Why do most "Christians" celebrate Xmas in a pagan way?

[Mess World]

Can you stop lying in this thread about what historians believe because your Christian

Because I've never heard or read anywhere on the net that most historians agree he existed I've only seen this on the coli

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Exactly did you really read it

‘Jesus Christ never existed at all,’ historian claims

Here you go

A self-published "athiest activist" from San Francisco.

I thought we were talking about historians, right? Not guys who have never held any job in history and who have to pay people to publish their rants.

Can you stop lying in this thread about what historians believe because your Christian

Because I've never heard or read anywhere on the net that most historians agree he existed I've only seen this on the coli

How can you claim you've "never heard or read" that anywhere on the net when your own link that you already posted made that claim!

If you already forgot, these were some of the statements made in the link you posted yourself.




Maybe you need to step outside of the athiest echo-chamber you seem to live in. Even profoundly secular websites like wikipedia agree with me...hell, even "rational wiki" agrees with me.

You don't have to agree with wikipedia. But for something to be acknowledged as the historical consensus on wikipedia, and for you to claim that you've never even heard or seen it on the net....all that shows is that you're not paying much attention at all.

Here are the quotes again...all of which are easily available on the internet, where you claim you don't see them:


the wikipedia entry on the question, which has extenstive references if you check:

biblical scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels. While scholars have sometimes criticized Jesus scholarship for religious bias and lack of methodological soundness, with very few exceptions, such critics do support the historicity of Jesus, and reject the theory that Jesus never existed, known as the Christ myth theory.
baptism of Jesus and his crucifixion to be historically certain... these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent" and "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical 'facts' they are obvious starting points for an attempt to clarify the what and why of Jesus' mission."

nearly all modern scholars consider the baptism of Jesus and his crucifixion to be historically certain... these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent" and "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical 'facts' they are obvious starting points for an attempt to clarify the what and why of Jesus' mission."

Scholars who specialise in the origins of Christianity agree on very little, but they do generally agree that it is most likely that a historical preacher, on whom the Christian figure "Jesus Christ" is based, did exist. The numbers of professional scholars, out of the many thousands in this and related fields, who don't accept this consensus, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Many may be more cautious about using the term "historical fact" about this idea, since as with many things in ancient history it is not quite as certain as that. But it is generally regarded as the best and most parsimonious explanation of the evidence and therefore the most likely conclusion that can be drawn.

The opposite idea - that there was no historical Jesus at all and that "Jesus Christ" developed out of some purely mythic ideas about a non-historical, non-existent figure - has had a chequered history over the last 200 years, but has usually been a marginal idea at best.

Or from Professors Alanna Nobbs and Edwin Judge, two of Australia's most noted historicans:

In our judgment, the second part of your statement is quite far from reality. While historical and theological debates remain about the actions and significance of this figure, his fame as a teacher, and his crucifixion under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, may be described as historically certain.

and more cites, from Christians, Jews, agnostics, athiests:

As Professor Bultmann, Professor of New Testament studies, once wrote:

“Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community.”


Paul Maier, former Professor of Ancient History, remarks: “The total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus’ existence.”


Also, Craig Evans who is widely known for his writings on the subject of the historical Jesus says that: “No serious historian of any religious or nonreligious stripe doubts that Jesus of Nazareth really lived in the first century and was executed under the authority of Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea and Samaria.”


Even the most skeptical of New Testament scholars Bart Ehrman (who is certainly no friend of Christianity) states that:

“These views are so extreme (that Jesus did not exist) and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.”


Scholar Michael Grant says: “To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has ‘again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars.”

In truth, the claim that Jesus never existed as a historical person is not on the table of historical scholarship (unless you are an atheist blogger). According to Richard Burridge: “I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that (that Jesus did not exist) anymore.”

some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed, and he really was crucified, just as Julius Caesar really existed and was assassinated. .... We can in fact know as much about Jesus as we can about any figure in the ancient world.

Marcus Borg, Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions


There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.

Richard A. Burridge, Professor of Biblical Interpretation, Kings College, London, inJesus Now and Then


This view [that Jesus didn't exist] is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice, which holds all the main primary sources, and Christian people, in contempt. .... Most of its proponents are also extraordinarily incompetent.

Maurice Casey, Nottingham University, in Jesus of Nazareth


Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E.

Prof James Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary, in Jesus Within Judaism


I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus .... We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period.

Prof Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina in an interview by The Infidel Guy


Research in the historical Jesus has taken several positive steps in recent years. .... the persistent trend in recent years is to see the Gospels as essentially reliable, especially when properly understood, and to view the historical Jesus in terms much closer to Christianity’s traditional understanding

Prof Craig Evans, Arcadia Divinity College, Arcadia University, in What are They Saying about the Historical Jesus?


we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. ..... In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.

The late Michael Grant, eminent historian of the Roman Empire, in Jesus: an historian's review of the gospels


[The following is beyond reasonable doubt from everyone's point of view:]that Jesus was known in both Galilee and Jerusalem, that he was a teacher, that he carried out cures of various illnesses, particularly demon-possession and that these were widely regarded as miraculous; that he was involved in controversy with fellow Jews over questions of the law of Moses; and that he was crucified in the governorship of Pontius Pilate.

A.E. Harvey, formerly at Oxford University, in Jesus and the constraints of history


So in one sense I think I’m not alone in feeling that to show the ill-informed and illogical nature of the current wave of “mythicist” proponents is a bit like having to demonstrate that the earth isn’t flat, or that the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, or that the moon-landings weren’t done on a movie lot.

Larry Hurtado, Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh University, on Larry Hurtado's Blog


An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only help anchor him in history. Myth and legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something much more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it.

Emeritus Professor Edwin Judge, Ancient History Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney, in the Foreword to The truth about Jesus by P Barnett


I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed.

Jeffery Jay Lowder, writing on the Secular Web


.... a growing conviction among many scholars that the Gospels tell us more about Jesus and his aims than we had previously thought ..... subsequent Christianity may be in greater continuity with Jesus than was previously thought.

J Paget, Cambridge University, in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus


Jesus did more than just exist. He said and did a great many things that most historians are reasonably certain we can know about today. .... A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today - in the academic world at least - gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat.

M A Powell, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, in The Jesus Debate


Historical reconstruction is never absolutely certain, and in the case of Jesus it is sometimes highly uncertain. Despite this, we have a good idea of the main lines of his ministry and his message. We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died. ..... the dominant view [among scholars] today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-century Judaism.

EP Sanders, Oxford & Duke Universities, in The Historical Figure of Jesus


Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically.

The late Graham Stanton, Cambridge University, in The Gospels and Jesus


Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it [the theory that Jesus didn't exist] as effectively refuted.

Robert Van Voorst, Western Theological Seminary, in Jesus outside the New Testament


[In answer to the question, did Jesus exist?] I would say it is much more likely that he did than he didn’t. To believe that he had been imagined or invented is a much harder task than to rely on the available evidence, which is obviously not as clear-cut as one would like, but is sufficiently good to say that somebody by the name of Jesus existed around the time when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea in the first century AD.

Geza Vermes, Oxford University, in A new church is born, History magazine


The historical evidence for Jesus himself is extraordinarily good. .... From time to time people try to suggest that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, but virtually all historians of whatever background now agree that he did

NT Wright, Oxford & St Andrews Universities, in the Guardian

 

[Soon]

No, that doesn't mean that one of those divisions during NT writing times was a gnostic/Jewish split. Gnostic Christians did one day become prominent, but not until a couple generations after John was written, and even then the things they wrote looked nothing like John.

The Johannine community which the Gospel of John came out of was considered Gnostic. The reason the Gospel of John is so radically is because they looked at Christ as a Divine being to share knowledge and liberate humans, this is at the core of Gnosticm. Later Gnostics got more radical and seemed to be following the same lines of Hinduism. And some ancient books of the Hebrew Bible did get mythical, so its no surprise Hinduism/Gnostics were into the idea of seven heavens and enlightenment it all originated from Judaism/Mesoptamia.

Raymond E. Brown is not secular and has some interesting views of scripture. For Raymond E. Brown to down play this is not surprising. But he is good in some aspects. But I do find both secular and religious scholars tend to leave stuff out. This is why I get information from both sides.

If you don't believe the Johannine community was Gnostic and was splitting off from the rest of the Church, then you are the minority. There is a reason the Gospel of John only has two or three fragments of the apocalyptic message that you find all over the Gospel of Mark.

 

[Mess World]

The Johannine community which the Gospel of John came out of was considered Gnostic. The reason the Gospel of John is so radically is because they looked at Christ as a Divine being to share knowledge and liberate humans, this is at the core of Gnosticm. Later Gnostics got more radical and seemed to be following the same lines of Hinduism. And some ancient books of the Hebrew Bible did get mythical, so its no surprise Hinduism/Gnostics were into the idea of seven heavens and enlightenment it all originated from Judaism/Mesoptamia.

Raymond E. Brown is not secular and has some interesting views of scripture. For Raymond E. Brown to down play this is not surprising, but he is good in some aspects. But I do find both secular and religious scholars tend to leave stuff out. This is why I get information from both sides.

If you don't believe the Johannine community was Gnostic and was splitting off from the rest of the Church, then you are the minority. There is a reason the Gospel of John only has two or three fragments of the apocalyptic message that you find all over the Gospel of Mark.

 

[Mess World]

A self-published "athiest activist" from San Francisco.

I thought we were talking about historians, right? Not guys who have never held any job in history and who have to pay people to publish their rants.






How can you claim you've "never heard or read" that anywhere on the net when your own link that you already posted made that claim!

If you already forgot, these were some of the statements made in the link you posted yourself.




Maybe you need to step outside of the athiest echo-chamber you seem to live in. Even profoundly secular websites like wikipedia agree with me...hell, even "rational wiki" agrees with me.

You don't have to agree with wikipedia. But for something to be acknowledged as the historical consensus on wikipedia, and for you to claim that you've never even heard or seen it on the net....all that shows is that you're not paying much attention at all.

Here are the quotes again...all of which are easily available on the internet, where you claim you don't see them:


the wikipedia entry on the question, which has extenstive references if you check:









Or from Professors Alanna Nobbs and Edwin Judge, two of Australia's most noted historicans:




and more cites, from Christians, Jews, agnostics, athiests:

Oops wrong person meant to give this to you

 

[Soon]

Richard Dawkins is a clown, and for Jesus not to exist, neither should his mother, father, brothers, sisters, disciples, and Paul. To deny the existence of Jesus, you have to deny the existence of 20 other people.

 

[Mess World]

Richard Dawkins is a clown, and for Jesus not to exist, neither should his mother, father, brothers, sisters, disciples, and Paul.

Most historians agree that he didn't exist is what that article says

Now you bible thumpers can argue all day about fictional characters in the bible when they're not in any history books

 

[Soon]

Most historians agree that he didn't exist is what that article says

Now you bible thumpers can argue all day about fictional characters in the bible when they're not in any history books

Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up.

I wish he would list the Historians.

 

[Mess World]

Him speaking has nothing to do with the article Dawkins isn't a historian he's a zoologist and evo biologist.

 

[Mess World]

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Oops wrong person meant to give this to you

Most historians agree that he didn't exist is what that article says

Now you bible thumpers can argue all day about fictional characters in the bible when they're not in any history books

Reading comprehension, man. He's not saying "Most historians agree that he didn't exist". And there's not the slightest bit of evidence in that jpeg to support what he IS saying.

You're taking an out-of-context quote by a non-historian, reading it completely wrong, and then using it to deny what historian after historian has already told you.

As far as "not in any history books", what are you talking about? Cambridge Ancient History, Oxford Classical Dictionary, every single serious history book on the period discusses Jesus and other figures of the New Testament in great detail. Show me the book of history that covers 1st-century Israel/Palestine and doesn't include Jesus???



If you already forgot, these were some of the statements made in the link you posted yourself.

In his book Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, Atheist historian Michael Grant completely rejected the idea that Jesus never existed.

....To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serous scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.

Secular scholar Will Durant, who left the Catholic Church and embraced humanism, also dismisses the idea in Caesar and Christ (the third volume of his Story of Civilisation)

The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.... The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them.

Rudolf Bultmann
Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the Palestinian community.


Robert Van Voorst
Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.... The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question.


Graham Stanton
Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which as to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher.

And then there's these:

As Professor Bultmann, Professor of New Testament studies, once wrote:

“Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community.”


Paul Maier, former Professor of Ancient History, remarks: “The total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus’ existence.”


Also, Craig Evans who is widely known for his writings on the subject of the historical Jesus says that: “No serious historian of any religious or nonreligious stripe doubts that Jesus of Nazareth really lived in the first century and was executed under the authority of Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea and Samaria.”


Even the most skeptical of New Testament scholars Bart Ehrman (who is certainly no friend of Christianity) states that:

“These views are so extreme (that Jesus did not exist) and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.”


Scholar Michael Grant says: “To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has ‘again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars.”

In truth, the claim that Jesus never existed as a historical person is not on the table of historical scholarship (unless you are an atheist blogger). According to Richard Burridge: “I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that (that Jesus did not exist) anymore.”

some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed, and he really was crucified, just as Julius Caesar really existed and was assassinated. .... We can in fact know as much about Jesus as we can about any figure in the ancient world.

Marcus Borg, Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions


There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.

Richard A. Burridge, Professor of Biblical Interpretation, Kings College, London, inJesus Now and Then


This view [that Jesus didn't exist] is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice, which holds all the main primary sources, and Christian people, in contempt. .... Most of its proponents are also extraordinarily incompetent.

Maurice Casey, Nottingham University, in Jesus of Nazareth


Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E.

Prof James Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary, in Jesus Within Judaism


I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus .... We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period.

Prof Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina in an interview by The Infidel Guy


Research in the historical Jesus has taken several positive steps in recent years. .... the persistent trend in recent years is to see the Gospels as essentially reliable, especially when properly understood, and to view the historical Jesus in terms much closer to Christianity’s traditional understanding

Prof Craig Evans, Arcadia Divinity College, Arcadia University, in What are They Saying about the Historical Jesus?


we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. ..... In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.

The late Michael Grant, eminent historian of the Roman Empire, in Jesus: an historian's review of the gospels


[The following is beyond reasonable doubt from everyone's point of view:]that Jesus was known in both Galilee and Jerusalem, that he was a teacher, that he carried out cures of various illnesses, particularly demon-possession and that these were widely regarded as miraculous; that he was involved in controversy with fellow Jews over questions of the law of Moses; and that he was crucified in the governorship of Pontius Pilate.

A.E. Harvey, formerly at Oxford University, in Jesus and the constraints of history


So in one sense I think I’m not alone in feeling that to show the ill-informed and illogical nature of the current wave of “mythicist” proponents is a bit like having to demonstrate that the earth isn’t flat, or that the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, or that the moon-landings weren’t done on a movie lot.

Larry Hurtado, Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh University, on Larry Hurtado's Blog


An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only help anchor him in history. Myth and legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something much more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it.

Emeritus Professor Edwin Judge, Ancient History Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney, in the Foreword to The truth about Jesus by P Barnett


I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed.

Jeffery Jay Lowder, writing on the Secular Web


.... a growing conviction among many scholars that the Gospels tell us more about Jesus and his aims than we had previously thought ..... subsequent Christianity may be in greater continuity with Jesus than was previously thought.

J Paget, Cambridge University, in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus


Jesus did more than just exist. He said and did a great many things that most historians are reasonably certain we can know about today. .... A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today - in the academic world at least - gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat.

M A Powell, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, in The Jesus Debate


Historical reconstruction is never absolutely certain, and in the case of Jesus it is sometimes highly uncertain. Despite this, we have a good idea of the main lines of his ministry and his message. We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died. ..... the dominant view [among scholars] today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-century Judaism.

EP Sanders, Oxford & Duke Universities, in The Historical Figure of Jesus


Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically.

The late Graham Stanton, Cambridge University, in The Gospels and Jesus


Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it [the theory that Jesus didn't exist] as effectively refuted.

Robert Van Voorst, Western Theological Seminary, in Jesus outside the New Testament


[In answer to the question, did Jesus exist?] I would say it is much more likely that he did than he didn’t. To believe that he had been imagined or invented is a much harder task than to rely on the available evidence, which is obviously not as clear-cut as one would like, but is sufficiently good to say that somebody by the name of Jesus existed around the time when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea in the first century AD.

Geza Vermes, Oxford University, in A new church is born, History magazine


The historical evidence for Jesus himself is extraordinarily good. .... From time to time people try to suggest that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, but virtually all historians of whatever background now agree that he did

NT Wright, Oxford & St Andrews Universities, in the Guardian

The "historian" in your youtube is Dr. Richard Carrier, the forefront of the "Jesus myth" fringe. He is another self-published atheist activist who doesn't work for any university and has never held a position at any accredited institution. That's the best your side can come up with. And Bart Ehrman, an anti-Christian activist (and university professor) who still agrees with the huge consensus that Jesus existed, destroys Carrier here.

 

[Mess World]

Reading comprehension, man. He's not saying "Most historians agree that he didn't exist". And there's not the slightest bit of evidence in that jpeg to support what he IS saying.

You're taking an out-of-context quote by a non-historian, reading it completely wrong, and then using it to deny what historian after historian has already told you.

As far as "not in any history books", what are you talking about? Cambridge Ancient History, Oxford Classical Dictionary, every single serious history book on the period discusses Jesus and other figures of the New Testament in great detail. Show me the book of history that covers 1st-century Israel/Palestine and doesn't include Jesus???



If you already forgot, these were some of the statements made in the link you posted yourself.




If you already forgot, these were some of the statements made in the link you posted yourself.








The "historian" in your youtube is Dr. Richard Carrier, the forefront of the "Jesus myth" fringe. He is another self-published atheist activist who doesn't work for any university and has never held a position at any accredited institution. That's the best your side can come up with. And Bart Ehrman, an anti-Christian activist who still agrees with the huge consensus that Jesus existed, destroys Carrier here.

I have reading comprehension ? I said what you're saying now last nite. I said historians in the past agree he existed last nite

 

[Soon]

I saw this video, his argument is weak.

Also this is the article from Richard Dawkins site, Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up.

Also, Richard Dawkins can't list not one reputable, respected, and highly regarded western Historian that believes Christ did not exist.

 

[Mess World]

I saw this video, his argument is weak.

Also this is the article from Richard Dawkins site, Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up.

Also, Richard Dawkins can't list not one reputable, respected, and highly regarded western Historian that believes Christ did not exist.

So how does someone prove outside the bible that Jesus existed ?

 

[NZA]

1) I have heard this argument before.

But if you have a low life preacher or backsliding Christian, do you think religion is the problem or the person's lack of character?

There was a time when there was no Christianity or Judasim or Islam was the world a better place, worse or the same? The reason I ask cause I wonder if this fight is because of arrogance, or do you believe there was a Utopia at some point in human history and you want to go back to those times. Cause if the Atheist goal is to destroy religion, do they think the people who are power hungry will have better motives.

2) I agree, they don't get the most out of the Bible because of their limited knowledge and believing the Bible is the inerrant word of God. There are Christians who can't tell you where Bethlehem or Nazareth are located. So it will go over most Christians head that the authors wrote what they believe, it could be prophetic, historical, or inspirational. There are some who probably believe the entire Bible was dictated like the Ten Commandments were to Moses.

i dont think religion is the only problem. people will always be problematic. stalin, mao, and pol pot were problematic without religion. religion is just one of the things helping to motivate certain actions. political ideology and cults of personality can fill the void that a lack of religion will leave. they both thrive where there is a lack of critical thinking and both can make people feel justified in harming others.

if you get rid of religion, you still have to get rid of people's tendencies toward authoritarianism and superstiitous thinking or it will manifest itself in some other way. some shortsighted atheists may think the world will be better without religion, but that is missing the forest for the trees. the world will be better with an informed and educated public encouraged to think and ask questions.