Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Philip Jackson Armstrong on December 27, 2011 at 4:40pm

Joke right! To further ones personal perspective regardless of what you don't know. This is a joke right?

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Permalink Reply by Dan Tres OMi on December 27, 2011 at 4:43pm

wow, the writer makes some big claims. First he claims that there is material evidence of Jesus because it's a historical event. Ironically he only states that Christians witnessed this. He also claims that other religions are not based on historic events. Where the writer gets this evidence is beyond me. He only quotes the NT. While I commend the fact that he doubts and questions, he quickly discounts any evidence or ideas outside of Christianity. So in essence, his so called reasoning is very very flawed. 

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Permalink Reply by Bobby Havicon on December 27, 2011 at 4:53pm

I agree. However, what would the motivation have been for the Christians to make up their evidence for what they knew to be false?

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Permalink Reply by sway austin on January 2, 2012 at 2:19am

Maybe it wasn't so much an issue of Christians falsifying evidence in order to get others to believe what they believed, but falsifying evidence as a means of getting others to believe what they wanted them to believe whether they themselves actually believed it or not. Religion has always been used as a tool to control the masses.

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Permalink Reply by Artor on January 2, 2012 at 11:25am

Every Xtian I meet today makes up lies that are obviously & demonstrably false, and the drivel you linked to is no exception. Every point he makes begins with an unfounded assumption that ignores a huge body of science & history. If this is his or your standard of proof, I have a bridge in Manhattan to sell you, cheap. It's okay, I'm trustworthy. It says so right on the TA blog. What motivation could I have to lie?

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on December 27, 2011 at 5:03pm

It's the same old tired nonsense that's been refuted over and over again on TA and elsewhere. There's nothing new here.

What would be the motivation to fabricate the New Testament?

False premise. False dichotomy.

First, it wasn't fabricated in the sense of someone writing something they knew not to be true. The person arguing such a thing evinces an ignorance of the last 200 years of research into the dating, authorship, literary form, redaction history, translation, and transcription of the NT, plus the formation of the canon.

Second, it isn't the case that this is an either or choice with "they knowingly fabricated the stories" on one hand and "they were biographers recording eyewitness accounts of historical events" on the other. There's a third option and that is that they utterly believed what they wrote was true but they just plain wrong.

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Permalink Reply by Bobby Havicon on December 27, 2011 at 10:21pm

What would be the motivation for the earliest followers to have invented the resurrection story? What did they have to gain from spreading that lie?

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on December 27, 2011 at 10:31pm

You've just replaced "New Testament" with "resurrection". I'm not sure why you think this is a different question.

Again, false premise; false dichotomy.

Ignoring the obvious problem of the fact that the only accounts we have of the resurrection are IN the New Testament(!), I'll just quote myself with some slight modifications:

First, [the resurrection] wasn't fabricated in the sense of someone writing something they knew not to be true. The person arguing such a thing evinces an ignorance of the last 200 years of research into the dating, authorship, literary form, redaction history, translation, and transcription of the NT, plus the formation of the canon.

Second, it isn't the case that this is an either or choice with "they knowingly fabricated the stories [of the resurrection]" on one hand and "they were biographers recording eyewitness accounts of historical events" on the other. There's a third option and that is that they utterly believed what they wrote was true but they just plain wrong.

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Permalink Reply by Bobby Havicon on December 27, 2011 at 11:24pm

I substituted them because for there to have been writings, there must have been an oral tradition that preceded the writing, or are you saying the authors were themselves eyewitnesses to the resurrection? The story had to have a beginning, yes? What was the purpose of its genesis if the story at its conception is false?

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on December 28, 2011 at 1:20am

It is simply not the case that for their to have been an oral tradition that preceded the writing that the genesis of the story is in a historical reality. There may have been a historical person named Jesus but even Christian Historical Jesus scholars don't believe that the actual Jesus is synonymous with the Christ of the later myths.

Apply this same brand of silliness to the Koran and ask yourself if the fact that Islam's holy book was first transmitted orally before being written down means that Muhammad rose to heaven on a winged horse. Ready to convert to Islam? No?? Why not? Why the double standard?

You continue to maintain a false dichotomy whereby you think that the stories were either known to be false and consciously concocted by the authors or actually happened. This is just plain naive. It ignores the facts.

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Permalink Reply by Bobby Havicon on December 28, 2011 at 9:59am

But who started the story and why? What did they gain from it?

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Permalink Reply by Philip Jackson Armstrong on December 28, 2011 at 10:42am

The whole Jesus myth is a repetition of the same things said about numerous other gods that predate Jesus.  Go look up Mithras, Horus, and Osirus for starters. There is nothing about Jesus that can't be attributed to an earlier god. Only the names have changed over the centuries.

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