The Evidence For Jesus' Existence Is Nothing But Hearsay

reply to post by AlexG141989

Virtually all other claims of Jesus come from sources outside of Christian writings. Devastating to the claims of Christians, however, comes from the fact that all of these accounts come from authors who lived after the alleged life of Jesus. Since they did not live during the time of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts serve as eyewitness evidence.

Do you realize that if we go by your standards then the evidence for Alexander the Great is hearsay as well?

Originally posted by ignorant_ape
reply to post by Salvatore_Rubberface

 

you cant rule out Jesus, he's mentioned every where.

by your logic harry potter is real - he is ` mentioned everywhere ` too

You can't compare Jesus to a fictional character? Where does it say that Bible is a novel? My friend the fact is that you dont want to make jesus real because you've been brain washed in to not believing in him. Harry Potter and Jesus are two very different individuals. It is a written record that Jesus is mentioned by contemporary people of that time. If for instance bush says he's met with harry potter and sentenced him 20 years in prison then i must say your logic isn't any better than his.

Originally posted by Lilitu
But every police officer knows if he takes reports from two or more witnesses she will get two or more accounts of what happened. Fact is that eye witness accounts (or first-hand as you put it) are terribly unreliable.

Oh this is deliciously ironic. Hopefully it needs no explanation as to why. So in other words even if every account of Jesus was an eye witness then we'd just be hearing this excuse. Like I said in my first post in this thread, this type of debate is pointless.

reply to post by Salvatore_Rubberface


I totally agree with you. Comparing historical figures to obvious fictional characters is so ludicrous I can't believe they can't grasp the reason why it is ludicrous. But those kinds of arguments are very, very typical in this kind of debate. They will say the craziest stuff and use the silliest arguments to justify their disbelief.

reply to post by Iasion

The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ by Nicolas Notovitch:
what about the life of Issa?
So similar don't you think!

kacou

Originally posted by AshleyD

Oh this is deliciously ironic.

Not at all. There are no eye witness accounts in the holey word since none of the people who claimed to be witnesses can be cross examined. At best all you have is hearsay and at worst, a complete fabrication.

reply to post by Lilitu


You totally missed the point. Read it again. I'm saying you people are balking for the sake of balking. I clearly said even IF every account was an eye witness account then you would just raise the objection that eye witness accounts are unreliable. There is no way to win with those who simply cannot believe but refuse to believe.

Originally posted by kacou
The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ by Nicolas Notovitch:
what about the life of Issa?
So similar don't you think!

kacou

I suspect it was a pious fraud orchestrated by Theosophists.

I am not "balking" at anything. I am interested in finding - and knowing - the truth. Physical, empirical truth, not "spiritual" truth.

The foundation of the Christian religion is that Jesus Christ, in addition to being the Son of God, was God made flesh, who then lived on Earth as a man and redeemed his life of the flesh for all of us, to "pay" for our sins so that we could be forgiven and admitted to Heaven if we only we acknowledge his sacrifice and love him for it.

If Jesus Christ is not a historical person, if he did not live in the flesh, then the entire religion falls apart and has no basis. An allegorical or mythical hero is not going to appease God for our collective sins. The whole thing is based on the fact that God caused a part of his very self to become one of us and then allowed that part to be tortured and sacrificed to save the rest of humanity.

Surely God, in his infinite wisdom and all powerfulness, could have seen to it that sufficient evidence would remain of his Son's physical life on Earth to prove to us that that part is real? It is the divinity of the Christ, his identity as God and as the Son of God, and his willing sacrifice and resurrection, that the Christian must accept on faith.

Surely a kind and reasonable God who wants us to come to salvation would not expect an intelligent, reasoning human being to accept ALL of it on pure faith?

How am I to tell the difference between other religious and moral legends, mythology, and parables and the truth of Christianity? Because of the historical existence of Jesus Christ as a "real" person and his crucifixion - right? If there is little or no evidence that Jesus existed historically as a real, flesh-and-blood person and was crucified, then God has left me no reasonable method for distinguishing between the Bible and other works which speak of Gods and mythical heroes. Why would he do that?

I notice also that none of the Christians here have addressed my earlier point, which is that true followers of Christ should be able to duplicate the miracles and feats of Jesus - he said so. Why no response?

Originally posted by AshleyD
reply to post by Lilitu

 

You totally missed the point. Read it again. I'm saying you people are balking for the sake of balking. I clearly said even IF every account was an eye witness account then you would just raise the objection that eye witness accounts are unreliable. There is no way to win with those who simply cannot believe but refuse to believe.

This is exactly what these atheists want. They have given up religion and are now forcing their non beliefs on those who still hold on to their faith. This is as if the Fox after not being able to get the grapes started preaching that the grapes were poisoned and therefore no one should eat them. Hey you atheists stop forcing your will on others by presenting false evidence.

reply to post by AlexG141989



Whether Jesus existed or not is not even relevant. Whether jesus could make people believe that he could do miracles is also irrelevant. Otherwise, David Blaine should start his own religion. Even if Jesus existed, even if he performed miracles, even if he in fact "was the son of god" he evidently left the matter as a painfully unverifiable as it could be, leaving nothing but words. So whatever you assume of him is untestable.

Why should anybody follow one religion as opposed to any of the others? flip a coin? Or do you just go with the flow and just become part of the popular religion in your town?

God may or may not exist, but he has left nothing that one can verify his existence for. Unless of course you begin with the assumption that he must have created the entire universe, but then again, if proving an argument by making it's own conclusion one of its premises was a valid way to reason, then we could prove anything we wanted.

-rrr

Originally posted by TheComte

Originally posted by Parabolic
The most obvious was simply that there was no 'real' system of writing.

Care to explain to me in a U2U why you think the Romans did not have a real system of writing.

There were several people in this post arguing as to why there were little or no recorded/ written records of Jesus during the time he was actually alive. I offered a plausible reason 'why,' in that, during this time there were no sophisticated methods for keeping records. Most stories were passed down through the generations orally via songs, poetry, and narratives. We find Egyptian hieroglyphics written on clay or papyrus, and in early Greek as the predominant record keeping systems.

I'm not confirming or denying that Jesus existed, I'm simply offering a reasonable premise as to why there were little or no surviving historical records of the life of Jesus during the time he was alive.

Originally posted by AshleyD
reply to post by Salvatore_Rubberface

 

I totally agree with you. Comparing historical figures to obvious fictional characters is so ludicrous I can't believe they can't grasp the reason why it is ludicrous. But those kinds of arguments are very, very typical in this kind of debate. They will say the craziest stuff and use the silliest arguments to justify their disbelief.

I agree with you that bringing out pointless arguments to explain disbelief is a total waste of time, but that's because disbelief does not need justification. It is belief that does.

-rrr

reply to post by Parabolic


Except your premise is neither reasonable nor plausible as the Romans had an advanced system of writing and kept quite accurate records, many of which are known to this day. Please, enlighten me on why you think the Romans could not keep written records.

Originally posted by Heike
I am not "balking" at anything. I am interested in finding - and knowing - the truth. Physical, empirical truth, not "spiritual" truth.

And that is the kind of inquisitiveness I completely respect. I'm talking about the same familiar faces that make up the antagonistic horde that follow ATS believers around not in order to discuss, debate, learn, or teach but to antagonize, ridicule, insult, and demean. I never once got the impression you were remotely like that. There is a huge difference between a sincere truth searcher, which is what you appear to be, and someone who is only here to troll and disrupt.

Originally posted by TheComte
reply to post by Parabolic

 

Except your premise is neither reasonable nor plausible as the Romans had an advanced system of writing and kept quite accurate records, many of which are known to this day. Please, enlighten me on why you think the Romans could not keep written records.

To say that my premise is neither reasonable nor plausible is logically fallacious, as we'd have to first accept your unsubstantiated appraisal that Roman record keeping was indeed advanced, and that Romans were the definitive record keepers of the time. My premise was more general and hardly exclusive to the Romans.

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
reply to post by AlexG141989

 

Virtually all other claims of Jesus come from sources outside of Christian writings. Devastating to the claims of Christians, however, comes from the fact that all of these accounts come from authors who lived after the alleged life of Jesus. Since they did not live during the time of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts serve as eyewitness evidence.

Do you realize that if we go by your standards then the evidence for Alexander the Great is hearsay as well?

Ahem! ^^^^^^^

Did I make a point or not?

You see, all "evidence" we have the Alexander the Great lived was written about him after his death.

If we can state with certainty that this evidence rules out the existence of Jesus Christ, then it at that very moment rules out the existence of Alexander the Great.

Originally posted by Parabolic
To say that my premise is neither reasonable nor plausible is logically fallacious, as we'd have to first accept your unsubstantiated appraisal that Roman record keeping was indeed advanced, and that Romans were the definitive record keepers of the time. My premise was more general and hardly exclusive to the Romans.

It doesn't matter what you think, because there ARE records of others who lived at this time. There's more historical evidence for Pontius Pilot than there is for Jesus (that being none). You would think that the son of God who performed miracles and raised the dead would certainly have people writting about him more than Pntius Pilot. In fact, if Jesus did exist and did do such things, the evidence would be overwhelming, not just existent, but it is not even existent.

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
Ahem! ^^^^^^^

Did I make a point or not?

You see, all "evidence" we have the Alexander the Great lived was written about him after his death.

If we can state with certainty that this evidence rules out the existence of Jesus Christ, then it at that very moment rules out the existence of Alexander the Great.

Wrong. There are letters written from Alexander the Great as well as a ton of evidence that he existed while he was still alive, and not after the fact.

My God man, do a google search before you make such claims.
Why do people make such claims without actually knowing for certain?
Do you just assume things (as you do about Jesus)? Or do you simply think no one will check it out?

reply to post by Iasion


Thanks for all the information. It's very rare to see someone on here that actually knows what they're talking about. Most claims on this site (and in this thread in particular) seem to be baseless. I was surprised to see that no one responded to your arguments, but then it came to me that they can't. You can't argue against facts. Keep doing what your doing.