Re: Do you ever doubt God's existence?

[Kev]

Seriously, your putting Bilbo on ignore for calling you a retard? You got to have thicker skin man and you didn't even attempt to refute his points. Mars got owned in the argument and is taking his toys and going home.

For the record I never called him a retard. I merely pointed out the absurdity of his claim that folk invented Jesus 50 years later and then managed to convince their friends and neighbours, who had lived in the region for generations, that he had walked amongst them, performed miracles and was killed and raised again and that they must just have forgotten this.

I then said his idea was retarded.


@MIles. I enjoyed your little defiant rants. I imagined you singing them whilst dancing around in white underpants, blood gushing from a new knife wound as you jumped up and down on your bed waving your little knife.

[Gandalf]

Thank you, Bilbo. I quite enjoyed posting those little rants too. There is nothing like getting on an absurdist roll and multi-posting on an absurdist topic. It is emancipating and only when one can accept that there is nothing but nothingness can one truly be free. Of course part of the process meant saying that you had caught the ghey, but a godless world means assuming that everyone has a touch of the ghey.

Anyway, no blood letting from me as that is an occasional thing for when I go completely mad and I am feeling somewhat calm at the moment.

[Kev]

Thank you, Bilbo. I quite enjoyed posting those little rants too. There is nothing like getting on an absurdist roll and multi-posting on an absurdist topic. It is emancipating and only when one can accept that there is nothing but nothingness can one truly be free. Of course part of the process meant saying that you had caught the ghey, but a godless world means assuming that everyone has a touch of the ghey.

Anyway, no blood letting from me as that is an occasional thing for when I go completely mad and I am feeling somewhat calm at the moment.

You shouldn't tell someone they have caught the ghey. In a thread by Eric asking if Hulk was gay I joked that he indeed looked a bit gay and he unfriended me on facebook and blocked me.

It's very offensive don't you know.

[VictorCharlie]

Man people are getting sensitive around here

[Gandalf]

Thank you, Bilbo. I quite enjoyed posting those little rants too. There is nothing like getting on an absurdist roll and multi-posting on an absurdist topic. It is emancipating and only when one can accept that there is nothing but nothingness can one truly be free. Of course part of the process meant saying that you had caught the ghey, but a godless world means assuming that everyone has a touch of the ghey.

Anyway, no blood letting from me as that is an occasional thing for when I go completely mad and I am feeling somewhat calm at the moment.

You shouldn't tell someone they have caught the ghey. In a thread by Eric asking if Hulk was gay I joked that he indeed looked a bit gay and he unfriended me on facebook and blocked me.

It's very offensive don't you know.

You are a bit weird. Fag.

[Kev]

Thank you, Bilbo. I quite enjoyed posting those little rants too. There is nothing like getting on an absurdist roll and multi-posting on an absurdist topic. It is emancipating and only when one can accept that there is nothing but nothingness can one truly be free. Of course part of the process meant saying that you had caught the ghey, but a godless world means assuming that everyone has a touch of the ghey.

Anyway, no blood letting from me as that is an occasional thing for when I go completely mad and I am feeling somewhat calm at the moment.

You shouldn't tell someone they have caught the ghey. In a thread by Eric asking if Hulk was gay I joked that he indeed looked a bit gay and he unfriended me on facebook and blocked me.

It's very offensive don't you know.

You are a bit weird. Fag.

That's it. u are on ignore now you prick.






































Fucking Cunt.

[Gandalf]

Thank you, Bilbo. I quite enjoyed posting those little rants too. There is nothing like getting on an absurdist roll and multi-posting on an absurdist topic. It is emancipating and only when one can accept that there is nothing but nothingness can one truly be free. Of course part of the process meant saying that you had caught the ghey, but a godless world means assuming that everyone has a touch of the ghey.

Anyway, no blood letting from me as that is an occasional thing for when I go completely mad and I am feeling somewhat calm at the moment.

You shouldn't tell someone they have caught the ghey. In a thread by Eric asking if Hulk was gay I joked that he indeed looked a bit gay and he unfriended me on facebook and blocked me.

It's very offensive don't you know.

You are a bit weird. Fag.

That's it. u are on ignore now you prick.






































Fucking Cunt.

That is funny.

[Beanz]

Bilbo

The new testament accounts of Jesus are in no way to be taken as an indication that such a character did indeed exist. It is quite plausible to suggest that even the so called, historical figure, to which you refer can be dismissed as allegorical or composite in a time full of would be Messiahs. This is still the case if you dismiss his claims of divinity. Everything we know about such a disputed figure is clearly a reflection of the individual Gospel writers own personality, it is why they can never agree. He is a synthetic construct like “Uncle Sam”, “King Arthur” or “Robin Hood”. This post Jesus invocation of a God like figure is entirely reconcilable with both Judeo- Roman Culture and Hellenistic Judaism. In fact the idea of a dying then rising deity can be traced back to Egyptian times, a culture that left it’s mark all over Judaism. Archaeology has uncovered real evidence that the great monotheistic mother religion of Judaism, was not practised by the original Israelites, whose belief system seems to not be to different from the other polytheistic practices of it’s neighbours. So again even the Old Testament’s credibility in historical matters has to be questioned.

Bilbo by your ludicrous logic every faith, ideologicical belief, cult, or movement, need only produce numerous martyrs to establish their authenticity. People are willing to die for an idea. You do not need an historical figure to establish a cult you can base it on any number of things because people WANT to believe. On the one hand you say you are not discussing the divinity of Christ and then you describe him as a healer of the sick and refer to his crucifixion and rising from the dead. What is it then? Who is this Jesus of whom you speak? Socrates, and William the Conqueror never claimed to be divine, they never claimed to be no part of this world, it is this crucial distinction that reveals your ignorance. You can not believe in the historical Jesus and then dismiss all the claims to divinity that he and his followers made. It is what identifies him, it is what makes him Jesus. If he was lying and his followers were lying then obviously his and his followers words are not to be trusted, and we can not ever really know who this Jesus is, or indeed if he ever existed. Maybe you should take a leaf out of Socrates book, and accept that all we really know, is that we are ignorant. This is the philosophical foundation on which education is built.

Idiotic conclusions and retarded arguments aside, your argument that the Gospels are history that could not possibly made up and retroactively transplanted back in time, because people 50 years later would remember them, betrays your own reliance on the gospels as an historically accurate record of what happened. This tenuous reasoning also relies on a previously different world with no written records and just people’s memories and word of mouth being suddenly supplanted by a literate populace avidly reading the Gospel accounts and disputing their content. Why do the Jewish people have to collude in what you so unwittingly accurately refer to as “this grand delusion”. The Gospels were not like the local newspaper, it wasn’t 2011, like you said, “no tv, no radio, no written records”.

Only in the mind of a believer can “it not be seriously debated that he didn’t exist at all.” No offence of course. How can the claim that people invented Jesus be more absurd than the claim that he performed miracles and was killed and raised again? You do not have to convince people in the region at that time,that Jesus walked amongst them, and performed these feats, because the Christian church didn’t start till 300 years later and the Gospels regular use came even later and further away from Galilee. It also supposes on your part, that the Jewish/Roman culture of the time was unable to understand allegory and parables and that the Judeo Hellenic culture that followed was similarly simplistic.

Suicide bombers, people who crash planes into buildings, The Mooneys suicide cult, David Kouresh and his followers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology, etc, etc these are all examples of movements built on illogical, mythical gibberish, and ideological scenarios with no basis in fact. Josephus and Tacitus are sources from decades and centuries later and are akin to saying, because there are two pins in the haystack there must be a magnet underneath it. There is also the small matter of you claiming that “It’s an historical fact that enough people believed not only that Jesus did exist, but that they also saw him killed and then raised again.” This was your opening salvo in your response to Mars claim, that Jesus was a fictive character, and yet this is not confirmed by Josephus or Tacitus. Only the New Testament claims this and yet you say that the argument is not about the divinity of Jesus, but about his existence in history. The thread is about doubting God’s existence and you have not made it clear what you think on the matter. You have just took pot shots at peoples arguments and went on about your knowing Jewish history whilst referring to the New Testament. Are you a Jew or Christian?
Or are you agnostic ? Just curious.

Finally Pacfan now you have fulfilled your God fantasy and have everyone dancing at the end of your strings like some giant puppet master, do you think you can engage in conversation and not preach to us like some omniscient guru?

[Beanz]

Seriously can you not see how retarded this idea of yours is?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So anyone one that doesn't agree with you is silly and retarded? And here I thought that miles was the only condescending, know it all, asshole on this forum. - debate/discussion over.

It's not about agreeing with me. Claiming Jesus never existed is like me saying dinosaurs never existed. It IS moronic.

Just think it through logically.

The Jews were no friends of the Christians, who they saw as an heretical cult. They also lived in Israel for hundreds of years, and most were not very socially mobile, thus living in villages for generations.

How is it possible for someone to invent a character 50/60 years previously,make grandiose claims of miraculous healings, thousands of followers, a public execution and then a claimed resurrection and then place him in the very villages that these Jews are living.

Do you not think that some of them might go 'Hang on a minute, we are living here at the time, this bloke never came around our way!'.

Again I ask you, if they made him up 50 years later, why did the Jewish people collude in this grand delusion and seemingly accept that this man really did live, even though presumably nobody had any memory of him whatsoever?

If this really is the extent of your though on this matter, then I repeat it is retarded.

No offence of course.


The birth of the Christian church is proof positive of the existence of the historical figure of Christ. It simply never would have got off the ground had the whole story been fabricated out of thin air.

Now I'm not saying anything concerning the Bible being true, or the gospels accurately portraying him, that is a matter of faith. But it cannot seriously be debated that he didn't exist at all.

Right, and I hope you're not offended that i've put your pretentious/arrogant ass on ignore.

Not offended at all, another one bites the dust.

That response is Gheyer than a harlequin lycra jumpsuit

[Mars_ax]

Congrats on your service even though it is pretty irrelevant to getting bent out of shape on an internet forum. You are considered a well-spoken and informed poster on this board but your belligerence on this thread when challenged on your position versus well thought out arguments suggest either a lack of conviction or frustration with your reasoning. Honestly if you are going to take a minority position that Jesus is a completely fictional character the onus is kind of on you to support the argument not simply attempt to poke holes in the widely believed premise that Jesus was at least an actual man that walked the Earth.

Who's getting "belligerent", or bent out of shape on an Internet forum? Challenge my views all you want, just don't start name calling, and/or debating like a condescending douche, or the discussion ends.

In re: Jesus: It's possible that a holy-man/rabbi existed 2000 + years ago, that the 'Jesus' character depicted in the 'gospels' was very loosely based on. So i'm not really arguing that this rabbi, et al, never existed, or "walked the earth". My guess is, the new testament, written and revised 50-300 years after the Jesus character's death, regards a composite/construct of holy-men/rabbis living before and/or after the 1st century. So from a historical perspective, and in a factual sense, the "gospels" have to be taken as a work of fiction, especially since absolutely nothing was written by the alleged Jesus or about him by others during his lifetime.

[Kev]

Bilbo

The new testament accounts of Jesus are in no way to be taken as an indication that such a character did indeed exist. It is quite plausible to suggest that even the so called, historical figure, to which you refer can be dismissed as allegorical or composite in a time full of would be Messiahs. This is still the case if you dismiss his claims of divinity. Everything we know about such a disputed figure is clearly a reflection of the individual Gospel writers own personality, it is why they can never agree. He is a synthetic construct like “Uncle Sam”, “King Arthur” or “Robin Hood”. This post Jesus invocation of a God like figure is entirely reconcilable with both Judeo- Roman Culture and Hellenistic Judaism. In fact the idea of a dying then rising deity can be traced back to Egyptian times, a culture that left it’s mark all over Judaism. Archaeology has uncovered real evidence that the great monotheistic mother religion of Judaism, was not practised by the original Israelites, whose belief system seems to not be to different from the other polytheistic practices of it’s neighbours. So again even the Old Testament’s credibility in historical matters has to be questioned.

Bilbo by your ludicrous logic every faith, ideologicical belief, cult, or movement, need only produce numerous martyrs to establish their authenticity. People are willing to die for an idea. You do not need an historical figure to establish a cult you can base it on any number of things because people WANT to believe. On the one hand you say you are not discussing the divinity of Christ and then you describe him as a healer of the sick and refer to his crucifixion and rising from the dead. What is it then? Who is this Jesus of whom you speak? Socrates, and William the Conqueror never claimed to be divine, they never claimed to be no part of this world, it is this crucial distinction that reveals your ignorance. You can not believe in the historical Jesus and then dismiss all the claims to divinity that he and his followers made. It is what identifies him, it is what makes him Jesus. If he was lying and his followers were lying then obviously his and his followers words are not to be trusted, and we can not ever really know who this Jesus is, or indeed if he ever existed. Maybe you should take a leaf out of Socrates book, and accept that all we really know, is that we are ignorant. This is the philosophical foundation on which education is built.

Idiotic conclusions and retarded arguments aside, your argument that the Gospels are history that could not possibly made up and retroactively transplanted back in time, because people 50 years later would remember them, betrays your own reliance on the gospels as an historically accurate record of what happened. This tenuous reasoning also relies on a previously different world with no written records and just people’s memories and word of mouth being suddenly supplanted by a literate populace avidly reading the Gospel accounts and disputing their content. Why do the Jewish people have to collude in what you so unwittingly accurately refer to as “this grand delusion”. The Gospels were not like the local newspaper, it wasn’t 2011, like you said, “no tv, no radio, no written records”.

Only in the mind of a believer can “it not be seriously debated that he didn’t exist at all.” No offence of course. How can the claim that people invented Jesus be more absurd than the claim that he performed miracles and was killed and raised again? You do not have to convince people in the region at that time,that Jesus walked amongst them, and performed these feats, because the Christian church didn’t start till 300 years later and the Gospels regular use came even later and further away from Galilee. It also supposes on your part, that the Jewish/Roman culture of the time was unable to understand allegory and parables and that the Judeo Hellenic culture that followed was similarly simplistic.

Suicide bombers, people who crash planes into buildings, The Mooneys suicide cult, David Kouresh and his followers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology, etc, etc these are all examples of movements built on illogical, mythical gibberish, and ideological scenarios with no basis in fact. Josephus and Tacitus are sources from decades and centuries later and are akin to saying, because there are two pins in the haystack there must be a magnet underneath it. There is also the small matter of you claiming that “It’s an historical fact that enough people believed not only that Jesus did exist, but that they also saw him killed and then raised again.” This was your opening salvo in your response to Mars claim, that Jesus was a fictive character, and yet this is not confirmed by Josephus or Tacitus. Only the New Testament claims this and yet you say that the argument is not about the divinity of Jesus, but about his existence in history. The thread is about doubting God’s existence and you have not made it clear what you think on the matter. You have just took pot shots at peoples arguments and went on about your knowing Jewish history whilst referring to the New Testament. Are you a Jew or Christian?
Or are you agnostic ? Just curious.

Finally Pacfan now you have fulfilled your God fantasy and have everyone dancing at the end of your strings like some giant puppet master, do you think you can engage in conversation and not preach to us like some omniscient guru?

Well that was a long winded lot of nonsense.

I didn't comment on the claims of divinity, or even the Gospels at all, because they are not necessary to demonstrate that Jesus lived.

Real actual history is. No man has ever had the impact on human civilisation that Jesus had. Belive he was mad, bad, insane, whatever you want, but to suggest he simply sidn't exist at all is utterly, utterly absurd.

The Bible characters, locations and events aren't just inventions in a novel, they are real. Israel was a real location two thousand years ago, with a religion, synagogues, priests. It was historically real. The church really did spring up out of Judaism. It is real, there are churches all over the world.

The Roman Empire is real, they truly did embrace Christianity in the end as their offiical ruling, none of this has anything to do with what is written in a book, it's just real history.

If Jesus never lived at all, why did people follow him?

How did the gospel writers know that Pontius Pilate was the provincial govener at that time, and get all the incidental details correct? Pontius Pilate is a proven historical figure, although outside the Bible of minor importance, it's strange that they managed to remember back 50 years and get a real figure to order his execution.

Anyway, let me put the same test to you as I did to Mars Ax.

How do you invent a character 50 years prior, place him in a real geographic location where people have lived for generations and make truly remarkable claims for him, and then get people of the day to belive in him and to assume he really was real if he was just made up?

How come the people who lived there at the time didn't wonder why anybody remembered him?

Your analgy with Robin Hood and King Arthur is also completey fatuous. What historical importance did these two men have? How much of an influence?

Saying Jesus didn't exist, in the light of the historical impact he made, is like saying Ghengis Khan or Alexander The Great didn't exist.

It is easy to understand why you say he doesn't exist however. You don't believe in God and the Bible and therefore wish to dismiss it. So you say he didn't exist at all. Or like Nameless believes, will insist he was just a Jewish copying of some Egyptian Horus myth. Easy way to dismiss it with a wave of a hand, an not having to wrestle with the complexity of it all.

It's intellectually weak and feeble, but emotionally it is gratifying as you can insist it is nonsense without having to take it seriously.

The Bible is the most studied, debated, loved, hated, scrutinised, misquoted and examined book in the world. The greatest minds in human history down the ages have wrestled with it, and sought to debunk it, yet it still remains to this day.

To suggest that it can be debunked by something as simple as saying Jesus didn't exist is embarrassing. It is like a Christian attempting to dismiss evolution by saying dinosaurs never existed and trying to end the conversation there.

[Beanz]

[QUOTE=Bilbo;1033686]

Bilbo



Well that was a long winded lot of nonsense.

I didn't comment on the claims of divinity, or even the Gospels at all, because they are not necessary to demonstrate that Jesus lived.

Real actual history is. No man has ever had the impact on human civilisation that Jesus had. Belive he was mad, bad, insane, whatever you want, but to suggest he simply sidn't exist at all is utterly, utterly absurd.

The Bible characters, locations and events aren't just inventions in a novel, they are real. Israel was a real location two thousand years ago, with a religion, synagogues, priests. It was historically real. The church really did spring up out of Judaism. It is real, there are churches all over the world.

The Roman Empire is real, they truly did embrace Christianity in the end as their offiical ruling, none of this has anything to do with what is written in a book, it's just real history.

If Jesus never lived at all, why did people follow him?

How did the gospel writers know that Pontius Pilate was the provincial govener at that time, and get all the incidental details correct? Pontius Pilate is a proven historical figure, although outside the Bible of minor importance, it's strange that they managed to remember back 50 years and get a real figure to order his execution.

Anyway, let me put the same test to you as I did to Mars Ax.

How do you invent a character 50 years prior, place him in a real geographic location where people have lived for generations and make truly remarkable claims for him, and then get people of the day to belive in him and to assume he really was real if he was just made up?

How come the people who lived there at the time didn't wonder why anybody remembered him?

Your analgy with Robin Hood and King Arthur is also completey fatuous. What historical importance did these two men have? How much of an influence?

Saying Jesus didn't exist, in the light of the historical impact he made, is like saying Ghengis Khan or Alexander The Great didn't exist.

It is easy to understand why you say he doesn't exist however. You don't believe in God and the Bible and therefore wish to dismiss it. So you say he didn't exist at all. Or like Nameless believes, will insist he was just a Jewish copying of some Egyptian Horus myth. Easy way to dismiss it with a wave of a hand, an not having to wrestle with the complexity of it all.

It's intellectually weak and feeble, but emotionally it is gratifying as you can insist it is nonsense without having to take it seriously.

The Bible is the most studied, debated, loved, hated, scrutinised, misquoted and examined book in the world. The greatest minds in human history down the ages have wrestled with it, and sought to debunk it, yet it still remains to this day.

To suggest that it can be debunked by something as simple as saying Jesus didn't exist is embarrassing. It is like a Christian attempting to dismiss evolution by saying dinosaurs never existed and trying to end the conversation there.

Answer the fucking question, the only one waving their hands saying nothing to see here is you. It is neither intellectually weak, or feeble to decimate your argument, you are just not used to getting owned. The reason my response is long winded is because you are constantly contradicting yourself much like the gospel writers and it is difficult to keep up.

“The Bible characters, locations and events aren't just inventions in a novel, they are real. Israel was a real location two thousand years ago, with a religion, synagogues, priests. It was historically real. The church really did spring up out of Judaism”

So now it’s not just Jesus but the characters, locations and events too.

“The Roman Empire is real, they truly did embrace Christianity in the end as their official ruling, none of this has anything to do with what is written in a book, it's just real history.”

Yes I know, I already mentioned this when talking about the council of Nicea and Constantine.

“If Jesus never lived at all, why did people follow him?”

This is comprehensively answered in my response.

“How did the gospel writers know that Pontius Pilate was the provincial govener at that time, and get all the incidental details correct? Pontius Pilate is a proven historical figure, although outside the Bible of minor importance, it's strange that they managed to remember back 50 years and get a real figure to order his execution.”

Now you really are grasping at straws, because some facts are correct so must all biblical claims.

“How do you invent a character 50 years prior, place him in a real geographic location where people have lived for generations and make truly remarkable claims for him, and then get people of the day to belive in him and to assume he really was real if he was just made up?

How come the people who lived there at the time didn't wonder why anybody remembered him?”

Read my response. Yes read.


“Your analgy with Robin Hood and King Arthur is also completey fatuous. What historical importance did these two men have? How much of an influence?

Saying Jesus didn't exist, in the light of the historical impact he made, is like saying Ghengis Khan or Alexander The Great didn't exist.”

Again you started this by using the analogy of William the Conqueror. Robin Hood, Uncle Sam and King Arthur and Jesus Christ can be compared if you believe them to be fictional. Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great and William the Conqueror are historical figures, independently documented and unlike Jesus making no claims to be Divine.

“It is easy to understand why you say he doesn't exist however. You don't believe in God and the Bible and therefore wish to dismiss it. So you say he didn't exist at all. Or like Nameless believes, will insist he was just a Jewish copying of some Egyptian Horus myth. Easy way to dismiss it with a wave of a hand, an not having to wrestle with the complexity of it all.”

The only person not wishing to wrestle with the complexity of it all is you. You assume my response is both flippant and ill informed, whereas in reality nothing could be further from the truth. It is because I have studied and examined the Bible and experienced Christianity, Judaism and various other religions first hand for the first 16 years of my life that I feel more than qualified to offer an educated opinion.

“The Bible is the most studied, debated, loved, hated, scrutinised, misquoted and examined book in the world. The greatest minds in human history down the ages have wrestled with it, and sought to debunk it, yet it still remains to this day.

To suggest that it can be debunked by something as simple as saying Jesus didn't exist is embarrassing. It is like a Christian attempting to dismiss evolution by saying dinosaurs never existed and trying to end the conversation there”

The fact is that the existence of Jesus is just one of a myriad of questionable components that go to make up the Bible. The point of my response was not the debunking of your precious Bible, but the questioning of your readiness to dismiss Mars cogent argument suggesting that Jesus may not have existed. It obviously hit a raw nerve and so you resorted to calling his reasoning moronic and retarded, much like you called my response intellectually weak and feeble.

[Mars_ax]

Bilbo

The new testament accounts of Jesus are in no way to be taken as an indication that such a character did indeed exist. It is quite plausible to suggest that even the so called, historical figure, to which you refer can be dismissed as allegorical or composite in a time full of would be Messiahs. This is still the case if you dismiss his claims of divinity. Everything we know about such a disputed figure is clearly a reflection of the individual Gospel writers own personality, it is why they can never agree. He is a synthetic construct like “Uncle Sam”, “King Arthur” or “Robin Hood”. This post Jesus invocation of a God like figure is entirely reconcilable with both Judeo- Roman Culture and Hellenistic Judaism. In fact the idea of a dying then rising deity can be traced back to Egyptian times, a culture that left it’s mark all over Judaism. Archaeology has uncovered real evidence that the great monotheistic mother religion of Judaism, was not practised by the original Israelites, whose belief system seems to not be to different from the other polytheistic practices of it’s neighbours. So again even the Old Testament’s credibility in historical matters has to be questioned.

Bilbo by your ludicrous logic every faith, ideologicical belief, cult, or movement, need only produce numerous martyrs to establish their authenticity. People are willing to die for an idea. You do not need an historical figure to establish a cult you can base it on any number of things because people WANT to believe. On the one hand you say you are not discussing the divinity of Christ and then you describe him as a healer of the sick and refer to his crucifixion and rising from the dead. What is it then? Who is this Jesus of whom you speak? Socrates, and William the Conqueror never claimed to be divine, they never claimed to be no part of this world, it is this crucial distinction that reveals your ignorance. You can not believe in the historical Jesus and then dismiss all the claims to divinity that he and his followers made. It is what identifies him, it is what makes him Jesus. If he was lying and his followers were lying then obviously his and his followers words are not to be trusted, and we can not ever really know who this Jesus is, or indeed if he ever existed. Maybe you should take a leaf out of Socrates book, and accept that all we really know, is that we are ignorant. This is the philosophical foundation on which education is built.

Idiotic conclusions and retarded arguments aside, your argument that the Gospels are history that could not possibly made up and retroactively transplanted back in time, because people 50 years later would remember them, betrays your own reliance on the gospels as an historically accurate record of what happened. This tenuous reasoning also relies on a previously different world with no written records and just people’s memories and word of mouth being suddenly supplanted by a literate populace avidly reading the Gospel accounts and disputing their content. Why do the Jewish people have to collude in what you so unwittingly accurately refer to as “this grand delusion”. The Gospels were not like the local newspaper, it wasn’t 2011, like you said, “no tv, no radio, no written records”.

Only in the mind of a believer can “it not be seriously debated that he didn’t exist at all.” No offence of course. How can the claim that people invented Jesus be more absurd than the claim that he performed miracles and was killed and raised again? You do not have to convince people in the region at that time,that Jesus walked amongst them, and performed these feats, because the Christian church didn’t start till 300 years later and the Gospels regular use came even later and further away from Galilee. It also supposes on your part, that the Jewish/Roman culture of the time was unable to understand allegory and parables and that the Judeo Hellenic culture that followed was similarly simplistic.

Suicide bombers, people who crash planes into buildings, The Mooneys suicide cult, David Kouresh and his followers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology, etc, etc these are all examples of movements built on illogical, mythical gibberish, and ideological scenarios with no basis in fact. Josephus and Tacitus are sources from decades and centuries later and are akin to saying, because there are two pins in the haystack there must be a magnet underneath it. There is also the small matter of you claiming that “It’s an historical fact that enough people believed not only that Jesus did exist, but that they also saw him killed and then raised again.” This was your opening salvo in your response to Mars claim, that Jesus was a fictive character, and yet this is not confirmed by Josephus or Tacitus. Only the New Testament claims this and yet you say that the argument is not about the divinity of Jesus, but about his existence in history. The thread is about doubting God’s existence and you have not made it clear what you think on the matter. You have just took pot shots at peoples arguments and went on about your knowing Jewish history whilst referring to the New Testament. Are you a Jew or Christian?
Or are you agnostic ? Just curious.

Finally Pacfan now you have fulfilled your God fantasy and have everyone dancing at the end of your strings like some giant puppet master, do you think you can engage in conversation and not preach to us like some omniscient guru?

I'm thinking that Pacfan might actually be god or at least one of his sons, he has divinity written all over him.
BTW, the main issue I have with both halves of the bible, is not that it isn't a marvelous/somewhat entertaining holy yarn, but that, even if you removed all the parts regarding supernatural events and divinity, it simply isn't believable or grounded in reality.

I liked what Mark Twain had to say:

It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.
-- Mark Twain

[Kev]

Sigh.

OK I insist Jesus really did exist.

Exhibit 1, Please disprove this at your own leisure.

Tactius, the greatest Roman historian mentioned him in his Annals.

Contrary to your belief, Tacitus did not live 300 years after Jesus but was born in AD 50, on 20 years or so after the crucifixion.

He wrote in his Annals about the great fire of Rome in Nero's day in AD60 and noted the persecution of the followers of one 'Christus', a little superstitious cult whose followers called themselves Christians. He wasn't a fan, he thought it was a cult but he confirmed historically that his followers were active and being persecuted as early as AD 60, just 30 years after Christ's death.

Knock yourself and visit wikipedia here

Tacitus on Christ - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No serious scholar in the world rejects the authenticity of Tacitus' account and as he confirms that people were historically being martyed for belief in Christus as early as AD 60 your attempts to pass it off as a myth from 300 years later is completely and utterly disproved.

I'm off out to see my nephew now for a few hours, I'm teaching him to play chess.

Good night.

[superheavyrhun]

For those who are looking for an argument that religion is as divisive today as it was two hundred years ago need look no further than this thread. I'm not really going to dip my toe in the water any more than I did a few pages ago, but this recent debate has demonstrated my view that religion has generally been a force in the world that has produced more negative effects than positive.

I hope everyone can chill out and ask themselves, "what would the fictional/real/composite Jesus do?"