Proof of the "historical" Jesus... (page 3)

seedy3

Ahhhhhhh.............. Faith, there's your proof! What more would you need. All you need is faith, then all else falls in line.

Kenneson

Seedy3,
Do you have that faith you mention? If you don't, do you want it? Or are you content with your "proofs" of Jesus' non-existence?

No I do not have the faith I was refering to, as that Jesus existed. I find just baseing what I beleive solely on faith is a very weak foundation, I do not mean that derogatoraly, because most people that I know are christian and really know nothing about their own religon. My wife being one of them. However you and quite a number of others here have made an effort to understand their faith, which I feel is great.

No, I also do not desire to have a faith in the bible, it's God/s (depending on how you look at it). I research religons as a hobby, not as a faith, I do so becasue it ties in with the history of mans development and a study of one without the other is really fruitless.

But thanks for the offer

Seedy

Xander

I find it hard to believe that some people would believe that a religion with over one billion adherents and continues 2000 years after it's inception was started by a non-existant person.

Can this logic even be reasoned with? I mean, if I started a cult and gained enough followers to start torturing and executing people who would not join me, and centuries later my followers, who've continued my practices up until almost the present, now cover the earth....would that mean I was right to begin with?

Before you brag of christianity's numbers, I think you'd better do some long, hard looking at how it GOT most of those numbers. Might also explain why fewer and fewer people claim to be christian these days. You can't burn someone at the stake for disagreeing with your religion anymore in most of the world.

an abiding FAITH in Jesus as The Messiah

Ummm...James 2:26? Talk about hella double standard! For Jesus followers, if they have faith, but don't prove their belief, they are as good as dead. However, Jesus expects everyone to have faith in his return without HIM having to prove anything.

Xander F
(Unseen Apostate Directorate of North America - Ohio order)
A fanatic is one who, upon losing sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts.
--George Santayana

Kenneson

Xander writes, "Can this logic be reasoned with? I mean, if I
started a cult and gained enough followers..."

By your own admission, you state that a cult does not begin without a founder. Yet that is what skeptics ask us to believe about Christianity. Don't they deny a "historical" Jesus? The rightness or wrongness of your followers behavior wouldn't negate the fact that you began the cult.

As to James 2:26, as I see it, by reading the context of the whole chapter means that proper conduct can only come about with an
authentic commitment to God in faith. Faith produces works and not
vice versa.

funkyderek

By your own admission, you state that a cult does not begin without a founder. Yet that is what skeptics ask us to believe about Christianity. Don't they deny a "historical" Jesus? The rightness or wrongness of your followers behavior wouldn't negate the fact that you began the cult.

So who founded Mormonism? The angel Moroni or Joseph Smith?

--
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. - Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

ThatSucks

Kenneson said:

By your own admission, you state that a cult does not begin without a founder. Yet that is what skeptics ask us to believe about Christianity. Don't they deny a "historical" Jesus? The rightness or wrongness of your followers behavior wouldn't negate the fact that you began the cult.

But what if Xander started a cult 2000+ years ago and went around clammoring on about a Cultic Climune who was sent by God to do his bidding and save mankind, etc. Then, Xander would have started the fabrication of the Climune.

Look! I beheld a grand site. A man, the purist of pure, standing by the pond in Annington. Upon asking this man his name, he said, "I am Climune. I am the holy one. I fulfil God's promise to deliver your people once again. Tell your people the good news so they will know that they are not forsaken." Then as quickly as he came, he vanished.

Xander could have walked around claiming to have witnessed the above, screaming for people to have faith in what he says to be the truth. As he gained more followers, so began the Climune movement, all basing their lives on the FAITH in what Xander had said.

In this case their would be no historical "Climune", only Xander, who started the movement.

Bona Dea

One thing I've always been curious about was the wise men from the east, who followed the star.

Has there been anything written in Eastern History about this?

I would think that would be a notable thing. It does seem as though there would be some sort of documentation (besides that found in the bible) about the kings who carried gifts to a child that they had found by following a star to a stable. I mean, that is the kind of stuff that fables and folk stories that you hand down through generations is made of...if nothing else, it seems as though there would be a story about it in their culture.

Does anyone know if there is any such "story" or documentation in the Orient?

"Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them."
-Walter Kerr

Liberty

Hi Simwitness,

To me the question isn't really about whether the "real" Jesus existed or not but rather what was his "true" nature? The evidence for Jesus as the man/god described in the Bible is very poor. Besides much scholarly evidence which disputes the claims made for him by Christians, I find that common sense and logic are also against the concept of Jesus as a man/god with superhuman powers. For starters, nothing he predicted has been proven to have come true. Even his "prediction" of the punishment of Isreal by the Romans is suspect because the New Test. accounts of this could very well have been written after these events took place and then were retroactively credited to the long dead Jesus. The same goes for the "predictions" of his own capture and execution. Nothing else he predicted has come true at all! All of his promises to the Apostles remained unfulfilled in their lifetimes and continue to be unfulfilled 2000 years later.
Jesus also never bothered to predict the most important events of World history such as medical advances, atomic power, jet planes, space flight, and men walking on the Moon! If he couldn't see these immensely important things in mankind's future then his powers seem very limited indeed.

The concept that a loving God, who had even lived as a man, would require blind faith in such vague and/or unproven claims, events, and predictions which have little or no evidence to acompany them (which then take thousands of years to occur) in order that people may be saved from His deadly Judgements just strains the limits of credulity, fairness, and simple justice. The complex and convoluted nature of the Salvation plan imposed upon the Bible by its modern adherents just does not ring true for a logical and fair Super Being capable of creating the whole of the Universe. The Jesus stories sound too much like other mythical heroes born of the ancient past to be "true" in a modern sense. The Bible is not a book about an intellegent Super Being and His loving interactions with His beloved creation but rather is about petty tribal gods and the primitive tribesmen who try and make sense of their savage world over a long stretch of time as their religion evolved under the occupation of countless more powerful invaders who infused their own concepts and explainations into the mix. An all powerful Super Being behaving in a logical manner is nowhere to be found in the Bible. Nor are any scientific priciples evident in any explainations of how nature works, just the common myths prevailent in the Middle East at that time. If the Bible were inspired by a true Creator God it would be compatable with modern scientific observations and better still would have explainations which are revealed to be true as our knowledge increased over time, instead the exact opposit is true as Bible apologists are always scrambling to adjust their Biblical explainations to fit new scientific data.

Double Edge

So who founded Mormonism? The angel Moroni or Joseph Smith?

To a Morman, neither... it was Jesus Christ, since they believe their religion is a 'restoration' of the original Christianity.

To a non-Morman, does it matter?

Proof of the "historical" Jesus...

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