Malaclypse the Younger

As far as I know, Hans is asking about the existence of Jesus, not Caesar Augustus. However, showing evidential support of Jesus's actual existence of the same strength that professional historians have established evidential support for Augustus's actual existence would indeed be a good start (and might very well win you whatever corresponds to the Nobel Prize in Ancient History).

Hans

Malaclypse the Younger

This assumes item 3 can not be shown, which ties into your other quote below.

Which argues 3 can not be shown. And you may well be right. Personally, I think all three items are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to show; item 3 being the most difficult by far.

Hans

Paul5204

Personally, I can not. That's not to say that a historian can or can't. The consequence? The only consequence I can personally see is my answer to the first question.

Malaclypse the Younger

Indeed. In fact, you can just skip 1 and 2; they're red herrings. If #3 is fulfilled, it doesn't matter if Jesus was a real or fictional character (or anywhere in between); contrawise, even proving 1 and 2 true beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't help us at all with 3.

Hans

Malaclypse the Younger

I concur. 3 is the only item that needs to be fulfilled. And how to do that is completely beyond me!

You make me think!

sighhswolf

If I may add a couple of questions here,
how exactly do you define "god" and or "supernatural."
If your definition of supernatural is "something outside of reality", then there is absolutely no
evidence and/or proof, that there is anything what so ever outside of the reality in which we reside as humans...period.

So far mankind has failed to provide proof that anything supernatural does in fact exist, even though mystics have tried from the beginning of written history and before.
We only know of ONE (1) reality and that is the plane of our own existence.
I dont think that a leap of faith is at all warrented, why would there necessarily be a need for a leap of faith when making rational assumptions about the "unreality" of a particular religious deity?
A leap of faith is only called for in the absense of provable assertions and/or valid evidence.
To say that theist and non-theist must at some point resort to a leap of faith does not make sense to me, it takes no leap of faith to make a statement that there is no evidence for the existence of a reality outside of the one we have direct knowledge of.
Certainly there are those who would argue that by simply stating that god exists disqualifies his
supernatural standing and diminishes his capabilities of omnipotance, omniscience, and destroys the idea of unlimited attributes, by assigning a nature to the being.
A contradiction in terms.
That requires a leap of faith to attain the status of truth.
Wolf

Bilboe

Hans writes: "With a little thought I have identified what are the three reasons I'm incapable of believing in Christianity:

1. I'm unable to confirm that the testimony offered about the life and times of Jesus is from actual witnesses."

We know that Paul was a persecutor of the early Jewish believers in Jesus. We know Paul started persecuting them in the mid-to-late 30s. We know that Jesus died around 30ce. So there was already a signficant group of people who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and that they claimed a status for him that was considered blasphemous (otherwise no reason to persecute them), within less than 10 years of Jesus' death. Our earliest record for Jesus are the letters of Paul, written in the 50s. From them we know that Jesus was crucified and that later his followers claim to have seen him raised from the dead. From Paul's teaching in the 7th Chapter of I Corinthians, it seems clear that Paul tried to base his teachings on known teachings of Jesus. When there wasn't any known teaching from Jesus, Paul was careful to point out that he was giving his own opinion. From this we can reasonably surmise that there was already a body of teaching considered to belong to Jesus at the time Paul was writing his letters. Further, since in Galatians Paul says he was careful to compare his theology with that of the Apostles in Jerusalem, we can predate that body of teaching considerably sooner.

Now as to the Gospels: There is considerable debate as to the identity of the authors and as to when they were written. I read some place that there was evidence that the Gospel of Mark was written in the 50s. However, I haven't heard if this has been confirmed. Most scholars date the Synoptic Gospels between 65-75ce, and the Gospel of John perhaps around 90ce. We know from the fact that later sources refer to them, that 90 is about the latest we can go. However, there is evidence within the Gospels to show that they were based on earlier source material. How much earlier remains debatable.

There is also evidence from Josephus, the Talmud, and early Roman historians for Jesus existence.

This does not confirm that the testimony concerning Jesus is from witnesses, but we can ask, if not from witnesses, then from who and why? There is room for doubt, but there is also room for assent.

"2. I'm unable to confirm that the witnesses' claims are factual."

Me: I would consider there to be two important claims:

A. Jesus rose from the dead. Of all the explanations I have heard for this, the most likely seems to be that the witnesses believed they actually saw Jesus alive after he had died. What caused them to believe this? If one wants to think that they were in a psychological state where hallucinations would be readily believable, I won't argue against it, though I think it becomes rather improbable. Since I have no philosophical objections to the miraculous, I find believing he rose from the dead the better explanation.
B. Jesus' claim to something like divinity. From the fact that Paul started persecuting the early Jewish believers for blasphemy, it's clear already that they thought Jesus was in a special category. If one goes through the Synoptics, we see that Jesus thought this about himself, also. Forgiving people's sins; claiming that something greater than the temple was here; telling lepers that they were not only healed, but clean -- a right reserved for the priests; his frequent parables involving a landlord or ruler sending his son, or throwing a party for his son; his claim to sending prophets and wise men. And of course, there are the more open claims to divinity in the Gospel of John, which I won't discuss, to avoid debate on their historicity. But what we must remember is that all this happened in a Jewish society, where any claim to divinity was repugnant. What would cause Jewish people to think this of a man? Again, there is room for doubt. But there is also room for assent.


"3. I'm unable to confirm that the claims made by Jesus (as per the witness testimony) concerning God and Heaven are true."

Me: Here I would suggest that you read the Gospels for yourself, and ask God to show you who Jesus is. If you don't believe in God, then pray honestly: "God, I don't believe that you exist. However, if you do, and if you want me to believe in Jesus, I am willing to." And if there is a God, and if God rewards those who seek Him, you'll get an answer, sooner or later.

Hans

Malaclypse the Younger

I'm still stuck on this.

For item 3 the affirmative would have to demonstrate the evidence and how the evidence infers the claim. This may be impossible but I can't see how an attempt is self-contradicting.

To me your statement only implies that evidential arguments are impossible where the existance of the supernatural (in this case the Christian God) is possible.

Hans

Bilboe

If this has worked for you then please share your revelation by confirming item 3 for us.

Bilboe

Hans,

I've had experiences that I consider to be spiritual in origin. However, I don't rest my faith solely on those experiences. My faith is a combination of correspondence of experience to belief (those exerpiences I mentioned are part of it); coherence of the evidence -- philosophical, historical, scientific, the lives of others I know who have followed Jesus, the person of Jesus himself, all seem to fit together; and wish fulfillment -- believing that God loves us enough to die for us is too good a story for me to reject without overwhelming evidence -- you may call it my crutch, if you prefer. But it seems to help me walk around pretty well. I doubt any of this will be convincing to you. I don't expect it to. I believe that God loves you and wants a personal relationship with you. And I believe that if you reach out to Him, He'll embrace you fully. How He will make that known to you is between you two.