Scientific Approach to the Jesus question

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Cris, May 30, 2006.

  1. ashura the Old Right Registered Senior Member

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    If I wrote a fictional eye witness account of a pink dinosaur that baked me cookies right this second, and you find it 2000 years later, would be compelled to believe it?
     
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  3. John99 Banned Banned

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    how do you know they existed, did you ever see a video of them or photographs? or are you simply going on faith? relying on moldy manuscripts?

    woohooo/

    Like what 8mm film archives?
     
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  5. nds1 Registered Senior Member

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    Eyewitness accounts according to who? The Bible?

    Why is it that many other big events of history have hundreds of eyewitness acounts backing it up, not two?

    The Quran is an eyewitness account too. Maybe that's why Islam is 21% of the world.
     
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  7. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Skin, I was just pointing out that there are many more reasons to believe that Jesus was a real person than Plato or Aristotle, two who unquestionably existed in most people's estimation, and it's good to see you didn't contest that, but you really need to follow along more closely.
     
  8. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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    M*W: The philosophers had eye-witness accounts. These guys were teachers. Their human associations were well-documented. There's really no question or dispute who they really were. No one else stood in for them. They were who they said they were, and history agrees with that.

    There were NO eye-witness accounts of Jesus, unless you accept as credible and true the biblical eye-witness accounts. The biblical eye-witness accounts cannot be proven, because they were not documented by history ONLY myth! The bible writers created characters with distinct personalities, but that doesn't mean that any of them actually existed. The characters surrounding Jesus did not exist either... even those characters who were supposed to be the eye-witness documenters of Jesus. None of them existed. It's also highly unlikely that a man named Pilate existed. The Romans were supposed to be the detailed record-keepers of the Empire, yet, there are no records to be found of Jesus and his family, even though there was a great census that went out over the land. None of their names were included in the Roman records. Had they been, the church or other PTB would have made sure those documents were readily available to be viewed by the doubters. If something doesn't exist, you cannot have an eye-witness account of it... that is, unless it's a delusion.
     
  9. SkinWalker Archaeology / Anthropology Moderator

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    You guys are falling for the straw man argument (the main logical fallacy I forgot to mention) IAC has created. This is typical of those deluded by their belief systems since it doesn't pay to critically examine the principles they're based upon. If the principles are established as unlikely, fallacious themselves, contradictory, etc., then the belief itself crumbles like a house of cards.

    This is why fundamentalists, the truly deluded of religious adherents, cling to such disproved, debunked, and pseudoscientific principles and completely refuse to actually engage in intelligent discourse. The fundamentalist believes that should one of their supernatural and superstitious principles be dismissed or accepted as unlikely (Noachian flood myth; zombie Jesus; Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt; parting the Red Sea; stopping the rotation of the Earth for 24 hours; and other nonsensical and superstitious beliefs of Iron Age cult followers), then the whole house of cards will collapse. And they're right. It does collapse. Indeed, it collapsed long ago, but the credulous chose to believe in the incredible rather than obtain educations or accept the educations they obtain.

    So, straw man arguments aside, IAC really has no evidence that is legitimate by even kooky standards to support his claims. The claim is the evidence.

    What are those reasons? You've made the claim -we've all seen it. We just don't see what the reasons are. Saying there are many more reasons and there actually being many more reasons are two different things.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2007
  10. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Jesus left a wake of change in history, like a stone hitting a still pond, and that, right at and just after the time of his Incarnation, nothing close to this can be said about Plato and Aristotle.
     
  11. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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    M*W: You cannot compare the two. Apples and oranges. There was no 'incarnation' of Jesus, but Aristotle and Plato were living, breathing men of note.
     
  12. SkinWalker Archaeology / Anthropology Moderator

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    You're assuming it was a stone. Does not the shit of a passing bird also leave a ripple? Part of me is being funny, but I'm also being serious. There are many instances in history and prehistory where an assumption about past events has created a false and very wrong belief.

    The cargo cults of Polynesia are case in point. Indeed, these cults serve to demonstrate the fallacious nature of your overall assumptions: you assume that because the majority of a population believes it must be true. Complete and utter poppycock.

    Moderator Note to M*W and IAC: If your comments disappear, its because the rest of us don't need to read your bickering. Use the PM system.
     
  13. SnakeLord snakeystew.com Valued Senior Member

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    Ok. Kindly do me a favour and state what evidence exists to show that jesus lived and further from that to show that jesus was god. On second thoughts don't bother.. I've seen it all too many times. This is where someone comes along and mentions some guy who lived some 200 years after the supposed existence of jesus and yet considers it evidence. How I wish I never bothered posting in the first place now

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  14. SnakeLord snakeystew.com Valued Senior Member

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    Some of the following posts were split from this point in another thread.
    A vast portion of people believe without question that humans only use 5-10% of their brains. A vast portion of people believe without question that ostriches bury their heads in sand. Neither of these are factual and yet everyone believes them to be absolute truth. People now are "gullible yokels", nevermind thousand of years ago.

    People still throw salt over their shoulder, salute magpies, hang horseshoes over their doors and so on because even now people cannot get away from daft and pointless superstition and belief. It was only a little while ago that christians went out and killed women and children because they honestly believed they were witches - that these people could cast genuine magic spells. Hell, there's still cultures in the world that still believe in forms of magic - voodoo and whatnot. You could consider people now in this modern age of technology and knowledge as vastly less superstitious and prone to gullibility than those of thousands of years ago. But for crying out loud, look at them. Humans are still bloody idiots.

    They escape the stupidity of one god only to fall for the next one to come along. They actually sit down and consider the beliefs of Scientology as valid, (lol), the beliefs of christians as valid, (lol), there's some that honestly believe that breaking a mirror will result in 7 years bad luck, still say "bless you" when someone sneezes even though the bubonic plague ended a long time ago. They cross their fingers thinking that's going to help somehow and pay attention to their star signs/mediums/fortune tellers/crystal balls/tarot cards etc etc and so on.

    Now, you might not personally believe Harry Potter is real, but there's an insane amount of crapola that you do - for no good reason - based not upon any facts, but mere assumption, old wives tales, personal opinion.

    You think the people of 2000 years ago weren't "gullible yokels"? Hell, even modern day people are.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 11, 2007
  15. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Yes, but people believed Jesus right off the bat, we know that Potter is fake.
     
  16. SnakeLord snakeystew.com Valued Senior Member

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    You're actually wrong. Need I mention Nicea, (some 300 years after the supposed life and death of jesus)?

    Needless to say, some 2000 years later there are still people that don't believe a jesus even existed or had any miraculous powers/was god etc and the bible clearly shows that there were people back then that also didn't believe.

    Furthermore, there are people today that believe Scientology "right off the bat", or that aliens exist "right off the bat", or that theres a giant plesiosaur swimming in Loch Ness "right off the bat", or that they're going to win the lottery this weekend "right off the bat".

    In short: you're wrong.
     
  17. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    You missed the point, no surprise.
     
  18. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    It was many people who lived when Jesus lived, lest you forget, or never really thought through.
     
  19. SnakeLord snakeystew.com Valued Senior Member

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    I do love a discussion. I dislike it when people do not even attempt to make an actual discussion but just leave pointless one-liners with no value or meaning to anything. If, as you claim, I missed the point - kindly restate it. I can't personally see what relevance your last post had to anything I said, nor do I see how my response to it 'missed the point'. Please clarify.

    I mean surely by now you've learnt how to have an actual discussion? All I ever see from you are vague, meaningless one-liners. Please, try harder.

    Go back and check every single post you've made in this thread alone. Not one of them is more than a line long, and some just a couple of words; "Surely not".

    Do you get charged 20 cents per word or something? Try actually responding to posts. Would you agree with anything written in my last post? Would you agree that even today mankind is exceptionally gullible and prone to fantastical and inherently worthless beliefs? Please, say something..

    [edit] The scary thing is you've been here probably not even a third of the time I have and yet you have a higher post count. I can only wonder how many of those posts were made just for that post count - lacking any actual discussion whatsoever.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2007
  20. SkinWalker Archaeology / Anthropology Moderator

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    Which one of them, definitively, wrote a record of Jesus that can be dated to his lifetime?

    Again, what are the data that are used to support your claims?
     
  21. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    The Jesus mania was because of a real person, not a known fictitious character like Potter.
     
  22. ashura the Old Right Registered Senior Member

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    Yes and I think it's been established that people are gullible yokels.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2007
  23. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Dated to who's lifetime? (You're being deliberately vague.)
     

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