aa5874

I do not need your imagination to get information about Jesus. All the written information is there for everyone to see.

I can only deal with information as presented in the NT and from church writings.

Jesus is presented as the son of the God of the Jews, see Mark 1.1. The Jesus of Mark 1.1 is fiction. Mark's Jesus is a myth.

Elijah

I really wish you were/are right here but the conversations I’ve had here don’t lead me to believe that. I know there are people on here who have a thought-out, more rational understanding of God but they are in the minority. Credit is earned with me, not due anyone.

What do you think the major differences between your understanding of Christ and God and that of the Sunday school genie god concept is? How do you think your understanding of God and Christ has evolved as you’ve entered adulthood?

You work with what you are given and you don’t expect what shouldn’t be expected. We are talking about a nobody son of a carpenter who was executed, not a king or great leader or teacher who left writings. He was just a guy who got himself killed, the fact that any evidence remains regardless of the credibility of the text is impressive.

Elijah

Why shouldn’t I take that as a title of honor? A messenger doing God’s will, as in when Jesus says those who do my father’s will are my brothers. Why should I interpret that in a superstitious/literal way that is impossible and makes no sense and is only fit for a cartoon? Why shouldn’t I interpret that rationally?

Toto

God and Jesus receded into the distance along with Santa Claus and any belief that the universe cares about me.

But this is off topic for this forum.

You are assuming that Jesus existed in some form similar to the gospel story as an explanation for why the founder of the movement left no evidence of his existence. It's sort of like begging the question.

Elijah

I have no reason to assume him to be more than a peasant and I have no reason to believe a peasant from that time would leave any substantial evidence of his life. I’m begging the question of his existence but I don’t know why you would go against him being of a lowly position in life or what reason you would have to suggest otherwise.

avi

Ah. So, Jesus is a historical figure, but KongZi is a myth:
This thread seeks to address the question of evidence, or rather, the absence thereof, in regard to verification or repudiation of an hypothesis. Some folks believe that the absence of data supports the notion that a particular hypothesis is valid, or invalid. Others contrarily accept the view, as I do, that absent evidence, one can draw no conclusions about nature, which retain validity, upon scrutiny by neutral parties, notwithstanding any sort of mathematical exercises which may purport to demonstrate the contrary.

Two examples, thus far, have been introduced in this thread: life of Jesus, and life of KongZi. Both men have been the subject of voluminous writing, yet, for neither man is there extant today authentic documentation substantiating their existence, which would rigourously withstand independent assessment. However, there is, at least in my mind, a huge difference between the two figures of history, as regards the purported authenticity of their lives....

Jesus, if he existed, was reputed to have possessed magical powers, and reportedly claimed that he, himself, was a supernatural creature.

KongZi, if he existed, presented himself as an ordinary human. He authored his own documents, in the traditional manner, commenting about politics, ethics, and morality. He never claimed divine status.

It is, accordingly, in my mind at least, if in no one else's, incorrect and improper to compare or contrast these two figures. If one truly seeks to examine the evidence of the existence of KongZi, one must first master the Chinese language, itself an undertaking of no modest dimension. Certainly this silly girl who wrote the article in the popular mechanics type of Ladies home journal cited by Toto has an agenda: she seeks to demean KongZi, for her own purposes, unknown to me. I sincerely doubt that she has read KongZi, in the original Chinese: Wo bu xiang ta neng nian na ge kewen, "LunYu", yong HanZi.

If one seeks to compare KongZi's writings with those of someone from the west, then, that author ought to be Socrates, not Jesus, for, like KongZi, Socrates never asserted any kind of divine status, nor do we possess today any extant manuscripts authored by him. Moreover, they both lived about 2500 years ago.

Demonizing a bona fide giant of human creativity, like KongZi, by claiming, completely in ignorance, that he too, like Jesus, is likely a "mythical" figure, detracts from the principal focus of this thread, which concerns the problem associated with faith based logic, i.e. believing that absence of evidence proves something. In that context, it is possible to comprehend an assertion proposing a "mythical" status for KongZi, comparable to that of Jesus, because the suggestion does correspond to reasoning based on faith, rather than the 2400 years of written evidence to the contrary.

No Robots

The point is that the existence of many historical figures would be invalidated by the mythicist approach. Look, for example, at its application to Shakespeare.

spamandham

It isn't a matter of uncertainty. The concept of a species is just that, a concept - an ideal that does not actually exist. Evolutionary theory does not allow for there to have been an actual first man.

No actual first man = no Adam = no historical core to the 'first man' myth believed by many to be historical.

No thorough investigation is possible, because the lines we draw between species fundamentally do not exist in nature. It isn't a matter of throwing our hands up, it's a matter of understanding the necessarily ambiguous nature of the concpet of a species.

Every human that ever existed, had a human parent (appropriate caveats for the possibility of interspecies breeding). No investigation is necessary, because this is a scientific certainty. There can not have been a first man. This is certain.

I don't know whether you are truly having difficulty understanding that life is continuous rather than discrete, or are merely being obstinate. Either way, further discussion about it seems pretty pointless, and it makes it difficult to take the rest of your argument seriously.

spamandham

Evidence is data that supports a position. If the data isn't credible, then it isn't evidence.

Elijah

Fully agree.