On religion

[d000hg]

Incidently, have a look here where it shows I am right. It all seems to be hearsay and reported accounts.

You're doing it again. Find some website that says what you want to hear and then state it as concrete proof.

You'll accept as gospel (!) a site put together by some nutter you never heard of, but not believe something accepted by billions of people over 2000 years as being true?

[speling bee]

I din't call you names. There's a difference between being wrong, and deliberately stating as fact something you haven't even bothered to research first.


And if you're going to use those metrics, you will have to class pretty much all of ancient history as totally unreliable. Because there are more people writing about Jesus, and more copies of what they wrote, closer to the events they write about, than pretty much any other historical figure or event of those times.

Coinage and inscriptions provide better evidence. the evidence for Jesus is not overwhelming but it's pretty good.

[mudskipper]

Jesus must have been real.

You can buy a bit of the true cross on ebay. It's authenticity is guaranteed with a red wax seal, so he must have existed, or there would be no such thing as the true cross and it couldn't be authentic.

[doodab]

In New Scientist a couple of weeks ago, there were articles on the nature of reality. One proposal is that reality is defined by mathematics. Since all of mathematics can be derived from the empty set, then if the basis of reality is maths, the basis of reality is nothing. Nothing requires no explanation, therefore reality requires no explanation.

Oh dear, says God, I hadn't thought of that...

It requires other axioms and rules of inference to get from the empty set to all of mathematics.

[speling bee]

Jesus must have been real.

You can buy a bit of the true cross on ebay. It's authenticity is guaranteed with a red wax seal, so he must have existed, or there would be no such thing as the true cross and it couldn't be authentic.

It is possible that the cross is genuine but Jesus never existed.

[Cliphead]

All claims that Jesus existed come from the writings of people who never met him or even lived at the same time, there are no contemporary writings that mention him, no Roman records mention him.

Zero evidence and nothing but hearsay.

[Zippy]

Jesus must have been real.

You can buy a bit of the true cross on ebay. It's authenticity is guaranteed with a red wax seal, so he must have existed, or there would be no such thing as the true cross and it couldn't be authentic.

Two f***ing grand?! It's used FFS!

[mudskipper]

Two f***ing grand?! It's used FFS!

Yeah, but you get a few bits of dead saints as well.

Edit: And free p&p

[speling bee]

All claims that Jesus existed come from the writings of people who never met him or even lived at the same time, there are no contemporary writings that mention him, no Roman records mention him.

Zero evidence and nothing but hearsay.

Josephus mentions Jesus. He is a Jewish historian and not contemporary, but is outside of the early church accounts.

The problem with expecting Roman records is that Roman historical documentation is quite Rome-centric, so there is unlikely to be any extant account of a prophetic /minor rebellious figure in an outlying province.

Some evidence is not zero evidence. It is zero proof.

[speling bee]

Hmmm ... a quick google seems to undermine your point:

Have a look at the examination of the sources here:

There seem to be no primary ones at all? I am reluctant to include the gospels as no one knows who wrote them and they heavily contradict each other.

If the gospels did not contradict each other, they would be suspect.

Ancient sources often contradict themselves and we sometimes don't know who wrote them.