Sarpedon

I'm well aware of the fact that the gospels are hearsay. Since the premise of the thread is "Assuming the historical Jesus existed..." I'm also assuming that the apostles existed, and that the gospels are based on their teachings. Personally, I don't believe that the apostles existed (except Paul) as they are all rather caricatured. Judas is evil, Peter is simple, Thomas is ridiculously skeptical, etc. They may be based on real people, but who knows?

My story, unlike the christian one, does not involve magic, or invisible monsters, or anything outside of every day experience. Therefore, it requires less evidence than a more fantastical story that involve a man that comes back from the dead. Because, everyone knows that generally people don't come back from the dead. In the jesus story, people fly around, speak to invisible monsters, rise from the dead, feed 5000 people with three loaves of bread, and other such improbable things. Given an equal lack of evidence, why would you believe such a story over mine?

Which early christian writings are you referring to? Please reference them. If you didn't get my point about claiming witnesses but not producing them, please read my post again.

Now evidence that christianity began as a cult.

1. In a cult, questioning or criticism of the leader is not allowed.

Jesus continually abuses his disciples whenever they ask questions or criticise him. Included is the Matthew 16:23 incident where he refers to Peter as 'Satan' after the latter criticises him. There are other such incidents, usually with Peter getting the rebuke.

2. The cult leader expects offerings and gifts from his followers. Matthew 26:6 gives the story of jesus and the ointment, where jesus is again rebuked by Peter for his hypocrisy, and Jesus once again is dimissive.

There's another story, perhaps one of my colleagues can help me find the chapter and verse, where Paul demands that all members of the church sell their property and give the proceeds to him. One couple holds back some money, and he kills them. If that isn't cult behavior I don't know what is.

3. The meaning of words is confused, and rendered meaningless. Romans 2:25 - For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.

This renders followers confused, and casts doubt on the truth. Similarly, modern christians equivocate on the meaning of certain words: "God" "love" "hate" etc. There's an EoG thread going about the meaning of "God", and the verse where Jesus says "Anyone who does not hate his own family...and even himself, is not fit to be my disciple" is where the christian says that "hate" doesn't mean what it actually means.

4. Cult recruitment involves a number of will-breaking activities, including sleep deprivation, long speaches, and arguments where several believers are pitted against one non-believer.

Acts 20:7 records how Paul talked all day and all night, until a listener fell asleep and fell out the window and died.

5. Cults restrict information from outside sources:

Acts 19:18-19
Some believers, too, came forward to admit in detail how they had used spells and a number of them who had practised magic collected their books and made a bonfire of them in public.

6. Cults attempt to isolate believers from old social ties, so that they have no contacts outside of the cult:

Matthew 10:36 'A person's enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who comes to me without hating father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and his own life too, cannot be my disciple.'

Cults exist, and have existed for a long time. They are well documented, and well understood. Christianity began as such a cult. That it became so successful is remarkable, but it could as easily have been any of the other hundreds of cults infesting the late roman empire. If you stop for a moment and compare it to known cults, e.g. Mormonism, Scientology, Raelianism, Hare Krishna, Falun Gong, etc you will see that they all share these characteristics.

anthrosciguy

A passage which we know was written many years after the fact claims that Paul claims that he saw something... That's not too convincing. My statement "Or is that slim unsupported claim enough to hang a worldview on?" isn't an ad hominem, but a valid question about Christianity and those who do hang their worldview on just that sort of unsupported claim. Whether you do or not I neither know nor care -- but many do.

Kosh

Of course, before you can claim that Paul saw the ressurected Jesus, you have prove that Paul existed, and wasn't just a device used by different writers... there is that theory ya know!

Celine

Oh, before I forget, let me invite you all over to my house for some poker, beer, and chips this Friday night.
We're going to play "intellectual gambit poker." That's where the Christian apologists at the table, unlike the rest of us, get a kind of special dispensation. They get dueces-wild/trump card -- just call it the supernaturalist assumption. The rest of us are playing straight hands.
It should be fun, though.
If utterly dishonest.

Zeichman

You never said that in your initial post. It was that it was PURE myth, and that no one witnessed ANY of it. Strong language. Much stronger than you're using here. Are admitting your wrong?
I'd call a post-mortem appearance some form of a miracle to the ancient mind. Again, that's completely beside the point.
irrelelvant.
This conversation is getting stupid. I've stated it many times. Paul has seen it. (1 Cor 15:8) and he also described it (perhaps in language as to make fun of mytics) in Phillipians, iirc.
Please demonstrate that either of these epistles or passages are not authentically Pauline. Only one credible scholar comes to mind which contests them (Robert M. Price).
Had you actually read all of my post you would have known that I said that it was a gross exaggeration in that post.
The thread is going as such:
Initial post: what are reasons for not X?
You: All X is absolutely untrue.
Me: There is one true X.

All you're doing is saying you're right, which is unhelpful to the initial post. YOu provide no reasons, arguments or evidence. YOU bear the burden of proof to assist your fellow atheist. I'm providing what evidence I can on my lack of sleep at the moment.

Sarapedon:
Neither does my Christianity.
Please provide evidence that Jesus was regarded as having been fleshly ressurrected by the earliest believers.
I don't claim that any of that is historical, however.
Q lacks all references to named disciples, as does Marcan Pronouncement source and the Miracle sources. The portrayal of the disciples as complete fools in Mark would indicate that they were not revered by all early Christians. Not to mention the degree of conflict depicted in Galatians 2 between the Jerusalem Pillars and Paul.
Demonstrate that any of this goes back to the historical Jesus. You're no better than fundamentalists you criticize when you use this type of interpretation. Scholars acknowlege that these are written 40-90 years after the events they portray.

Again, I would like a demonstration of historicity of these events. All of the writings which you cite were written a long time after the alleged event. When one actually looks at first-person documents, one finds that the money was to be given to the poor (Romans 15:26, 1 Corinthians 13:3, Galatians 2:10)
I can accept the historicity of the "hate" saying, given that it's attributed to Q1, and I will heartily agree that all too often Christians interpret it in a way comfortable to 21st century middle-Americans.
Demonstrate the historicity of this, please. Acts, with the exception of events which are also verified by Pauline epistles, is nearly a historically worthless document. It was probably written about 120 AD, and is not a good indicator of early Christianity in general (given its clearly apologetic intent) nor of individual Christians early on. I'm not sure I understand why you accept the historicity of certain events and not others.
See above
I think your problems are that you assume:
a) a unified early Christianity (for which evidence, aside from Acts, is lacking)
b) the historical reliablity of Acts and other material which scholars do not accept as historical
c) even if one were to grant you the above, early Christianity does not fulfill enough requirements of the cult criteria to be considered one.

I would strongly reccomend reading a book about the historical Jesus or Christian origins by Crossan, Burton Mack, Robert Funk or someone along those lines.

Amaleq13

How do you explain the transition from Paul's, let's say "respectful disagreement" to Mark's "complete fools"?

Kosh

I don't think his position has changed at all!

Fact: nobody witnessed any of it (at least not the ones that "documented it"!)
Fact: it is pure myth, until evidence is presented to prove otherwise.

Actually, as Crossan points out in "The Birth of Christianity", post mortem "apperances" were a common thing to those people. Nothing miraculous about it, they just believed it happened. A lot.

Must have been some bad 'shrooms around there....

Now, the '68 Mets, THAT was a miracle.

Will noone else be addressing the O.P.?

JEST2ASK

Thanks
Freigeister & AV-98 Ingram

Just want to be sure that I understand what is being proposed … it is not non-believers that have to fear a historical Jesus but Christianity … However I do not think that granting a historical Jesus … means that I also have to grant the existence of the apostles in fact I would think they are rather unnecessary … why if one thinks the gospels are hearsay (and IMO literary embellishments ) think that any of the supporting characters are anything other than literary devices




Bottom line ... if all the supernatural claims are removed ... what remains would be judged on its moral message ... " The ethical trweatment" of fellow humans ... I could support that but it seems a little redundant :thumbs:

Mountain Man

The bible is pure myth. No one writing the bible was an eye witness to any of the jesus related events. Yes, it is. Why? I'm not a christian and I could not care less about the bible, what it says or what it's apologists have to say about it. IT'S A MYTH!

Yahweh

Alright, you win, the opening post was a crappy thought experiment.

But the one thing you were wrong about was in saying I was close-minded. Saying I'm unhappy with the quality of scholarship that claims to make a case for the nonexistence of Jesus means exactly that; after posting on the JREF forum, it turned out that authors like Kersey Graves, Archarya S, Remsburg, Earl Doherty, and some other authors based their cases on bad or outdated scholarship, so that case that there was not at least a wisdom sage who or social revolutionary had failed to be properly made. I dont believe the claims have been substatiated on academically acceptable grounds, so at the very least I wont suggest Christianity is false on the basis of the nonexistence of Jesus (this isnt the same thing as conceding Jesus actually existed).

So, at least based on that, when I read sites about how Christianity is false because Jesus was based on Mithra, I think they miss the point. So I considered the thought experiment in the opening post would be sufficient to bypass all of those claims altogether, and get a better variety of replies and see how others would respond