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Infamous
Skeptic Friend
85 Posts |
 Posted - 12/13/2002 : 09:13:14 [Permalink]
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Here's my application of Occam's Razor: The simplest possible explanation is that Jesus was a real person. We have plenty of evidence to support that, and the only arguments to the contrary are the denial of supporting evidence, and circumstantial evidence provided by the similarity between Christianity and other religions. There is no logic in moving to any explanation more complicated than "Jesus was a real person." The only reasons one would want to do that are either anti-religious or anti-Christian sentiment, or a personal predisposition toward conpiracy theories.
Apparently you fail to see the difference between Zeus, Apollo, Odin, Loki, Brahma, and Jesus. All of those other entities were never claimed to be anything but gods. There was nobody in ancient Egypt, Greece, Norway, or India who would have claimed to have spent three years with Hathor or Poseidon or Thor or Shiva, as the followers of Jesus claimed.
Then there are Mohammed, Buddha, and other religious founders, whose religions claim them to be real people. And there were people back then who testified to spending time with Mohammed and Buddha, just as Peter, James, John, and Luke claimed to have spent time with Jesus.
So what you're really doing is comparing apples with oranges. |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 09:46:02 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Infamous
The simplest possible explanation is that Jesus was a real person. We have plenty of evidence to support that,
Awesome! After five continuing threads of this topic, someone claims to have plenty of supporting evidence! Now we're getting somewhere.
Ok, now let's hear it. I'm sure it can't possibly be any of the so-called "evidence" we've already discussed (and shown lacking) ad nauseum, right?
quote:
denial of supporting evidence
You have this amazing (and annoying) ability to sweep aside and dismiss pages of discussion and arguments in one grandiose declaration. By saying "denial", you are implying that all of these forgeries and stretches in interpretation of ancient documents are obviously true and historical evidence of a historical Jesus, and that we are not justified in doubting them.
Please defend this view.
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| Edited by - Tokyodreamer on 12/13/2002 09:53:30 |
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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 10:07:07 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Infamous
... just as Peter, James, John, and Luke claimed to have spent time with Jesus.
I suppose this is not all that bad a place to start.
Would you mind referencing these claims and giving us your estimate of (1) by whom, and (2) when these claims were made? |
For the philosophical naturalist, the rejection of supernaturalism is a case of "death by a thousand cuts." -- Barbara Forrest, Ph.D. |
| Edited by - ConsequentAtheist on 12/13/2002 10:09:39 |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 11:30:28 [Permalink]
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Here's my application of Occam's Razor: The simplest possible explanation is that Jesus was a real person.
If we are going with the simplest possible explanation of why no one reported seeing Jesus, no one reported any of his miracles happening, no one saw any of his Apostles, no mention of him shows up for generations and is then contradictory--the simplest answer is that he is a fiction character who exists only between the covers of the books written about him.
We have plenty of evidence to support that,
We have zero evidence to support a historic Jesus. There is no person recorded in the area at the time who could have even been mistaken for him.
and the only arguments to the contrary are the denial of supporting evidence,
Which have been shown to be "Pious Frauds"
and circumstantial evidence provided by the similarity between Christianity and other religions.
Since all Jesus is is a story with no physical evidence (as fiction never comes with physical evidence--being fiction) that fact that the story isn't original allows us to dismiss it.
There is no logic in moving to any explanation more complicated than "Jesus was a real person."
There can be no more complicated explanation than "a real person" as you have not a single shred of evidence to even suggest he was a person.
The only reasons one would want to do that are either anti-religious or anti-Christian sentiment, or a personal predisposition toward conpiracy theories.
Oh please spare us you biggotry.
Apparently you fail to see the difference between Zeus, Apollo, Odin, Loki, Brahma, and Jesus. All of those other entities were never claimed to be anything but gods. There was nobody in ancient Egypt, Greece, Norway, or India who would have claimed to have spent three years with Hathor or Poseidon or Thor or Shiva, as the followers of Jesus claimed.
Sure there were. Hera spent a lot of time with Zeus, Vishnu used to hang out with Shiva, oh the laughs they had together.
You don't get it do you? You are too hood winked by Christian hog wash. The people you are claiming spent time with Jesus are all characters in the story. There is no evidence for them either. It's like saying " How can you say that Tarzan is fictional when Jane spent so much time with him." Pick up a copy of Tarzan of the Apes sometime, it starts with the author telling how he met a man who was an eyewitness to the life of Tarzan and how he got the story from him. Yet it is still placed in the fiction section, and to notice the fact that it so closely resembles The Jungle Book is not taken to being anti-apeman or anti-Lord of the Jungle sentiment.
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I learned something ... I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween. I guess they don't like strangers going up to their door and annoying them.
-Bruce Clark
There's No Toilet Paper...on the Road Less Traveled |
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darwin alogos
SFN Regular
USA
532 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 13:18:07 [Permalink]
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- Slater:The evidence to the contrary are the myths of Mithra and Dionnysus which match the Jesus story. They are known fictions.
DA:Slater just which stories of good old Dino and Mothra are you referring to? I'm searching through my MERDIAN HANDBOOK OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY,and my copy of BULFINCH'S MYTHOLOGY and I can't find ONE THING that is even close to anything recorded in the NT TD:Ok, now let's hear it. I'm sure it can't possibly be any of the so-called "evidence" we've already discussed (and shown lacking) ad nauseum, right?
DA: TD,before you go on celebrating like you refuted one piece of probative evidence thats been presented you should acknowledge your bonehead blunder when you confused the passages in Josephus and you NEVER HAVE PRESENTED ANY REBUTTAL EVIDENCE TO THAT REFERENCE,therefore, you really should squelch your bravado untill you DEAL WITH THE FACTS ALREADY PRESENTED! |
To deny logic you must use it.To deny Jesus Existed you must throw away all your knowledge of the ancient world. To deny ID
you must refute all analogical reasoning. So the question is why deny? |
| Edited by - darwin alogos on 12/13/2002 13:25:20 |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 14:38:22 [Permalink]
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quote:
Quoth DA:
DA:Slater just which stories of good old Dino and Mothra
Now that's funny.
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I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.
-Agent Smith |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 14:57:16 [Permalink]
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Sweet mother of god, DA, how many times have I given you the references? And still you look in childrens books and have the nerve to complain. "Gee, I looked in a different place than you told me and I can't find what you are talking about...duuuuh."
I'll make it easy, just three reference books
Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life by Carl Kerényi
The Mysteries of Mithra by Franz Cumont
The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology by Joseph Campbell |
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I learned something ... I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween. I guess they don't like strangers going up to their door and annoying them.
-Bruce Clark
There's No Toilet Paper...on the Road Less Traveled |
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Avenel
Skeptic Friend
USA
60 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 15:12:26 [Permalink]
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| DA, you can also find essays comparing specific claims about Jesus with occurances in other God-man myths herehttp://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa.htm. I'd recommend looking at the books in the bibliographies of these essays as well. |
"How many angels can swim on the head of a beer?" - Roger Ramjet |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 15:28:08 [Permalink]
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| What is it with you and that web site? Are you getting a commission? |
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I learned something ... I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween. I guess they don't like strangers going up to their door and annoying them.
-Bruce Clark
There's No Toilet Paper...on the Road Less Traveled |
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Legallee Insane
Skeptic Friend
Canada
126 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 17:39:33 [Permalink]
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The way I see it, there probably was some guy way back then named Jesus. But my theory is that he was just a really good con-artist who swam across the ocean from Mexico and people couldn't pronounce his name properly.
Did Jesus, the character from all those bible stories, really exist?
Absolutely not. Other than the bible (a book that was not neccessarily written when people think it was), and some falsified artifacts (shroud of turin for example) there is no evidence to support the actual existence of such a figure. The bible doesn't even count as evidence for creationism, there has never been anything found to support that any bible tales might be the least bit true. |
--"Only the fool says in his heart: There is no god -- The wise says it to the world"
--"I darn you to HECK!" - Catbert
--"Don't worry, we're not laughing at you, we're laughing near you." |
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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 18:10:36 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Legallee Insane
Other than the bible (a book that was not neccessarily written when people think it was), ...
What a curious formulation. |
For the philosophical naturalist, the rejection of supernaturalism is a case of "death by a thousand cuts." -- Barbara Forrest, Ph.D. |
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Legallee Insane
Skeptic Friend
Canada
126 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 20:03:32 [Permalink]
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| Well it's true isn't it. Do we have concrete proof that the bible isn't simply the work of some person with an overactive imagination. |
--"Only the fool says in his heart: There is no god -- The wise says it to the world"
--"I darn you to HECK!" - Catbert
--"Don't worry, we're not laughing at you, we're laughing near you." |
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darwin alogos
SFN Regular
USA
532 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 20:45:38 [Permalink]
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This review sums it up: quote:
Too bad there's no scholarship involved, January 4, 2002
Reviewer: trueskeptic (see more about me) from Gaithersburg, MD United States
More entertainment for conspiracy buffs! - but with much less honest intellectual input than most.
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"[m]any of the claims made about parallels between Jesus and pagan figures are only justified by reference to books that are nearly a
hundred years out of date and, as J. P. Holding has demonstrated, modern Mithras studies have moved on a good deal. In the few cases
where I could check their sources something rather surprising came up. Freke and Gandy are so selective and vague with their references
that I could find a statement that totally contradicts their central thesis on the very page that they pointed to.
A couple of examples will surface to show we are not dealing with a pair of objective scholars but people who are willing to pull the wool
over the eyes of their readers. They refer many times to The Mysteries of Mithra by Francis Cumont and published in 1903. Yet we find
that in his comparison of Mithraism and Christianity, Cumont (certainly no friend of Christianity himself) specifically states that unlike
Mithras, Jesus was a real person.
When dealing with ancient sources they are even more blatant. On the basis of some third century pictures of crucifixions, the authors claim
Bacchuus was crucified and Christians copied the idea. This is their piece de resistance and they even put one of the pictures on the cover
of their book. But suppose there existed an earlier source who stated categorically that no pagan godman was crucified. That would destroy
their case and reading the Jesus Mysteries you would assume that neither Freke or Gandy knew of such a source even if it existed. You
would be wrong.
They quote from Justin Martyr many times about his concerns that pagans and Christians had some similar rituals (they did and modern
scholarship is totally unsurprised by this). He is a second century writer who therefore predates all the pictures of pagan godmen being
crucified and he writes:
"But in no instance, not even in any of those called sons of Jupiter, did they imitate the being crucified; for it was not understood by them, all
the things said of it having been put symbolically." Justin Martyr 's First Apology LX.
No honest scholar would simply fail to quote this vitally important contradiction to their thesis. Gandy did attempt to explain away this
passage when it was presented to him but failed utterly and certainly could not say why he ever felt he could simply miss it out of his book."
Borrow, but don't buy.
Was this review helpful to you?
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To deny logic you must use it.To deny Jesus Existed you must throw away all your knowledge of the ancient world. To deny ID
you must refute all analogical reasoning. So the question is why deny? |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2002 : 21:27:10 [Permalink]
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A few problems
Who the F**k wrote this piece of drivel?
I have actually, at this point, exchanged letters with JP Holding. He has a great deal of trouble telling the truth. In fact I was left with the distinct impression that honesty was of no concern to him whatsoever.
The dramatically new Mithra studies he talks about that "contradict" Franz Cumont say that Persian and Roman Mithraism were contemporaneous and not sequential as Cumont had surmised.
Which means that it is more damning towards Christianity and not less as he would like to mislead you to believe.
This comment that Cumont was "certainly no friend of Christianity himself" is simple Protestant bigotry. Franz Cumont was a devote Roman Catholic, who had even studied for the priesthood at one point. He struggles throughout his book with the Christian thefts of Mithrain theology. He attempts to reconcile it again and again by stating that Jesus was historic and Mythra a myth but cannot explain why the older version of the story isn't the true one and the newer is.
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I learned something ... I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween. I guess they don't like strangers going up to their door and annoying them.
-Bruce Clark
There's No Toilet Paper...on the Road Less Traveled |
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