And you are going to have us read bias material to prove your point? Please be logical and get something from an unbiased source. “There is plenty of historical evidence, from a variety of sources, that Jesus existed. No one who takes the trouble to familiarize herself with the evidence can doubt it. The "Enlightenment" position that there was no such person as Jesus of Nazareth, itinerant Jewish preacher, is quite dead.” (quoted from Dan Berger, Faculty Chemistry/Science, Bluffton College) http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/feb99/919714996.Sh.r.html
Yet the Mayans who wrote this accounts where not the enemies to these myths, therefore they would be embellished. Your point would be made better, Spidergoat, if the enemies of the Mayans had written and embellished about the myths of the Mayans. Can you find any evidence from their enemies? First-hand accounts are not even witnessed by present day news reporters. What they do is gather the facts from the witnesses or what was reported earlier from reliable sources. You would expect the same from a historian.
Why would they write anything if they know it is a myth? Therefore vampires must exist.. People still do this day, knowing full well they ain't real keep writing about them. By your reasoning vampires must exist for this to happen. Why the need to do that? Stories are carried through the ages. To this day people still mention Macbeth, Hamlet, Huck Finn and so on without those people existing and without the need to write a book explaining that those people don't exist. Do you think the writers really cared about whether people would argue about the existence of their characters 1000's of years later? Of course not, and so there is no logical reason why they would write about a character saying "it doesn't exist". What you'd do with old stories is find evidence pertaining to the existence of such characters. There is none for vampires, and yet against your reasoning people still write about them. There is also none for gods/demi gods - including jesus.
Christians were not enemies of the Jesus mythology, and so embellished them to include all sorts of supernatural things. Fortunately, some other early Christian writings were preserved in the Gnostic Gospels to show another point of view.
the former the imagination of Paul of Tarsus, and the latter from the imagination of Bram Stoker. and we got both from the imagination of L Ron Hubbard, a religion and scifi/horror stories.
That is not the point, Spidergoat. The point is Jesus is mentioned by the enemies of Christianity in their book, The Talmud. They had the benefit of 200-plus years to know if the sources were reliable or not. If Jesus was a myth but the sources were unreliable, then they should have written nothing. If Jesus was a myth and the sources reliable, then they should have said, "This person never existed." But that is not the case. He is mentioned in their book. Why perpetuate a myth if He never existed? Therefore, Jesus existed. That is the only logical conclusion.
Very good point, SVRP, and the Talmud also says that Jesus performed miracles, and as this was obviously considered fact, the Talmud writers spun it as best they could saying the miracles were from demonic power.
No one has built a belief around the lives of Macbeth, Hamlet, and Huck Finn either, so your point is not a reasonable response. Take this for an example: you are an enemy to a belief. You know (or believe) that it is all based on a myth. You have years of research from many resources. Meanwhile this belief is growing among the people almost uncontrollable. You have a responsibility to respond to it. If the sources are unreliable then the best response is to write nothing. If the sources are reliable then the best response is to write, “This person did not exist.” You don’t write anything or any story with any commentary to perpetuate the myth. That would not be logical. But Jesus is mentioned in the enemy’s book, The Talmud, with commentary. Therefore, the correct conclusion is Jesus did exist.
Not necessarily! Myths are perpetuated because many myths carry with them a parable or message with regards to living your life, and a way for the human mind to connect to the concept of what various peoples of different belief systems believe God to be. Also, the use of myths to control the masses and keep your populations from straying from the faith. Especially in the case of the Abrahamic faiths ,the perpetuation of myth as reality and the threat of eternal hellfire are very powerfull tools to keep people in fear and ignorance. Did Jesus exist? I'm not sure. There does, however, seem to be some very powerfull evidence (which others have posted here) that indicates otherwise.
Christianity is looking to a Power greater than government for guidance, not lemming mentality there.
No one has passed off Hamlet or Macbeth as religous figures. They are not Gods. Surely, you can see the difference here. The Gospel Of Huck Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The Talmud is not by any means a written first-hand account. In fact, the Talmud does little if nothing in proving Jesus's miracles. Read Below: Note: The text below was taken from http://www.christianorigins.com/miracles.html The text above is has a clear Christian bias towards proving Jesus' miracles and existence, yet it still had to admit that The Talmud proves nothing. The text above stated "The reference to "sorcery" is clearly a statement that Jesus performed at least seemingly miraculous deeds." Actually, the reference to "sorcery" cleary means absolutely nothing because it follows the statement "It has been taught:" with a colon. Also, this sentence is merely reiterating Christian tradition from a century before. So out of the entire Talmud, that one sentence posted above is all there is in mentioning Jesus' "sorcery," or miracles. Notice how the paragraph begins with "It has been taught." So everything after that statement, including the word "sorcery," is something that has been taught, or oral tradition. The Talmud used Christian oral tradition from a century before and included this one sentence in The Talmud. In no way does this sentence in The Talmud prove anything. In fact, it reiterates that the whole thing was probably a story.
Given that the majority of stories would have been verbal, and handed down far beyond any time scale that people had to prove or show those stories as real you have no case. I bet when you're in the pub with your friends and one tells you he slept with 3 women the night before you can't even substantiate that let alone a story that has been handed down over several hundred years. For the latter parts of your argument, there is then no reason you would dismiss your friend as a fraud. Indeed I would wager money that you eventually repeat his story: "I have a friend that slept with 3 women in one night". It is the indisputable way that people work. Once again, if any of your statement here was valid then Anne Rice would have never written about vampires. Because that is what stories are and that is what stories do. Even more so in a time when there was nobody to say "show me evidence to support your claim". You only suffer now because humans in general have progressed. There is no validity or logic in your conclusion. "Building a belief" was not the issue. For some reason you keep assuming that if something is fictional nobody would ever write about it. I keep pointing this out as being fallacious, and you seemingly enjoy ignoring it. Let it also be said that it never was a case of "building" a belief. Indeed people were told and forced what to believe. Until even now there are people that don't get a choice - it's a kind of "believe or die" situation that even coming up to the year 2007 still persists. Why over the millennia we have been told what to believe, who we can or can't marry, what we can or can't do. These people were not given choices, but given laws governing what they would or would not believe. Right now there are millions upon millions that believe Santa Claus exists. We perpetuate that belief - indeed we shove it upon them whether it's wanted or not. But surely given that we all know Santa is fictional we "would say 'this person doesn't exist" and yet we don't. Proof positive that your statement is worth absolute nothing. We, us modern day humans boldly tell our children that Santa does exist even when we know full well he does not. Why do we do it? Why do we tell them to be good and not bad otherwise this fictional being wont visit them? It's simply a form of control - something that the religious have been under since day 0. Nothing you have said even remotely points at the existence of a specific being - and yet you continue not because the argument has merit, but because you want it to be so. You have been handed those cards since before you could walk. People telling you what is and what isn't and you simply cannot let go. When someone challenges what you have been fed since birth you will savagely refute it because it would tear down the very fabric of who you are. Having said that I do somewhat pity the current level of argument you are providing. If that is all you have that fabric wont hold up for long. On another note: If someone wrote some text saying that "jesus doesn't exist" back then how long do you honestly think that text would remain intact? In 2007 it's quite alright, no matter what you write it should survive anything thrown at it because of our technology and advancement. Can the same be said of back then? Could a person happily and freely go "against the grain" as it were? How long would the text survive, how long would the person survive? Instead you are trying to use the text of 'person unknown', the opinion of Mr. We don't have a clue who to try and claim that it is "logical" proof that a certain being existed. It's unfounded, its ludicrous and it has no value in discussion. "years of research from many sources" does not belong in your analogy. You have nothing to show what if any research was done or was possible. What you also failed to add is the probable price that would have been paid for such a thing, the expected life span of any text that dared go against state belief, and so on. You're a nobody in a world of people who's belief is "growing uncontrollably". We can even test this right here and now in 2007. Go to Iraq and write a book debunking the existence of allah. Try and get your book out there in public and see how long either you or it survive. This is 2007. You can't even do it now, what in the world makes you think it would have happened a millennia ago? Oh yes, "responsibility". Please, responsibility means shit. I'm sorry but you're wrong. I would happily perpetuate any myth if I knew it would make me well known and quite possibly well off. Why, I would sit down and write a Santa novel.. People have been spreading belief in that fictional being for centuries, and given that he is a popular character at the right time of year would pretty much ensure my future comfort. Nowadays it's probably somewhat harder considering pretty much everyone can write and pretty much everyone is educated. Those that could write and were educated were the ones in the position to "perpetuate myths". Their "responsibility" had nothing to do with going completely against society beliefs. Damn, they'd be the very next people crucified and nobody would even remember their names. An entirely faulty conclusion - based solely upon personal want than anything of even remote substance.
The earliest Talmud was created nearly 400 years after Jesus was alleged to live. I don't even see how this is part of any believer's argument. The Talmud is, therefore, dismissed from this argument.
Did "Aristotle" or "Plato?" And Jesus was widely quoted the Apostles in their historical renderings, but Aristotle and Plato have no biographical renderings about them from contemporaneous sources that I know of.
What "historical renderings" are these. Surely you aren't still going on about how the anonymous authors of the gospels are the alleged "apostles" of the alleged christ? The so-called gospels were written nearly a lifetime after jesus was alleged to have existed.
