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Here's an un-paywalled link: America doesn't need more god, it needs more atheists I fully agree with Cohen's assertion that many of the horrible things that humans impose on other humans have a basis in their religious belief system. Coincidentally, I also read Moms for Liberty, Extremist...

It's one thing if you're telling your own story, it's another when you're trying to say that Jesus was the awesomest Messiah and so much better than all the others, and you have these things he did that are so well-known that they cannot be denied, are easy to criticize and thereby tend to call...

Indeed, I conclude that Jesus existed and that all his amazing powers of calming storms à la Elijah / Elisha were grafted on later. I sometimes wonder why he didn't turn the water into wine before walking on it...

If one does not accept that Jesus was the Messiah, I think it's absolutely possible also to criticize the efforts of gMatthew and gLuke trying to shoehorn Jesus into it. The differing ancestral lines, Matthew's annoying habit of seizing any lines in the OT that might possible show Jesus...

Thanks, rousseau, for doing my homework for me, I didn't expect you to do that and am grateful. In retrospect, I should have availed myself of the search functionality before posting like a newbie. I appreciate you responding so gently, and I'll dig into those threads.

Wow, thanks for sharing those. While I haven't been able to pull up rationalskepticism.org, I've found the historyforatheists.com site and find O'Neill's arguments persuasive. Lots of well-researched and interesting material there which address my question directly, I'm very grateful.

Thanks for your comments. I especially appreciate you giving voice that Yeshua crucified doesn't exactly fit the Jewish concept of a Messiah. I'm interested in what brought Paul success in "sell[ing] tickets" to his interpretation, if you have relevant material to which you could point me, I'd...

Thanks for the response. Your description of Yeshua ben Yusuf depicts more or less my conclusion: a historical Essene preacher who somehow, despite his non-Davidic lineage and birth in Nazareth (or was it Capernaum? But that's a different thread), convinced himself that he was the Messiah...

Sure they did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_public_debt#/media/File:Federal_Debt_Held_by_the_Public_1790-2013.png

The US hasn't paid off the national debt since a very brief period in 1835-1836. Hasn't been a problem, and the US' prosperity continues.

What do forum-dwellers view as the best evidence for a historical (as opposed to mythical) Jesus? William Harwood (Mythology's Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus) argues that the recording of Josh being baptized by John the Baptist in the Gospels casts such doubt on Jesus' claim to being the Messiah...

As usual, America will eventually do the right thing, once all the other options have been exhausted. I blame British colonialism. It gave the US a political system with built-in gridlock, where, to prevent undesirable things from happening, the system was designed to keep anything from...