And this isn't even controversial among bible scholars. Mark didn't emerge until at least 30 years after the supposed death of the supposed Jesus.
The authors don't even claim to have been there themselves. Do you actually think that Mark was written by the character Mark, Matthew by the character Matthew, etc? Hoo, boy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel
The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible. They were probably written between AD 66 and 110. All four were anonymous (with the modern names of the "Four Evangelists" added in the 2nd century), almost certainly none were by eyewitnesses, and all are the end-products of long oral and written transmission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#Composition
Like the rest of the New Testament, the four gospels were written in Greek. The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c. AD 66–70, Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90, and John AD 90–110. Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous and most scholars agree that none were written by eyewitnesses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels#Scope_and_genre
The genre of the gospels is essential in understanding the intentions of the authors regarding the historical value of the texts. New Testament scholar Graham Stanton states that "the gospels are now widely considered to be a sub-set of the broad ancient literary genre of biographies." Charles H. Talbert agrees that the gospels should be grouped with the Graeco-Roman biographies, but adds that such biographies included an element of mythology, and that the synoptic gospels also included elements of mythology. E.P. Sanders states that "these Gospels were written with the intention of glorifying Jesus and are not strictly biographical in nature."
The historical function of "biography" was not to reliably tell someone's life, but to be inspirational.
https://www.wondriumdaily.com/synoptic-gospels-historians-approach/
The term “Gospel” comes from the Old English word for “good news.” These books do not claim to be objective histories; they claim to be proclamations of good news. In other words, these books are not historically accurate accounts of things that Jesus said and did. These are books that are proclaiming information about Jesus that is meant to provide information needed for salvation. These books are the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biography#Historical_biography
In the early Middle Ages (AD 400 to 1450), there was a decline in awareness of the classical culture in Europe. During this time, the only repositories of knowledge and records of the early history in Europe were those of the Roman Catholic Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period to write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the church fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were meant to be inspirational to the people and vehicles for conversion to Christianity (see Hagiography).
It's only a very recent phenomenon of biography being accurate historical record.
The authors of the gospels evens say this up front. The author of John says outright that he wrote it "that you may believe," not because it's true or because it's historically accurate. The entire point of the bible is conversion, not historical record or (accurate) biographical record.
How do you not know this? Wikipedia is free, you know.
The author of Luke, for example, admits openly up front to not being there, but to have looked into matters.
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,
just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.
With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,
so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Have you really not read Luke? What did you think was going on here? Why would someone who was there need to say any of this?
And haven't you ever noticed it's written in the third person? Even structurally, the whole thing is written as stories, like The Tortoise and The Hare, not like an eyewitness recounting what they'd observed. It's told from the perspective of a storyteller, who's making shit up, not a historian or a biographer or an eyewitness.
Open any modern biography or history book and notice how they convey information. It's not through silly stories of magic.
There are infinite numbers, but there is only one correct solution to 2 + 2. If someone said 4 was also the wrong answer and threw it away with all the other numbers, they'd be wrong.
This is vacuous nonsense. You have to prove your "answers" are correct, rather than use silly platitudes to pretend you get to keep your myths in the game. We don't need to know all the correct answers to identify wrong answers. 2+2=eat is a wrong answer, for example.
And if you think Jesus Christ is no different than any of the false gods, I'm not convinced you've studied Christ or His positive influence in the world. Perhaps you find it simpler to disregard pondering a higher power altogether and not dwell on it?
We don't have to think anything. Again, it's up to you to prove the existence of your savior. We can conclude, based on Xianity's abject failure to do so, that he didn't exist. We kind of have no other choice. If we ask for 1700 years and we keep getting nonsense, what other conclusion can we come to?
Nobody in history can find this person. They can't tell you anything about him that doesn't come from the same fabricated myths bible.
It should be suspicious to you that the only source of all the information about your Jesus is entirely in the bible. Nobody else wrote a book about him.
Worse, the book that does exist is overtly fictitious.
I'm not convinced you've studied Christ or His positive influence in the world. Perhaps you find it simpler to disregard pondering a higher power altogether and not dwell on it?
Clearly, you haven't. You don't know, for example, that originally Mark ended with the women running away from the tomb. The resurrection myth is a forgery added later. The nativity was a much later addition as well, and the crucifixion is ahistorical; crucifixions were not conducted that way. For example, Jesus' body would have been left up to rot on the crucifix on a public roadway as a warning to others. It's absolutely historically false for the claim of him being taken down. That would never have happened.
I'm not convinced you've studied Muhammad and Allah and their positive influence in the world.
How does that sound to you? Does that sound reasonable? Are you obliged to have extensively studied the quran, the hadith and all the tafsirs to be able to say, "sounds made up"? No, you don't.
It's amazingly hypocritical that you demand atheists be experts in the bible. Not just because you're obviously not, but because you reject other religions without having expertise in their mythology. That makes you intellectually dishonest. You're a hypocrite who demands from others what you will not do yourself.
We don't need to have expertise in your bible to say "I don't believe you" when you tell us of the gross, immoral, bizarre and absurd stories of your silly book. We can spot at a distance that they're silly myths.
And again, I must point out that you've resorted to "my religion is useful" rather than "my religion is true."
We don't need to ponder a "higher power" when there is no evidence of such a creature's existence. We can look up at the infinite universe around us, that your book described as a flat region covered by a dome with tiny lights set into the dome.
We can be inspired by the work being done to uncover the secrets of the universe from the birth of stars down to the quantum particles.
We don't need fairy tales. The fact you do is terribly sad. Look around you at the natural universe around you. You can't be inspired by that without inserting a Santa Claus? That's so sad. And it has 100% failure rate of being the correct answer. It wasn't "god" when we figured out lightning, thunder, earthquakes or rain. "God" has never been the correct answer... ever. And every time it's not, your god gets smaller and smaller.
If God appeared right in front of you and told you to go to church, I think you would still deny Him. Maybe you'd just say you've had a hallucination and you should stop eating nachos before bed. You have to seek God diligently and earnestly to find Him. If you've already resolved yourself to not believe something right from the get-go, you could deny that the sky is blue.
This is such as stupid statement. Firstly, you would have to demonstrate that it was actually a god, and not alien technology, a hallucination, a hologram or any of thousands of explanations. You don't get to just designated any phenomenon as "god." That's on you.
But if it was a god, then you would have FINALLY provided evidence. What took you so long? Yes, I would believe it existed. That doesn't mean I'm going to worship it. We're going to have a conversation about his attitude, and why he's so fragile that he needs so much applause from lesser creatures. And if he's as eternal and unchanging as you people say he is, then we're probably going to need to figure out a way to kill him or block him from this dimension.
You should read the bible some day. You want to live in a world where this creature actually exists? The same creature who commanded genocide and slavery?
However, none of this even means anything. It hasn't happened, and as you believers describe him, he's not even possible. He's both good and inscrutable = self-refuting. He's perfect and needs worship = impossible. He knows all and grants free will = mutually exclusive. All-loving yet vengeful =
This is not our fault. It's yours. I've personally asked multiple times for your god to show up. I even posted that I had a whole weekend of nothing planned and that it would be a good opportunity for him to appear. He didn't. You might be aware of that weekend. It was the weekend where "god is real" was not on every news channel in the world for every moment.
We don't need to "deny" what you haven't proven, any more than you "deny" the love of Bigfoot. We don't need to worry about creatures we must conclude are fictional.
You're misunderstanding my tape measure analogy. All I was saying there is that if current tools and methods in science don't prove something to be true, that doesn't automatically make it false. More research with different methods and tools is needed.
So, you can't prove your god exists, even in principle.
All this means is that you've surrendered all known, verifiable methods of demonstrating your god is real. You don't get to claim that it's real and then defend its absence by claiming it can't be detected. You're asserting you have detected it. You can't have it both ways, as much as you dishonestly try it. Science loves learning new stuff. Show the scientists how you detected "god." Whenever you're ready.
Scientists are competitive. They'd love to be the first to prove a universe-altering phenomenon. They're all ears. Lay out your method of reliably detecting "god."
You seem to be admitting that you were lying about your god being real. You've discounted every single method of detection - including all the ones you don't know or understand, since I'm guessing you're not a quantum physicist or a cosmologist - and declined to supply your reliable, repeatable, verifiable method.
Hell, you don't seem to have even know the gospels weren't written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, so your reliability is sketchy at best.
You've left us with nothing. If I wasn't already a non-believer, you've made a great case for why nobody should think any of this is true.
You may be implying something different with your "Christians ignoring their own book" comment than what I'm picking up, but I agree we should know what the Bible actually says if wish to discuss it with others. I am working hard at studying the Bible and constantly learning from it.
I know what the bible says, and I don't especially care. You have to demonstrate that your bible is true first, without using the bible to justify the bible, as that's circular, fallacious and frankly, insane.
But since you seem to be leaning back on it as the source for your belief and for all your justification, you seem to be admitting that contrary to your original assertion, evidence for Jesus does not exceed that of Alexander the Great. Why would you have to keep coming back to the same one book, the same book that is the source of the claim in the first place. What about all this "evidence" you were touting? You should be able to set the bible completely aside, yet you don't. Suspicious.
What this amounts to is an inescapable conclusion that your Jesus only exists between the front and back pages of the bible. If we have to keep going back into the bible to figure everything out, then we must conclude that's the entirety of his existence. A fictional character in a book of stolen, plagiarised and fraudulent stories.
If you are secular, why is convincing religious people to give up their faith a "good thing", as you put it? Do you believe there is an objective good? What do you base it on? It would have to be a higher axiom than whatever you make up for yourself. Do you believe there is oblivion or an afterlife after me die? Do you believe life has purpose, or not? What is your reason for caring what we believe before we die (this question is especially important if you believe in oblivion)? A lot of questions, I know. But I think that in particular is the heart of the issue here.
The irrational cannot be convinced. You already admitted you don't believe because it's true but because it's useful and helpful. You have needs other than truth that your superstitions meet. It's just sad, is all.
We should all aim to have as many true beliefs as possible, and as few beliefs as possible, as that helps us accurately understand and navigate the world.
Believing that a magic man will sweep you up to his castle when you die diminishes this life, and it's sad that you're looking forward to death so you can spend eternity in bliss, instead of making the most of this one and only life. Wasteful.
Believing that a magic man can be convinced to grant you wishes through a magic spell (prayer) makes actually doing anything useful in the world unnecessary. Not to mention, boldly narcissistic. Children starving, being abused don't merit your god's attention, but he'll grant you a parking space, entry to your preferred college, or save you from the tornado he sent? Perverted.
Believing that a magic man will absolve you of all your guilt with a quick spell into the clouds, and you need never make amends with the one you wronged. Thinking you're "covered by the blood of Jesus" wherein someone else is punished for your own culpability is perverted and immoral. It's an old pagan myth called scapegoating, or more formally, substitutional atonement or vicarious redemption. You put the sins of the town onto a goat and drive it out of the town to die in the wilderness, and the townsfolk wash their hands of their responsibility. Immoral.
"Isn't it interesting that people only look for a doctor when they're sick or injured? It's when you're hurt that you look for someone to heal you. Medicine is predatory!"
Medicine can be proven to work. We also accept that it is not always 100% effective. We know contraindications, we know side effects, we know dosage, we know it might not be suitable for pregnant women, we know it might affect your ability to operate heavy machinery.
Your religion may be real in the sense that there are people who believe it's true, but none of you can actually back up your claims, and you just got done admitting that it's not even possible, even in principle. Your religion is not medicine. If it was, the followers of your religion would recover from illness faster or at a higher survival rate than the "others" or none at all. They don't. Indeed, prayer as a strategy for medical intervention is demonstrated to be ineffective.
Xianity really has fallen, that even its adherents have no idea what's in it or where it came from. The invention of the printing press allowed people to have their own bible and study and interpret it themselves. But now they don't even bother. They just regurgitate nonsense from bad apologetics sites or just make baseless assertions, most of which contradict the other assertions.
Here's a tip for the future: never debate the bible with an atheist. It will never work out for you. We know it better than you do, and we know where it came from. Most of y'all have never even read it. Obviously, that includes you.
[ Source: LifeWay Research ]
Please read your bible one day. Then study its origin.
