Kapyong

Gday,

Many of us have made the point before.
Here it is again.

Your argument, when applied to Scientology, or Theosophy, or Hinduism, supports them just as well as Jesus. Because they too have many believers who believe in them; and have real places, people and events mixed in with the myths.


The legends of Hercules also contain reporting of alleged facts; they detail his life with real people and real places mentioned.

Do you consider Hercules just as real as Jesus?
Your argument does.


There is NO archeology to support the existence of Jesus.
None.

You keep bringing up archeology which is consistent with the Jesus story as if that is somehow evidence for Jesus.

It is not.

Just as than the real places in the Greek myths make are not evidence for Hercules.

But you don't seem to grasp this.

It does not matter how many real places or real people or events are mentioned in a supernatural story - that does NOT make the supernatural Jesus story any more real.


There is ZERO archeological evidence supporting the existence of Jesus.

None.
You have repeatedly failed to cite any.
Now you are reduced to claiming a book you have NOT read DOES have this evidence.

But your claim is wrong.
There is NO archeological evidence for the existence of Jesus.

You can prove me wrong instantly and win this argument by simply producing ONE such piece of archeological evidence for the existence of Jesus.

(NOT some evidence which is consistent with the story.)


Your argument is false.
The legends of Hercules have many real places etc.
That does NOT make Hercules real.


Rubbish.
The existence of a pool or a gate or something does NOT prove the rest of a supernatural story is true; anymore than London being in Harry Potter books make HIM real; or hercules is real becuae his legends name real places.

Your argument is useless.
But you ignore the problems with it, and repeat it every post.


Preaching by a faithful believer, who repeats the useless argument you keep making.


Preaching by a faithful believer, who repeats the useless argument you keep making.


In fact the opposite is true - G.John is late and makes obvious mistakes. But you just ignored these awkward facts when presented and kept right on preaching.


Yes.
There is no archeological evidence for the existence of Jesus.
None.


The Book of Mormon is full of real places.
Does that make it accurate?
Of course not.

Many books of legends and myths are set in real places, or have real people. That does NOT the story true.

Your argument is useless becuase proves all the myths are true :
* Hercules
* Gilgamesh
* Moses
* Demeter and Kore
* Krishna
* Dionysus
* Osiris
* Buddha
* King Arthur
* Robin Hood
* etc. etc.

All are real people of history, according to your argument.

Your argument is clearly broken.



K.

Kapyong

Gday,

I said
"it was completely wrong on this, and other issues"

I did not say :
"the book is completely wrong"

I cannot believe you are so ignorant as to not understand my plain English. You keep doing this - willful mis-understanding, silly and immature pickiness, anything to score a point in your mind, but you avoid the issues when you are wrong.


I conclude you are a troll, here to stir, not interested in rational debate.


K.

ercatli

I'm sorry, but that's the nature of forums. I haven't been here for the discussion, and I've invited you all to present your arguments. Further, knowledge keeps on expanding, so things true a decade ago may be known to be wrong now..

I'm sorry, I don't recall the link - it's very difficult when I have so many responses to make, and I'm writing a response on page 6 to a post on page 4. But I don't depend only on Grant, I have quoted more than a dozen scholars, and referenced even more. So I can hardly see that dismissing Grant (even if you could do it) would change things all that much.

So you, presumably without a relevant PhD, or I (certainly without one) can do better? They have their agreed methods. And they have agreed conclusions, contrary to what you have said. Yes, there are always some who disagree with the consensus, but there is broad agreement about a reasonable core, and the arguments tend to be around the edges. For example, the fairly cautious E Sanders has a list of Jesus "facts", NT Wright has a slightly larger list, a slightly larger list still can be extracted from Michael Grant, and so on, but the core elements remain the same. That is why so many scholars say quite clearly that there is good broad consensus on many issues.

Yeah, my sediments too. I tried to word my OP to discourage the sort of discussion we're having, and I still don't see why people of differing viewpoint can't simply compare notes and learn from each other, but I'm sorry that I don't think it's happening between us. So let's put it to bed.

Best wishes.

ercatli

You said: "you have no external historical sources of Antiquity to support the HJ". I quoted a whole bunch of scholars to the effect that the sources we do indeed include historical sources to support the historical Jesus.

So here you present a whole lot of evidence for Jesus being a divine being as well as a man. That is hardly evidence I as a christian would reject, but it does not answer the question. We are talking about the evidence presented by historians for the existence or otherwise of a man named Jesus who is mentioned in the gospels, not whether that man was also a divine being (though I would be happy to discuss that on another thread)

Can you please provide the evidence for your original statement, which is not just assertion, and which would be sufficient to counter the evidence I quoted?

Thanks.

ercatli

OK, thanks Doug. I am amazed that anyone could believe a story based on so little evidence and so much imagination, but I certainly couldn't. I prefer to follow the evidence as assessed by experts. That has necessitated my changing some of my beliefs, but I'm OK with that.

My OP asked people here to present their reasons why they think I am wrong, and present them in a friendly way. You have done that, and I thank you. Granted how we each see your "solution", I don't think there is a lot of point in discussing it further. But it has been educational to read it, and I thank you again.

Best wishes.

Steven Carr

Still absolutely nothing from erclati worth reading, who continues to ignore everything.

I guess Popeye existed, because the character was based on a real person.

Why did Paul claim Jews had not heard of Jesus, apart from Christians preaching about him?

ercatli

G'day gurugeorge,

Thanks for that detailed exposition, I found it quite enlightening. You have certainly answered my OP and set out how you think I am mistaken in my belief. I think your story is a bit of an evidence-free zone, but let's not worry too much about that just now. Rather, in the same spirit as you have offered your views, I'll offer a few comments of how I respond.

This is a pretty amazing and freewheeling set of ideas. You may be right that it's a myth to a modern rational person, but then I guess there may not be all that many modern rationalists (more likely postmodern a-rationalists) because surveys show that many people who are not christians believe some supernatural things about Jesus.

But the story of Jesus is very different to other myths, and the other examples you quote are very different to each other.

Prof J Dunn looked through ancient writings for a parallel, and concluded: "we have found nothing in pre-Christian Judaism or under the wider religions of the Hellenistic world which provide sufficient explanation of the origin of the doctrine of the incarnation, no way of speaking about God, the gods or intermediate beings, which so far as we can tell would have given birth to this doctrine apart from Christianity."

And I find it difficult to see a similarity between Krishna, the Buddha and Hercules. I think the Buddha's historical existence is reasonably well established, whereas I doubt anyone thinks Krishna has any similarities with the Buddha. But I can agree that there are some common elements between some myths and the Jesus story.

Yes, I know some christians who have had some experiences of God, though probably not as spectacular as you had in mind. And of course it is possible that, if God exists, he could give people internal certainty about his existence. It just so happens that nothing remotely like that has ever happened to me, so I am left with my faltering brain.

Well please allow one rational person to explain how they have that belief. The stories are there. Their plain meaning is broadly obvious, though of course there is a lot more beneath the surface. When I am confronted by them, I want to assess whether I can believe them or not. I think about the following:

• When I think about the world and about people and myself, I find many facts which seem to me to be better explained by the existence of a creator God than by his non-existence. These are basically the classic proofs for God - I don't think they can prove his existence, but I find they show it to be more likely than not. (I know others, and perhaps you too, will not agree with this, but let's not argue - life's too short, this is just a personal explanation, and the thread is about something else.)
• The NT stories ring true to me. If God probably exists, then I have no problems with the miraculous, I can easily believe these aspects if I think the stories add up. I trust the authors because they seem reliable - often for similar reasons that scholars find them reliable on many matters.
• When I check with the scholars, I find that their methods of analysis generally utilise methodological naturalism - they make working assumptions to exclude the miraculous from their historical analysis. (There are some exception, but not that many among the scholars I mostly read.) But even within these narrow assumptions, they conclude (mostly) that Jesus existed, and we can know lots of things about him. Of the stuff that they can't endorse historically, they don't reject much of it outright as untrue. Rather, they say they cannot as historians make a judgment on (say) the resurrection beyond understanding what people believed, and they say that a lot of the gospels is interpretation, which may not be "historical", but that neither makes it true or untrue.
• So because the scholars give me a solid base to work from, and because I am happy to trust the interpretation of the writers, I can approach the person whom they describe. And I find that not only can I trust him, but I want to follow him, to give my loyalty to him. That's a personal response based on all the above.
• Once I get to that point, it makes sense to trust that the God who sent Jesus didn't allow the story about him to get too messed up. I don't have any commitment to inerrancy (it is never claimed and it doesn't look to be true) but I can trust these writings in a practical way to live my life by.
• Finally, I have lived by these conclusions and beliefs for more than 4 decades, and while I often have doubts and re-appraisals, the convictions tend to grow. And as I further investigate the facts (I read quite a bit) I find the facts continue to support the conclusions. It all seems to work, and hang together. And it's good.

So from where I sit, it all looks very rational. Other people see it differently, and I can respect that, and I would hope they would respect my conclusions.

I think this is the place I disagree with you most. You, and others here, seem to assume that either Jesus was a "superhero" (other words are used by others, but the concept is sort of similar) or that he was a man, and that he couldn't be both.

But the christian belief, based on the documents we have, is that he was definitely a man, but that he was more than a man. We can easily grasp the idea that a person can be more than one thing - a black man, and an Englishman, and a husband, and a genius, etc. If you had have been there, he would have looked just like a man because he was a man - he had normal male sex organs, he ate food, his feet got dirty and sweaty, he talked and laughed and got upset, etc, etc. That is the first obvious reality, and one which friends and enemies, believers and unbelievers alike, could have seen.

So the human aspects of him can readily be analysed by historians, and when it is, they agree, in the main, that there was indeed a person Jesus. Your fanciful myth-story, based on very little evidence, seems to me to fail tragically at this point. So while I found your story interesting and well expressed, it seemed much more mythical than the Jesus story.

So there you have it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for reading mine. Best wishes.

ercatli

These are interesting questions, Toto, and I'm glad you asked them. If you read my previous post to gurugeorge (the dot points in the middle), you'll see that although I start with the historians' conclusions, I do not end there. Let me give you a very poor parallel.

If a guy notices a girl at a party who particularly attracts him, he will try to chat her up, find out more about her. If he is wanting to be married, he may pursue her with that in mind. He will try to find out more about her and much of what he finds out will be factual. But if he finally decides to marry her (assuming she agrees!), it will not be only because of the facts. By then he will love her. He may think she is the most beautiful person in the world (which is difficult to establish factually). He will decide to commit his life to her, even though he cannot know for sure that it will be the best choice. These decisions and views will not be fully factual, but they will be based on fact. And few of us would criticise him for thinking this way.

Sort of similar with Jesus. The previous post showed how I get to the point of deciding Jesus is factually true. Then on that basis, I make a commitment beyond the facts, but not contrary to the facts. I trust God to have given us all enough to go by. And that is enough for me.

If I had the guts, the first answer might be yes, but as it is, my answer is that I give a lot of my time and money and allegiance, but not all. The second answer is no - I don't see that is an obvious requirement of following Jesus.

Again, I am not as consistent as I'd like to be, but within practical limits, yes. I don't see any problem with the use of science and medicine that Jesus never knew about, in fact I think they are wonderful.

No. The NT and Jesus himself makes it clear that I don't have to - there is now a better way.

No. Like I said, I am far from living out my ideals, but I am at least a long way down the road. We give significant time and money to support people who need it. I spent many years in my work caring for the environment (I chose work that I felt would benefit the world) and we try to live in an environmentally responsible way. I detest modern crass consumer materialism and avoid it as much as I can. We try to consume less and live lightly on the earth within the limits of living in a major city and having to bring up three children.

Because living in a way that cares for ourselves, our fellow humans and the world is only part of the requirement of following Jesus. We also need to live in a way that recognises God. We will live with him forever, so we need to get with the strength now, and to allow him to correct us and use us in his purposes. Jesus said that too. Plus, the way christians know the truth is not just through the written words, but through direct contact with God's Spirit. If we ignore him, we stuff it up. Simple as that.

Thanks so much for these questions. They were a sobering challenge, and I hope I've given you fair answers. Best wishes.

ercatli

I don't believe Jesus objectively appeared different to different people, but his impact them was different, and each responded to him out of their own character. Happens all the time in our lives.

I don't think one has to believe in supernaturalism, but one has to at least be open-minded about it. Naturalistic assumptions are just that - assumptions - but they make it difficult to approach the stories open-mindedly.

I'm not sure on what basis you make that statement!

Thanks for your comments.

gurugeorge

I think you're arguing against something I haven't been saying here. I'm not claiming any derivation, or even similarity, except in respect of the fact that we have several stories about fantastic beings. On the face of it, the stories of Buddha, Krishna, Hercules, Jesus, Laozi, Superman and many, many others, are stories about fantastic beings. Most of them also have human, sweaty aspects, even Clark Kent looks pretty normal

So: as they come down to us, they are all myths, all myths about entities with fantastic, miraculous abilities.

Some of them may be based on human beings who once lived, others not.

It would take a lot of historical investigation to decide that Jesus is in the former camp - that kind of historical investigation has not really been done, because it's simply the default position of most people who have thought about it (for the reasons I mentioned - cognitive dissonance, cultural reinforcement, psychological bias), that Jesus is in the former camp. It's just taken for granted.

I think you're on a decent footing for religious belief with the general arguments for God - I am not one of those rationalists who totally sneers at such arguments (although I don't believe them myself). You are also on solid ground if you find a certain set of ethical teachings works in your life. But believing in an entity on sketchy historical grounds that are conditional on scholarship is not a very rationally secure foundation for religious belief.