Very interesting post. Thanks for posting about it!!
Here is more more about Christ as amyth. There is a lot of evidence that he has never existed!
"Are the New Testament gospels history? Where's the proof? | Acharya S | D.M. Murdock" (Scientific Evaluation)
And some other interesting information in this documentary !
I guess I have to follow you around everywhere you post this and post my response:
You can't prove a negative so there is NOT overwhelming evidence that Jesus never existed.
All of the direct evidence that exists has been collected for you in one library called the Bible. After contemporaries have done all that work for you it is disingenuous to say that there is nothing else except what was collected and preserved.
The burden of proof does not lie with those making extraordinary claims. They are there for you to accept or reject as you will. Jesus made it clear that He had no intention (deliberately) to give you unassailable proof. He provided enough evidence for those who want to find Him and not enough evidence for those who don't. It's a filter and filters are designed to let some things get through and keep others out.
I laugh (sadly) at those who sit on the outside demanding that Jesus do even more than die for them. They want to be spoon fed while keeping their mouths firmly shut - just like a 2 year old rejecting a big spoonful of coconut cream pie!
I will just repeat. Bible is not an evidence of God, as it has little verification in actual historical events and little basis in science.
It is clearly explained in the video, why Bible is not an evidence.
Bible IS NOT and evidence of existence of Christ, same as Marvel comic book is not an evidence of Spider-Man.
I should not even reply to your comments as it is typical nonsensical response by someonee who clearly lack capacity for logical reasoning and understand logical fallacies . Typically, you have just used a logical fallacy called Circular Reasoning - god exists because the Bible says god exists and, since god wrote the Bible, it must be true.
Ah, telling a rocket scientist he is incapable of logical reasoning. Very good.
Have it your way. Eyewitness accounts respected, collected, preserved and distributed by thousands of their contemporaries don't count as evidence.
It is true that those eyewitnesses did testify that "all Scripture is inspired by God" and therefore, if you choose to believe them you can proceed to infer that God wrote the Bible. But it is not required that you believe that until you decide what to do about those pesky eyewitness accounts.
Other holy books have eyewitness accounts as well. What makes the bible more trustworthy than the others?
I think we should use eye-witness accounts for evidence of things in the universe and place them above all other forms of evidence. Instruments that can see more of the electromagnetic spectrum and experiments that provide continued reliability at providing effective results should be placed lower than eye-witness testimony. This way, the electron doesn't exist, along with every element on the periodic table! : )
Now you just used another logical fallacy when you mentioned that you are "rocket scientist"
It is called "appeal to authority".
If I tell you a story and ask you to keep it safe and tell the people of the world, how long would it be before that story was changed by the people you told it to? a word added here and there, a passage or two removed because they didn't fit in with what someone else thought of the story.
We are Human and we have many weaknesses two of them are not having amazing memories and not being very trustworthy when it comes to the power over people that religion can provide.
Combine the two and you get multiple religious beliefs and armies of people that will kill over them.
Thousands of their contemporaries?
There were four writers and their writings are at least 60 years after the fact.
There were lots of contemporaries who were still alive when the various books of the New Testament were written, cherished, preserved, and distributed. For example:
and
and then you go through counting up all the specific people who were part of the early church and widely known, for example, the last chapter of the book of Romans mentions these specific individuals that Paul greeted. It's a bit long, but that's my point - there were plenty of people in all the early churches who knew and accepted Paul.
You say God exist from microscopic view, the quartz change depending the watcher , and the way of view of every watcher, not same all the time, how explain that atom, where 90% is nothing, give consistency of matter to things
That's why my premise is to review its claims...for consistency with scientifically understood principles.
All truth should be consistent not so?
Let me ask you something: why, exactly, would people not want to find Jesus? It's not that atheists don't want to find god. It's that they looked for god and saw nothing. They got no answers to their prayers, saw no evidence that was compelling enough for them to become believers. Trust me, many atheists would LOVE to believe in a kind god and an afterlife.
The generally understood reason for folks not wanting to find Jesus is that you would have to give up your own sovereignty first.
Try starting over. Jesus is not going to provide you the kind of proof you are seeking. He is simply standing outside your door and knocking. You can choose to open the door or you can keep demanding he show you more forms of ID. :o)
I don't think most people would mind giving up their sovereignty if it meant eternal life. The ''atheists just don't want to be saved'' explanation is what they give you at church, but it's completely incorrect. Many have tried opening the door.
I am an atheist because it is plain to see that stories, although based around some possible truth's are just that... stories.
A belief in an almighty being is nothing more than a comfort blanket to keep us safe from the harsh realities of this short life.
But if anyone can tell me which of the estimated 4200 religions and spiritual traditions are the correct ones to follow to bring me salvation, i'll gladly take a look into it not because of my need to find a god, but for the need to understand why after thousands of years we still tear ourselves apart because someone believes differently than someone else.
You need to separate out the truth of the Scriptures found in the original Greek and Hebrew from all the false teachings and bad behaviors you mention. They have nothing to do with each other.
There. I have told you. No more excuses. :)
I hear you... a valid point... Its taken me many years for some aspects that I will be covering in the series
Prove to me there is not a teapot orbiting mars.
Therefore there is a teapot orbiting mars.
I thought it is a teacup orbiting Mars! :)
You can't prove to me Jesus never existed, therefore Jesus must have existed. Stan's argument from ignorance fallacy.
It's like saying "You can't proved I don't have 500 bitcoins right now, therefore it's true that I have 500 bitcoin"
Never said that. Merely refuted that there was "overwhelming proof that he didn't exist."
I'm only saying there are credible eyewitness accounts that he did. Make of that whatever you will.
There are also books that's being made mix with history in the past and unrealistic events. That's what the bible had.
No. The books of the Bible did not appear in a vacuum. They were cherished, preserved, distributed and used all around the Mediterranean from the very years in which they were written. There are 5600 chains of custody for the various documents and they all match.
having records of Christ 30-40 years after his death is actually really really good for ancient sourcing. I'm fine with you saying he never existed, but I have a list of about 200 historical figures who you also have to say never existed by this logic.
The "Christ was a myth" argument is kind of ill-informed, you will find very very few - secular and religious - biblical history scholars who support it. Those who do are often kind of fringe figures. I mean this as no insult to you, but Christ existing is pretty much solid. It's his divinity that's in question (and that question is a lot more interesting)
Please give me a list of these so called 200 figures, and explain why would they be considered as non exisiting.
I'll get the book down and give you a "greatest hits" cut and put the ISBN - because there's a lot of obscure figures you probably won't know.
As for what I mean by "not existing" is that basically it's because we have much less evidence for them, much further away from their life. What we have of Christ states that not long after his death, he had gained a following of people in the Roman Empire. There's emperors who we have just one passing mention of about 200 years later in a run down of other emperors but nothing else. Yet no one questions these emperors, just Christ - because most people questioning Christ don't understand how ancient sources work.
I would say that Jesus is a real person.
However he was rather a magician than a son of god, what have made him very popular.
i could answer Zeitgeist, all that mention there are Christified and all are symbolic in all culture ( like Sumerian tablets) and december 25 is the begining of the sun movement , december 20 is the finish of the past calendar , julian calendar, now we are in gregorian calendar.
This post is great. Not because I am overly interested in the content or because I choose sides in the narrative.
But because it's showing the potential of the Steemit network as a place to discuss and debate, not just vote on the post and leave a snappy 2-liner or a beg for a backvote.
And that's worth a lot in social media.
Sadly such debates are very uncommon on Steemit. Majority of conversations and comments are about bullshit. Steemit is mostly a place for rich to get richer
Yup. The majority of comments are spambots begging for upvotes or people giving each other empty compliments in hopes of getting noticed. This is the first legitimate conversation I've seen here.
I respect your belief on this topic and as I often do, I tend to look at both sides of the argument. I think Richard Dawkins is incredibly intelligent even though I disagree with his beliefs. Here is something you can take into consideration too. http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/did-jesus-exist/
Thanks for reply but you missed the point by saying "I respect your belief", as my view of world is not based on any belief. I do not BELIEVE in ANYTHING. I CONSIDER the most probable POSSIBILITIES by trying to take into account all facts, I have been lucky to be aware of, that science has discovered so far :-)
To me that is your belief, but I understand we see it differently. Im excited to see where this takes us as more posts unfold.
Zeitgeist is a really really bad documentary. It cites no sources and literally makes things up (like saying Christ was based on Horus, news to the thousands of secular and religious Jesus scholars).
Here's a really good debunking:
http://crossexamined.org/whats-wrong-with-the-zeitgeist-movie/ (A christian site, but the debunking is original from a skeptical site that has since gone bust and that was the only place that still had it)
EDIT Skeptic Project has a much better point by point rebuttal, I thought people would appreciate a more scientific host: http://skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/
This one I think is the best, but difficult to get a believer to commit 10 minutes of their life to the actual origin of their mythology. Super interesting stuff though. After I watched it, even my unconscious fears of religion melted away. Watch it, what could you lose?
It is certainly true that Satan has done his best to sew false and confusing myths throughout history to minimize and hide the truth. Like flares and chaff to distract missiles from finding the real aircraft.
But Christians have Jesus Christ in person, spending years with ordinary but highly credible people who in turn spent decades sharing their experiences with startup churches all around the Mediterranean Sea.
This is the basis of Christianity and the primary reason why people believe the narrative about Him. Not vague story telling around campfires over the preceding millennia.
Jesus specifically stated that the Hebrew Scriptures (a.k.a. "Moses and the Prophets") were true and should be believed: "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"
So our faith has solid grounding in real people at a real place and time and is not derived from other ancient myths.
Assuming that the myths described in this video are not the products of the authors imagination stated in a way to maximize the correlation with Jesus' story, I can think of a combination of several ways they may have occurred.
So I stay grounded in specific eyewitness accounts of what Jesus did and said and what his followers learned from Him - in person and through his promised guidance by the Holy Spirit.
It is a fascinating video however. It just gets its causes and effects mixed up.