...the head of an image processing and fx software company, I can tell you one thing with certainty: Online apps that transfer photos back and forth and process them online are the very last thing on our list of technologies to be concerned about.
Why? Because nothing on the net will ever compare to an in-system, RAM-based, N-layer handling, real-time nondestructive effects engine written close to the metal with live geometric warp layers, masking and animation. That's on the application end.
One the user end, these web based apps are meant for your grandmother. And at that, only on days when someone else in her apartment building or upstream on her cable connection isn't downloading "300" on bit-torrent, and there aren't 200 other people on the same server trying to process an image. The entire idea of "thin clients" for image manipulation is one that presumes bandwidth and server power that are not available at this point in time - it's silly, is what it is.
You can buy a great image manipulation system for about $30 if you simply look hard enough. You'll be able to level photos, retouch them, or process the living heck out of very high resolution images if that's your intent, set people on fire, morph them, all manner of sophisticated things. Or you can use a web app and move a slider and wait... and move... and wait... and save... and wait... and finally get back your pic. Which you had better hope is what you wanted. When I say you'll get it back, I mean after that "300" download finishes, of course.:-)
So here's what you should be asking yourselves: What is your time worth?
Yes indeed, it implies that humans can think their way through to the idea that there are ways to behave that benefit self, family, community, nation and world in ways that are in reasonable balance. As opposed to getting one's morals canned out of a book, repressing sexuality, fearing homosexuality, trying to impose all manner of your canned morality on people who do not share your delusions. An amazing idea, I agree. Much easier to get your morals canned; saves having to figure things out. Good for the mentally lazy, the mentally incompetent, and of course, those who are simply gullible. And those who carry combinations of those three burdens to varying degrees.
The Universe without God? Even more interesting
Ok, Mr. AC. Sigh. The universe is impossible for you to think of as having been there in one form or another. You think something had to start it because in your mind, everything has to have a cause. So you postulate "God." God, then, "causes" the universe and this makes you all warm and fuzzy. I then ask, as usual, so what caused God. You answer, hey, he was always there. I say, gee, aren't you the fellow that said everything had to have a cause, and *that* was why you assume there had to be a god? You go yeah, uh, uh, but he's GOD, so he was always there, and I say, well fella, if God could always be there, then the universe could too, and so there is no need to postulate a god. End of argument, end of "interesting", Christian retires with egg on face. There, saved us a lot of time. No need to thank me.
Are we so "advanced" and "wise" that we dismiss God as a mere superstition?
Some of us simply aren't vulnerable to mythology. It isn't about intelligence, generally, it is about gullibility and the ability to face the hugeness of the universe with wonder instead of fear; it is also the ability to recognize, and accept, that some questions do not have obvious answers and that this does not in and of itself cause a need to arise to make up answers to fill in those blanks. Some of us are perfectly ok with blanks; curious, certainly, but not fearful and not willing to succumb to nonsense explanations just to have some kind of thing to point to as an answer.
Even though I am very educated and have been in obtaining advanced degrees since 1987, I am not yet ready to make that leap.
You can educate yourself until you're blue in the face, and you may never reach an intellectual state that is sufficient to erode your particular combination of gullibility, fear, and need for a father-figure. None of this changes reality; reality is what it is, and there is no degree of faith that will change it. The Egyptians had enormous faith in Ra; no Ra. The Greeks had enormous faith in Zeus and company; no Zeus, and no company, either. The Hindus have enormous faith in Kali and crew; no Kali, no crew. Voodooists have enormous faith in their various hoodoos. No hoodoos. No African gods. No Hawaiian gods. No Chinese gods. No ghosts, no spirits, no elves, no fairies, no santa, no easter bunny, no spaghetti monster. And of course, Christians have enormous faith in God, and no surprise... no god, either. Faith has its own merits. But changing reality isn't one of them. It hasn't worked for any other religion or religious adherent, and it isn't going to work for you either, no matter how nice your religion is, or makes itself out to be.
The day you wrap your head around that may be the day you try to work out your own morals, too, instead of taking them from a 2000 year old book, and that same day you may look to the stars and actually realize how wonderful and huge the universe is. You can look at the Hubble deep space photo and finally catch on to the fact that the idea of a god isn't big enough - by a long shot - to account for what is in that single photo.
Those dates are the dates of the times the stories appear to have been written, judging by the style of the writing and the issues that can be cross-referenced to the culture of that time. Not the dates of the books; there are no such books, only copies. The books themselves are much more recent. The three primary sources are:
The Vatican Manuscript (4th century; missing pages from Hebrews 9:14 to the end of Hebrews, also missing Timothy, Titus, and the Book of Revelation): Still accepted as the best reference by most authorities.
The Sinaitic Manuscript (4th century; complete, plus contains two books known as "The Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Shepherd of Hermas")
The Alexandrin Manuscript (5th century; 25 pages missing from Matthew, 2 from John, and 3 from 2nd Corinthians). This is generally known as the poorest of the three manuscripts.
There are over five thousand different historical (old enough to be used as source references) manuscript copies of the New Testament. Some are in Greek, some in Latin, and some in Hebrew. These generally date somewhere between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. Of that number, most are incomplete copies; sometimes this is due to loss of some of the manuscript, but it is often simply a consequence of the actual bulk of the various ancient transcription mediums (papyrus, vellum and parchment). Often, the New Testament was issued as a series of separate documents, for instance broken into The Four Gospels, the Acts and General Epistles, the Pauline Epistles, and the Book of Revelation.
With regard to the fragment, again, this has already been covered, but: Refer to the wikipedia article on it. It is a lot better; there you will find the honest assessment that it is much later than the page you linked to claims. One of the ways we know this is because it is part of a codex, and codexes weren't in use early on. If it was that early, it would have been from a scroll (a roll, not a bound book, or a codex.) The fragment is most likely from about 250 AD, which means it is basically contemporaneous with the rest of the bible's oldest copies.
However - for the sake of looking at this in the most generous way possible - let's assume that it dates from 150 AD. There is no way that can be so, but let's just run with it. This is 120 years after Christ. No one who wrote this document, even if written in 150 AD, was one of his peers. So it is a story written about "the old times", if you will, not a contemporary alternate source of information. What we're looking for here is something from the government, from a writer (there were tons of them), a note about the 3 hour blackout when he was resurrected, that sort of thing that comes from a source that is not the bible. We already know what the bible says. We can't look to it to confirm its own content, we need another source. That, in a nutshell, is what is missing.
The historical evidence is first, the existence of Christianity, and second, the New Testament and various other writings. (Are we going around in circles yet?)
Historically speaking, none of that qualifies as proof. The NT documents are 200 to 300 years younger than the time during which Christ was supposed to live. The earliest record we have of the Christians themselves is about 80 to 100 AD, which is 50 to 70 years after Christ lived. The evidence from that time is from people who were not even born when Christ was supposed to be alive. This is what we mean when we say that there is no historical evidence - nothing from Christ's time. We have stories in a book from centuries later, and we know the cult was around 50 years or so after the time in which he was supposed to have been around. That's not very strong in general, and historically speaking, it is nothing. And yes, you're going around in circles. This has already been covered, in detail, elsewhere in the thread.
Regarding the trouble a false story causes, keep in mind that hasn't stopped others - Mormons, Scientologists, Hindus, Crystal gazers, Astrologists, UFO abductees, Phrenologists, Faith healers, Voodoo cultists, Politicians, etc, ad infinitum. Because we know falsehoods are very common in religion and politics, it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that Christianity is similar to the rest of that list in this regard. What would be of interest would be contemporaneous (meaning, same time in history) independent records of Christian doings, and particularly, Jesus' doings. There aren't any that have come to light so far, and that's a definite warning sign for falsehood. Not definitive by any means, but certainly a caution flag.
Quite a lot of history has to do with studying and interpreting these kinds of documents, so yes, they are a kind of historical evidence.
Yes, but not the kind that can validate the truth of the existence of Jesus Christ. The study of biblical documents in order to get them straight is called "textual criticism" and it serves only to keep the bible true to itself. Look into it. I highly recommend the "Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism: Revised Edition" by J. Harold Greenlee. You can find it on Amazon.
And sure, you could imagine the existence of Jesus to be a falsehood perpetrated by a conspiracy that was put across in 250 AD, or 40 AD, or at some other time.
Conspiracy? Perhaps. Have you ever played "telephone"? That's all it takes for stories to mutate in wondrous ways, and there were many, many decades before the stories in the bible came to light. Or it could have been a schism, a copycat religion (there is some evidence for this, there are numerous similarities between Christianity and earlier religions) or even parody. The point is, we don't know, and it is foolish to guess; it is better to point out we don't know, and then go looking for what is missing. We can weigh the evidence as we go. Starting now, there isn't any. I'm sure everyone involved would like to find some. It's only a hobby for me, and I am very curious about what went on. I can hardly imagine the state of a devout Christian upon hearing that they found actual records of Christ - of any kind - from a source like the government, or even a supplier of crosses or the poor sod who catered the last supper. Anything! And if that "anything" was a real, bona fide artifact - the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas, the order for his crucifixion, a complaint from the money-changers at the temple, a record of the darkness during his resurrection - there'd be worldwide notice taken. And for good reason.
Some people - educated, well socialized - have broad sets of interests, and often conduct conversations that range far and wide. When you move out of your mother's basement, you may meet some of these people. Don't embarrass yourself by attempting to bring the conversation back to its starting point over and over again; most people will find that cute once or twice, and after that, simply an indicator that you are socially retarded. You won't be invited back, and then where will you get your pizza? Run along now.
I'm pretty sure a lot of things cited in the Bible have been found where the Bible says they are. I think you concede as much later in your post.
Certainly. However, this doesn't go any distance at all towards validating the story of Jesus, any more than mentioning the CIA in a Jack Ryan book proves the existence of Jack Ryan. Background history is easily accessible to any author of a serious work of fiction, of course.
My understanding is that many (most?) historians believe that much of the text of 300 AD reflects accurately much of what was written much earlier, at least 70AD, maybe earlier.
No. There is nothing available from that time period; the earliest texts are from 200-300 AD at best, and that's if you're being generous. We have not one original document with regard to the NT. Which is really too bad. We know - because what we have are copies - that the stories are at least one document generation older than the oldest documents we have, but that's all we know for sure.
If you reject outright as unreliable any claim to supernatural events,
I don't. I hold them to be extraordinary claims, and I expect those claims to be justified by extraordinary evidence; a complete lack of evidence I find to be unacceptable. The 3 hours of darkness is a good example because it was country-wide. The lack of a record of this I find to be rather telling. Such records are typically easy to find. There are other events that I think would evince similar notice, such as feeding a multitude from a single loaf of bread. But I don't assume they're impossible; the story makes those claims and asks to be taken seriously. Fine. I do. But then I can't find any evidence of this; It is the lack of such note that causes me to doubt the whole thing.
All I'm saying here that there is historical evidence which indicates that Jesus existed.
Really? Ok, out with it then. Seriously. If you are privy to this information, I'm sure the entire world, Christians and non-Christians alike, want to hear it. What do you know about this? Come on: Exactly what is this "historical evidence"?
I am perfectly ready to be proven wrong. By all means, do so. All you have to do is back up that one statement. Over to you.
My point is that you are being very particular in subjecting anything written about Jesus to this level of scrutiny that is generally not applied to the very many other historical figures who are known only through Nth generation copies of written accounts.
I am being very particular. Extraordinary claims require, if not extraordinary evidence, as Sagan would have it, then at least the same standard of evidence as everything else. Therefore, without corroboration, the bible, a veritable fount of extraordinary claims, does not rise to the standard of a historical document.
With regard to Jesus: If you tell me you have a horse, I will not begin with doubt. If, however, you tell me your horse is bright green, flies, and can heal the sick, then you're going to have to show me your horse and its abilities because again, you'll find that I've all of a sudden become quite particular. If you consider this an unreasonable stance, that's fine. I'm not accountable to you. You should have found someone more gullible to present your equine entertainment.
Use quotation marks more carefully. I said "no one particularly doubts".
Fine. Change my text to: "You're quite wrong when you say 'no one particularly doubts' those writings." I particularly doubt them. So do many others. No need to change anything else I said, either in specific or in the sense of it. You're still 100% wrong.
If you don't even understand what I am saying, futher discussion is useless.
Rest assured, I understood you perfectly. You were simply wrong. You're still wrong. Anything else you want to cover?
I apologize to my fellow Americans for being harsh, but we have got to 'kick it up a notch' or we are done.
Becoming "godly" isn't "kicking it up a notch", it is stepping backwards into the dark ages. Get with the program. Otherwise, yes, you've made some good points.
Okay, no more patent system. I certainly hope you're willing to spend billions of dollars on public funding of medical research, since the average new drug takes about $1 billion to develop
You just need to get rid of the factors that make it a 1 billion dollar cost. Lawyers, the FDA, and insurance companies. Those are the other ants in the picnic basket. After that, the average drug would cost four goats and a pill-casing. Your government has made your life a nest of parasites under the ridiculous (and flat out false) operating principle that you can be, and should be, made "safe" from drugs. This is, of course, impossible. Don't blame the cost of drugs on the drug companies. They're not responsible for the costs. Your legislators are, and indirectly, the diseased legal and regulatory systems they have produced and continue to support are. Get rid of them, and drugs will advance more like the way electronics do. Only faster, if the USPTO is gone as well. Of course, electronics would advance faster too.
But I'm just dreaming. America is a nation of people that think they should be paid if they slip, spill coffee, hit a deer, get pregnant, or feel they have been insulted. They love the mommy system. Because they're children, mentally speaking. And yes, I'm a US citizen. Just not a proud one.
Otherwise, the court system would be backlogged beyond belief.
Methinks you've not been paying attention. Not only is the court system backlogged, it starts right at the top with time limits and all manner of restrictions on what it will hear, regardless of applicability. The court system has been broken for years. Just like the rest of the system, only a bit worse. You can see it in decisions (pot grown in California for use in California is an "interstate commerce" matter, "make no law" means "make some law", "shall not be infringed" means "we can infringe this way", "no ex post facto law" means "unless we want to", etc.) You can see it in the war on personal choice (misnamed the war on drugs by the mommy-police); you can see it in the blithe ignorance of the president's violation of his oath, you can see it in the fact that judges are allowed to fall asleep at the bench and get away with it without it even having any effect on the decisions made that session. And of course, with regard to patents, the fact that software patents have not been thrown out en masse is one of the most telling measure of judicial incompetence of all.
That is absolute and utter nonsense. The NT texts check well with themselves; the problem is that for the story told therein, there is no corroboration. "All of human history" is replete with examples of multiple instances of history told from different viewpoints within different cultures. We don't just know about the Greeks from the Greeks; we know about them from the Romans, from all over Europe in fact. There is no one book, published by a cult, that contains the Roman story. Likewise, we know about the Greeks from similar multiple sources. We know even more about them because when we look at the writings they left and they say "there is a library here... a royal barge there... a temple here..." we actually find these things. History is an area that fails to have multiple sources only at the very fringe events (which I personally think Christ's advent would not qualify as) or at bunkum/superstitious events (David and Goliath, Moroni and the Golden Tablets, 99.999% of UFO sightings... if not 100%, the 3-hour darkening of the skies)
To put "all of human history" in the same basket with the biblical tales is to insult historians the world over, and to demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of how history is collected, understood, and evaluated.
The New Testament texts are more reliable than pretty much any other texts from that time period.
They have been determined to be reliably the same story, from codex to today's KJ. That is entirely distinct from being "good history." You've confused the two. The NT is by all indicators a very low quality history (or an outright historical fiction); authors reporting the same event within the book don't even always agree, and the events themselves have no corroboration in other records, at least, as yet, so you can't even side with one or the other.
Whatever criteria you use to throw them out as invalid will also apply to pretty much every other document from that time period or earlier
No. The criteria used for grading historical information is multi-sourcing, of which there is plenty for much of history. The bible, however, fails this important, nay, critical, aspect of historical validation. So one can easily disregard the bible without, for instance, presuming the Greeks were a myth, that the Vikings did not ply the seas, or that the Christians did not burn witches, rack dissenters, and stone women. The bible is known to have not changed since about 300 AD. It contains some broad strokes - kings and kingdoms, largely - that are historically accurate. It also contains a great deal of supernatural event reporting, some of which serves to handily disqualify it as a true record of history. One specific event is reported in Matt. 27:45. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour... This is not something that would have gone either un-noticed or un-reported if it happened. Yet it did; that's a prime indicator that the bible is telling fibs. Entirely aside from the supernatural character of the event, which of course is another, and of which you can find numerous examples in the bible. Most biblical events can be shrugged off as being too local or minor to find their way into other histories, but not that one.
So it is critical to keep straight what we mean when we say that the bible is true to itself. What it means is that the text we have today closely matches the text of 300 AD. That is all it means. It doesn't mean that the bible is a historical document; it doesn't mean that actual historical documents are less trustworthy because they have survived in poorer shape, or have been translated more times; the latter are often far better records than anything in the bible simply because there are many other accounts that corroborate what they say, for instance, Cleopatra isn't just a Shakespeare
Don't you realize that the works of Tacitus and Josephus that we have today are also "supposed to be copies of earlier works"? But no one particularly doubts in those cases that the original manuscript once existed, that the attribution of authorship is probably correct, and that the copies are mostly accurate transcriptions, with perhaps a few editorial additions, accidental omissions, and so on.
(a), yes I do realize they are copies, and (b), I take them with considerable doubt, as do most people who study this subject, and (c) should those writings be false, and there certainly are indications they have problems, that casts even more doubt on the proposition that Jesus existed as a historical person. I was simply giving the writings the note of at least existing outside the bible itself, which they in fact do. You're quite wrong when you say "no one doubts" those writings. I suggest you do a little research; for instance, Jospehus was a Pharisee, and his writings are criticized on the basis that he is attributed things scholars think no Pharisee would have written. Tacitus got his facts wrong, called a prefect (Pilate) a procurator and so forth. Many people, including myself, believe that Tacitus' writings on this are a forgery by Johannes de Spire circa the 15th century. So don't mistake my courtesy for ignorance. The most important fact regarding those writings is that they exist outside the literary tradition of the bible, and in that, they stand as the earliest such records, even as flawed as they may be, that exist. Even giving them the most possible room, as I did above, they still come from a time after Jesus was supposed to be extant, and that is the real problem - they're not records of Jesus at all, even with all the leeway one can hand them. They're records of the cult of Christ, which is something else again entirely. Throwing Tacitus out, my position becomes even stronger - or in other words, there is even less contemporaneous data to verify the story of Christ. We have records of the cult of vampirism and the cult of Hannibal Lecter; but we know these are fictional characters. Lecter in particular is at risk for turning into a pseudo-historical figure, but vampires don't seem to exceed the credulity of some people, and it is clear we can't rule out either Vlad the Impaler or the vampire Lestat as candidates for future shenanigans.
Furthermore, the copies that you mention are complete copies.
No. Both the Vatican and the Alexandrin manuscripts are missing large sections. Only the Sinaitic is complete (and in fact, it contains two more books known as "The Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Shepherd of Hermas") But it is from about AD 400, which is one heck of a gap from being an original document.
There are also fragmentary copies that survive, including this fragment, which was probably written during about 125-160 AD, and almost certainly sometime during 100-200 AD.
In fact, reasonable dating range for that fragment extends to about 250 AD for several reasons, one of the most telling being that it is a codex fragment, not a roll. Even the article you linked to mentions this. In any case, that is almost 300 years past the time when Christ was supposed to be extant. There is no certainty at all that the dates you quote - still over a century after the purported events - are accurate, but even if they are, they're still not contemporaneous, they're well into the "I head it this way" of centuries-old storytelling. They could still be accurate, but that is where comparing historical sources comes in, and as we know, that effort yields nothing, and I consider that to be a bell-ringer in terms of casting doubt on the whole story - even without the ridiculous supernatural nonsense that would surely have been noticed by the writers and historians of the day - for instance, when Christ was resurrected, I think they'd have
Given the story in the bible, even without supernatural powers, Jesus interacted with the government and the merchants and the people a great deal. There were many writers active during that time who would, I think, have been very likely indeed to have made note of Jesus's activities if he really existed, yet didn't say a word in all their writings - and we're talking about a lot of writing! Here are some of those authors:
Philo-Judæus,
Seneca,
Pliny the Elder,
Arrian,
Petronius,
Dion Pruseus,
Paterculus,
Suetonius,
Juvenal,
Martial,
Persius,
Plutarch,
Pliny the Younger,
Justus of Tiberius,
Apollonius,
Quintilian,
Lucanus,
Epictetus,
Hermogones,
Silius Italicus,
Statius,
Ptolemy,
Appian,
Phlegon,
Phædrus,
Valerius Maximus,
Lucian,
Pausanias,
Florus Lucius,
Quintius Curtius,
Aulus Gellius,
Dio Chrysostom,
Columella,
Valerius Flaccus,
Damis,
Favorinus,
Lysias,
Pomponius Mela,
Appion of Alexandria,
and Theon of Smyrna.
So I strongly disagree both on the bit player position, and on the "would be documented" position. Thanks for your reply, though.
There's a reason that there are no Jack "Ryanism" cults -- there's no Jack Ryan to start them. Personality cults need a person for everyone to initially cluster around.
The personalities being followed in the case of Christianity seems most likely to be that of the authors; Paul and Mark and Luke, perhaps, or whoever wrote those books. Same as in Hubbard's case, and the authors of the Norse or Greek mythologies.
Though the Christians may think they are following Jesus, the evidence leans towards them simply following a character creation of the biblical authors, probably out of whole cloth (though perhaps just "embroidered", though there is no evidence for that.) There is certainly personality a-plenty to follow. There's just no evidence it came from Christ. Look at the vampire cultists that follow Anne Rice's (and other author's) fiction. Those people love these vampires and they go out of their way to emulate them. Look at the Lecter cults that follow Hannibal Lecter, and again, emulate like crazy (and I didn't pick that word randomly.) These are cases of people following the author's personality, or more fairly, their creativity, as expressed in a character. Yes, people will follow anything. Don't blame me for that. But the evidence is there.
I'm just saying that since there was a religion, a following, there must have been some prophet called Jesus.
The problem with this reasoning is demonstrated by: Because there was a following of Zeus, there must have been some being called Zeus; because there was a following for Kali, there must have been some being called Kali; because there was a following for satan, there must have been a being called satan; because there is a following for Mormonism, there must have been a being called Moroni; because there was a following, a religion, there must be an earth-mother; because people leave milk at the back door, there must be elves; because there are many books about Jack Ryan, he must be a real person.
None of the above statements follow.
You see now? It doesn't follow that just because someone tells a story as a basis for a religion, that the content of the story relates to reality. Stories can be *just* stories, and they surely often are. Belief by itself does not in any way alter reality. Reality just trundles along, being what it is and nothing else.
But if there had NOT been that prophet, why would there have been a following that wrote down all that stuff in his name, or that tried to follow in his footsteps?
Oh, that's an easy one: Today's Christians are not following any prophet at all. They're following a book. Poorly, usually. As for why they did so originally, there could be many answers: For instance, rebellion. Like Pastafarianism - people just get tired of being fed myth. Eventually they make up more. Maybe Christianity was meant to be parody. I don't know, I wasn't there. I am curious. There are certainly other options than some guy who healed the sick and fed multitudes from one loaf of bread. It isn't unreasonable to view Christianity as a tool for control; religions often are. That may have been the entire point. It has worked excellently in that role for literally thousands of years; we're still in the grip of Judeo-Christian morality, and the enlightenment was some time ago. Kind of frightening, given how poorly constructed, misogynist, homophobic, and pro-slavery the whole mess is.
...and along that line of thought, please, some decent wifi drivers and hardware in the laptop, thank you, thank you. g/n would be lovely, but even good g would make some of my employees happy.
Very good; thanks for your detailed response. Now, one last question: Isn't it simpler to assume that some person in a story did not exist, thereby accounting for the actual evidence (no mention in contemporaneous history), as opposed to assuming they did exist, yet somehow managed to avoid being recorded anywhere - especially if this person was associated with miracles, seen or unseen?
If we're going to use Occam's razor, let's cut everything in sight. "One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything." We can explain the bible without Jesus, given that there is nothing that requires we explain it with Jesus. Personally - I'm not ruling his existence out - but I surely am not going to accept it on the word of the bible alone.
Thus, all of your examples - Odin, Ra, etc. - are irrelevant. Odin, Ra - these are supernatural.
No. Jack Ryan isn't supernatural. You did exactly what you accused me of; you said "all of your examples" and then proceeded to ignore one of them. But I didn't do that to you. I addressed your point as made, and gave you a mundane example to chew on quite intentionally.
My point is that just because Jesus (a divine, supernatural figure in the story) is in the story, is not sufficient reason to extend the idea that he was a real figure - divine or otherwise. For that, we need some confirming historical evidence... and there isn't any, at least, to date.
I'm not arguing that the bible didn't have an author or authors. You, however, seem to be arguing that because Jesus is a character in the bible, he was probably a real person. To that I simply say, show me why this should be accepted; I know of absolutely no confirming historical evidence. My guess is that you have been conditioned to assume that Jesus was real, and you don't even know why. Is a character's presence in a story enough to make you think it was real? Does the story simply have to be old? Did David then exist, because he was in a story with Goliath? Do you see how empty that kind of reasoning is?
I say, if the bible says Jesus existed, then we should be able to find many mentions of him in history outside the bible; he was no "bit player." We have not - as yet - found any such mentions, and my response to that situation is to doubt his actuality as an historical figure. I don't assume he was real because a book mentions him; that seems entirely too gullible. Add in the assignment of supernatural characteristics, and I'm flat out of credulity. You, however, like the idea that he was real. So I simply ask, why? Could this simply be vestigial politeness to Christians? Seriously - why?
Something tells me that if they cared about evidence it wouldn't be called faith...
Precisely. However, when they attempt to argue in the mundane world, and attribute events (like the flood, or the genesis of the universe itself, or the existence of a divine being named Christ in the real world) to stories in their books, then they are attempting to use non-faith tools (argument from a stance asserting real-world truth) to counter arguments made from established evidence. This makes responding to them using the facts and tools of science and history perfectly reasonable.
No one argues with a person who says nothing; an internal faith should not, one would imagine, require argument with other people. If it does, then it must submit to responses that take the real word into account. That's only fair. So if one wishes to "witness", one had better wrap one's head around the idea that the other person(s) may have witnessed something else.:-)
Whoa, whoa. You were doing ok until here, where you slip up. It is perfectly reasonable to assume, given the existence of early Buddhists, that there was a Buddha.
No. Let's retarget your comment, and see what happens:
It is perfectly reasonable to assume, given the existence of early Panthiests, that there was an Odin.
It is perfectly reasonable to assume, given the existence of early Egyptian Sun-worshipers, that there was a Ra.
It is perfectly reasonable to assume, given the existence of early UFO-cultists, that there were UFOs.
It is perfectly reasonable to assume, given the existence of early fans of Tom Clancy, that Jack Ryan existed and worked for the CIA.
You are conflating characters in a story with the authors of a story. There is no such relationship that automatically arises; that is only the case when the story is a history, and my entire point is that there is no evidence that confirms the bible's role in telling about Jesus as a historical one. Jesus did not write the bible (or anything else, even according to the bible.) The only conclusion you can draw from Jesus' presence in the stories in the bible is that since these are claimed to be tellings of history, then the reasonable thing to do is go searching elsewhere in history to get confirmation. That confirmation has, to date, not been forthcoming. This leaves the status of the bible as history unconfirmed. No matter how you want to cast Christ's role - human, hybrid, divine, alien - all you have to go on is what the bible says, simply because that's all we've found. The fact that the bible says something is not enough to come to the conclusion that said something represents a factual retelling of history. There are many books, many claims of divine and supernaturally powerful figures, many claims of humans who figure in those stories. This is the actual situation from which you pull your assertion that it is reasonable to presume there was a Christ.
People make up stories. You simply have to factor that in.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? Because nothing on the net will ever compare to an in-system, RAM-based, N-layer handling, real-time nondestructive effects engine written close to the metal with live geometric warp layers, masking and animation. That's on the application end.
One the user end, these web based apps are meant for your grandmother. And at that, only on days when someone else in her apartment building or upstream on her cable connection isn't downloading "300" on bit-torrent, and there aren't 200 other people on the same server trying to process an image. The entire idea of "thin clients" for image manipulation is one that presumes bandwidth and server power that are not available at this point in time - it's silly, is what it is.
You can buy a great image manipulation system for about $30 if you simply look hard enough. You'll be able to level photos, retouch them, or process the living heck out of very high resolution images if that's your intent, set people on fire, morph them, all manner of sophisticated things. Or you can use a web app and move a slider and wait... and move... and wait... and save... and wait... and finally get back your pic. Which you had better hope is what you wanted. When I say you'll get it back, I mean after that "300" download finishes, of course. :-)
So here's what you should be asking yourselves: What is your time worth?
Yes indeed, it implies that humans can think their way through to the idea that there are ways to behave that benefit self, family, community, nation and world in ways that are in reasonable balance. As opposed to getting one's morals canned out of a book, repressing sexuality, fearing homosexuality, trying to impose all manner of your canned morality on people who do not share your delusions. An amazing idea, I agree. Much easier to get your morals canned; saves having to figure things out. Good for the mentally lazy, the mentally incompetent, and of course, those who are simply gullible. And those who carry combinations of those three burdens to varying degrees.
Ok, Mr. AC. Sigh. The universe is impossible for you to think of as having been there in one form or another. You think something had to start it because in your mind, everything has to have a cause. So you postulate "God." God, then, "causes" the universe and this makes you all warm and fuzzy. I then ask, as usual, so what caused God. You answer, hey, he was always there. I say, gee, aren't you the fellow that said everything had to have a cause, and *that* was why you assume there had to be a god? You go yeah, uh, uh, but he's GOD, so he was always there, and I say, well fella, if God could always be there, then the universe could too, and so there is no need to postulate a god. End of argument, end of "interesting", Christian retires with egg on face. There, saved us a lot of time. No need to thank me.
Some of us simply aren't vulnerable to mythology. It isn't about intelligence, generally, it is about gullibility and the ability to face the hugeness of the universe with wonder instead of fear; it is also the ability to recognize, and accept, that some questions do not have obvious answers and that this does not in and of itself cause a need to arise to make up answers to fill in those blanks. Some of us are perfectly ok with blanks; curious, certainly, but not fearful and not willing to succumb to nonsense explanations just to have some kind of thing to point to as an answer.
You can educate yourself until you're blue in the face, and you may never reach an intellectual state that is sufficient to erode your particular combination of gullibility, fear, and need for a father-figure. None of this changes reality; reality is what it is, and there is no degree of faith that will change it. The Egyptians had enormous faith in Ra; no Ra. The Greeks had enormous faith in Zeus and company; no Zeus, and no company, either. The Hindus have enormous faith in Kali and crew; no Kali, no crew. Voodooists have enormous faith in their various hoodoos. No hoodoos. No African gods. No Hawaiian gods. No Chinese gods. No ghosts, no spirits, no elves, no fairies, no santa, no easter bunny, no spaghetti monster. And of course, Christians have enormous faith in God, and no surprise... no god, either. Faith has its own merits. But changing reality isn't one of them. It hasn't worked for any other religion or religious adherent, and it isn't going to work for you either, no matter how nice your religion is, or makes itself out to be.
The day you wrap your head around that may be the day you try to work out your own morals, too, instead of taking them from a 2000 year old book, and that same day you may look to the stars and actually realize how wonderful and huge the universe is. You can look at the Hubble deep space photo and finally catch on to the fact that the idea of a god isn't big enough - by a long shot - to account for what is in that single photo.
Those dates are the dates of the times the stories appear to have been written, judging by the style of the writing and the issues that can be cross-referenced to the culture of that time. Not the dates of the books; there are no such books, only copies. The books themselves are much more recent. The three primary sources are:
There are over five thousand different historical (old enough to be used as source references) manuscript copies of the New Testament. Some are in Greek, some in Latin, and some in Hebrew. These generally date somewhere between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. Of that number, most are incomplete copies; sometimes this is due to loss of some of the manuscript, but it is often simply a consequence of the actual bulk of the various ancient transcription mediums (papyrus, vellum and parchment). Often, the New Testament was issued as a series of separate documents, for instance broken into The Four Gospels, the Acts and General Epistles, the Pauline Epistles, and the Book of Revelation.
With regard to the fragment, again, this has already been covered, but: Refer to the wikipedia article on it. It is a lot better; there you will find the honest assessment that it is much later than the page you linked to claims. One of the ways we know this is because it is part of a codex, and codexes weren't in use early on. If it was that early, it would have been from a scroll (a roll, not a bound book, or a codex.) The fragment is most likely from about 250 AD, which means it is basically contemporaneous with the rest of the bible's oldest copies.
However - for the sake of looking at this in the most generous way possible - let's assume that it dates from 150 AD. There is no way that can be so, but let's just run with it. This is 120 years after Christ. No one who wrote this document, even if written in 150 AD, was one of his peers. So it is a story written about "the old times", if you will, not a contemporary alternate source of information. What we're looking for here is something from the government, from a writer (there were tons of them), a note about the 3 hour blackout when he was resurrected, that sort of thing that comes from a source that is not the bible. We already know what the bible says. We can't look to it to confirm its own content, we need another source. That, in a nutshell, is what is missing.
Historically speaking, none of that qualifies as proof. The NT documents are 200 to 300 years younger than the time during which Christ was supposed to live. The earliest record we have of the Christians themselves is about 80 to 100 AD, which is 50 to 70 years after Christ lived. The evidence from that time is from people who were not even born when Christ was supposed to be alive. This is what we mean when we say that there is no historical evidence - nothing from Christ's time. We have stories in a book from centuries later, and we know the cult was around 50 years or so after the time in which he was supposed to have been around. That's not very strong in general, and historically speaking, it is nothing. And yes, you're going around in circles. This has already been covered, in detail, elsewhere in the thread.
Regarding the trouble a false story causes, keep in mind that hasn't stopped others - Mormons, Scientologists, Hindus, Crystal gazers, Astrologists, UFO abductees, Phrenologists, Faith healers, Voodoo cultists, Politicians, etc, ad infinitum. Because we know falsehoods are very common in religion and politics, it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that Christianity is similar to the rest of that list in this regard. What would be of interest would be contemporaneous (meaning, same time in history) independent records of Christian doings, and particularly, Jesus' doings. There aren't any that have come to light so far, and that's a definite warning sign for falsehood. Not definitive by any means, but certainly a caution flag.
Yes, but not the kind that can validate the truth of the existence of Jesus Christ. The study of biblical documents in order to get them straight is called "textual criticism" and it serves only to keep the bible true to itself. Look into it. I highly recommend the "Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism: Revised Edition" by J. Harold Greenlee. You can find it on Amazon.
Conspiracy? Perhaps. Have you ever played "telephone"? That's all it takes for stories to mutate in wondrous ways, and there were many, many decades before the stories in the bible came to light. Or it could have been a schism, a copycat religion (there is some evidence for this, there are numerous similarities between Christianity and earlier religions) or even parody. The point is, we don't know, and it is foolish to guess; it is better to point out we don't know, and then go looking for what is missing. We can weigh the evidence as we go. Starting now, there isn't any. I'm sure everyone involved would like to find some. It's only a hobby for me, and I am very curious about what went on. I can hardly imagine the state of a devout Christian upon hearing that they found actual records of Christ - of any kind - from a source like the government, or even a supplier of crosses or the poor sod who catered the last supper. Anything! And if that "anything" was a real, bona fide artifact - the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas, the order for his crucifixion, a complaint from the money-changers at the temple, a record of the darkness during his resurrection - there'd be worldwide notice taken. And for good reason.
Some people - educated, well socialized - have broad sets of interests, and often conduct conversations that range far and wide. When you move out of your mother's basement, you may meet some of these people. Don't embarrass yourself by attempting to bring the conversation back to its starting point over and over again; most people will find that cute once or twice, and after that, simply an indicator that you are socially retarded. You won't be invited back, and then where will you get your pizza? Run along now.
Certainly. However, this doesn't go any distance at all towards validating the story of Jesus, any more than mentioning the CIA in a Jack Ryan book proves the existence of Jack Ryan. Background history is easily accessible to any author of a serious work of fiction, of course.
No. There is nothing available from that time period; the earliest texts are from 200-300 AD at best, and that's if you're being generous. We have not one original document with regard to the NT. Which is really too bad. We know - because what we have are copies - that the stories are at least one document generation older than the oldest documents we have, but that's all we know for sure.
I don't. I hold them to be extraordinary claims, and I expect those claims to be justified by extraordinary evidence; a complete lack of evidence I find to be unacceptable. The 3 hours of darkness is a good example because it was country-wide. The lack of a record of this I find to be rather telling. Such records are typically easy to find. There are other events that I think would evince similar notice, such as feeding a multitude from a single loaf of bread. But I don't assume they're impossible; the story makes those claims and asks to be taken seriously. Fine. I do. But then I can't find any evidence of this; It is the lack of such note that causes me to doubt the whole thing.
Really? Ok, out with it then. Seriously. If you are privy to this information, I'm sure the entire world, Christians and non-Christians alike, want to hear it. What do you know about this? Come on: Exactly what is this "historical evidence"?
I am perfectly ready to be proven wrong. By all means, do so. All you have to do is back up that one statement. Over to you.
I am being very particular. Extraordinary claims require, if not extraordinary evidence, as Sagan would have it, then at least the same standard of evidence as everything else. Therefore, without corroboration, the bible, a veritable fount of extraordinary claims, does not rise to the standard of a historical document.
With regard to Jesus: If you tell me you have a horse, I will not begin with doubt. If, however, you tell me your horse is bright green, flies, and can heal the sick, then you're going to have to show me your horse and its abilities because again, you'll find that I've all of a sudden become quite particular. If you consider this an unreasonable stance, that's fine. I'm not accountable to you. You should have found someone more gullible to present your equine entertainment.
Fine. Change my text to: "You're quite wrong when you say 'no one particularly doubts' those writings." I particularly doubt them. So do many others. No need to change anything else I said, either in specific or in the sense of it. You're still 100% wrong.
Rest assured, I understood you perfectly. You were simply wrong. You're still wrong. Anything else you want to cover?
Becoming "godly" isn't "kicking it up a notch", it is stepping backwards into the dark ages. Get with the program. Otherwise, yes, you've made some good points.
GOD.SYS not found. Installing REALITY.SYS
You just need to get rid of the factors that make it a 1 billion dollar cost. Lawyers, the FDA, and insurance companies. Those are the other ants in the picnic basket. After that, the average drug would cost four goats and a pill-casing. Your government has made your life a nest of parasites under the ridiculous (and flat out false) operating principle that you can be, and should be, made "safe" from drugs. This is, of course, impossible. Don't blame the cost of drugs on the drug companies. They're not responsible for the costs. Your legislators are, and indirectly, the diseased legal and regulatory systems they have produced and continue to support are. Get rid of them, and drugs will advance more like the way electronics do. Only faster, if the USPTO is gone as well. Of course, electronics would advance faster too.
But I'm just dreaming. America is a nation of people that think they should be paid if they slip, spill coffee, hit a deer, get pregnant, or feel they have been insulted. They love the mommy system. Because they're children, mentally speaking. And yes, I'm a US citizen. Just not a proud one.
Methinks you've not been paying attention. Not only is the court system backlogged, it starts right at the top with time limits and all manner of restrictions on what it will hear, regardless of applicability. The court system has been broken for years. Just like the rest of the system, only a bit worse. You can see it in decisions (pot grown in California for use in California is an "interstate commerce" matter, "make no law" means "make some law", "shall not be infringed" means "we can infringe this way", "no ex post facto law" means "unless we want to", etc.) You can see it in the war on personal choice (misnamed the war on drugs by the mommy-police); you can see it in the blithe ignorance of the president's violation of his oath, you can see it in the fact that judges are allowed to fall asleep at the bench and get away with it without it even having any effect on the decisions made that session. And of course, with regard to patents, the fact that software patents have not been thrown out en masse is one of the most telling measure of judicial incompetence of all.
That is absolute and utter nonsense. The NT texts check well with themselves; the problem is that for the story told therein, there is no corroboration. "All of human history" is replete with examples of multiple instances of history told from different viewpoints within different cultures. We don't just know about the Greeks from the Greeks; we know about them from the Romans, from all over Europe in fact. There is no one book, published by a cult, that contains the Roman story. Likewise, we know about the Greeks from similar multiple sources. We know even more about them because when we look at the writings they left and they say "there is a library here... a royal barge there... a temple here..." we actually find these things. History is an area that fails to have multiple sources only at the very fringe events (which I personally think Christ's advent would not qualify as) or at bunkum/superstitious events (David and Goliath, Moroni and the Golden Tablets, 99.999% of UFO sightings... if not 100%, the 3-hour darkening of the skies)
To put "all of human history" in the same basket with the biblical tales is to insult historians the world over, and to demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of how history is collected, understood, and evaluated.
They have been determined to be reliably the same story, from codex to today's KJ. That is entirely distinct from being "good history." You've confused the two. The NT is by all indicators a very low quality history (or an outright historical fiction); authors reporting the same event within the book don't even always agree, and the events themselves have no corroboration in other records, at least, as yet, so you can't even side with one or the other.
No. The criteria used for grading historical information is multi-sourcing, of which there is plenty for much of history. The bible, however, fails this important, nay, critical, aspect of historical validation. So one can easily disregard the bible without, for instance, presuming the Greeks were a myth, that the Vikings did not ply the seas, or that the Christians did not burn witches, rack dissenters, and stone women. The bible is known to have not changed since about 300 AD. It contains some broad strokes - kings and kingdoms, largely - that are historically accurate. It also contains a great deal of supernatural event reporting, some of which serves to handily disqualify it as a true record of history. One specific event is reported in Matt. 27:45. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour... This is not something that would have gone either un-noticed or un-reported if it happened. Yet it did; that's a prime indicator that the bible is telling fibs. Entirely aside from the supernatural character of the event, which of course is another, and of which you can find numerous examples in the bible. Most biblical events can be shrugged off as being too local or minor to find their way into other histories, but not that one.
So it is critical to keep straight what we mean when we say that the bible is true to itself. What it means is that the text we have today closely matches the text of 300 AD. That is all it means. It doesn't mean that the bible is a historical document; it doesn't mean that actual historical documents are less trustworthy because they have survived in poorer shape, or have been translated more times; the latter are often far better records than anything in the bible simply because there are many other accounts that corroborate what they say, for instance, Cleopatra isn't just a Shakespeare
(a), yes I do realize they are copies, and (b), I take them with considerable doubt, as do most people who study this subject, and (c) should those writings be false, and there certainly are indications they have problems, that casts even more doubt on the proposition that Jesus existed as a historical person. I was simply giving the writings the note of at least existing outside the bible itself, which they in fact do. You're quite wrong when you say "no one doubts" those writings. I suggest you do a little research; for instance, Jospehus was a Pharisee, and his writings are criticized on the basis that he is attributed things scholars think no Pharisee would have written. Tacitus got his facts wrong, called a prefect (Pilate) a procurator and so forth. Many people, including myself, believe that Tacitus' writings on this are a forgery by Johannes de Spire circa the 15th century. So don't mistake my courtesy for ignorance. The most important fact regarding those writings is that they exist outside the literary tradition of the bible, and in that, they stand as the earliest such records, even as flawed as they may be, that exist. Even giving them the most possible room, as I did above, they still come from a time after Jesus was supposed to be extant, and that is the real problem - they're not records of Jesus at all, even with all the leeway one can hand them. They're records of the cult of Christ, which is something else again entirely. Throwing Tacitus out, my position becomes even stronger - or in other words, there is even less contemporaneous data to verify the story of Christ. We have records of the cult of vampirism and the cult of Hannibal Lecter; but we know these are fictional characters. Lecter in particular is at risk for turning into a pseudo-historical figure, but vampires don't seem to exceed the credulity of some people, and it is clear we can't rule out either Vlad the Impaler or the vampire Lestat as candidates for future shenanigans.
No. Both the Vatican and the Alexandrin manuscripts are missing large sections. Only the Sinaitic is complete (and in fact, it contains two more books known as "The Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Shepherd of Hermas") But it is from about AD 400, which is one heck of a gap from being an original document.
In fact, reasonable dating range for that fragment extends to about 250 AD for several reasons, one of the most telling being that it is a codex fragment, not a roll. Even the article you linked to mentions this. In any case, that is almost 300 years past the time when Christ was supposed to be extant. There is no certainty at all that the dates you quote - still over a century after the purported events - are accurate, but even if they are, they're still not contemporaneous, they're well into the "I head it this way" of centuries-old storytelling. They could still be accurate, but that is where comparing historical sources comes in, and as we know, that effort yields nothing, and I consider that to be a bell-ringer in terms of casting doubt on the whole story - even without the ridiculous supernatural nonsense that would surely have been noticed by the writers and historians of the day - for instance, when Christ was resurrected, I think they'd have
Given the story in the bible, even without supernatural powers, Jesus interacted with the government and the merchants and the people a great deal. There were many writers active during that time who would, I think, have been very likely indeed to have made note of Jesus's activities if he really existed, yet didn't say a word in all their writings - and we're talking about a lot of writing! Here are some of those authors:
Philo-Judæus, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Arrian, Petronius, Dion Pruseus, Paterculus, Suetonius, Juvenal, Martial, Persius, Plutarch, Pliny the Younger, Justus of Tiberius, Apollonius, Quintilian, Lucanus, Epictetus, Hermogones, Silius Italicus, Statius, Ptolemy, Appian, Phlegon, Phædrus, Valerius Maximus, Lucian, Pausanias, Florus Lucius, Quintius Curtius, Aulus Gellius, Dio Chrysostom, Columella, Valerius Flaccus, Damis, Favorinus, Lysias, Pomponius Mela, Appion of Alexandria, and Theon of Smyrna.
So I strongly disagree both on the bit player position, and on the "would be documented" position. Thanks for your reply, though.
The personalities being followed in the case of Christianity seems most likely to be that of the authors; Paul and Mark and Luke, perhaps, or whoever wrote those books. Same as in Hubbard's case, and the authors of the Norse or Greek mythologies.
Though the Christians may think they are following Jesus, the evidence leans towards them simply following a character creation of the biblical authors, probably out of whole cloth (though perhaps just "embroidered", though there is no evidence for that.) There is certainly personality a-plenty to follow. There's just no evidence it came from Christ. Look at the vampire cultists that follow Anne Rice's (and other author's) fiction. Those people love these vampires and they go out of their way to emulate them. Look at the Lecter cults that follow Hannibal Lecter, and again, emulate like crazy (and I didn't pick that word randomly.) These are cases of people following the author's personality, or more fairly, their creativity, as expressed in a character. Yes, people will follow anything. Don't blame me for that. But the evidence is there.
The problem with this reasoning is demonstrated by: Because there was a following of Zeus, there must have been some being called Zeus; because there was a following for Kali, there must have been some being called Kali; because there was a following for satan, there must have been a being called satan; because there is a following for Mormonism, there must have been a being called Moroni; because there was a following, a religion, there must be an earth-mother; because people leave milk at the back door, there must be elves; because there are many books about Jack Ryan, he must be a real person.
None of the above statements follow.
You see now? It doesn't follow that just because someone tells a story as a basis for a religion, that the content of the story relates to reality. Stories can be *just* stories, and they surely often are. Belief by itself does not in any way alter reality. Reality just trundles along, being what it is and nothing else.
Oh, that's an easy one: Today's Christians are not following any prophet at all. They're following a book. Poorly, usually. As for why they did so originally, there could be many answers: For instance, rebellion. Like Pastafarianism - people just get tired of being fed myth. Eventually they make up more. Maybe Christianity was meant to be parody. I don't know, I wasn't there. I am curious. There are certainly other options than some guy who healed the sick and fed multitudes from one loaf of bread. It isn't unreasonable to view Christianity as a tool for control; religions often are. That may have been the entire point. It has worked excellently in that role for literally thousands of years; we're still in the grip of Judeo-Christian morality, and the enlightenment was some time ago. Kind of frightening, given how poorly constructed, misogynist, homophobic, and pro-slavery the whole mess is.
I was saying that this made him more likely to be recorded by history, actually. But I take your point.
Very good; thanks for your detailed response. Now, one last question: Isn't it simpler to assume that some person in a story did not exist, thereby accounting for the actual evidence (no mention in contemporaneous history), as opposed to assuming they did exist, yet somehow managed to avoid being recorded anywhere - especially if this person was associated with miracles, seen or unseen?
If we're going to use Occam's razor, let's cut everything in sight. "One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything." We can explain the bible without Jesus, given that there is nothing that requires we explain it with Jesus. Personally - I'm not ruling his existence out - but I surely am not going to accept it on the word of the bible alone.
Clouds! I see clouds! It must be TRUE! It's not just about the penknife!
No. Jack Ryan isn't supernatural. You did exactly what you accused me of; you said "all of your examples" and then proceeded to ignore one of them. But I didn't do that to you. I addressed your point as made, and gave you a mundane example to chew on quite intentionally.
My point is that just because Jesus (a divine, supernatural figure in the story) is in the story, is not sufficient reason to extend the idea that he was a real figure - divine or otherwise. For that, we need some confirming historical evidence... and there isn't any, at least, to date.
I'm not arguing that the bible didn't have an author or authors. You, however, seem to be arguing that because Jesus is a character in the bible, he was probably a real person. To that I simply say, show me why this should be accepted; I know of absolutely no confirming historical evidence. My guess is that you have been conditioned to assume that Jesus was real, and you don't even know why. Is a character's presence in a story enough to make you think it was real? Does the story simply have to be old? Did David then exist, because he was in a story with Goliath? Do you see how empty that kind of reasoning is?
I say, if the bible says Jesus existed, then we should be able to find many mentions of him in history outside the bible; he was no "bit player." We have not - as yet - found any such mentions, and my response to that situation is to doubt his actuality as an historical figure. I don't assume he was real because a book mentions him; that seems entirely too gullible. Add in the assignment of supernatural characteristics, and I'm flat out of credulity. You, however, like the idea that he was real. So I simply ask, why? Could this simply be vestigial politeness to Christians? Seriously - why?
Should have been: "that take the real world "
Sigh. Apologies.
Precisely. However, when they attempt to argue in the mundane world, and attribute events (like the flood, or the genesis of the universe itself, or the existence of a divine being named Christ in the real world) to stories in their books, then they are attempting to use non-faith tools (argument from a stance asserting real-world truth) to counter arguments made from established evidence. This makes responding to them using the facts and tools of science and history perfectly reasonable.
No one argues with a person who says nothing; an internal faith should not, one would imagine, require argument with other people. If it does, then it must submit to responses that take the real word into account. That's only fair. So if one wishes to "witness", one had better wrap one's head around the idea that the other person(s) may have witnessed something else. :-)
No. Let's retarget your comment, and see what happens:
You are conflating characters in a story with the authors of a story. There is no such relationship that automatically arises; that is only the case when the story is a history, and my entire point is that there is no evidence that confirms the bible's role in telling about Jesus as a historical one. Jesus did not write the bible (or anything else, even according to the bible.) The only conclusion you can draw from Jesus' presence in the stories in the bible is that since these are claimed to be tellings of history, then the reasonable thing to do is go searching elsewhere in history to get confirmation. That confirmation has, to date, not been forthcoming. This leaves the status of the bible as history unconfirmed. No matter how you want to cast Christ's role - human, hybrid, divine, alien - all you have to go on is what the bible says, simply because that's all we've found. The fact that the bible says something is not enough to come to the conclusion that said something represents a factual retelling of history. There are many books, many claims of divine and supernaturally powerful figures, many claims of humans who figure in those stories. This is the actual situation from which you pull your assertion that it is reasonable to presume there was a Christ.
People make up stories. You simply have to factor that in.
I meant to say: "but telling an ancient historical fiction from an ancient history"
My apologies.