Australian Politics Forum - Did Jesus exist?

mozzaok

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Did Jesus exist?
Dec 18^th, 2008 at 11:38am

[EDIT: split from this thread: http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1229249376/15#15]

OK smartypants, find any historical record that references jesus or king arthur.

If you mean I do not accept third, fourth, fifth hand accounts, written hundreds of years after the fact, as evidence, then you would be right.

It is not that I lie, it is just that you don't like the truth.

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« Last Edit: Jan 2^nd, 2009 at 11:43am by freediver »

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freediver

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Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God
Reply #1 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 11:46am

Quote:

OK smartypants, find any historical record that references jesus

The Bible.

Quote:

or king arthur.

The legend of King Aurthur and his merry men.

I think there are some non-Biblical references to Jesus from people who would have had a motive to deny his existence. Of course, the strongest evidence is the existence of his followers, especially those who saw him in the flesh. You just can't get that sort of thing happening around imaginary people. Given the evidence, his actual existence is far more likely than his fabrication. It takes a bizarrely absurd conspiracy theory to explain away the evidence and justify a claim that he didn't even exist. You are obviously applying a completely different standard to that applied by the majority of academic historians. It's as if his following counts against the liklihood of his existence, rather than for it.

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« Last Edit: Dec 18^th, 2008 at 11:53am by freediver »

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mozzaok

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Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God
Reply #2 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 12:02pm

NO?
Couldn't find any?
You would have thought with all the walking on water, floating up into the sky sort of stuff, he got up to, someone may have called the local papers to do a story on him.

You see, I think there well may have been an historical jesus, although we have absolutely no evidence to corroborate the fact, but the tome on which you pin your hopes is unfortunately not reliable.

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freediver Gold Member Offline www.ozpolitic.com Posts: 48834 At my desk.	Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God Reply #3 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 12:07pm Are you still saying there is no evidence, or just that you reject it? You seem to be contradicting yourself on the issue.
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mozzaok Gold Member Offline OzPolitic Posts: 6741 Melbourne Gender:	Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God Reply #4 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 12:16pm Sorry FD, you must be unfamiliar with the rules of evidence. What you are proffering is hearsay. Which does not mean it cannot be true, just that we have no actual evidence that it is.
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freediver Gold Member Offline www.ozpolitic.com Posts: 48834 At my desk.	Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God Reply #5 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 12:23pm Quote: Sorry FD, you must be unfamiliar with the rules of evidence. Why yes I am Mozz. I wasn't even aware that there was a single universal set. Please, enlighten me.
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mozzaok Gold Member Offline OzPolitic Posts: 6741 Melbourne Gender:	Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God Reply #6 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 12:50pm I am sure you are more than capable of looking them up if you are actually interested, rather than diverting from the point. Needless to say, you will find that hearsay is not usually allowed as evidence, except under exceptional circumstances.
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freediver

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Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God
Reply #7 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 12:56pm

No I am not capable of looking them up. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a universal set of rules of evidence, so I wouldn't know where to begin. As far as I can tell, you are either making these rules up as you go along, or you are taking a set of rule designed for one situation (eg a criminal trial) and applying them to another situation to which they are ill suited (eg history). Furthermore these rules are designed to reject certain forms of evidence, not to define them as not being evidence.

In other words, there is no fundamental difference between the evidence for various historical figures you accept or reject as having existed. The difference is that you accept some evidence, but not other evidence, based on some fairly complex, arbitrary, inconsistent and inappropriate standards. It is not a matter of evidence existing about one person and not for another. To say the eivdence doesn't exist is simply a lie.

Do you accept the existence of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism?

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muso Gold Member Offline Posts: 13151 Gladstone, Queensland Gender:	Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God Reply #8 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 2:00pm I'm not sure if I subscribe to the "Jesus Never existed" brigade. I agree that The Bible and one or two other extra canonical sources - Josephus, and I think Tacitus was another. Maybe Pliny the younger made some mention of early Christians too.
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freediver Gold Member Offline www.ozpolitic.com Posts: 48834 At my desk.	Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God Reply #9 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 2:03pm Would you say there is not even any evidence that he existed?
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muso

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Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God
Reply #10 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 2:12pm

freediver wrote on Dec 18^th, 2008 at 2:03pm:

Would you say there is not even any evidence that he existed?

I'm saying that he most probably existed, but was caught up in the usual hyperbole that is associated with verbal accounts that go around too long before being put to paper. If we compare the Song of Roland to the written history of Charlemagne, we get an idea of the kind of result that follows from this kind of process.

There are similarities between Homer and certain parts of the Old Testament, probably for the same reason. Another example is that many of the same elements in the Biblical Nativity can be found in the birth of Mithras - for example the Shepherds and the Wise Men (representing the Four Winds in this case) following a star. The fact that Mithras's birth date was celebrated on December 25th seems to add weight to this influence.

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locutius

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Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God
Reply #11 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 3:57pm

Mozza, you and I are very similar in out views about faith and the value of religion but I have to say that I do believe that Jesus actually existed as a person. I just don't ascribe any divinity to him. As to Arthur I also think that there is a possible connection to a real figure as there is in many legends but the evidence is very scant and tainted with a lot of wishful thinking.

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mozzaok

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Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God
Reply #12 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 7:53pm

Yes, I agree that their possibly was a real Jesus character on which the bible stories are based, but the fact remains, that while there were jewish historians who recorded important events from that time and place in history, they make no mention of Jesus at all.

Hence the actual Jesus, and the biblical representation of the Jesus character, are most likely to be hugely different.

If any of the biblical claims were true, it is immensely unlikely to have gone unrecorded by anyone, other than the much later recorded reports, ascribed to his biblical apostles.

FD, first hit on google was beyond you it seems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_evidence

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freediver

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Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God
Reply #13 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 10:02pm

Quote:

FD, first hit on google was beyond you it seems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_evidence

So I was right then? You are simply taking a set of standards that apply to one situation and applying them to another for which they are completely unsuited. You might as well demand someone perform a scientific experiment to prove Jesus existed.

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mozzaok

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Re: Students to be taught there isn't a God
Reply #14 - Dec 18^th, 2008 at 11:06pm

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a scientific experiment to prove Jesus existed.

Well that is easy, you take the square root of the reliability of verbally transmitted messages, with generational gaps between translations, which is .00397, then you multiply that by the number of people who will accept anything they are told by an authority figure, 4,587,974,396, then you divide that by exposure to dogmatic programming of juveniles with jesus specific focus, 2,011,738, then you multiply that by the number of these who still maintain a functioning capacity for reason, 649,872.

Which coincidentally equals 33, Jesus age at the time of his crucifixion(fiction)?, which is obviously a divine sign that you were right all along.

So, I guess I'll see you sunday. Wink

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