Did Christ really exist ?

[joelr]

The global blood belief is scientific because of the fountains of the deep. The Bible and scientists both talk about it. Scientists Confirm Biblical Account of the ‘Fountains of The Deep’

Modern geology, its sub-disciplines and other scientific disciplines utilize the scientific method to analyze the geology of the earth. The key tenets of flood geology are refuted by scientific analysis and do not have any standing in the scientific community
NOTE, REFUTED:


Erosion
The global flood cannot explain geological formations such as angular unconformities, where sedimentary rocks have been tilted and eroded then more sedimentary layers deposited on top, needing long periods of time for these processes. There is also the time needed for the erosion of valleys in sedimentary rock mountains. In another example, the flood, had it occurred, should also have produced large-scale effects spread throughout the entire world. Erosion should be evenly distributed, yet the levels of erosion in, for example, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains differ significantly.[112]
Geochronology

This [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic']Jurassic carbonate hardground shows generations of oysters and extensive bioerosion, features incompatible with the conditions and timing postulated for the Flood.[7]

The alternation of calcite and aragonite seas through geologic time.[113]
Geochronology is the science of determining the absolute age of rocks, fossils, and sediments by a variety of techniques. These methods indicate that the Earth as a whole is about 4.54 billion years old, and that the strata that, according to flood geology, were laid down during the Flood some 6,000 years ago, were actually deposited gradually over many millions of years.

Paleontology
If the flood were responsible for fossilization, then all the animals now fossilized must have been living together on the Earth just before the flood. Based on estimates of the number of remains buried in the Karoo fossil formation in Africa, this would correspond to an abnormally high density of vertebrates worldwide, close to 2100 per acre.[84] Creationists argue that evidence for the geological column is fragmentary, and all the complex layers of chalk occurred in the approach to the 150th day of Noah's flood.[114][115] However, the entire geologic column is found in several places, and shows multiple features, including evidence of erosion and burrowing through older layers, which are inexplicable on a short timescale. Carbonate hardgrounds and the fossils associated with them show that the so-called flood sediments include evidence of long hiatuses in deposition that are not consistent with flood dynamics or timing.[7]
Geochemistry
Proponents of Flood Geology are also unable to account for the alternation between calcite seas and aragonite seas through the Phanerozoic. The cyclical pattern of carbonate hardgrounds, calcitic and aragonitic ooids, and calcite-shelled fauna has apparently been controlled by seafloor spreading rates and the flushing of seawater through hydrothermal vents which changes its Mg/Ca ratio.[116]

Sedimentary rock features
Phil Senter's 2011 article, "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology", in the journal Reports of the National Center for Science Education, discusses "sedimentologic and other geologic features that Flood geologists have identified as evidence that particular strata cannot have been deposited during a time when the entire planet was under water ... and distribution of strata that predate the existence of the Ararat mountain chain." These include continental basalts, terrestrial tracks of animals, and marine communities preserving multiple in-situ generations included in the rocks of most or all Phanerozoic periods, and the basalt even in the younger Precambrian rocks. Others, occurring in rocks of several geologic periods, include lake deposits and eolian (wind) deposits. Using their own words, Flood geologists find evidence in every Paleozoic and Mesozoic period, and in every epoch of the Cenozoic period, indicating that a global flood could not have occurred during that interval.[117]
[/URL]

 

[joelr]

The resurrection of Jesus was predicted as early as the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, not copied from pagan religions. The Resurrection: “According to the Scriptures”?

"RESURRECTION OF THE MESSIAH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
While there is a generally agreed-upon theology of resurrection in the Old Testament (cf. Job 19:25–27; Ps 49:15; 73:23–28; Isa 25:8; 26:19; Ezek 37:1–14; Hos 13:14; Dan 12:1–4 etc.), connections between Psalm 16:10 and Psalm 22, and Isaiah 53:10–11 and Daniel 12:2–3 reveal that the Messiah, in particular, would be raised from the dead.

"

Yes and all of your examples were added AFTER the 5th century, as confirmed by Professor F
Stavrakopoulou

This was the beginning of Israel becoming monotheistic. Before this they were polytheistic. So the OT was created from 5BC on. The savior messiah in all parts of the OT came after this period. Period. Before this Israel was more Polytheistic (Ashera was Yahwehs consort) apologetics does not trump actual PhD historians.

start at 4:04

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Since nobody can keep the Ten Commandments, they were given as a mirror not as a code of perfection. We are to strive to keep the Ten Commandments, but nobody can. It pleases God when we strive for perfection even though we could never reach it.

You mean the 613 commandments.

Actually they CAN be kept. Was there a particular commandment that you think can't be kept? God himself says they are easy:

Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
Deuteronomy 30:11-14

 

[joelr]

The global blood belief is scientific because of the fountains of the deep. The Bible and scientists both talk about it. Scientists Confirm Biblical Account of the ‘Fountains of The Deep’

No scientists think there was a global flood because all evidence rules it out and it's a story from a myth.
Noah's Ark is a reworking of the Epic of Gilamesh. all geology studies rule out a world-flood and unless they found some fundamentalist scientists no scientist would believe something already proven false.
These are myths like Zeus and the world-serpent?


Noah's flood
Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account.[42] What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives.[43] In a 2001 Torah commentary released on behalf of the Conservative Movement of Judaism, rabbinic scholar Robert Wexler stated: "The most likely assumption we can make is that both Genesis and Gilgamesh drew their material from a common tradition about the flood that existed in Mesopotamia. These stories then diverged in the retelling."[44] Ziusudra, Utnapishtim and Noah are the respective heroes of the Sumerian, Akkadian and biblical flood legends of the ancient Near East.

 

[joelr]

The resurrection of Jesus was predicted as early as the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, not copied from pagan religions. The Resurrection: “According to the Scriptures”?

"

Yes in 5BC they got the idea for a messiah.
But the gospels were written many centuries later when authors could copy ideas from other mystery religions already established.:

"
miraculously born, dying-and-rising savior god—each, like Jesus, just as unique as the next: from Dionysus to Osiris, Zalmoxis, Inanna, Dolichenus, and Adonis (not to mention Romulus, Hercules, and Asclepius).

It simply cannot be claimed that the Jewish authors of the idea of their own miraculously born, dying-and-rising savior, were in no way aware of nor at all influenced by the widespread instantiation of exactly that kind of savior all around them, in practically every culture they knew. That’s simply absurd. The coincidence is impossible. Which is why even ancient Christian apologists were not so foolish as to claim this—or even more absurdly, that no such dying-and-rising savior model even existed. Of course it existed. And they well knew it. They chose to blame it on the Devil. Plagiarizing the idea in advance, to try and set up a culture that would then dismiss the Jesus story as just another myth akin to the others the Devil conjured. This is a ridiculous defense, akin to claiming evolution is obviously false because the Devil “planted all the fossils.”

No. The only plausible reason for why some Jews ever came up with a Jewish dying-and-rising savior god in precisely that region and era, is that everyone else had; it was so popular and influential, so fashionable and effective, it was inevitable the idea would seep into some Jewish consciousness, and erupt onto the scene of “inspired” revolutionizing of a perceived-to-be-corrupted faith. They Judaized it, of course. Jesus is as different from Osiris as Osiris is from Dionysus or Inanna or Romulus or Zalmoxis. The differences are the Jewish tweaks. Just as the Persian Zoroastrian system of messianism, apocalypticism, worldwide resurrection, an evil Satan at war with God, and a future heaven and hell effecting justice as eternal fates for all, was Judaized when they were imported into Judaism. None of those ideas existed in Judaism before that (and you won’t find them in any part of the Old Testament written before the Persian conquest). No one claimed they were “corrupting” Judaism with those pagan ideas (even though in fact they were). They simply claimed these new ideas were all Jewish. Ordained and communicated by God, through inspired scripture and revelation. The Christians, did exactly the same thing.

It’s time to face this fact. And stop denying it. It’s time to get over it already. Resurrected savior gods were a pagan idea. All Christianity did, was invent a Jewish one."


PhD Carrier

 

[Wandering Monk]

Also in order for Jesus to be a savior, we need to be repentant. We can't just say we're sorry and let it go like that. Repentance is more than that. And some people are not repentant yet claim to believe in Jesus. Similarly with others who observe certain rituals yet are flagrantly going against God's commandments. (adultery being one.)

Great, but this thread is not about doctrine but history. Try not to confuse the two.

 

[Skywalker]

They were not with him, they just ran away abandoning him. All eleven forsook him. And multiple people can hallucinate together about some thing.
Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena - Wikipedia

In India Gods and Goddesses drink milk.

They didnt abandon Jesus. They went to their deaths not denying their faith in Jesus. All of the apostles but John died horrible deaths.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Yes in 5BC they got the idea for a messiah.

5BC?

 

[Skywalker]

Modern geology, its sub-disciplines and other scientific disciplines utilize the scientific method to analyze the geology of the earth. The key tenets of flood geology are refuted by scientific analysis and do not have any standing in the scientific community
NOTE, REFUTED:


Erosion
The global flood cannot explain geological formations such as angular unconformities, where sedimentary rocks have been tilted and eroded then more sedimentary layers deposited on top, needing long periods of time for these processes. There is also the time needed for the erosion of valleys in sedimentary rock mountains. In another example, the flood, had it occurred, should also have produced large-scale effects spread throughout the entire world. Erosion should be evenly distributed, yet the levels of erosion in, for example, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains differ significantly.[112]
Geochronology

This Jurassic carbonate hardground shows generations of oysters and extensive bioerosion, features incompatible with the conditions and timing postulated for the Flood.[7]

The alternation of calcite and aragonite seas through geologic time.[113]
Geochronology is the science of determining the absolute age of rocks, fossils, and sediments by a variety of techniques. These methods indicate that the Earth as a whole is about 4.54 billion years old, and that the strata that, according to flood geology, were laid down during the Flood some 6,000 years ago, were actually deposited gradually over many millions of years.

Paleontology
If the flood were responsible for fossilization, then all the animals now fossilized must have been living together on the Earth just before the flood. Based on estimates of the number of remains buried in the Karoo fossil formation in Africa, this would correspond to an abnormally high density of vertebrates worldwide, close to 2100 per acre.[84] Creationists argue that evidence for the geological column is fragmentary, and all the complex layers of chalk occurred in the approach to the 150th day of Noah's flood.[114][115] However, the entire geologic column is found in several places, and shows multiple features, including evidence of erosion and burrowing through older layers, which are inexplicable on a short timescale. Carbonate hardgrounds and the fossils associated with them show that the so-called flood sediments include evidence of long hiatuses in deposition that are not consistent with flood dynamics or timing.[7]
Geochemistry
Proponents of Flood Geology are also unable to account for the alternation between calcite seas and aragonite seas through the Phanerozoic. The cyclical pattern of carbonate hardgrounds, calcitic and aragonitic ooids, and calcite-shelled fauna has apparently been controlled by seafloor spreading rates and the flushing of seawater through hydrothermal vents which changes its Mg/Ca ratio.[116]

Sedimentary rock features
Phil Senter's 2011 article, "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology", in the journal Reports of the National Center for Science Education, discusses "sedimentologic and other geologic features that Flood geologists have identified as evidence that particular strata cannot have been deposited during a time when the entire planet was under water ... and distribution of strata that predate the existence of the Ararat mountain chain." These include continental basalts, terrestrial tracks of animals, and marine communities preserving multiple in-situ generations included in the rocks of most or all Phanerozoic periods, and the basalt even in the younger Precambrian rocks. Others, occurring in rocks of several geologic periods, include lake deposits and eolian (wind) deposits. Using their own words, Flood geologists find evidence in every Paleozoic and Mesozoic period, and in every epoch of the Cenozoic period, indicating that a global flood could not have occurred during that interval.[117]

The flood belief existing in other faiths supports the Bible because it shows that what the Bible said happened actually happened. The fact that other people talked about it shows they are all talking about the same event that happened.

 

[Skywalker]

You mean the 613 commandments.

Actually they CAN be kept. Was there a particular commandment that you think can't be kept? God himself says they are easy:

Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
Deuteronomy 30:11-14

People who believe in God strive not to lie and steal but when you are human accidents happen.

 

[Skywalker]

Yes in 5BC they got the idea for a messiah.
But the gospels were written many centuries later when authors could copy ideas from other mystery religions already established.:

"
miraculously born, dying-and-rising savior god—each, like Jesus, just as unique as the next: from Dionysus to Osiris, Zalmoxis, Inanna, Dolichenus, and Adonis (not to mention Romulus, Hercules, and Asclepius).

It simply cannot be claimed that the Jewish authors of the idea of their own miraculously born, dying-and-rising savior, were in no way aware of nor at all influenced by the widespread instantiation of exactly that kind of savior all around them, in practically every culture they knew. That’s simply absurd. The coincidence is impossible. Which is why even ancient Christian apologists were not so foolish as to claim this—or even more absurdly, that no such dying-and-rising savior model even existed. Of course it existed. And they well knew it. They chose to blame it on the Devil. Plagiarizing the idea in advance, to try and set up a culture that would then dismiss the Jesus story as just another myth akin to the others the Devil conjured. This is a ridiculous defense, akin to claiming evolution is obviously false because the Devil “planted all the fossils.”

No. The only plausible reason for why some Jews ever came up with a Jewish dying-and-rising savior god in precisely that region and era, is that everyone else had; it was so popular and influential, so fashionable and effective, it was inevitable the idea would seep into some Jewish consciousness, and erupt onto the scene of “inspired” revolutionizing of a perceived-to-be-corrupted faith. They Judaized it, of course. Jesus is as different from Osiris as Osiris is from Dionysus or Inanna or Romulus or Zalmoxis. The differences are the Jewish tweaks. Just as the Persian Zoroastrian system of messianism, apocalypticism, worldwide resurrection, an evil Satan at war with God, and a future heaven and hell effecting justice as eternal fates for all, was Judaized when they were imported into Judaism. None of those ideas existed in Judaism before that (and you won’t find them in any part of the Old Testament written before the Persian conquest). No one claimed they were “corrupting” Judaism with those pagan ideas (even though in fact they were). They simply claimed these new ideas were all Jewish. Ordained and communicated by God, through inspired scripture and revelation. The Christians, did exactly the same thing.

It’s time to face this fact. And stop denying it. It’s time to get over it already. Resurrected savior gods were a pagan idea. All Christianity did, was invent a Jewish one."


PhD Carrier

Osiris didn't resurrect. He became a zombie.

 

[Aupmanyav]

The flood belief existing in other faiths supports the Bible because it shows that what the Bible said happened actually happened. The fact that other people talked about it shows they are all talking about the same event that happened.

All scriptures and religious stories have lies and exaggerations. Floods in all religions are that. Zoroastrianism is better than the others. It talks of a flood by snow. The Zoroastrian Gathas have stories from ice-age time.

They didnt abandon Jesus. They went to their deaths not denying their faith in Jesus. All of the apostles but John died horrible deaths.

Many people die for their beliefs. Nothing strange there. Many a times stepping back is not possible.

 

[Skywalker]

No scientists think there was a global flood because all evidence rules it out and it's a story from a myth.
Noah's Ark is a reworking of the Epic of Gilamesh. all geology studies rule out a world-flood and unless they found some fundamentalist scientists no scientist would believe something already proven false.
These are myths like Zeus and the world-serpent?


Noah's flood
Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account.[42] What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives.[43] In a 2001 Torah commentary released on behalf of the Conservative Movement of Judaism, rabbinic scholar Robert Wexler stated: "The most likely assumption we can make is that both Genesis and Gilgamesh drew their material from a common tradition about the flood that existed in Mesopotamia. These stories then diverged in the retelling."[44] Ziusudra, Utnapishtim and Noah are the respective heroes of the Sumerian, Akkadian and biblical flood legends of the ancient Near East.

I dont know if the story of Noah's ark is literal or a parable. Christians have different beliefs about parables being literal. Christian beliefs about God and redemption are not taken from Zoraster.

 

[Skywalker]

scholarship on Mithras:
Other savior gods within this context experienced “passions” that did not involve a death. For instance, Mithras underwent some great suffering and struggle (we don’t have many details), through which he acquired his power over death that he then shares with initiates in his cult, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a death. Mentions of resurrection as a teaching in Mithraism appear to have been about the future fate of his followers (in accordance with the Persian Zoroastrian notion of a general resurrection later borrowed by the Jews). So all those internet memes listing Mithras as a dying-and-rising god? Not true.


Carrier rebuttles the claim of Brown (not a PhD historian) and completely shows the Jesus birth is taken from Pagan ideas:
The virgin birth myth for Jesus was, certainly, almost entirely modeled on Jewish precedents, both in and out of the Bible—from the miraculous impregnation of Sarah in the OT, to the miraculous conception of Moses in Philo’s Life of Moses and the Biblical Antiquities. But it was a syncretic creation, combining those Jewish elements, with pagan, producing a hybrid, just like every other instance of cultural diffusion (e.g. the way the Romans altered the Athena story when adapting it to Minerva): something different from anything before, yet fully explained by all its precedents. I should also add, for those who will inevitably ask, yes, it’s true, the original Hebrew scriptures did not predict a virgin birth, although their Greek translations could still have inspired the idea, evidencing a third source, the paganized Judaism of Hellenism:
Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier



His apologetics is not accepted in the historicity field and has been shown to be false.Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier



Luke is the most agregious in copying narratives from the OT. It's total fiction.
As I have shown Jesus is just another late comer to the savior god trend and all of them are fiction.

[/QUOTE]

That has nothing to do with the Christian belief that God is perfect and just and sin separates us from God and God made a way for everyone. Mithras has nothing to do with Jesus because his followers didnt believe he was a savior.

 

[Skywalker]

All scriptures and religious stories have lies and exaggerations. Floods in all religions are that. Zoroastrianism is better than the others. It talks of a flood by snow. The Zoroastrian Gathas have stories from ice-age time.Many people die for their beliefs. Nothing strange there. Many a times stepping back is not possible.

The apostles had perfect opportunity to say they had lied about Jesus if they had, but they didnt.

 

[Skywalker]

Yes and all of your examples were added AFTER the 5th century, as confirmed by Professor F
Stavrakopoulou

This was the beginning of Israel becoming monotheistic. Before this they were polytheistic. So the OT was created from 5BC on. The savior messiah in all parts of the OT came after this period. Period. Before this Israel was more Polytheistic (Ashera was Yahwehs consort) apologetics does not trump actual PhD historians.

start at 4:04

The Old Testament doesn't mention God having a wife.

 

[Wandering Monk]

Since nobody can keep the Ten Commandments, they were given as a mirror not as a code of perfection. We are to strive to keep the Ten Commandments, but nobody can. It pleases God when we strive for perfection even though we could never reach it.

So, do you apply the same reasoning to bowling? 'Since I will never bowl a 300 game, I am not going to bowl at all?'

The Tanakh explicitly says that the commandments are NOT too difficult. See Deuteronomy 30:11-14

God did not demand perfection, else why give rules for sin offerings?

 

[Skywalker]

So, do you apply the same reasoning to bowling? 'Since I will never bowl a 300 game, I am not going to bowl at all?'

The Tanakh explicitly says that the commandments are NOT too difficult. See Deuteronomy 30:11-14

God did not demand perfection, else why give rules for sin offerings?

We should strive to do the right thing but we cant be perfect.

 

[Wandering Monk]

We let Skywalker derail this thread. I repent of playing the game. Let's get back to history and dump the theological BS.

 

[YoursTrue]

I meant that the belief that the Amalekites and Midianites were accountable for their community sins.

When I have time I'll check the scriptures there.