There is NO Historical Evidence for Jesus

[Trailblazer]

What are your standards?

My standards are that the prophecy was fulfilled. It is called 'connecting the dots.'
You have to have a claimant and put him to the test, in order to determine if he fulfilled the prophecies.
Using your standards, nobody could ever get to the truth, they would just keep going in circles.

So why would you attempt to convince...

I am not trying to convince anybody since that is not my job.

 

[Trailblazer]

That is far more likely reinterpretation after the fact. Christians have done the same thing. I have yet to see a Jesus prophecy that lives up to its claims. I am not going to wade through endless examples. You need to find your best example. If you want some guidelines on what it takes to be a valid prophecy this article can help you:

1. It must be accurate. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not accurate, because knowledge (and thus foreknowledge) excludes inaccurate statements. TLDR: It's true.
2. It must be in the Bible. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not in the Bible, because Biblical by definition foreknowledge can only come from the Bible itself, rather than modern reinterpretations of the text. TLDR: It's in plain words in the Bible.
3. It must be precise and unambiguous. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if meaningless philosophical musings or multiple possible ideas could fulfill the foreknowledge, because ambiguity prevents one from knowing whether the foreknowledge was intentional rather than accidental. TLDR: Vague "predictions" don't count.
4. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened be true but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.
5. It must have been unknown. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of an educated guess based off contemporary knowledge, because foreknowledge requires a person to know a statement when it would have been impossible, outside of supernatural power, for that person to know it. TLDR: Ideas of the time don't count.

Biblical prophecies

There are numerous Biblical prophecies, some vaguely fulfilled, others strangely unfulfilled. Of course, like the Bible, the Quran also contains what its followers maintain are fulfilled prophesies. Christians tend to find these unconvincing or silly — which is coincidentally the attitude which...

rationalwiki.org

Just for the sake of argument, let's look at your five criteria for a valid prophecy:

1. It must be accurate. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not accurate, because knowledge (and thus foreknowledge) excludes inaccurate statements. TLDR: It's true.

What do you mean by accurate?

1. It must be in the Bible. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not in the Bible, because Biblical by definition foreknowledge can only come from the Bible itself, rather than modern reinterpretations of the text. TLDR: It's in plain words in the Bible.

Well, of course it mist be in the Bible, in order to be Bible prophecy.

1. It must be precise and unambiguous. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if meaningless philosophical musings or multiple possible ideas could fulfill the foreknowledge, because ambiguity prevents one from knowing whether the foreknowledge was intentional rather than accidental. TLDR: Vague "predictions" don't count.

Vague predictions do count as part of the overall picture of the fulfillment of prophecies although as a standalone they don’t prove anything.

1. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened be true but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.

It would not be improbable. Rather, it would not only be probable but it must have actually happened, because God’s perfect foreknowledge requires that it was going to actually happen.

1. It must have been unknown. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of an educated guess based off contemporary knowledge, because foreknowledge requires a person to know a statement when it would have been impossible, outside of supernatural power, for that person to know it. TLDR: Ideas of the time don't count.

It would not be unknown. It would have been known that it was going to happen since that is what God’s perfect foreknowledge requires, something that God new was going to happen in the future.

 

[nPeace]

Did you not ask this before, and an answer given already?
Are you hoping for another? Did you actually consider the answer?
Please consider the following.

An era when embellishment and exagerations were common writing techniques.

Every era has some aspect to it, that may not be the best.
That doesn't automatically follow that there were not other aspects that were useful, and beneficial.

Take our era - the information age
...for the vast majority of people, digital changes happen outside of their conscious perception. They are merely confronted with constantly changing demands and requirements for their social life: They need 'DigiD’s' for their communication with government institutions; they feel the need to own a smartphone and maintain a Facebook page to keep in touch with their family or they feel the constant pressure to update their computer software and hardware in order to “keep up”.

At the same time, the technologies and processes that are behind these changes have become ever smaller, more complex, and more hidden in our daily physical environment. It is difficult, in short, to find a shared language, shared concepts and shared ways of conversation that involve large and diverse groups of people in the question how our personal lives and social power relations are actually changing in relation to digital technologies.

How modern life affects our physical and mental health

Why believe in these stories in the 21st century when we have better rules for critical thought and skepticism?

Because they contain values that work for our day - any era. They are timeless.
Since you disagree though, please name ONE rule WE have that is better, and please explain why skepticism is such a good thing, and how you apply it where science is concerned... for example, explain how you apply critical thought and skepticism regarding whale evolution.

Just because it is a comfortable tradition of belief?

Is that how you feel about what scientists believe?
How do you feel about these skeptical and critical thinkers?

 

[Alien826]

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.

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.

All the bolded statements are assertions that you can't possibly have absolute knowledge of. Assumptions, in other words. Drawing conclusions from assumptions is not going to convince anyone but the already convinced. All I can suggest is that my opinions are based on what others tell me about their beliefs in god, for example that god wants us all to be saved. I can take that idea and criticize his methods, based on what I do know about human nature, which tell me that remaining hidden has not worked well in the past and is unlikely to work well in the future. Being mysterious has resulted in a multiplicity of religious organizations that have tended to make war on each other more often than not. 1939 years since Jesus gave his message, and we still had WW2.

Time for a change I think.

 

[nPeace]

Look, I started the thread so I get to choose the topic. Responses in line with TOS should be about the topic. If the topic makes Christians uncomfortable then there are other threads they can visit. But while we're all on this topic, it isn't about prayers getting answered or not or if the Bible is a reliable source and the stories truthful. The topic is whether or not secular historians ( I have to use to word "secular" in all my posts because if I don't Christians jump on that to bring up Luke who they claim was a legitimate historian. He wasn't.) Anyway I have to use "secular" historians to eliminate Luke who had a vested interest in getting the Jesus story rolling.

So I posed the question to Windwalker THREE times if I recall correctly. Each time he sidestepped the question and got into all this esoteric New Age mumbo-jumbo but never dared try to answer my question which was:

Can you name one secular historian from the 1st century who mentions "Jesus the Christ" or Jesus anything that would identify him as Jesus the great rabbi son of God who died and caused a great earthquake, darkness at noon for 3 hours and zombie saints to rise from their graves?

And then he gets upset because I don't deal with a few New Age topics like "internal vs external" which don't have anything to do with the topic. Or maybe windwalker is just saying "You won't show me yours so I won't show you mine." Who knows?

Why are people here always accusing others of getting upset!!!? Are they themselves upset? It seems that way. Take care dude.

 

[nPeace]

The critics creed: "Deny everything, admit nothing, demand evidence, make outrageous counter accusations."

When will they get the Winner frubal back. It's needed.

 

[Alien826]

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."
"Show me," you say.
I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll offer to spray-paint the dragon to make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work. Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?

This is similar to The parable of the Invisible Gardener.

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"[1]

Parable of the Invisible Gardener - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

My standards are that the prophecy was fulfilled. It is called 'connecting the dots.'
You have to have a claimant and put him to the test, in order to determine if he fulfilled the prophecies.
Using your standards, nobody could ever get to the truth, they would just keep going in circles.

I am sure it would make a significant difference for me if I could conclusively document the existence of deities like I can with human spirits and non-human entities as a veteran paranormal researcher and investigator, or if I could sense, see, hear, and directly communicate with any kind of deity like I can with human spirits and non-human entities as a psychic medium. As a medium, I've spent the past 43 and a half years of my life sensing, seeing, and hearing human spirits as well as a few non-human entities. The last 15 and a half years of my life have been comprised of having direct interactions with human spirits and a few non-human entities, but I've never had any form of direct encounter (feeling, seeing, hearing, or directly speaking to) with any deity. As a matter of fact, the only supernatural phenomena I've ever witnessed while in a church were the earthbound spirits of confused Christians who had no idea what was happening to them. I'm not convinced that any deities exist, but I'm quite confident that human spirits and non-human entities exist.

I am not trying to convince anybody since that is not my job.

I feel that way when I speak to hardcore skeptics about paranormal phenomena.

 

[Trailblazer]

I'm sure it would make a significant difference for me if I could conclusively document the existence of deities like I can with human spirits and non-human entities as a veteran paranormal researcher and investigator, or if I could sense, see, hear, and directly communicate with any kind of deity like I can with human spirits and non-human entities as a psychic medium.

I'm sure the skeptics will call me gullible, but I do not care. I do not need to document the existence of human spirits and non-human entities in order to 'believe' that they exist. Since I am not a psychic medium or a paranormal researcher and investigator documentation is not something I am able to do, but because of what I already believe about human spirits and because I trust that your experiences are genuine, I believe that these entities exist. I guess you could say I take it on faith.

 

[Trailblazer]

When will they get the Winner frubal back. It's needed.

I still give winners even though there is no frubal.

*WINNER*

 

[nPeace]

Christianity professes conviction from the Holy Spirit according to the Bible. The only way to know God in Christianity is through the Holy Spirit. That comes through hearing the word of God preached. According to the bible it becomes obvious to all who hear the word of God. For if they do not know God's truth no one could be yet held to a final judgment. According to Christianity all will know what they conscientiously reject or accept. Iow, they'll know the truth irrefutably, and reject it. Free will dictates that all must know the truth in order to accept or reject it. So those who reject the truth will know they reject the actual truth.

And that is the Bible.

So in conclusion conviction only comes through the Holy Spirit, and those who hear are without excuse because they know that they know that they know the truth and reject it.

All the evidence in the world won't matter without the Holy Spirit.

As an atheist I know no such truth. That is my honesty. I know the Bible salvation message accurately and still have no conviction of it's truth. So either Christianity is false, or the Holy Spirit has yet to convict me. Until I know it's true there is no free will choice.

Well if you are going to say what's in the Bible, you can't be picky. Otherwise, you misrepresent the truth, and don't show interest in truth.
Hopefully the latter is not the case.

(Romans 1:18-23)
18 For God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who are suppressing the truth in an unrighteous way, 19 because what may be known about God is clearly evident among them, for God made it clear to them. 20 For his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable. 21 For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God nor did they thank him, but they became empty-headed in their reasonings and their senseless hearts became darkened. 22 Although claiming they were wise, they became foolish 23 and turned the glory of the incorruptible God into something like the image of corruptible man and birds and four-footed creatures and reptiles.

(Psalm 19:1, 2) 1 The heavens are declaring the glory of God; The skies above proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day their speech bubbles forth, And night after night they reveal knowledge.

Hence...
(Psalm 10:4) In his haughtiness, the wicked man makes no investigation; All his thoughts are: “There is no God.”


Then, alongside that, we have this.
(1 Thessalonians 2:13) . . .when you received God’s word, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but, just as it truthfully is, as the word of God, which is also at work in you believers.

Examining the Bible, reveals this to be true.
(Joshua 23:14) . . .not one word out of all the good promises that Jehovah your God has spoken to you has failed. They have all come true. . .

We have two primary sources of physical evidence where we find hundreds of pieces of evidence.
The holy spirit comes into play, only where the humble - not the haughty, or arrogant deniers - act on the evidence before them.
In other words, they don't squeeze their eyes shut, or stick their head in the sand.

That's what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 13:10-16

 

[nPeace]

I still give winners even though there is no frubal.

*WINNER*

Oh. I see. Maybe I could create a tiny image. That would look better.

 

[nPeace]

And what hard evidence do you have such a realm exists?

That's not the topic. How is it, you are interested in that one?

 

[Thrillobyte]

The critics creed: "Deny everything, admit nothing, demand evidence, make outrageous counter accusations."

I'm forced to deny there's any evidence for the gospel Jesus' existence because no Christian will present any despite my innumerable requests. Let's nip this in the bud, Dyb:

Do you have ANY secular historic references or citations to support the belief that the gospels Jesus existed? Do you have ANY historic references for Jesus from ANY of the historians in the list I presented in post #44? Do you have any statues or reliefs, or artifacts or monuments or anything dating from the 1st century that history says belonged to Jesus? Do you have any of this? Simple yes or no, and we can proceed from there, but please no 10-paragraph smoke and mirrors in response to cover a simple yes or no. Are you able to answer the question with a simple yes or no?

 

[Thrillobyte]

That's not the topic. How is it, you are interested in that one?

I'm not. You mentioned it. I simply responded.

 

[Trailblazer]

All the bolded statements are assertions that you can't possibly have absolute knowledge of. Assumptions, in other words.

No, they are not assumptions, they are beliefs. A belief is not the same as an assumption. For one thing, my beliefs are based upon evidence whereas assumptions are not.

Drawing conclusions from assumptions is not going to convince anyone but the already convinced. All I can suggest is that my opinions are based on what others tell me about their beliefs in god, for example that god wants us all to be saved. I can take that idea and criticize his methods, based on what I do know about human nature, which tell me that remaining hidden has not worked well in the past and is unlikely to work well in the future. Being mysterious has resulted in a multiplicity of religious organizations that have tended to make war on each other more often than not. 1939 years since Jesus gave his message, and we still had WW2.

I am not trying to convince anyone of anything that I believe. All I can suggest is that my beliefs are based on my own research and investigation, NOT on what others tell me about their beliefs in God, for example that god wants us all to be saved. For one thing, I do not even believe that there is such a thing as 'saved' since I do not believe that there is anything to be saved from, except maybe ourselves, our own lower material nature.

The Essence of God has remained hidden, but that has worked just fine, since people who are interested in God can find out about God from God's Manifestations (Messengers). Not even the Messengers of God know God's Essence, so how are we are supposed to know?

Nobody needs to know God's Essence in order to know God's message.

Time for a change I think.

Good luck waiting for that to happen.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

I'm sure the skeptics will call me gullible, but I do not care. I do not need to document the existence of human spirits and non-human entities in order to 'believe' that they exist. Since I am not a psychic medium or a paranormal researcher and investigator documentation is not something I am able to do, but because of what I already believe about human spirits and because I trust that your experiences are genuine, I believe that these entities exist. I guess you could say I take it on faith.

In my case, sincerely believing in God by faith didn't exactly work out for me, nor did years of dedicated and earnest prayer to God. Therefore, I no longer accept the existence of any deity on faith. Having said that, I'm not willing to entirely dismiss the existence of any deities because I believe in supernatural phenomena, and the existence of deities could be a possibility in this regard. I can honestly say that I believe that human spirits and non-human entities exist, but I don't just claim to believe without providing what I consider to be evidence that substantiates my belief. I'm totally convinced, and I've shared my experiences as a psychic medium and a paranormal researcher and investigator on this forum for more than a year now (such as in this post here).

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I do not consider it irrational to believe in God by faith, as long as faith is supported by evidence.

Yes, you've stated that before, and my response is the same. You use a private definition for evidentiary support here, which is what makes the belief unjustified and hold it irrational. Belief by faith is the opposite of justified belief.

There are two reasons that God doesn’t prove that He exists.

One.

I still do not understand why you would set aside critical thinking in order to test the claims of Christianity.

Because its claims immediately fail critical analysis. They needed to be tested empirically - what I likened to trying on a pair of shoes for fit and wearing them awhile before giving up on them if they don't fit quite right at first.

I don't think that most Christians who are encased in that shell even think about critical thinking at all.

No argument.

It is not that they lack the skills, it is that they don't think to use them since they have been so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Church, and that tends to suspend all thinking and turn it into believing.

Here's where I disagree. Those skilled in critical thinking are immune to being unwilfully indoctrinated.

I agree that once you have ruled out the god of Genesis and of Abraham as taught by Christianity the Christian religion is toothless, but that does not mean that religion is toothless, since Christianity is not the ONLY religion in the world.

Where are the teeth in your religion? I see a ***** cat that I am safe to disregard. What fate do you imagine for me if I die an atheist, and how would it be different if I died a Baha'i instead?

1. It must be precise and unambiguous. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if meaningless philosophical musings or multiple possible ideas could fulfill the foreknowledge, because ambiguity prevents one from knowing whether the foreknowledge was intentional rather than accidental. TLDR: Vague "predictions" don't count.

Vague predictions do count as part of the overall picture of the fulfillment of prophecies although as a standalone they don’t prove anything.

Vague predictions is all that scripture offers, and any number of events can be called its fulfillment.

1. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened be true but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.

It would not be improbable. Rather, it would not only be probable but it must have actually happened, because God’s perfect foreknowledge requires that it was going to actually happen.

You've misunderstood what improbable means in this context. Let me illustrate, along with what is meant by specificity.

I've shared the passage from the movie called "Frequency" in which Dennis Quaid's son living in the future tells his father living in the past the outcome of game five of what is for him the as yet unfinished 1969 World Series from 1998 using a ham radio in order to convince his father that he really knows his father's future. Here's what the son said to the father:

"Well, game five was the big one. It turned in the bottom of the 6th. We were down 3-0. Cleon Jones gets hit on the foot - left a scuffmark on the ball. Clendenon comes up. The count goes to 2 and 2. High fastball. He nailed it. Weis slammed a solo shot in the 7th to tie. Jones and Swoboda scored in the 8th. We won, Pop."

Then the father sees it all play out live on a TV in a bar. Is that convincing? Once one rules out a taped delay broadcast of the game, yes, it is. No other event could be mistaken for the prophesied game, and this knowledge simply wouldn't be available to the average man living in the father's time. Why? Because it is very specific and predicted something very unlikely - times, dates, batters' names and the results of their at bats.

Biblical prophecy lacks that specificity and improbability, without which, it is very human and mundane, and reminds no critical thinker of a transhuman prescience.

 

[Windwalker]

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

I'd say the issue lies in the idea of what God is and does. Why are we assuming God thinks like humans, where we may make a judgment call in matters of choices to do one thing or the other? This is an example of anthropomorphizing God. The solution to this is to get rid of thinking of God like another human being with thoughts and feelings and the range of human emotions.

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.

Sure, those answers are all working off the same faulty premise, which is projecting upon the Divine human attributes. So yes, those answers offered really don't satisfy the rational mind, even to the very people who offer them as excuses. It's all just rationalizing to make their beliefs work somehow.

But my answer to that is similar to what I say to Creationists who deny evolution. What all those bad rationalizations are about its trying to defend a poor understanding and interpretation of the book of Genesis. Why not just change how they read the Genesis story, rather than try to deny the science? One doesn't need to negate God, because the Genesis myth isn't scientifically accurate, for goodness sake.

But no, instead they are married to their ideas about God, and are not willing to reconsider their ideas. This is not faith. This is been married to one's ideas and not be willing to reconsider how they think about God.

The problem is that the question is never really answered.

I can address it more easily by getting rid of being married to the anthropomorphic ideas about God, making those simply more figures of speech, rather than literal descriptions about what God actually is. But then my answer would not be defending the literal ideas of an anthropomorphic God.

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.

I would argue that God is out in the open every single moment of every single day. It's really more a matter of getting rid of expecting that God conforms to our mythic-literal ideas about God that allows it to be realized. As the mystic Meister Eckhart said so well, "I pray God make me free of God, so that I may know God in God's unconditional being."

All we are seeing when we impose upon the Divine fabric of Reality our mental images of God, is a projection of our own minds. But when we let go of those, then "we shall see face to face... then we shall know even as we are known". And all these other questions are trying to fit God into a box of human ideas. It's obviously not going to work.

 

[Thrillobyte]

Why are people here always accusing others of getting upset!!!? Are they themselves upset? It seems that way. Take care dude.

I'm not upset, honest. I think Christians show themselves in a bad light because outside people reading my question notice that Christians are deliberately avoiding answering the question. One name from them would draw me closer to Christianity again because I would have what I have been seeking for the last several years: evidence the Jesus of the gospels actually existed, yet not a single Christian seems able to provide one..