avi

No.
This is incorrect.
Here's a reference, one of many.

Returning to the thrust of the thread, re: evidence,
I am completely opposed to this sentiment.

The question is clear, to me at least, namely, if there has been thus far no evidence of a messiah, notwithstanding many claims, throughout history, of individuals presenting white knight credentials seeking to slay dragons with their bare hands, then, (admittedly simplistically) by definition, there has been no messiah thus far. No evidence == no god.

Elijah

Could you paste something from there that you think is making the point you want to make.
Well I consider Jesus the messiah. I don’t expect anything more impressive then what he did coming anytime soon from anyone else. I still have faith that the plan will work out; the only good king is the dead king.

I don’t know what the messiah has to do with proving the existence of God.

avi

Yes, I would prefer that we remain "technical", therefore:
sorry S&H, but, if you will scroll down, in the link which you provided, in post 16, you will observe that Ganesha, while possessing an elephant head, contains a conventional human foot, and therefore, presumably, a human footprint, not an elephant footprint.

Drug dealers and elephant footprints aside, the issue is simple, does absence of anything give evidence for something?

A person without observable disease is not thought to be free of disease, is he?

I do not accept the hypothesis that we are entitled to repudiate Christianity by virtue of having no evidence in support of the historical Jesus, nor any firm knowledge of either the authors or dates of authorship, of any of those several religious documents, proclaiming his ministry....

I reject Christianity, and all other religions, not because of the absence of evidence ostensibly supporting the myth, but because two and three thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was a clever species full of inventiveness and creativity, but with very little data, instruments, or testable theories to explain the solar system, death, life, misery, agriculture, or climate. Absent concrete, testable theories, early man confabulated, and dreamed. The semitic tribes, like the Persians, Chinese, Mayan/Oltec, and Egyptians before them, wrote on Papyrus (or silk) or stone, or clay tablets, and thus transmitted myths from one generation to the next. It is pointless to argue, in my opinion, that absent evidence of his birth, the Jew from Bethlehem called Jesus never existed. Maybe he did exist, maybe not. Without evidence of his life, we don't really know, one way or the other.

The lack of evidence can neither prove nor disprove an hypothesis. Absent batteries, (i.e. a source of power) can one prove that the infrared source on a remote control unit is either defective or fully operational?

spamandham

Yes. Every unequivocal human child ever born, had at least 1 unequivacal human parent (and probably 2).

It's important to understand that 'species' do not actually exist in nature. It's a concept we use to categorize things. Maybe this will help. Imagine a timeline showing all the ancestors of humans up to some point in the past.

Is it human?
| I dunno big 'ol gray area |
Definitely not Probably Not Unsure Probably Definitely
find A.............find B............find c.....find d......find e
\/
no significant difference between d and e

Compare this to what you are suggesting, and tell us which you think better matches current evolutionary theory?

Is it human?

No No No No | Yes
find A....find B....find C....find D...find E
\/
A chimp just gave birth to a human at teh D to E transition! No wait...TWO humans!


(the formatting doesn't seem to work...hope you get the idea anyway)

spamandham

Can we please end the evolution derail? Suffice it say, several people are pointing out your error. Consider that you might be wrong and go do your own investigation. Eventually, you'll realize that it's impossible for there to have been a first human, and therefor Adam is necessary a myth - a myth that many people have (and still do) believe to be historical.

This was afterall, the entire point being countered. Even if you want to argue for a historical core to Noah, Moses, and Abraham, you simply can not make such an argument in regard to Adam and Eve.

spamandham

...and I'd have gotten away with it too, if not for those meddling kids!

aa5874

Again, what man are you talking about?

We have the WRITTEN STATEMENTS of the NT authors and the Church writers, they all claimed Jesus was the son of the God of the Jews who was raised from the dead.

It is FALSE to claim that Jesus of the NT was a man.

You have no other information, no written statement from anywhere that can corroborate the Jesus stories.

You may be doing exactly what the authors of the NT did, they made up plausaible stories about a character called Jesus and people believed the stories.

I will not believe the story you made up about Jesus until [b] you get your written statements from antiquity.

I am not living in the 1st century, I do not believe things are true because they appear plausible.

The authors claimed Jesus was a God, it is false. Jesus was a myth, just like Achilles.

mountainman

Dear aa5874,

Suppose for a moment I had access to a time machine (dont laugh this is serious) and I offered to lend it to you to go back to the second century and see your buddy - the perhaps historical St. Clement (was it Clement?) or was it Ignatious? You choose. At any rate, say I call by tomorrow with the machine and you make the jump back there, to the second century and interview (I will supply a camera crew) this author.

Do you have list of questions you could ask?
What would they be?

Best wishes,


Pete

Elijah

Your uncertainty of who should be established as the first doesn’t prevent a first nor does a fuzzy classification of species. The difference between D and E should be what makes us human apart from our previous genetic counterparts. The subtleness/significance of the change doesn’t matter nor the grayness of the area in discussion. In the end reason will have to be applied to the sample and a first of our species will have to be chosen based on whatever criteria your evolutionary genetic model calls for.

“Probably” and “unsure” is why we investigate scientifically; they shouldn’t be in the results of a thorough investigation. You just can’t throw up your hands and go it’s impossible for there to be a first to our kind because “species” is just a label we apply so there was no beginning to our species, that sounds like pot talk to me.

Elijah

Jesus
Statements you don’t believe to be true because they couldn’t be true, so the question is now, what is the truth?
The son of man actually.
I don’t expect there to be.
I don’t think the stories the NT authors were making up about Jesus would be considered plausible. I think a whole bunch of people were saying all kinds of stuff to get people to believe Jesus was the messiah and if you don’t try to hold what they are saying in some context of reality you are just going to interpret it nonsensically.
You know what’s out there and what’s not so asking for stuff that you know isn’t there over and over and over is kind of redundant.

Given two scenarios on how the whole Jesus phenomenon got going I’ll go with the more plausible one.

That’s like saying they claimed the fountain of youth was in America since that is false. America is a myth just like Atlantis. Now we can verify America exists because it still exists in the present unlike the guy 2000 years ago, but hopefully you see the faultiness of your logic here.

Thanks for not answering my questions.