spin

A poor workman blames his tools.

aa5874

What tools do you have for Jesus? I have been asking for tools everyday now and nobody has responded.

Although I accept that the NT is the worst tool, I applaud your ability to get positive results for Jesus.

RED DAVE

From Larsguy47:
Pure bullshit and fantasy.

From Larsguy47:
Unless you have some evidence for this, maybe another secret book, I suggest you consider a 12-Step Program.

I admit that I'm powerless over my tendency to spout nonsense, and that my life has become unmanageable.

From Larsguy47:
No even worth refuting. You need to do 90 meetings in 90 days.

From Larsguy47:
How about a detox?

From Larsguy47:
Followed by a rehab.

By the way, since you've shifted threads again, I guess you realize that you've been thoroughly refuted with regard to your nonsense about the Peloponnesian War.

Or are you about to have a relapse?

RED DAVE

Febble

I usually just lurk around here, but this rather amazes me, as a scientist as much as as a Christian. You post a list of things you don't believe happened as written, and then conclude, on the basis of your own incredulity, that "Jesus never existed".

I'd love to know what the evidence for and against a historical Jesus are, and I trust atheists on the matter more than Christians. But I did expect something more than an argument from incredulity.

Human beings are not given to reporting dry observations. Our memories don't work like that. We see what we expect to see, we embed what we see in a narrative that makes sense to us, given our state of knowledge, we infer causal agents that we believe must have been present, given our understanding of causality.

I would tend to agree that Jesus became a Mythical figure. I don't find it very credible that there was no man behind the myth. Perhaps I've met too many myths.

aa5874

Where do scientists meet myths? Maybe, as a Christian, you believe that the NT must have some truth in it. Please de-myth Jesus for me, I am all ears.

Actually, I have it the other way, the mythical figure became man, this is based on the statements in John 1:1 and John 1:14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us( and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.

I have difficulty regarding those statements as truth more like fiction.

Anyhow, I eagerly await your input for support of historicity.

Febble

At conferences, LOL!

And they turn out to have feet of clay, mostly.

Well, I think the NT has a lot of truth in it, if by truth you mean wisdom, which you probably don't. I tend also to think (from ignorance of the counter arguments, I freely admit) that the gospels are rather freehand, secondhand accounts of a series of real events, undergoing the early stages of mytho-morphosis, if there's such a word. And Matthew and John strike me as being told with a definite agenda. I'm curious as to what the real events were, who the real man was. I'm not in a position to convince you that there was one, I lurk here in the hope if hearing the arguments for and against.

Well, I have it that way too! But if there was a real man who was fitted to a myth, it doesn't mean there wasn't a real man.

Well, they are not objective "truth" as in "I had pizza for lunch". But there are other kinds of truth. It's my favorite passage in the whole bible.

Sorry to disappoint!

aa5874

This is unbelievable. I was really hoping to learn a thing or two.

Febble

You are too incredulous. But I'm not a scripture scholar. I was raised a Christian, and being a scientist, I want my faith to be rational. It didn't really occur to me until recently that there was doubt that Jesus was a historical figure, although of course I am aware of theological debate about the plausibility of the resurrection. So I am (unbelievably or not) on as much a fact-gathering mission as you. My hunch is that Jesus was historical because to me the gospels read like inconsistent accounts of real events rather than fiction. Or, if fiction, more like magical realist fiction than mythology. So it strikes me as more plausible that there was a real man, a teacher, of great charisma, who was crucified, and whose followers somehow came to believe he returned to them, bodily, after death. Real people have believed stranger things with less excuse, in my lifetime.

But that's it. I'm hoping some more scholars will turn up!

Malachi151

Care to comment on my article?

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...th_history.htm

spin

Someone doing research has only three options:

1. what can be proven;
2. what can be disproven; and
3. neither of the above.

The reason why you come up with your results is because you unwisely omit the availability of the third option. What that means is that you are unable to deal with all the possibilities, making your analysis biased. Hence, your attacks on the bible are you blaming the tool you are using and as the saying says,

A poor worker blames his tools.

All that you are doing is substituting one belief for another.