keyser_soze

Anybody read much of the old greek philosphers? One of the first stories that made me think was when I was reading(plutarch iirc) about the bleeding statue of some greek goddess around 500 B.C. and that they had offered human sacrifices to the statue. It occurred to me that they actually took that ridiculous crap seriously, their mythology that is...It occurred to me that every religion has these events, and each of them believe just as much as muslims and christians! All religions die out, christianity pretty much closed the book on it's zoraster and mithraist roots. But it's time will pass too. Not soon enough, but it will happen.

Kosh

While I agree that the miracles were later fabrications, how do you account for GMark, circa 70ad?

Vorkosigan

You mean the gospel of Mark, circa 110 AD?

Kosh

Is there a new concensus on the dating? I thought it was 70.

110, 120. Whatever it takes.

Mageth

When is the last time we allowed someone to see who was born blind,

It happens quite often, actually. One example: children may be born with clouded lenses (congenital cataracts) due to infections they acquire before birth. These children are generally functionally blind, but at some point their sight can be restored, or at least improved, via cataract removal surgery. This surgery is optimally performed when the child is young, but has been performed on adults with congenital cataract blindness to restore sight (their vision, however, has to develop quite a bit on its own afterwards, as their brains never learned to "see").

ever seen a doctor walk on water?

Have you ever seen a saviour walking on water, or do you have to rely on second- or third-hand accounts?

Apparently, that's a trick others have mastered.

Since when do we bring people back to life who have been dead and buried in the ground for a few days?

Why would we want to? They're dead already. But in the future, if cryogenic suspension pans out, who knows but that we may even be capable of this feat? (I don't hold much hope in it working out, however)

And as far as we know, nobody's ever really performed this feat.

Now obviously no atheist believes the miracles even happened, but no sorry - Jesus was not some skilled doctor, because if he was - he had more medical knowledge than any doctor does today.

No, he is more than likely just a myth, or at least the miraculous exploits attributed to him are mythical.

Haran

Suetonius.... born ~69 AD

Tacitus.... born ~56 AD

Cassius Dio.... born ~150 AD

????

It is so obvious that they all borrowed the stories of healing from the Christian New Testament, for they were each born and wrote too late!

Warning - Sarcasm

zog

I think that it is entirely credible that a preacher/faith healer like Jesus could have some limited medical skill, we need only look at other supposed miracle worker healers for evidence of this even though they were probably more Faith Healers than anything else.

However to reason away the Miracles of Jesus with reason is something that it really a nonstarter as the majority of the miracles of the Gospels are too remarkable for these to be any sort of Legendary memory of real events (except possibly exorcisms), they seem to be designed on traditional motifs and almost deiberately out do all the old stories about healers.

WinAce

I thought I'd bump this so Magus can explain whether the evidence for Vespassian's healing the blind and lame guy is good.

Fred

It may be worth mentioning something about the miracles. I will use one as an example "Turning water into wine" was and may still be the metaphor for describing the Bar mitzfa. The "boy becomes a man".
Remembering that the Jesus character was an orthodox Jew may help to put these things into perspective.

Grumpy

Whereas the miraculous feats of David Copperfield are concretely real. We all saw him make the Statue of Liberty disappear, didn't we? Can Jesus top that? (Well, he made himself disappear - permanently.)