Hans

Bilboe, et.al.

I thank you for what I take to be a sincere response. However, the question at hand is how to satisfy item 3.

Bilboe

Hans,

I assume you've heard of the tri-lemma argument: Based on the claims that Jesus made about himself, either he was crazy, a lunatic, or divine. (We could make it a quad-lemma: or he didn't make them.) I think it's a fairly good argument. If we think the records are historical enough that we have good reason to believe that Jesus actually did things like forgive sins or claim that something greater than the temple was here, it makes it difficult not to put him into one of the first three categories. And based on the character of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, I find it difficult to place him into the first two. That may help you with #3. It may not.

EDIT; That should be "liar, lunatic..." not "crazy, lunatic...." That comes from writing when I should be sleeping.

[ March 31, 2002: Message edited by: Bilboe ]</p>

Hans

Bilboe

The tri-lemma argument, after ruling out limited alternatives, asks us to assume the acts of Jesus confirm his claims about God and Heaven. But alas, all we have done is assumed. The acts do not prove his divinity or his claims about God and Heaven.

Malaclypse the Younger

Hans

Well, the argument from the assumption of naturalism does not prove that the supernatural is impossible, it proves only that it is impossible to infer the supernatural from evidential arguments.

Evidential arguments require us to infer particular causes from the known existence of effects. However, to do so, we must assume that cause and effect is always true (i.e. naturalism). The finding of supernaturalism, which denies that cause and effect are always true, from such an argument would thus contradict a required premise, rendering the argument internally contradictory.

Hans

Bilboe

If you and I witnessed a man perform all the same acts as are attributed to Jesus, claimed to be the son of God, and told us about God and heaven how could we deduce the truth of his claims?

A predisposition to the belief in a creator along with the performance of acts to which we can not explain might lead us to assume his claims are true. But without something to verify them against, like experiencing this God and Heaven for ourselves, we would have no way to deduce their truth.

I see no difference between the supposition above and the Biblical accounts.

Answerer

Well guys, the website below will show all of you why Jesus is more of a myth than a fact. Hope all non-christians enjoy it.

<a href="http://www.truthbeknown.com/" target="_blank">http://www.truthbeknown.com/</a>

HRG

No. It is an argument which has been proposed by a couple of people, including myself. It states that the connection between reality and our perception of reality depends on the assumption of naturalism.

If you say "I saw X happen, thus X really happened", you assume the regularity of many processes: the emission of photons by X and their propagation, the photochemical processes in your retina, the biochemical processes in the optic centers of your brain etc. They all have to run according to naturalism if you want to infer X from your perception of X.

Thus you can never say that you have observed a particular supernatural event, since the very notion of observation assumes naturalism.

Regards,
HRG.

lpetrich

I don't like <a href="http://www.truthbeknown.com" target="_blank">http://www.truthbeknown.com</a> very much -- some of Acharya S's views I believe to be very dubious and New Agey.

However, here is a very sober and reasonably-argued Jesus-myth site: <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.com" target="_blank">The Jesus Puzzle</a>.

Answerer

Nevertheless Ipetrich, both of them show that Jesus is only myth despite what the christians got to say.

tronvillain

While I find The Jesus Puzzle interesting, I'm not sure either of them conclusively show that Jesus is only a myth.