Myth: More Evidence for Jesus Than Julius Caesar

Originally posted by Kapyong

Originally posted by noobfunand in no way does it effect my point i type fast i dont spell check i still amke a dam good point get over it ^_^

You can't spell, you don't know grammar, you don't know how to use capitals, you can't count properly, and you don't check your posts.

Very unimpressive indeed.

K.

[edit on 5-11-2008 by Kapyong]

Oh get your hand off it mate ...

If the argumeant is cleer then speling and gramer dont mean nothing.

The ability to use spell check is not a prerequisite to be able to post on ATS.

However, derailing a thread to attack another members intelligence and integrity over a few spelling mistakes is one of the most pointless and mean spirited, troll like behaviour traits that we can certainly do without.

You need to stick to the topic

Very unimpressive indeed.

edit - I will be back to participate in this debate as soon as I find some time ... Nice thread

[edit on 9/11/08 by Horza]

It seems as if many attacks made atheists/agnostics against Christianity are based more on feelings and emotions (especially the extreme fear, though no one will admit it, of there actually being a place called hell) than reason and logic.

It would be very advantageous for me to know that God does not exist. It's common sense that if God does not exist, I don't have to follow the strict regulations of the Bible (which many people who call themselves "Christians," but really are not followers of Christ, habitually disobey). I would be able to live a carefree and happy life in which I do my best to, besides making my own life as good as it can be, make a positive impact on the world through philanthropy or something else.

It would be "great" in a strictly physical sense if God did not exist.

However, I simply cannot deny Jesus Christ.

Though I may doubt God, when I move into the territory of doubting God's existence, the doubt of God's nonexistence pulls at me even harder.
I see the evidence for God everywhere. I see the changing effect of Jesus Christ on people's lives including my own. I see miracles happening, through visions and signs and wonders. I hear the prophecies of the Bible that have proven true, such as the establishment of the nation of Israel and Isaiah's prophecy of the exact date of the rebuilding of the temple even before it had been destroyed. I see the strong bibliographical attestation to the New Testament and hear about the atheists that have converted to Christianity after finding not a single factual error in the New Testament. I read about the significant evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the fact that atheist scholars simply have no explanation for the events that transpired during the first century but simply rule out the resurrection because it deals with the supernatural. I see the supernatural's effects in life. I know that, though not all of it is, much of witchcraft and spiritualism is real (I encourage every atheist to diligently try it out for a couple of years). I know that I possess strong feelings that penetrate my entire being and cannot be explained by science or biology but instead reflect my inner soul/spirit. I find that the Bible corresponds to reality, with its explanations of the evil nature of people proving true and the Biblical family of one man and one woman with the woman as the man's support and the man loving the wife enough to die for her turning out to be the most successful, and there are a lot more examples. I read about the early church fathers and how they died for Jesus Christ and how they had superhuman strength on working for the Gospel. I hear about how the power of God is still actively at work today. I read of near-death-experiences in which many people have actually been in hell. I realize that there is no explanation for how the universe began, how quarks were formed or how everything was composed of atoms or how the electrons began to circle around protons and neutrons that were bound together with a perfect force constant or how gravity was set at exactly 9.8 m/s. I see the awe-inspiring works of nature and know that it must have been under the direction of God. I find that the Bible provides more satisfactory answers for life's crucial questions that any other world system.

And I read the arguments of non-Christians. They're good arguments, and they do cause me to doubt. But again, as soon as I doubt God, everything else makes me doubt my doubt (I doubt that God doesn't exist).
I really have to admire the faith of atheists/agnostics.

grammar nazi's are people whom send j00 to grammar concentration camp's when-ever you're grammar is [bleep] suck. people who our a grammar nazi's, thinking there englishes are batter then your's. their waisting there time because it dont matter what your saying but how your saying it. they just gt all pissd cuz we cn typ fastr them by typing lik this den dey say dat dey cnt red wht we sy. j0r languag is silly
Nein! Nein! Nein! Es gibt zu viele Fehler! Stoppen! Jetzt stoppen, du dumme Esel!! Sprichst du Englisch überhaupt?! sehr blöd! ... Heil Spellcheck!)

uncyclopedia.wikia.com...

I like noobfun posts. He is a very intelligent person and he gets his point across clearly.

Many times I have had difficulty remembering how to spell certain words or how to do proper grammar because my first language is sign language so I usually end up looking up dictionaries on the web. Sometimes I'm too lazy or in a hurry so I just spell whatever I think is right

Now back to OP Good thread, Good Wolf. The myth of Christians is not limited to Julius Caesar. I have heard the same thing about Alexander the Great, Plato, Homer, etc., etc.

reply to post by Deaf Alien

Now back to OP

Good thread, Good Wolf. The myth of Christians is not limited to Julius Caesar. I have heard the same thing about Alexander the Great, Plato, Homer, etc., etc.

Heh, yeah. You can say that again. Lies are useful if they can mislead, apparently.

reply to post by Deaf Alien

ty ^_^

always nice to appreciated, love the grammer nazi's ill have to book mark it for later use

reply to post by Deaf Alien


Way to go, man. You resurrected the thread. I was surprised to see there had been recent action on it today.

Originally posted by Kapyong

Getting it wrong is the sign of someone un-observant who doesn't know the facts, and doesn't bother to check anything, which is all too common behaviour around here.
K.

Sorry mate, but your spelling is terrible. Don't you have a spellchecker?

That should be unobservant, not un-observant.

Originally posted by Good Wolf
I keep getting informed by Christians that there is more evidence of Jesus existing than Julius Caesar. This is of course absolute bovine excrement (sorry about the language ^_^). We have dozens of times more evidence for Caesar than we do for Christ Jesus.

Sigh. Here we go again....

We know that Julius Caesar lived from 100 to 44 BC. It would seem strange for there being next-to-no evidence for this man as from a historic stand point, he was a big man, a hot shot, a top cat - the indisputable boss cat.

So far, no dispute. My goodness, he's actually starting well.

He was on coins just like modern monarchs (started the trend).

Oops, spoke too soon. You see, coinage offers proof of the monarch who issued the coin, not the image of whom its supposed to be of. Unless you are wanting to say this coin of Hercules


is an image of a real person.

This is known as secondary evidence, and while I personally don't have a problem with it as evidence for Julius, its not what you would first cite.

We also have some stuff actually written by guy.

Problematic. The History of the Gallic War has only 10 known ancient copies, and the oldest copy in our possession is over 1000 years removed from autograph (first publication). Couple this with the fact that each of the 10 copies are different in substancial ways, such as which gods appeared to Julius to discuss tactics, that saying it was written BY him is inconclusive at best.

Again, personally I don't doubt it was originally written by Julius, but the data isn't as clear as you make it out to be. Having over 5300 Greek manuscripts to work with, with a time from autograph much shorter in durration, detecting scribal errors in the New Testament is more certain when comparing between its manuscripts than for the Gallic Wars with its 10 copies, long a standard work of Latin teachers to use with beginning students. The science of textual criticism has an embarrassment--of riches--for the New Testament.

Continued

Originally posted by Good Wolf
There are also plenty of contemporary witnesses to his elitist hyjinks such as:

This is the one that always gets me among skeptics. The Biblical texts are a 600 lbs gorilla that the majority of skeptics try to ignore - Matthew and Mark were both written within 30 years of the events depicted, well within the lifetime of those who could refute the events. To ignore the NT as a line of evidence, especially since the textual evidence is so much better than anything else in favor of Caesar, is nothing more than a sign of bias.

While I normally laugh at the use of Wikipedia as a source, in this case your list is pretty good. For the record, I will refer you to www.christian-thinktank.com... and www.tektonics.org... for secular references to Jesus. What is important to remember is Jesus WASN'T a king, general or philosopher, He lived in a backwater part of the Empire, and was killed in a humiliating manner AND THEY STILL FOUND REASON TO MENTION HIM. That fact alone is huge in Jesus' favor per our debate.

In fact, not only do we know that he exists, we even know what he looked like, we even know he was going bald.

Once again we run into the problem of verification, but here you might have an out - IF we can verify the time period this statuary was produced. IF it is from the right era - namely that Julius was alive and the statue was found in an area where Julius might have been (as opposed to being found in an area where Julius had never been, and thus could not have posed for the work).

So lets just put this stupid baseless claim to bed shall we, we are smarter than this.

No, because you haven't proven your case. You have made a decent argument for the proposition that Julius Caesar existed, but it is substantially less than the evidence for the existance of Jesus.





[edit on 11/3/2008 by Good Wolf]

[edit on 11/9/2008 by Spiderj]

Caesar was a Roman emperer. You can't expect Jesus, who suffered extreme marginality through crucifiction, to have the same kind of evidence. Coins and statues were for emperers. In terms of written evidence within the first 150 years, there are 48-50 sources that speak of Christ (not including the Orthodox Church he founded, and the many thousands of Christograms). Caesar has only 10. The ratio is 48/10.