There is NO Historical Evidence for Jesus

[Thrillobyte]

I feel like these have been addressed. It's all the same answer.

• A man who could raise people from the dead like Jesus did to Jarius' daughter and Lazarus would have been immediately drafted by the Romans to raise their troops killed in battle.
  • It wasn't publicised the way you're imagining, Jesus traveled around, and he hid from the authorities
• A man who had been condemned by the Romans to be executed and who had come back alive would have been immediately rearrested by the Romans and crucified all over again.
  • He rose from the dead, then dissappeared. Correct me if I'm wrong?
• A man the gospels claims was so famous he could turn out 9,000 people to hear him on a mountainside and then feed them all with a couple of loaves and two fish would have caused all 100,000 people of the city of Jerusalem and the entire garrisoned army of Romans to turn out to watch him be crucified
  • Those numbers were probably greatly exaggerated, and there was no fear of divine retribution because it wasn't a lie about Jesus
• witness the supernatural darkness for 3 hours
  • embelished by the authors without fear of divine retribution because it's not a lie about Jesus
• the gigantic earthquake that in reality would have leveled Jerusalem to the ground
  • embelished by the authors without fear of divine retribution because it's not a lie about Jesus
• the zombie bodies of their forefathers coming out of their graves.
  • embelished by the authors without fear of divine retribution because it's not a lie about Jesus

Well, there were other miracle workers around at that time. Did they write about any of those other people? Even a tiny bit? It just doesn't seem like this is their genre. And like I said, all the absence shows is that the Jesus story was not as grand in scale.



Well sure, don't believe it. But that doesn't mean it's false.

• It wasn't publicised the way you're imagining, Jesus traveled around, and he hid from the authorities

It doesn't have to be "publicized" in the way you're suggesting, like they put it into the "Mediterranean Daily". It would have just spread word to mouth. Additionally, the Roman soldiers who witnessed would have immediately reported back to their commanders that they had just witnessed a man raise someone from the dead. Had the soldiers not reported something this momentous they would have been executed if their commanders found out, and the soldiers knew they would be executed.

The rest, dyb are not logical. "It's not a lie about Jesus so it's okay"....well, I can't respond without saying something that would be construed as being insulting.

 

[Windwalker]

I only ever ask of Christians one thing:

Show me a single secular historical mention of "Jesus the Christ was crucified by the Romans and rose on the 3rd day." Is that too much to ask?

Would that have been too great a task for Jesus' father, God who is omnipotent according to the rumors and who presumably wants people to believe in his son?

This reminds me of someone I knew in my youth who said, "If God really exists, why doesn't he just write his name in the sky and then everyone would know he's real?" Do you see any flaws in his reasoning there?

 

[Thrillobyte]

I just love how accurate the Bible is in the OT prophecies.

You ARE being facetious, I hope.

 

[Alien826]

But the studies aren't testing a God, the test is the effectiveness of people praying. The question is: does prayer have any effect? Would a study put a God off? Heck we always perk up our ears when someone says they won the big game because of God. Guess what, people were watching. What about the losers? Weren't any of those players praying? How about the family and frineds of someone who has a kid in the hospital and they all pray hoping for a certain outcome? That is essentially a test, too: will God come through for little Johnny? Sometimes God comes through, sometimes God doesn't. That failure rate has to put doubts in the minds of some, eh?

But god, or the possibility of such, is always linked to the interpretation of the results, as you did with the sentence I have bolded. In the case of the sports team, one of the two has to win, so there's a 50-50 chance that the prayers of one side or the other will appear to be answered. Of course we don't see the losing side saying that god has let them down. With the prayer study, the negative results are interpreted to mean that god doesn't exist or doesn't answer prayer. The idea that god might have a choice in the matter seems to be ignored, logical though it might be, just as the winning team doesn't entertain the idea that they might have played more skillfully.

 

[Thrillobyte]

Hmmm. How could you make that mistake.


That doesn't strike you as crazy... or more accurately, a joke?
It sound like persons claimed they found a genie in a bottle, so the scientific community say, okay, make a wish and rub the bottle, and we'll see what happens.
I'm sure the genie would play dead. 'I mean, what do they think I am... a mouse, they think they can put in a box.' and laugh his head off.

Seriously though. That's a mockery.
Sorry those people wasted their time letting scientists make a fool out of them.


We do have something better than those scholars.
I mean, they can't even agree on the things they disagree on.
Let this guy tell you. What biblical scholars don’t do.
If that doesn't shake your faith, nothing will.


So yeah. You have gone to "witch doctors", So why aren't you running? They certainly aren't going to rub that chicken gizzard they spend their sought after funding on. However, they stroke your mind with that rabbit they pull out of a hat.

That doesn't strike you as crazy... or more accurately, a joke?
It sound like persons claimed they found a genie in a bottle, so the scientific community say, okay, make a wish and rub the bottle, and we'll see what happens.
I'm sure the genie would play dead. 'I mean, what do they think I am... a mouse, they think they can put in a box.' and laugh his head off.

You should ask the question to Pew Research and the medical experts who conducted the prayer studies, not me. I'm sure you can find some cockamamie excuse for why God operates the exact same way the laws of chance and odds do.

 

[Alien826]

This is what it boils down to, Alien.

We know God does not move on any discernible level here on earth. Yet here we are, all 8 billion of us. Against all odds starting out, we somehow managed to beat hunger, disease, wild beasts, natural disasters and all the rest. We should have lost the race going out the gate. The first two of us who managed to evolve to procreate should have been eaten by hyenas or something. Yet here we are. Alone on a planet with a God somewhere out there who either doesn't exist or doesn't want to interact with a single one of us, best as we can observe.

Go figure.

I agree with your general point, and that is the reason for my (lack of) belief in religious claims. In short, there is nothing that happens on Earth that needs god/s to explain it. It is way past time for our species to move on from superstition as a way to understand our world and the way it works.

 

[Windwalker]

We know God does not move on any discernible level here on earth.

If you define God in the terms you imagine God to be, then this is probably a true statement. But to those who understand the nature of the Divine beyond an anthropomorphic projection of a superhuman deity who performs magic tricks, then your statement is false. They would see that the fact that everything exists reveals the Divine in every single moment continuously.

In other words, if you set the terms of what you think God should look like, then you limit your perception to that alone. In effect, this is engaging in a personal straw man argument. Are you really refuting the existence of God, or just a very childlike idea about God?

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the Christian's ideas about God that you were exposed to, is what is in error, and that maybe there other perhaps better ways to think about God that don't violate common sense or reason? How do you respond to those who believe in God, yet don't have to deny reason and science in order to do it? They aren't really "true Christians", might be your answer to them like the fundamentalists you were exposed to would say?

 

[Thrillobyte]

Things must be taken in context. If someone asks that his enemy's children are born deformed, blind, dumb, etc. do you think Jesus meant that God would answer that prayer? One might keep fighting but then -- I go back to the fact that the gospel account stops basically before the temple was utterly destroyed by the Romans. I'll try to get more into this later.

Before i answer, I want you to read something and then contemplate whether or not the Christian god is capable of some of the most evil heinous crimes against humanity imaginable:

"In Joshua 6:20b–21, The Israelite army entered the town of Jericho: Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.” After the destruction of Jericho, next would come the people of Ai, then the people of Makkedah and Libnah and Lachish and Eglon and Debir—every man, woman, and child slaughtered and dedicated to God. In the end, the entire population of thirty-one city-states was utterly destroyed."

20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

The Christian god wipes out the populations of seven towns--men, woman, children, babies, livestock--everything.

Ask yourself why preachers NEVER touch any of this in their Sunday morning homilies. Because the congregations would stand up and walk right out of church in disgust when they learned this was in the Bible. The truth is 99.99% of people who to Sunday morning services haven't opened a Bible once in their entire lives. If they had they've never read these revolting passages describing the murderous corrupt degenerate god Christians serve.

 

[Thrillobyte]

Then you have no refutation to any or all of the points I originally made, since you are evading the topic points supporting them. In effect, you're just 'preaching' in other words, saying you're right, and when your 'facts' are challenged, you feign disinterest. And you say you don't want to be offensive? Did you evangelize like this when you were a fundamentalist Christian too?

I don't call "external vs internal" substantive evidence.

Get back to me when you've found a secular historian who mentions "Jesus the Christ" or ANY of the apostles that isn't an interpolation by some corrupt churchman from the 4th century.

 

[Windwalker]

I agree with your general point, and that is the reason for my (lack of) belief in religious claims. In short, there is nothing that happens on Earth that needs god/s to explain it.

I would correct this to more accurately say that there little reason to invoke the idea of God to explain things to us today that we have more scientific understandings of in order to explain.

It is way past time for our species to move on from superstition as a way to understand our world and the way it works.

Here's a bit of the rub to that though. To "understand our world and the way it works". In reality, as the saying goes, 'the more we know the more we know we don't know". This is a true for our own personal knowledge as we grow in wisdom, as it is for our scientific understandings of the world. In reality, what was seen a 'magic' in our pre-scientific age, begins to look more like magic again as we devel deeper and deeper into understanding the nature of reality. The more Mysterious it becomes.

Take what Einstein himself said,

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”​

​

- Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies​

In other words, reality is in fact at least as magical as our primitive selves of the past imagined it to be, and right now in our knowledge we are like teens who gain a little bit of knowledge and presume we have it all figured out now. But in time, the more knowledge we gain, the more we realize that is is in fact magical, albeight seen through the eyes of an adult with a rational mind, rather than the ignorant superstitions of our childhood. It's not a regression to superstition, but a progression from the prerational, to the rational, to the transrational.

 

[Windwalker]

I don't call "external vs internal" substantive evidence.

Get back to me when you've found a secular historian who mentions "Jesus the Christ" or ANY of the apostles that isn't an interpolation by some corrupt churchman from the 4th century.

Why are you making that the sole condition of truth? You're engaging in a straw man argument.

 

[Thrillobyte]

This reminds me of someone I knew in my youth who said, "If God really exists, why doesn't he just write his name in the sky and then everyone would know he's real?" Do you see any flaws in his reasoning there?

But that wasn't my question. My question was:

Would it have been too great a task for Jesus' father, God--who is omnipotent and who presumably wants people to believe in his son--to cause just one secular historical to mention "Jesus the Christ was crucified by the Romans and rose on the 3rd day." in one of his writings?

If it wouldn't have been too great a task then why didn't he do it, assuming he wanted people to believe in his son and reading such a thing would cause them to believe.

And it didn't seem to be flawed reasoning when Yahweh stopped the sun in the sky so Joshua had extra time to slaughter his enemies. What's so crazy about writing his name in the sky?

 

[Windwalker]

But that wasn't my question. My question was:

Would it have been too great a task for Jesus' father, God--who is omnipotent and who presumably wants people to believe in his son--to cause just one secular historical to mention "Jesus the Christ was crucified by the Romans and rose on the 3rd day." in one of his writings?

If it wouldn't have been too great a task then why didn't he do it, assuming he wanted people to believe in his son and reading such a thing would cause them to believe.

I believe the person who said to me why doesn't God just write his name in the sky was asking that in the context of "if God wanted people to believe in him...." So I do see similarity here in your expectation that if "he wanted people to believe in his son and reading such a thing would cause them to believe". I see this as very similar or parallel reasoning with his.

I mean, I could address picking apart this reasoning on any number of points to begin with, but I'm curious if you can see any flaws in it yourself?

And it didn't seem to be flawed reasoning when Yahweh stopped the sun in the sky so Joshua had extra time to slaughter his enemies. What's so crazy about writing his name in the sky?

Maybe the purpose of faith is something far more than just a mere acknowledgment of facts? How much transformative effect does it have on someone to simply accept the fact that water is wet, or that humans need to eat food? That's just the way things are. There is no 'mystery' when it's known facts. In fact, I'd argue that proofs are for the weak in faith who need concrete literal facts in order to feel safe in an uncertain world.

Hell, a verse pops into mind that supports that idea right here, "Then Jesus told him, 'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed'." Perhaps the author of John had a point to make about the nature of faith, versus needing concrete literal proofs? What positive ideas can you come up with that you could imagine that might have been?

 

[Alien826]

I would correct this to more accurately say that there little reason to invoke the idea of God to explain things to us today that we have more scientific understandings of in order to explain.

I see it as a calculated gamble. Over centuries, science has explained more and more things that used to belong in the realm of religion. With some bumps in the road, science has won out over superstition, over and over again. It would seem to be reasonable to expect that to continue. It's like watching a rock roll down a hill. Half way down, we could argue about what will happen in the future. An assumption that it will continue to roll to the bottom of the hill seems like a good bet.

In other words, reality is in fact at least as magical as our primitive selves of the past imagined it to be, and right now in our knowledge we are like teens who gain a little bit of knowledge and presume we have it all figured out now. But in time, the more knowledge we gain, the more we realize that is is in fact magical, albeight seen through the eyes of an adult with a rational mind, rather than the ignorant superstitions of our childhood. It's not a regression to superstition, but a progression from the prerational, to the rational, to the transrational.

I'm not sure that is true. Take the nature of matter. Once a rock was seen as a solid lump. Then we came up with the idea of atoms, which were seen as little lumps of matter with smaller lumps in orbit around them, like a miniature solar system. Then we found that the nucleus of the atom could be broken down into smaller parts and the forces that hold them together could be identified and measured. Now we have even smaller components to examine and quantum theories to describe how they behave. It does seem as if we are approaching some kind of limit in what we can discover, where everything is seen as some form of energy.

The question of how life diverged into different forms is now well explained. What we have left is the question of how it started in the first place. We don't know that yet and many people cling to some kind of intelligent creator as an explanation. Once again we seem to be getting close to a final answer. My bet holds here too. I'm betting on science, it has a good track record.

And I have no idea what "transrational" might mean. Right-wing people will probably try to stop it being taught in schools, thinking it's related to trans-sexuality.

 

[F1fan]

But god, or the possibility of such, is always linked to the interpretation of the results, as you did with the sentence I have bolded.
In the case of the sports team, one of the two has to win, so there's a 50-50 chance that the prayers of one side or the other will appear to be answered. Of course we don't see the losing side saying that god has let them down.

Right, the hindsight fallacy. Things turn out the way you want, God did it. Things don't, well, find an excuse that doesn't blame God.

With the prayer study, the negative results are interpreted to mean that god doesn't exist or doesn't answer prayer.

Yeah, tests in reality. It offers results that show humans that prayer may not be what it's believed to be, so look for soem other option.

The idea that god might have a choice in the matter seems to be ignored, logical though it might be, just as the winning team doesn't entertain the idea that they might have played more skillfully.

Inevitably the act of prayer falls back on the fallible human, and why they are praying at all. I notice you haven't considered that.

 

[Alien826]

I believe the person who said to me why doesn't God just write his name in the sky was asking that in the context of "if God wanted people to believe in him...." So I do see similarity here in your expectation that if "he wanted people to believe in his son and reading such a thing would cause them to believe". I see this as very similar or parallel reasoning with his.

I mean, I could address picking apart this reasoning on any number of points to begin with, but I'm curious if you can see any flaws in it yourself?

The question always remains though, why does god feel it is necessary to hide from us? I addressed this in an earlier post.

The answer always seems to be some kind of rationalization, of the form "God is mysterious, we can't understand god, but here's an explanation anyway" followed by trotting out "free will" or something similar. The problem is that the question is never really answered. The idea that god values free will over our well being is logically consistent, but can never be established, because "God is mysterious", which is the final argument that people retreat to.

It seems to me that god's purpose, whatever that might be, would be better served by coming out into the open, explaining what is going on, and enlisting our conscious support.

 

[dybmh]

It doesn't have to be "publicized" in the way you're suggesting, like they put it into the "Mediterranean Daily". It would have just spread word to mouth. Additionally, the Roman soldiers who witnessed would have immediately reported back to their commanders that they had just witnessed a man raise someone from the dead. Had the soldiers not reported something this momentous they would have been executed if their commanders found out, and the soldiers knew they would be executed.

OK, that's a good point. But still, it's not a lie about Jesus to say that the Roman soldiers witnessed it if they didn't.

The rest, dyb are not logical. "It's not a lie about Jesus so it's okay"....well, I can't respond without saying something that would be construed as being insulting.

I'm not saying it's OK. The authors would have been wrong to fabricate those details. But they might have done it anyway. That doesn't invalidate all the events of the story. It just reduces the scale.

However, if you're assessing believability of the story, you're making excellent points. If you're assessing the method used for authoring an accurate story, you're making excellent points.

The piece I think you're missing is that the authors likely would have a different threshold for what exaggerations are permitted depending on whether they are Jesus' words or actions.

 

[Trailblazer]

You ARE being facetious, I hope.

No, quite the contrary. It is amazing how the OT prophecies match who Baha'u'llah was, where He appeared, what He did on His mission, and what happened as the result of His coming, which is how I know those prophecies are accurate. They are so much on target that even if I had no other reason to believe that He was the promised messiah and the return of Christ, those prophecies would suffice.

 

[Trailblazer]

The question always remains though, why does god feel it is necessary to hide from us? I addressed this in an earlier post.

God is not hiding anything except His Essence. The attributes and will of God are God are manifest in the Manifestations of God, who I call Messengers.

It seems to me that god's purpose, whatever that might be, would be better served by coming out into the open, explaining what is going on, and enlisting our conscious support.

Don't you think that if God's purpose would be better served by doing something differently, God would do something differently?
After all, God is omnipotent and omniscient, so God could do something differently if He wanted to.

 

[Thrillobyte]

If you define God in the terms you imagine God to be, then this is probably a true statement. But to those who understand the nature of the Divine beyond an anthropomorphic projection of a superhuman deity who performs magic tricks, then your statement is false. They would see that the fact that everything exists reveals the Divine in every single moment continuously.

In other words, if you set the terms of what you think God should look like, then you limit your perception to that alone. In effect, this is engaging in a personal straw man argument. Are you really refuting the existence of God, or just a very childlike idea about God?

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the Christian's ideas about God that you were exposed to, is what is in error, and that maybe there other perhaps better ways to think about God that don't violate common sense or reason? How do you respond to those who believe in God, yet don't have to deny reason and science in order to do it? They aren't really "true Christians", might be your answer to them like the fundamentalists you were exposed to would say?

I define "God" in terms of how the scientific community defines "God". They are the ones doing the studies and tests. They are the ones who have concluded that a there is no supernatural being having any discernible effect on earth.

Much of what you say doesn't sound Christian, it sounds New Age. I personally don't think God exists. If he did, I believe he'd try to make himself known in some way. A God who hides himself from human view is a God who might as well not even exist far as I'm concerned. I mean we get into all this esoteric nonsense about, "God's presence on earth is made known in your heart and in your perceptions of how or what a supreme being who doesn't wish to be observed nevertheless interacts with spirits in tune with his spirit..yada yada" I don't deal in that stuff, walker. It only leads to confusion and gets us miles away from the topic of the thread.

Again,

Do you know of ANY secular historian from the 1st century who says, "Jesus the Christ" in his writings? Josephus doesn't count because his writings are heavily interpolated and tampered with by corrupt churchmen. That's a fact. Simple yes or no.