I have researched the historicity of Jesus and I can assure you there is no historical record outside the Bible of a Jesus of Nazareth, certainly not any transcripts of a trial of a Jesus of Nazareth. If there were we wouldn't be having this conversation.
What in the heck do you mean "Does...
I don't think they are. Their propensity it seems to me is to run away from facts like 1. there is no historical evidence for Jesus 2. the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses 3. the Bible is riddled with serious flaws that no God would allow to happen who wanted people to believe his son...
I never meant to imply that NDE studies offered proof of the afterlife. I personally believe there isn't an afterlife and that NOTHING so far proves an afterlife. I just meant that scientists have acknowledged that survival of the consciousness is a subject that science has wanted to delve...
We are in the 6th mass extinction and this one has the potential to reduce humanity to numbers not seen since man emigrated out of the African Savannah. If you want to call that an apocalypse that's fine. But don't call it "The Apocalypse" as in the Catholic Bible becase it is not driven by any...
Sure it does. If you want to take the approach that Christians live by faith alone without a need of want for evidence then it's true, that's a philosophical matter. But I don't know of any person outside of Christianity who lives purely by faith without evidence. If you were looking for a home...
And you base all your belief on a 3,000 year old Bronze Age text written by goat herders that has no basis in fact and is so full of contradictions and bad information that it leaks like a sieve? How does that happen except by gross gullibility?
So why doesn't he show himself once in a while? He had no problem doing it all the time in the OT. How did a Big Bruiser like God suddenly get so people-shy?
Maybe "supernatural level" is a better term.
Yes of course they have. Hundreds of NDE studies for one.
Of course, because they are the ones making the claim. The onus is always on the person making a claim. If a Christian says Jesus was real it's up to the Christian to prove he was. It's not...
Yeah, I tried to stress in the post you are responding to that I wasn't trying to make this a black and white issue--that's its more gray with lots of nuances depending on the Christians themselves, sort of like the thought that there are as many denominations of Christianity as there are...
Every crooked televangelist knows this fact and plays on it for their financial benefit to the impoverishment of the dupes who fall for it. The gullibility of simple-minded folks reared without a higher education is off the meter. Sadly, it's a fact of life--the street-smart sharks preying on...
By the prevailing lack of evidence for anything on the spiritual level. Now do I mean I know definitively there's nothing out there? No, I don't obviously because the afterlife cannot be proven to exist or not exist. But can I line up evidence for no afterlife alongside evidence for an...
You're looking at it from the point of view of an atheist. Atheists realize there is no God that runs the universe, and by extension there isn't a heaven waiting for them. So they don't worry about dying--that's correct. They value the time they have with friends and family here in the present...
The longer I live the more I realize that the reason people say they believe in God and Jesus just boils down to them desperately trying to convince themselves there is a God because deep in the inner most pit of their gut they are terrified of the thought their life will simply be coming to an...
I recognize your "scholarship" is better than mine. What I'm saying is that scholars can't be 100% certain of any of this. This stuff is 2000 years old and there aren't any written records to corroborate any of it. It's pure guesswork. How many times have these gospels been changed before...
Because we don't have a single document from the first 4 centuries that touches on the topic. The first whole copies of any gospels don't start showing up until roughly 330 CE. Scholars are debating in a vacuum about who came first. It's like an Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on first...
dybmh, for shame for shame. This is common knowledge all over the Internet. Every scholar knows that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a template and then embellished the stories. I mean it's right there in the gospels. Now if you're asking me to provide a source like a professor would to one of his...
I never said Luke was copied. I said Luke COPIED Matthew. And per my link I showed that Luke came as much as 15 years after Matthew. That's a long time in 1st Century years. And it's certainly not "the same time as Matthew".