It's coming...and I can't wait

i've never heard of the dude you are speaking of nor do i care about who he is. i personally don't care whether or not you believe in god or not or whether you think bill mahr is so freaking cool. you have full right by me to think what you want and please don't mistake this for some sort of "christian arrogance" because it's the furthest thing from it.

i just think that if you are going to doubt the legitimacy of christianity because of how it was recorded then you should doubt just abuot everything about history from say 1000 AD backwards. if you don't, then you are just selectively choosing a subject that you have a personal reason for doubting to support those claims.
 
Almost imperceptibly, the last 20 posts in this thread moved away from the issue of the evidence of Jesus’ existence to the question of his divinity. In my opinion, if the thread is to be useful to any of us, then we should return to the original issue – the attempt to establish whether or not Jesus existed – and then, if we can agree on that, move outward to the question of his divinity.

And, if we’re talking about existence, I think the analogy to Socrates is absolutely on point. Just as a background, Socrates never wrote anything, at least that we know of. What we do know of his life and his thoughts are preserved by 4 men: Xenophon, Aristotle, Aristophanes, and of course Plato. In a similar fashion, we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who record in their various ways the life of Jesus. One difference, and a difference that I think is important, is that none of our sources on Socrates really attempt to give us anything in the way of a biography. Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes use him as a character. Aristotle refers to his philosophical manner. So, in a sense, the argument for Jesus’ existence is more substantial than Socrates’. We have fairly complete biographies of Jesus’ life. We know far more about him than we do about Socrates.

Here’s the bottom line: those who question Jesus’ existence but not Socrates’ are engaging in a selective skepticism that reveals their bias.

This aspect of our discussion must be agreed upon first, before we’re going to accomplish anything useful regarding the question of Jesus’ divinity. Now, when I say “agreed upon”, I don’t mean that we all have to agree that Jesus actually existed, merely that if we’re going to question his existence, we have to also question the existence of a great number of ancient personalities for whose existence we have far less evidence. And unless we’re willing to do that – to question the existence of all but a handful of ancient people – then we might as well, for the sake of our discussion, “agree” that Jesus existed.
 
Coelacanth,

Would you agree that the plausibility of the existence of Socrates and/or Jesus depends partly on the plausibility of the content of the writer's writings?

Were I to report to you that I saw a woman at the supermarket who had a really nasty disposition and cursed at several people before lashing out with physical violence, you might be amazed, but probably not overly skeptical, since all those things are within the realm of normal human experience.

If I were to later tell you of a woman who descended from the sky with no means of support carrying nuclear weapons under each arm and shouting - at 190 decibels - that everyone will die while lighting shot forth from her toes, killing bystanders by the dozen...you might be amazed, and very likely skeptical.

So I don't see that it's so easy to separate the existence of a historical figure from the plausibility of the content of his story, and by extension the credibility of the biographer. Plato's narratives are much more plausible. And so they could be argued to be more likely to be true than the gospels.
 
good point tuba john, but i think after 2000+ years someone other than the hornfan atheist braintrust would have provided more concrete evidence by now.

further, there are tons of wild tails from history and i stand by if you are going to doubt the existence of jesus based on who/when/how it was recorded then you have to start questioning a whole bunch of other information.

for example, we all like the movie 300. are you going to tell me that a one-eyed injured dude is going to go back and tell everyone that the rest of the dudes got their asses kicked? hell no, he's going to tell everyone that they shoved it up the enemy's *** for about 2 weeks straight and only died because some hunchback dude ratted them out.

if you want to doubt that and have a bunch of spartan warriors come kick your ***, that's your problem.
wink.gif
 
If I parse your lengthy (and well-worded) response, what your argument boils down to is that the gospels are believable because generations of people have believed it. That its status as a tradition affords it some level of authority, and through that it gains credibility.

Somehow, that argument manages to both be circular and appeal to authority simultaneously!

<Edit>
Actually, as I re-read your post, I think you mean that pre-Christian jewish tradition lends credibility to the new testament and Jesus's existence. Which I don't find to be a much better argument, albeit one that is at least not illogical in two ways at once.

In my (admittedly isolated) example, the magical lightning woman could have been written about and predicted for generations. That would not change one iota the credibility of my story, since her appearance would be completely outside of normal human experience.
 
I'm not saying that the woman's (or Jesus's) existence is false. I'm saying that the gospels are not as credible as Plato's earnest accounts of Socrates, where relatively normal people are doing reasonably normal things.

It is illogical to say that Jewish tradition improves the credibility of the gospels for the following reason:

Regardless of whether Jesus existed or not, the oral tradition would exist that claims he did, simply because prior Jewish oral tradition demanded it. There are two possibilities: 1) Jesus existed 2) Jesus did not exist.

In case #1, he is the son of God and fulfills all the predictions laid out in the old testament about the Savior.

In case #2, he did not exist and the writers who invented him wrote their story to fit the predictions laid out in the old testament about the Savior.

Since the same result occurs in either condition, the existence of the Jewish tradition lends no credibility to either side of the debate.
 
coelacanth,

i agreed with stabone so i feel i must reply so you don't think i'm too much of a horse's arse. if you want to sit around and debate how or why you do believe in god that's fine. i think you all have an excellent vocabulary and have shown an incredible ability to philosophize. my feeling is that at the end of the day nobody really knows so all the philosophizing won't get us anywhere. you either believe in god or you don't but neither side can claim scoreboard until our unfortunate passing.

by the way, i know use of the word philosophize is internet greatness
 
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