Lucretius

I have just had an interesting and puzzling visit for the JWs (Jehovahs Witnesses)
Interesting as I do like "discussing things " with them and it now appears I am no longer on their "blacklist" afiter several years of them not bothering me but also puzzling as some of the non sequiturs in his argument were amazing in my opinion.
I just wondered if anyone else has come across some of these arguments from JWs.
There were as usual 2 of them together, a man in his late 50's and a woman who to be honest looked at 90 but she didn't say anything at all.
I managed to get the argument to the "Historicity of Jesus" and challenged him to name 5 non Biblical historic souces for the existence of Jesus (I think I should state here that I am pretty much agnostic about the existence of a historic Jesus myself but I am sure he was NOT the Son Of God even if he did exist ).
He of course mentioned Josephus which I was able to demolish as a possible forgery which has beeen generally accepted as such (my mentioning in passing my degree in Latin probably helped there ) but he did say he would "come back" once I had printed out the information for him to read (I will NOT be holding my breath while waiting though)
Next was a puzzling one he claimed that PLATO mentions Jesus at first he seemed to think that Plato was alive AFTER Jesus indeed when I mentioned a 400 or so years difference in time he said "Well you know about HITLER don't you and you were not alive when he was about " the comparison of JESUS & HITLER I must admit is a new one on me.
When I explained for the second time that Plato was long dead before the alleged birth of Jesus he said "Well it was a prophecy then " but he would then not accept that Plato by definition must be one of the Judeao-Christian prophets.
He then mentioned archaeology and said that because a place of execution had been found then that proved Jesus was killed there,this fell down when I mentioned that I could prove by archeaology that Newgate Prison had once existed but that did not prove that Fagin from Oliver Twist actually existed.
After that he was struggling so I let him include 2 Biblical "proofs" (kind & generous soul that I am ) next came the genelaogies of Jesus he seemed extremely puzzled by the fact that I knew there were 2 different ones he seemed to want to rely on Luke for some reason but eventually trotted out the old "Well one of them must be Mary's ", however he could not tell me which was Joseph's and which was Mary's,the woman at this point looked extremely puzzled as if she had never heard all this before.
Next came prophecy he mentioned that Jesus "died on a stake and his side was pierced" I had my Bible to hand and asked him which particular OT prophesy mentioned this in such detail, the woman tried to pass him a leaflet but he shrugged her offer off ,at which point he said "I'll come back with the reference at a later date and then you can give me the stuff about Josephus".

As I said has anyone ever come across Plato and Hitler being used by JW's to "strengthen their argument " before ?

Joan of Bark

Being in Thailand, I don't see the JW's any more and I sure miss them. They ARE fun to debate.

To answer your question, no, I've never heard of this argument before and I suspect it is one that this ninny came up with on the spur of the moment.

Styrofoamdeity

I had a rare visit from two Japanese missionaries today. I was not in the best of moods. A transcript of the conversation:

Visitors: We.....
SLAM!