FFT

Don't forget Joseph Smith, Jr.

Diogenes the Cynic

No, actually, they don't. Paul's letters say nothing at all about the life of Jesus, do not quote him even when it would serve Paul's purpose to do so and do not even give any unambiguous or explicit indication that Paul perceived Jesus as a real historical person. It also needs to be said that paul claimed to have gotten all his information about Jesus from hallucinations and that he had learned nothing from other people.
No, it only means that Paul was talking about a cosmic religious "Christ" figure which may or may not have had anything to do a real, historical person who had died 30 years previous (and who Paul had never met).
That's a huge amount of time- especially when you have no documentation or historical records and no access to witnesses.

It's highly unlikely that the audience for the Gospels would have known any witnesses or children of witnesses. The alleged events had occurred in a destroyed city 40-70 years prior to the writing of the Gospels, the characters in the story were obscure even in their own time and place and the audience for the Gospels were Gentiles living outside Palestine. The apologist canard that there were lots of witnesses hanging around ready to "refute" anything is the sheerest fantasy. Even if someone had remembered a guy named Jesus getting crucified, so what? How is he going to "refute" anything? What's he going to say, that he didn't see a resurrection? How is that a refutation? Exactly what kind of testimony are you suggesting would undermine the historical claims of the Gospels and what makes you think a bunch of religious fanatics would be willing to shut down their cult because some old codger says he doesn't remember any miracles? Are you starting to see how ridiculous this argument is?
Your premise that Asia Minor was crawling with witnesses who could "refute" the resurrection is completely bogus but it might actually be worth noting that the people who DID live at the same time and place as Jesus emphatically did NOT buy the story. Christianity failed utterly with Palestinian Jews. It had become almost entirely a Gentile religion within the first century after the alleged crucifixion.

Incidentally, if Jesus never existed then there COULDN'T be any counter witnesses, could there?
No one is alleging a hoax. That's another apologist straw man. It's a myth built up over time, not a deliberate deception.
There isn't a shred of credible evidence that any direct follower of Jesus believed in a physical resurrection. There isn't a single first hand claim to that effect. What we have in the gospels is claims by OTHER people (people who never met Jesus and never met an apostle) that the apostles saw a resurrected Jesus. What we have in Paul is a non witness making ambiguous claims about appearances by a "Christ" figure to people Paul never clearly identifies. And it needs to be said again that paul claims to have obtained this information from hallucinations, not from witnesses.

The extra information in the gospels was largely derived from the Old Testament, from sayings traditions and from the authors' own imaginations.
What do you mean by "unique" Every myth can be called "unique" if you really want to be obstinate about it. I will say that the Christian mythos does not contain any new ideas and that yes, myths have grown up around real historical people. There are cults who worship Elvis Presely. It's not unusual at all for such things to happen.

Imnotspecial

I suggest that people in those days had no difficulty believing in resurrections, virgin births and miracles and talking snakes and donkeys. The amazing thing is that some people of today still do. By the way Christianity is only believed be a relatively small number of the world population.

k_smith123

For five years now I have been treating the Bible as allegory and my interpretations indicate the Christianity emerged as a reaction to a "revelation" of allegoric secrets known as "The Great Mysteries". In effect, allegory served as a code which was used by the educated elites to create religions and enslave the rest of mankind. When the secrets of the allegories became too widely known and began to threaten established religions, men metaphorically identified with the name "John" produced large amounts of false interpretations to spread confusion and discredit honest interpreters. The metaphor known as "Christ" emerged out of these false interpretations.

(I know this theory will sound crazy to many, but it certainly is more likely than the literal alternative--isn't it?)

Ecrasez L'infame

Worryingly enough - yes, it is.

mikem

I think the figure is about a billion, which makes it probably the largest religion in the world. It has increased massively over the last few decades in developing countries, but is certainly on the decline in Western Europe.

mightyjoemoon

Islam has a larger following, and I don't know that there are good numbers on Buddhism and Hinduism, but they have to be very high given the populations of India and China.

mightyjoemoon

Dude, you and Chili need to get a thread going together. I would be spellbound.

Imnotspecial

I differentiate between nominal Christians and serious believers. Also there is a wide divergence of what different Christian groups believe and don't believe.

Diogenes the Cynic

Major religions ranked by size:



http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html