120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[Lumpenproletariat]

Blind ideological dogmatism is the only basis for rejecting the gospel accounts as evidence.

First of all, nobody here is dogmatically rejecting the gospels.

OK, so then you DO accept the gospel accounts as evidence, as four separate sources attesting to the miracle acts of Jesus. Just as you accept any other sources as evidence. So I was mistaken -- you do recognize that it is irrational to single out these four documents as the only ones in history that must be rejected as evidence.

Nearly everyone here has come from a background of having believed these stories and eventually coming to terms with just how absurd and unsupportable they are.

OK, you came to that conclusion, but at least you do admit that these documents or accounts are evidence for the miracle acts of Jesus and are not to be dogmatically rejected as evidence simply because they contain reports about miracle events. Whereas there is no credible evidence for the miracle acts of Zeus and Horus and Hercules and Perseus and other dieties or mythic heroes.

E.g., you acknowledge the gospel accounts as evidence, rather than "dogmatically rejecting" them, just as we accept the biography of Apollonius of Tyana, by Philostratus, as evidence, even though it reports miracle events which one may or may not believe, but still the document is evidence which cannot be dogmatically rejected as part of the historical record.

For some of us it started with noticing how contradictory they were on key issues.

A document may contain "contradictions" and yet be mostly true and reliable as a source for historical events. Most documents contain some "contradictory" elements, even though they are still reliable as an information source.

There are many contradictions between the various Christian writings, both canonical and non-canonical, because the writers are diverse and not part of a monolithic clique. And the same gospel account contains pieces that came from different sources.

For some of us it started elsewhere but as we became more familiar with the background surrounding these stories the truth came to us as inexorably as the rising tide.

Just like it comes to those tripping on LSD. Yes, "the Truth" does have a way of coming to those who meditate deeply enough, and take an extra puff or two, or some extra doses of one-sided propaganda from their favorite guru.

Truth is something that convinces even when we don't want to accept it.

So, if I'm not convinced by your claim, then your claim must not be true? It becomes true only when I'm finally convinced? So until I'm convinced, your claim is untrue?

The gospels only convince those who want to believe.

And only those who want not to believe are not convinced. Perhaps.

But a person seeking the truth cannot find it based on doing a survey of the psychological frame of mind of those who are convinced and those who are not convinced.

I'm seeking an answer to whether Jesus Christ had or has power, but the answer to this cannot be found by surveying the mindsets of those who believe and those who do not believe. It doesn't matter what such a survey would show, or what you claim someone wants to believe. I want to find the truth, not pretend to psychoanalyze someone who wants or wants not to believe something.

Maybe the gospels do not convince those who want not to believe, because they can find reasons not to believe. But the evidence and the reasons to believe are there, and the truth of it is the same even if it's only those who have the hope for eternal life who are convinced. Even if wanting something to be true influences one to believe, it does not follow that wanting it to be true automatically makes it false.

There are no witnesses in the gospels. There is only hearsay.

You could say that about most of the historical record, or most recorded history. Someone wrote that it happened. So it's only hearsay, and so most history really never happened? Even Caesar's Gallic War, written by a contemporary of the events, contains much that is only hearsay, because Caesar was not present to witness it himself, but only reported what was told to him.

Nobody has a clue who actually wrote these books.

If we knew who wrote them, that would make them credible? What's another example of a book that cannot be believed because we don't know who wrote it?

I looked up titles of anonymous books, and I came across this one, which is sort of a short epic poem, that deals with an historical event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Maldon

The text: http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/oecoursepack/maldon/

I see no indication that the credibility of this document is questioned just because it's anonymous. There are questions about the accuracy of some details, but it's generally accepted as a real description of the historic event. It no doubt has a pro-English bias, so one would take that into account. But that it's anonymous does not make it any less credible.

There are no miracles in the battle scene, but there is sensationalism in the bloody descriptions, maybe some exaggeration, but that doesn't discredit the document. If there were miracles, they would be dismissed as fiction. However, this is only one account. What if there were 3 or 4 separate accounts of the event, and they all reported a miracle event? Why shouldn't such a report then be taken more seriously? if there's more than one source? especially if there are 3 or 4?

In the case of the gospel accounts, the miracle events give an explanation why the accounts are even written at all. Why should the gospels even have been written? What was so special about Jesus and his "disciples" that a writer should waste papyrus on it?

There are at least 4 separate sources, and there's no explanation why any of it was written, unless something unusual happened. Some text, like the Sermon on the Mount sayings, could have ended up somewhere else anyway (in fact some parts of it are found elsewhere). But the narratives have nothing noteworthy except the miracle acts. Without these, why should any of it have been written?

Best explanation: the miracle events actually happened. That's why we have these "gospel" accounts at all. Something very unusual happened.

Nobody has anything more than conjecture as to when they were actually written . . .

They can be dated reasonably enough -- most writings of the time cannot be dated any more precisely. Pinpointing the exact date has little to do with the credibility of what is written.

. . . and to what purpose.

Exactly. What's the purpose of writing the gospel accounts? What was interesting about Jesus that anyone would write the accounts? Why more than one? Why did several writers take the trouble? If the miracle events did happen, then we have the answer.

There is strong evidence that at least two of the gospels we have today relied heavily on "Mark" as source material for their version, . . .

This reliance on earlier sources gives further credibility to the accounts. A writer wishing to be accurate would rely on earlier available sources. This increases rather than decreases credibility.

. . . so their existence explains nothing more than the difference between Superman only being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound (original version) and being able to fly (later version).

There's little indication of an increase in the power of Jesus as we go from Mark to the later gospels.

Admittedly there is a little. There is some "improvement" in Matthew and Luke over Mark. Some of this makes Jesus look better, but not much. This does not discredit the overall accounts.

There's nothing wrong about a later author adding "improvements" to an earlier account. This does not discredit either account. Such editing or amplifying has to be looked at critically, but there is no cause here for tossing the accounts out as unreliable or worthless for historical information on what happened.

Some of the "improvements" in Matthew/Luke over Mark are probably helpful in presenting the truth of the events. Others maybe not, or even more harm than good. But all four gospels help give us a more complete overall picture -- we're closer to the truth in having them as opposed to any of them having been excluded. We should read all of them critically, just as anything else we read. They should not be worshiped as infallible. Some believers invest too much in them as though they are sacred objects with some kind of magical power. But that doesn't discredit the writings for others who read them more critically.


(to be continued)

 

[skepticalbip]

Blind ideological dogmatism is the only basis for rejecting the gospel accounts as evidence.

The gospels are evidence, but unsupported and unverifiable evidence. Just as the accounts people give of being abducted by aliens and anally probed is unsupported and unverifiable evidence. However, of the two the evidence for anal probing aliens is stronger than the evidence for the miracles of Jesus if only because there are many, many more independent accounts. Plus the anal probing alien accounts are first hand accounts, not hearsay accounts.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Blind ideological dogmatism is the only basis for rejecting the gospel accounts as evidence.

(continued)

We have abundant evidence (Paul's writings) that in the early, more formative years of the development of Christianity nobody was talking about Jesus performing any miracles.

Yes they were talking about this -- nothing in Paul indicates otherwise. The miracles are mentioned in the Q document, which did exist and was used by Luke and Matthew. This document was written at about the same time as Paul's writings.

You can't conclude that "nobody was talking about Jesus performing any miracles" anymore than you can conclude that nobody was talking about anything or doing anything, because Paul mentions nothing about what anyone was talking about or doing. So your conclusion would have to be that in Paul's mind, the whole world never existed prior to his epistles.

Paul mentions almost NOTHING about the life or background of Jesus, of anything he did. So there's nothing conspicuous about Paul not mentioning the miracles, as he mentions virtually nothing of the acts of Jesus. (But he does mention Jesus being "handed over" and the "Lord's supper" event on the same night (1 Cor. 11:23-25), showing that it was the earthly historical Jesus he was writing about.)

Paul is not the only one who ignores the miracles of Jesus (other than the resurrection). All the later Christian writers play down the miracle healing acts (though they emphasize the virgin birth). The healing stories were something they had a disinterest in.

Outside the gospel accounts there is virtually nothing about Jesus, i.e., about what he did. Does this mean he did nothing? he didn't exist?

(Hint: There have been many humans who existed (how about several billion) who were never mentioned in any document that has survived.)

Paul quotes him saying "this is my body . . . this is my blood" and says he was "handed over," then the crucifixion and resurrection, and that's all. You can't conclude from this that Jesus didn't do the miracle acts, unless you conclude that everything prior to that night was fiction and Paul knew none of it -- not only the miracle events, but all the rest as well -- Jesus didn't even exist prior to that night.


Does not-being-mentioned mean NOT HAVING EXISTED?


If not being mentioned by Paul means it never happened, then we have to conclude that Jesus did nothing prior to that one night when he was arrested, which Paul reports. So does this mean that Jesus was a phantom who appeared in the flesh for the first time that night, ate with the disciples and then went out to be arrested and so on? And he did not exist before that night? It wasn't until that night at the table that the disciples first met him?

How could Paul believe the disciples were with him that night, unless he also believed they had been with him previously where something happened? That he doesn't mention what happened earlier can hardly mean that he thought nothing actually happened. What's absent in Paul is not just the miracle acts of Jesus, but all his words and deeds prior to that night. That Paul is silent on this does not mean he didn't know of it or that it didn't happen.

So to say that in the early years "nobody was talking about Jesus performing any miracles" is nonsensical because it presumes that nothing happened or was talked about if Paul didn't mention it. If the only things that happen are those which Paul talked about, then we'd have to conclude that the world did not exist prior to Paul, or prior to the night Jesus said "This is my body" etc. and was "handed over."


Yes, there's an absence of miracle stories.

The real silence about miracles, especially miracle healing acts, is PRIOR to Jesus, from 30 AD and earlier, for centuries, where there is no account of any historical person who performed any miracle healings. And then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there is an explosion of miracle healing stories, beginning somewhere after 30 AD, appearing in the gospel accounts, and then later in the non-canonical Christian writings.

How is this to be explained? How did such an outburst of reputed healing events happen so suddenly, when there is a total absence of such events for the many centuries before? The closest thing to it are prayers for healing at temples or shrines, and some inscriptions on the walls, when a worshipper happened to recover and attributed it to the healing god.

That's all there is. There are no miracle healing events, where the sick are brought in large numbers to a healer, such as we see in the gospel accounts. There is nothing that comes remotely close to these miracle healings reported in the gospel accounts.

You've been presented with this evidence before and you keep ignoring it. The stories about miracles did not start appearing for at least 30 years after the events in question.

In written documents that we have today, yes. But we have nothing about him that early, and for most historical events there are no written documents that early (or most events prior to 1000-1500 AD). Hardly any events get reported in documents earlier than 30 years out, usually much later. The time separation between the event and the first documents is usually much greater.

However, the miracle stories did appear much earlier -- they just didn't get written in documents that survived. The vast majority of documents did not survive, but rotted, and only those for which great care was taken have survived. This extra care began to happen several decades later, not in 30-50 AD.

The single best explanation for this is that traditional worshipers of Greek gods would chide Christians about their powerless god who couldn't heal diseases like Asclepius . . .

But why did they "chide" only the Christians? There were hundreds of different cults which promoted their various deities or mythic heroes, and all of them faced the same challenge of needing to prove their deity/hero was the strongest or the best, and so, if your explanation is correct, they also would have created their own miracle stories and got them circulated widely for public consumption, just as the Christians did.

And yet there are no others, but only the Christians, who published such accounts of miracle acts.

. . . or turn water to wine like Bacchus.

No, it's not true that Bacchus reputedly turned water into wine. I.e., the Greeks did not believe this. It was not part of the Bacchus myth, despite the silly nonsense from your favorite Jesus-debunker celebrity.

Here's a website that debunks most of the analogy of Jesus to Bacchus/Dionysius. http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/dionysus.php
The only real account of Bacchus changing water into wine is a later story from the 2nd century AD. Not that this argument about "water into wine" really matters, but it shows the extreme degree of distortion and exaggeration that the Jesus-debunker pundits go to in their desperation to find parallels to Jesus in pagan mythology.

You have to ask for the original written source for their claims about pagan deities and not just believe everything they say. Ask for original text from the ancient writings, so you can read it for yourself, instead of just accepting their slogans about the miracles of the pagan deities. When you check them yourself and read the accounts of the alleged miracles, it becomes obvious that there is no parallel to the Christ miracles in the gospels. Plus, of course, there are no multiple sources anywhere near to the times that those alleged miracle events took place. Most of the accounts are from several centuries later, or even thousands of years later.

It would only take one person to rise to the challenge in all that time and say "But Jesus did do things like that!" and ... BOOM, suddenly everyone would be tripping over each other to defend the honor of their favorite hero-god-myth.

And precisely this disproves your theory, because if you were right, there should be dozens or even hundreds of other hero-god-myth legends similar to the Christ legend publishing their own "gospel" accounts and defending their god-hero-myth with their own miracle stories -- and yet, there are none.

There are no others until after the Christ miracle accounts, and ONLY THEN, after these have circulated, do we begin to see a new rash of miracle stories, after 100 AD, most of them just adding new miracles to the Jesus stories, but also some new miracle-worker heroes eventually, like Apollonius of Tyana, and it's obvious that this one is not focused on Asclepius but on Jesus, because the descriptions include a miracle lifted out of the Gospel of Luke, showing that the author was trying to provide an alternative miracle-worker to the Jesus of the gospels.

There are no other miracle-worker hero-god-myths which emerge in the period prior to 100 AD, going way back, in fact, none at all for which any documents were written at any time near to the reported events. And yet, THERE SHOULD BE DOZENS OF THEM if it's true that the way they appear is that "everyone would be tripping over each other to defend the honor of their favorite hero-god-myth" as you're saying the Christians did in promoting Jesus.

Where are all the others? all the other favorite "hero-god-myth" legends that did exist but for whom we see NO new miracle stories appearing anywhere near this time? for whom there is nothing written? no healing miracle stories whatever -- Where are they? Name them, and give the written sources, the text that relates their miracle acts. Don't just toss out names like Horus or Krishna, which means nothing. Give the texts that tell about them. THEY DO NOT EXIST -- there is nothing but empty symbols or some silly magic or monster stories that are just for entertainment -- and there is no healer to whom the sick were brought to be healed, not even fictional accounts of such a thing.

If all the legends were trying to prove that their mythic hero could heal just as Asclepius allegedly did, then why didn't any of them produce similar miracle stories and get them circulated just as the Jesus stories got circulated? Why is Jesus the ONLY miracle-healer legend that existed or appeared as a result of this need to copy the Asclepius healer diety?

Obviously this cannot explain why the Jesus legend emerged, or how the Jesus miracle events originated.

Evidence refutes everything you say.

No, it refutes what you're saying. There are no other examples of miracle-healers or other miracle-workers for whom there are any written sources relating their miracle acts and appearing within 50-100 years after the supposed events.

And yet by your theory there would have to be dozens of them, if not hundreds. There were easily hundreds of other hero figures being worshiped by some local clique of followers who wanted to promote their hero and win more disciples, and your theory says they would have created miracle stories and got them circulated, published for hundreds and thousands of readers/listeners and would have become just as widespread as the Jesus miracle accounts became within 100 or 200 years from the time of the reported events.

And yet there are NO SUCH EXAMPLES, not one. Which refutes your explanation of how the Jesus miracle stories got circulated. There would have to be others. It absolutely defies all common sense that there would be ONLY ONE such case.

 

[DBT]

'' Gautama Buddha was alleged to possess superhuman powers and abilities; however, due to an understanding of the workings of the skeptical mind, he reportedly responded to a request for miracles by saying, "...I dislike, reject and despise them,"[1] and refused to comply. He allegedly attained his abilities through deep meditation during the time when he had renounced the world and lived as an ascetic. He supposedly performed such miracles to bring the most benefit to sentient beings and he warned that miraculous powers should not be the reason for practising his path.''

''It is said that immediately after the birth of Siddhartha Gautama (623 BCE),[3][4] he stood up, took seven steps north, and uttered:

"I am chief of the world,
Eldest am I in the world,
Foremost am I in the world.
This is the last birth.
There is now no more coming to be."

Furthermore, every place the baby Buddha placed his foot, a lotus flower bloomed.[2] There is a claim that the Buddha's birth was miraculous via a dream that his mother saw of a white elephant.[5]''

 

[Keith&Co.]

<WOT>
(to be continued)

Anything in there worth reading?

 

[atrib]

OK, so then you DO accept the gospel accounts as evidence, as four separate sources attesting to the miracle acts of Jesus. Just as you accept any other sources as evidence. So I was mistaken -- you do recognize that it is irrational to single out these four documents as the only ones in history that must be rejected as evidence.

The gospel accounts are evidence that some people at that time and place believed that the Jesus character described in the Bible may have existed and performed miracles. They are NOT evidence that the miracles actually happened. The gospel accounts are also far removed in space and time from said alleged events, and some of them have been copied from earlier accounts. The stories contradict each other and are full of factual errors in their description of how our reality works. So we are left with one deeply flawed account recorded by an anonymous writer based on hearsay from an anonymous source, neither of whom witnessed any of the supernatural events. NOT four independent eyewitness accounts that corroborate each other as you claimed.

The entire premise of your faith is based on the belief that Jesus was a clone of a supernatural creator, put on Earth so he could be offered as a blood sacrifice to appease said magic creator who had apparently fucked up his creation so badly that it could only be fixed by sacrificing his human clone in a barbaric way. The clone was killed off and then magically resurrected from the dead and levitated up into the sky without the aid of any mechanical devices. The story is absurd and illogical on the face of it. Couple that with the fact that it is an anonymous account based on anonymous hearsay, and is riddled with inconsistencies and claims that contradict reality, and the story is easily dismissed. The account does NOT meet the minimum standards of evidence required to make the story even remotely plausible, let alone satisfy your claim that is more reasonable to believe the account than to believe it is fiction.

OK, you came to that conclusion, but at least you do admit that these documents or accounts are evidence for the miracle acts of Jesus and are not to be dogmatically rejected as evidence simply because they contain reports about miracle events. Whereas there is no credible evidence for the miracle acts of Zeus and Horus and Hercules and Perseus and other dieties or mythic heroes.


E.g., you acknowledge the gospel accounts as evidence, rather than "dogmatically rejecting" them, just as we accept the biography of Apollonius of Tyana, by Philostratus, as evidence, even though it reports miracle events which one may or may not believe, but still the document is evidence which cannot be dogmatically rejected as part of the historical record.

Name one historian who believes or argues that Zeus and Horace are historical characters who possessed supernatural powers. Name ONE character in recorded history who historians believe possessed supernatural powers. Name one supernatural event in history that is accepted as fact by modern historians. Just one! You can't do that because there aren't any. You claim that the supernatural events described in the Bible should be treated as credible because they are part of the historical record and similar to other historical accounts that are considered credible. But you ignore the fact that modern history does not record a single supernatural claim as being credible for the entire duration that our species has existed and kept written records. You continue to repeat this untrue claim even though it has been pointed out to you several times earlier in this thread. This fact speaks volumes about the integrity of your testimony here, and makes it incredibly difficult to respect anything you say.

A document may contain "contradictions" and yet be mostly true and reliable as a source for historical events. Most documents contain some "contradictory" elements, even though they are still reliable as an information source.

The fact that the Bible is full of errors and contradictions does not help your case. It only adds support to our argument that the supernatural claims of the Bible cannot be considered reliable.

The gospels only convince those who want to believe.

And only those who want not to believe are not convinced. Perhaps.

But a person seeking the truth cannot find it based on doing a survey of the psychological frame of mind of those who are convinced and those who are not convinced.

Show us the evidence and we will consider it. Explain why you think we should believe that Jesus came back to life as a zombie and flew up into the sky. And no, a deeply flawed anonymous account based on hearsay, far removed in space and time from this magical zombification and supernatural flying act does not count as evidence.

I'm seeking an answer to whether Jesus Christ had or has power, but the answer to this cannot be found by surveying the mindsets of those who believe and those who do not believe. It doesn't matter what such a survey would show, or what you claim someone wants to believe. I want to find the truth, not pretend to psychoanalyze someone who wants or wants not to believe something.

Maybe the gospels do not convince those who want not to believe, because they can find reasons not to believe. But the evidence and the reasons to believe are there, and the truth of it is the same even if it's only those who have the hope for eternal life who are convinced. Even if wanting something to be true influences one to believe, it does not follow that wanting it to be true automatically makes it false.

The evidence is credible only in your imagination. Most of us here live in the real world and do not find your favorite fairy tale to be credible for the reasons that have been explained to you.

There are no witnesses in the gospels. There is only hearsay.

You could say that about most of the historical record, or most recorded history. Someone wrote that it happened. So it's only hearsay, and so most history really never happened? Even Caesar's Gallic War, written by a contemporary of the events, contains much that is only hearsay, because Caesar was not present to witness it himself, but only reported what was told to him.

Is Caesar reported to have risen up from the dead and floated up into the sky? Is Caesar credited with performing ANY supernatural acts? No. If you simply made the claim the claim that a preacher named Jesus existed, this claim might be considered plausible. On the other hand, if you claim Jesus turned into a zombie and flew up into the sky based simply on obviously flawed anonymous hearsay, the claim would not be credible. Simple concept to grasp for most, but apparently beyond your comprehension

I see no indication that the credibility of this document is questioned just because it's anonymous. There are questions about the accuracy of some details, but it's generally accepted as a real description of the historic event. It no doubt has a pro-English bias, so one would take that into account. But that it's anonymous does not make it any less credible.

The book is riddled with factual errors and contradictions. It would be foolish to consider the supernatural claims of the book regarding flying zombies as credible when many of the other claims it makes are so obviously wrong.

Best explanation: the miracle events actually happened. That's why we have these "gospel" accounts at all. Something very unusual happened.

Wrong. Best explanation is that the supernatural events are fictional.

Nobody has anything more than conjecture as to when they were actually written . . .

They can be dated reasonably enough -- most writings of the time cannot be dated any more precisely. Pinpointing the exact date has little to do with the credibility of what is written.

Not when the written account claims people rising up from the dead and flying up into the sky.

. . . and to what purpose.

Exactly. What's the purpose of writing the gospel accounts? What was interesting about Jesus that anyone would write the accounts? Why more than one? Why did several writers take the trouble? If the miracle events did happen, then we have the answer.

People make up shit all the time, and our libraries are full of books that describe stuff that people made up.

 

[atrib]

<WOT>
(to be continued)

Anything in there worth reading?

No. Lumpy keeps repeating his tired claims without actually responding to anything other people have said. Lumpy seems to believe that repeating a claim many, many times will magically make the claims more credible.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Christ belief is reasonable hope, with evidence, but not 100% certainty.

I know you think the miracles are the really big thingy. But the miracles are just part of the window displays to sell the notion of salvation and eternal life thru believing this character from the past so you can get your ticket to paradise. It is the larger package that was sold, and won people over.

But why were they won over? The superhuman acts he performed were evidence that he had contact with a life-giving power that might make eternal life or salvation possible. Without this evidence people would not have believed, i.e., would not have been won over.

The mere claim of superhuman power is not enough -- people generally do not believe without evidence. What's important here is that for the first time humans were provided with evidence, whereas earlier claims about salvation or eternal life or paradise were not accompanied by any evidence of such power, so there was no reason to believe those who made such claims.

I was not obsessing on what primary and secondary sources, I clarifying language as you played fast and loose with well understood terms. Is there something wrong with being forthright?

No, your talent for forthrightness and clarifying language and not obsessing on anything and especially for catching those who play fast and loose is unsurpassed, I'm sure.

I don't lose much sleep worrying about "primary" vs. "secondary" sources. E.g., I was surprised to learn that Tacitus is considered a "primary source" for events that happened 100 years earlier than he wrote about them.

The problem you have to solve is why it is that only this Jesus Christ figure emerges as a miracle-worker attested to in several separate documents within decades after the reported events, and we do not have others like him, i.e., other mythic hero or savior figures who did miracles, which is what we should have if it was so easy for such miracle stories to be attributed to a mythic hero as a result of mythologizing. Why only one and not many others competing with him, or many other new cults similar to the new Jesus cult after 30 AD?

Round and round….As I and others have already said, it isn’t a problem and it has been solved sufficiently for me to consider the construct implausible.

So then how do you answer that we have "only one" such mythic hero historical figure reported to have done such acts and for whom there are multiple documents appearing within decades after the reputed events? How does your solution answer this?

You speak of “several” separate documents. I see a fuzzy central source, with decades to allow several iterations to emerge into what we now call the Gospels via god-builders.

But why don't you see several others, i.e., other miracle-worker legends, coming from whatever source or sources which emerged into some other alternate "Gospels" of their own? Why is there ONLY ONE clique or "central source" of god-builders who succeeded in getting their mythic hero into the historical record, and there are no others? If you have solved this, what is your solution or answer as to how this happened?

Whoever the central charismatic leader(s) was/were, he/they did build an interesting general theology of salvation. I can understand why that would be compelling to many.

But why shouldn't there be others which also built an "interesting general theology of salvation"? Surely there WERE others which were also interesting and had compelling elements to them. If there was a demand for them, why shouldn't there have been a supply of new cult legends or myths to meet the demand? Only one new cult could meet this demand? What was so special about it that it alone could succeed in winning followers and getting its accounts or legends published?

Why should one expect many new competitors to this new cult to appear in this time frame, when there were already hundreds of existing gods to consider?

But then why did even this new cult acquire so many new believers when there were already hundreds of existing gods to consider? And as to competing cults, they certainly existed -- the question is: why didn't any of them also succeed and get their miracle mythic heroes publicized like these new Christ cults succeeded in doing so?

Weren't these new Christ cults meeting some demand out there? some demand the already-existing gods were failing to meet? And if so, then why should there not have been a few others, NON-Christ cults, which also could meet that demand? If there was the same fertile ground for them as there was for the new Christ cult(s), why couldn't any of the others also win followers and get their mythic hero published in "gospel" writings of their own?

As I said in my last post, the LDS are a great relatively modern example of just how one can build a religion with BS even without decades of fog to hide it in.

No, LDS had centuries of traditional Christ belief to fall back on. LDS was only a variant of the earlier Christ belief, keeping the same legendary figure, Jesus Christ, and adding the modification that he also appeared in the Americas, to the native Americans. There was a strong demand for this.

So we can explain the unique success of the new LDS cult, because it had a very identifiable message for which there was a strong demand, plus the momentum of 18 centuries of Christ-belief behind it, not just decades.

So by comparison, what was the unique element that produced the similar sudden rise of the Christ cult(s) after 30 AD? There was no singular message, and no single tie-in to previous decades or centuries of tradition, except that the new "gospel" or writings absorbed many of the already-existing teachings from diverse sources, many of them conflicting with each other, with several new cults suddenly appearing and claiming to have the true Christ teaching. But what new teaching did Christ introduce? What new phenomenon took place to cause the new Christ cult(s) to emerge suddenly?

What happened to cause LDS to suddenly appear is that a long-standing Christ-belief tradition had come into abrupt contact with the New World having new populations far-removed from where the Christ gospel originated, which disturbed millions of Christ believers who wondered how these native populations had any chance for salvation, including those of the previous 18 centuries, unless they somehow had Christ's gospel presented to them also.

Why not a John the Baptist cult, e.g., which attributed miracles to John the Baptist and made him into a god like the Christians made Jesus into a god? Or some other mythic hero figure? We should have several of them, if it's so easy for any charismatic bloak to come along and get himself made into a god and have miracle stories attributed to him.

Actually, there is a John the Baptist cult, just not like how you try to make it a carbon copy of yours, it is called Mandaeism.

Yes, but there is no record of him performing miracle acts. If miracle stories were so easy to concoct and get people to believe, why didn't these John the Baptist followers make their hero into a miracle-worker? Why is there no other miracle-worker legend in this period for whom we have written accounts, such as we have in the case of Jesus? if it was so easy to produce such accounts and there was such a demand for them?

Thousands of gods and theologies have been birthed and have died. Some borrow more from others, and some borrow less. Some last for millennia, some barely last more than a lifetime. Some mutate into thousands of variants, some stay to just a few variants.

And none of them presents any credible evidence of contact with a superhuman power, such as we have in the case of the Jesus miracle acts.

Why is Christianity on the wane in the western world? Why is it dying more rapidly in northern Europe, England, Canada, and Australia?

The evidence for Christ goes back 2000 years and perhaps loses impact over passing centuries or during certain periods. If Christ-belief is decreasing now, that doesn't tell us what did or did not happen back in 30 AD.

You don't solve this problem by offering Marcion as a comparable Jesus figure. Marcion himself was a Jesus believer, not a reputed miracle-worker or rival to Jesus. Nor did he present to us any different figure who is comparable to Jesus.

LOL…and just what would modern Christians in the US be like without the Old Testament, Revelations, and the coming of Christ? Hum…maybe better off; maybe then Christians would support torture just as little as non-religious Americans.

You got me there.

As I said earlier, your purported God sure has a funny way of revealing itself, and seems to let the humans do most of his talking for him, BS and all.

So what you mean is that IF Christ really had power, then there would be a booming Voice from the sky telling us so and demanding that we believe. And signs to prove it, like striking dead or torturing those who don't believe, especially the atheists, or non-Christians. Direct action from on high instead of BS coming indirectly through humans.

Admittedly, there could be more evidence. But there's no basis for saying how much evidence is required of a God, if there is a God, to convince humans. We have to look at the evidence we actually have. There's much truth for which we have limited evidence. It's appropriate to believe based on the limited evidence, even though it'd always be nice to have more.

Seems like it prefers to play hide-and-seek more than anything else…

Much of the truth we have comes in forms that are ambiguous. Maybe the most important truth is this kind -- the most direct and imposing truth is the same kind that the lower animals experience. Truth is still important even when it's elusive.

The truth of Christ is based on evidence and is reasonable, but it is not absolute proof or 100% certainty, as we wish we could have. We have to consider the evidence we do have, and draw whatever conclusions; but complaining that there ought to be more evidence, and 99% or 100% probability, and lamenting that we don't have this, is not itself part of a logical reasoning process -- this is not a good reason for concluding that it couldn't be true.

funny thing for a tri-headed god.

Not really. It's the norm for tri-headed gods. Get your facts straight.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

delete

 

[Keith&Co.]

Admittedly, there could be more evidence. But there's no basis for saying how much evidence is required of a God, if there is a God, to convince humans.

There is, though. The evidence for one specific god needs to be distinct from the evidence for all the other gods offered throughout history.

You've got, what, someone wrote a book and you really, really, really like it.
There are other books. Some with witnessed attestations! Rather than anonymous authors of unknowable provenance....

funny thing for a tri-headed god.

Not really. It's the norm for tri-headed gods. Get your facts straight.

That's funny, Lumpy. The only thing greater than your ignorance of other people's gods is your ignorance of the history of your own.

Get some facts in the first place, then straighten them out.

 

[Keith&Co.]

But why were they won over? The superhuman acts he performed were evidence .

They're evidence he wasn't the messiah. The messiah is supposed to have many qualities, but being superhuman isn't one of them. He's a representative of God, not an avatar of one.

Get your facts straight.

Good advice. heed yourself.

 

[atrib]

But why were they won over? The superhuman acts he performed were evidence that he had contact with a life-giving power that might make eternal life or salvation possible.

In order to use this argument, you have to first demonstrate that Jesus performed superhuman acts, like rising up from the dead and flying up into the sky. You have not provided any credible evidence for such acts, and you are never going to, because none exists.

Without this evidence people would not have believed, i.e., would not have been won over.

People believe all kinds of nonsense, often without a shred of evidence. Over a billion people on this planet believe Mohammed was a prophet of Allah and performed supernatural acts like flying up into the sky on a winged horse. Over a billion Hindus believe that the universe was created by Brahma. Many hundreds of millions believe that Gautama performed supernatural acts. Over a billion people including yourself believe that Jesus rose up from the dead and flew up into the sky. There is no evidence to support any of these beliefs, but that does not stop them. Your argument that people only believe things when they are provided credible evidence is false.

The mere claim of superhuman power is not enough -- people generally do not believe without evidence. What's important here is that for the first time humans were provided with evidence, whereas earlier claims about salvation or eternal life or paradise were not accompanied by any evidence of such power, so there was no reason to believe those who made such claims.

There is no evidence to support the claims of the Bible either. The supernatural acts of Jesus are not mentioned by a single historian of that period. Isn't it strange that no historian could be bothered to write down stories of people rising up from the dead and flying up into the sky?

I don't lose much sleep worrying about "primary" vs. "secondary" sources. E.g., I was surprised to learn that Tacitus is considered a "primary source" for events that happened 100 years earlier than he wrote about them.

Why did Tacitus not record Jesus rising up from the dead and flying up into the sky? Probably because it did not happen.

So then how do you answer that we have "only one" such mythic hero historical figure reported to have done such acts and for whom there are multiple documents appearing within decades after the reputed events? How does your solution answer this?

First, the only source for Jesus performing supernatural acts stories is the Bible. There are no multiple lines of evidence to corroborate the Bible stories . Your claim is based on a falsehood.

Second, history of full of claims of other people having performed supernatural acts. No historian consider any of these supernatural claims to be valid.


Your argument can be summarized thus:

The Bible says Jesus did magic, therefore magic.

Sorry, but we are not convinced.

 

[skepticalbip]

Lumpy,
You really should be cautious using the argument that people believed Jesus did magic as evidence that he did. Especially since we have hundreds of first-hand testimony and accounts of being abducted by anal probing aliens compared to four hearsay accounts of Jesus' magic.

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/more-americans-believe-aliens-have-visited-earth-than-believe-that-jesus-is-the-son-of-god

More Americans believe aliens have visited Earth than believe that Jesus is the Son of God

According to a National Geographic survey, 77 percent of all Americans “believe there are signs that aliens have visited Earth”, and according to a recent Harris poll only 68 percent of all Americans believe that Jesus is God or the Son of God. That means that the number of Americans that believe that UFOs have visited us is now greater than the number of Americans that believe what the Bible has to say about Jesus Christ. With each passing year, the frequency of UFO sightings seems to keep increasing, as does the number of movies, television shows and video games featuring aliens and extraterrestrial life. It is almost as if the population of the planet is being primed for something. Could this phenomenon be the “strong delusion” of the last days that is talked about in the Bible? And if there are beings out there that are not human, what is it that they want? Could it be that they have an extremely insidious agenda?

But then maybe you believe more strongly in anal probing aliens than you do in the divinity of Jesus - you haven't said.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Reason #12

(12) Jesus purposely confuses outsiders so they won’t be saved

The following scripture is from Mark 4:11-12:

And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.

This is one of the surviving scriptures that reveal the real, historical Jesus.

No, it more reveals the mindset of whoever quoted this passage out of the prophecies of Isaiah, from which it originates.

The reason that it is considered a genuine quote, or at least the general idea of what Jesus preached, is that it is contrary to the finished product of Christian theology -- that all people can be saved.

It isn't necessarily "contrary" to the final evangelical product. It depends on how it's interpreted.

The evangelist is quoting Isaiah and is staying strictly in accordance to that wording (Is. 6:9-10). This is originally an ancient Jewish prophetic teaching, not something new from Jesus in the 1st century AD.

If Jesus did speak something like this, it could explain why he was finally put to death. I.e., he was saying truth(s) that people did not want to hear, and he made mention of this rejection -- that they heard but didn't understand. The evangelist connected it to this Jewish prophecy, but we don't know the exact original words Jesus spoke, which might have been different than this gospel writer's interpretation, and different than the idea expressed in the Isaiah quote.

Maybe even the gospel writers (and disciples) did not like what Jesus was speaking, and the offensive truth(s) he spoke were excluded from the accounts.

The idea that only his direct disciples could understand the truth, but no one else, probably originated from these disciples, or some of them. Especially the idea that God intentionally blocked everyone else's understanding. There's reason to be suspicious of the idea that there was this inner clique of disciples who were the only ones who really understood him. It conflicts with other passages where his close disciples are depicted as dull and petty and foolish.

Some of what Jesus allegedly said after resurrecting (in scriptures that are likely forgeries), to go to all nations and preach the word, directly contradicts what is being said here.

Perhaps. But "what is being said here" is likely not something he really said. Or rather, he said something similar to this, but still basically different, and the gospel writer connected it to this Isaiah quote because it sounded similar. In which case what he really said does not contradict the admonition to preach the word to all nations.

What is revealed by this scripture is that Jesus’s ministry was targeted only to the Jews.

Not at all, because the ones to whom the truth is blocked are also Jews. The words "but unto them that are without" refers to Jews other than the disciples. These outsiders were a "crowd" of Jews gathered along the shore by the boat, in Galilee.

And the quote from Isaiah also makes it clear that it is Jews who are prevented from understanding the truth:

Go and say to this people [the nation of Israel, the Jews]: Listen carefully, but you shall not understand!
Look intently, but you shall know nothing!
You are to make the heart of this people sluggish, to dull their ears and close their eyes;
Else their eyes will see, their ears hear, their heart understand, and they will turn and be healed.
"How long, O Lord?" I asked. And he replied: Until the cities are desolate, without inhabitants, Houses, without a man, and the earth is a desolate waste. Until the Lord removes men far away, and the land is abandoned more and more.
--Isaiah 6:9-12

And then the captivity is described in which the Jews are removed from their land. This language is directed against Jews, not gentiles. And this language originated from Isaiah, not Jesus.

The words here are similar to those spoken of the Pharoah to whom Moses was sent, saying that the Lord hardened his heart so he would not obey, just as Isaiah says "this people" will have their heart made sluggish and their eyes closed and ears dulled. However you interpret this early Jewish theme, of God himself making the hearers unable to understand, it did not originate from Jesus.

That is why he preached only to the Jews and used language, idioms, and parables to confuse the non-Jews who might be overhearing his message.

No, it was Jews overhearing who were to be confused by the idioms and parables. There is nothing at all here about non-Jews, either spoken by Jesus, or by Isaiah who is quoted here. The ones hearing but not understanding were Jews.

He had no intention to bring his message of salvation to the Gentiles, who, as revealed in other scriptures, he clearly disdained.

No, there are plenty of other scriptures that say the opposite.

What is clear is that there was a faction of Jews who tried to make him an exclusive Jewish messiah who excluded Gentiles. And even if this tradition is early, it only shows that among his earliest followers, all of them Jews, there were those who insisted that his mission was to Jews only. But it was from their earlier messianic ideas that they derived this, not from Jesus.

The pettiness of the anti-Gentile theme is shown partly in Mt. 10:5-6:

Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

This jab at Samaritans makes little sense, because there were many Jews in some of these towns who were just as much part of the "lost sheep" of Israel as the Galileans and Judeans. There was antagonism toward the Samaritans, or tribalistic rivalry/hostility, but no reason to dismiss them all as pagans and excluded from Israel. This pettiness did not originate from Jesus but rather reflects the culture of the time and a mindset of some early believers who were hostile toward the Samaritans.

Therefore, Christianity is a forgery of Jesus’s true mission.

No, the exclusion of non-Jews is not a Jesus Christ idea or part of his true mission, but an idea of some Jews who worshiped him. And the intention to confuse those outside, so they won't understand, is an Isaiah idea, not a Jesus Christ idea. There is no need to connect Jesus to these Jewish ideas that predated him and were put into his mouth by writers in 40 or 50 or 60 AD.

It is perfectly plausible that some early believers, who were Jews, saw him as exclusively for Jews, being their promised "Messiah" and conforming to some earlier Jewish messianic ideas, fulfilling Hebrew prophecies, etc. But that was just their interpretation.

The more important question is: What did they see in him that they wanted to make him their "Messiah" and a savior miracle hero figure?

Explaining why they adopted him and mythologized him this way is made much easier by the proposition that he actually did perform the miracle acts. Isn't it obvious that if he actually did perform these acts, those Jews would have taken him to be their promised "Messiah"?

Why they messianized him is made more difficult to explain by the fact that Jesus actually DID NOT FULFILL some of the messianic promises. Yet many Jews did make him into their Messiah. Why?

If he actually did perform the miracle acts in the gospel accounts, we have the explanation. They were so astounded that they made him into their Messiah, despite some failure to perform everything that was expected of the promised Messiah. These miracle acts made him so conspicuous that they had to come up with an explanation. So they modified their messianic expectations to fit him.

But if he did NOT perform those acts, then why did they messianize him and put all these words into his mouth, or record them (the ones he really spoke), and fabricate the miracle stories? What was there about him that they reacted to him this way? It makes no sense.

And the hidden meanings, the parables, the confusing of the outsiders, shutting their eyes and ears so they wouldn't understand -- these were attempts to come up with some meaning, some explanation, and perhaps a way to explain away some things he said that they did not understand -- all of it suggests there was something going on that startled them and forced them to make something out of him. He must have done something noteworthy, something singular and totally different than anything before.

What could it have been? What is it that struck them so much that they went to all these confused attempts to make sense of him? If he really did perform those miracle acts, we have the explanation. Without them, we cannot explain these written accounts of him -- none of it makes sense.

 

[Keith&Co.]

No, it more reveals the mindset of whoever quoted this passage out of the prophecies of Isaiah, from which it originates.

I just love your biblical apologies, Lumpy.
We can't know for sure if any author of any of the Books can accurately attribute a quote to Jesus, it's possible to explain away anything one says Jesus SAID, but his impossible miracle acts, those we can depend on for their accuracy.

So, can't quote for shit, but always report the crazy shit with hi-fidelity.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What could it have been? What is it that struck them so much that they went to all these confused attempts to make sense of him? If he really did perform those miracle acts, we have the explanation. Without them, we cannot explain these written accounts of him -- none of it makes sense.

Sorry, Lumpy, but argument from ignorance is about as compelling as validating Jesus with a tarot deck.

 

[atrib]

The more important question is: What did they see in him that they wanted to make him their "Messiah" and a savior miracle hero figure?

There have been many dozens of people through our history who have been considered Messiahs or hero figures by their disciples. There are over a billion Muslims on the planet who believed Muhammad was a prophet and rode up into the sky on a winged horse. Many dozens of people killed themselves in Texas because they believed David Koresh was the Messiah. Jesus is not even remotely close to being alone in this category.

Explaining why they adopted him and mythologized him this way is made much easier by the proposition that he actually did perform the miracle acts. Isn't it obvious that if he actually did perform these acts, those Jews would have taken him to be their promised "Messiah"?

Umm, no.

If he actually did perform the miracle acts in the gospel accounts, we have the explanation. They were so astounded that they made him into their Messiah, despite some failure to perform everything that was expected of the promised Messiah. These miracle acts made him so conspicuous that they had to come up with an explanation. So they modified their messianic expectations to fit him.

Far more reasonable explanation: People make up shit. All the time.

But if he did NOT perform those acts, then why did they messianize him and put all these words into his mouth, or record them (the ones he really spoke), and fabricate the miracle stories? What was there about him that they reacted to him this way? It makes no sense.

Why did other humans get turned into Messiahs and hero figures? Do you honestly believe all of these Messiahs had supernatural powers they demonstrated to their followers?

And the hidden meanings, the parables, the confusing of the outsiders, shutting their eyes and ears so they wouldn't understand -- these were attempts to come up with some meaning, some explanation, and perhaps a way to explain away some things he said that they did not understand -- all of it suggests there was something going on that startled them and forced them to make something out of him. He must have done something noteworthy, something singular and totally different than anything before.

Pure speculation. Meanwhile, in all of recorded human history no person has ever risen up from the dead or flown up into the sky with no mechanical aids.

What could it have been? What is it that struck them so much that they went to all these confused attempts to make sense of him? If he really did perform those miracle acts, we have the explanation. Without them, we cannot explain these written accounts of him -- none of it makes sense.

Really? None of it makes sense? Therefore Jesus was the clone of a supernatural skydaddy who had to be sacrificed to atone for daddy's fuckups, and then zombified and raised up into the sky? This really makes sense to you? Go on, answer the fucking question for once. You won't.


You use walls of text to cover the fact that you have nothing to say. Your argument boils down to the following:

Bible sez magic. Therefore magic!

We are not buying the shit you are peddling.

 

[Kharakov]

Lumpy,
You really should be cautious using the argument that people believed Jesus did magic as evidence that he did. Especially since we have hundreds of first-hand testimony and accounts of being abducted by anal probing aliens compared to four hearsay accounts of Jesus' magic.

Do you want to hear about some guy who makes all the work you do meaningless because they can superpower it away, or someone sticking something up someone's ass in order to understand them better?

Ohh, wait, nm. Same dude, only in the one case they're pretending to be an alien. Seriously, you didn't figure that one out yet?

 

[funinspace]

Not sure why I'm even bothering responding to so much Wish, Wash, Repeat...

Wow, quoting from last December….

I know you think the miracles are the really big thingy. But the miracles are just part of the window displays to sell the notion of salvation and eternal life thru believing this character from the past so you can get your ticket to paradise. It is the larger package that was sold, and won people over.

But why were they won over? The superhuman acts he performed were evidence that he had contact with a life-giving power that might make eternal life or salvation possible. Without this evidence people would not have believed, i.e., would not have been won over.

The mere claim of superhuman power is not enough -- people generally do not believe without evidence. What's important here is that for the first time humans were provided with evidence, whereas earlier claims about salvation or eternal life or paradise were not accompanied by any evidence of such power, so there was no reason to believe those who made such claims.

Tis funny. Why has the LDS grown at about the same rate as the first centuries of Christianity without the “superhuman acts”? Why is Islam going to pass up Christianity in total numbers within 50 years, even though it got started 600 years later with no magic tricks? Magic tricks are hardly a necessity, as human history has clearly demonstrated. Lots of people believe all sorts of stupid shit without evidence all the time. Of course you have been told this over and over…

I was not obsessing on what primary and secondary sources, I clarifying language as you played fast and loose with well understood terms. Is there something wrong with being forthright?

No, your talent for forthrightness and clarifying language and not obsessing on anything and especially for catching those who play fast and loose is unsurpassed, I'm sure.

I don't lose much sleep worrying about "primary" vs. "secondary" sources. E.g., I was surprised to learn that Tacitus is considered a "primary source" for events that happened 100 years earlier than he wrote about them.

I would be truly impressed with a source that is from a historian that mentions Tacitus as a primary source for the life of Jesus, which is not the same as a Christian apologist spouting shit. Somehow, I don’t see you coughing one up….

The problem you have to solve is why it is that only this Jesus Christ figure emerges as a miracle-worker attested to in several separate documents within decades after the reported events, and we do not have others like him, i.e., other mythic hero or savior figures who did miracles, which is what we should have if it was so easy for such miracle stories to be attributed to a mythic hero as a result of mythologizing. Why only one and not many others competing with him, or many other new cults similar to the new Jesus cult after 30 AD?

Round and round….As I and others have already said, it isn’t a problem and it has been solved sufficiently for me to consider the construct implausible.

So then how do you answer that we have "only one" such mythic hero historical figure reported to have done such acts and for whom there are multiple documents appearing within decades after the reputed events? How does your solution answer this?

Nice how you build up your question framed within your assumptions and then throw it out like it is a challenge. You have not established that there are multiple documents. As most of us have already countered more than a dozen times, there appears to be one originating source, and then 3 branches from that ONE source. And has it has been stated dozens of times, it was not within decades that these sources appeared. It is estimated that the oldest Gospel (Mark) appeared some 3 decades after the purported death of Jesus, then next 2 come in up to 30 years later. So that is 3 to 6 decades after the purported events, not “within”. This also ignores that we really don’t even know who wrote the Gospels, nor even where they were composed.

Whoever the central charismatic leader(s) was/were, he/they did build an interesting general theology of salvation. I can understand why that would be compelling to many.

But why shouldn't there be others which also built an "interesting general theology of salvation"? Surely there WERE others which were also interesting and had compelling elements to them. If there was a demand for them, why shouldn't there have been a supply of new cult legends or myths to meet the demand? Only one new cult could meet this demand? What was so special about it that it alone could succeed in winning followers and getting its accounts or legends published?

It (Christianity) didn’t alone succeed. What planet are you on? Christianity has only briefly been the largest religion out there, probably not for much more than 500 years out of many millennia of history. What demand?

Why should one expect many new competitors to this new cult to appear in this time frame, when there were already hundreds of existing gods to consider?

But then why did even this new cult acquire so many new believers when there were already hundreds of existing gods to consider? And as to competing cults, they certainly existed -- the question is: why didn't any of them also succeed and get their miracle mythic heroes publicized like these new Christ cults succeeded in doing so?

Weren't these new Christ cults meeting some demand out there? some demand the already-existing gods were failing to meet? And if so, then why should there not have been a few others, NON-Christ cults, which also could meet that demand? If there was the same fertile ground for them as there was for the new Christ cult(s), why couldn't any of the others also win followers and get their mythic hero published in "gospel" writings of their own?

This new Christian cult did NOT “acquire so many new believers”. It grew much like the LDS cult has for the last 150 or so years, nothing amazing about it. This new cult even got over to India in the early centuries of Christianity, but barely made a splash amongst the Hindus. The Christian cult can thank the Roman Emperor for its later rapid growth as much as anything.

As I said in my last post, the LDS are a great relatively modern example of just how one can build a religion with BS even without decades of fog to hide it in.

No, LDS had centuries of traditional Christ belief to fall back on. LDS was only a variant of the earlier Christ belief, keeping the same legendary figure, Jesus Christ, and adding the modification that he also appeared in the Americas, to the native Americans. There was a strong demand for this.

So we can explain the unique success of the new LDS cult, because it had a very identifiable message for which there was a strong demand, plus the momentum of 18 centuries of Christ-belief behind it, not just decades.

And Christianity had centuries of Judaism to fall back on, keeping the same legendary figures, Adam, Noah, Jacob, Joseph, Jacob et.al., modifying the harsh Yahweh cult rules, making it fit a nicer paradigm. I have no idea why you bring up “just decades”, as the LDS has had about the same initial growth rate as Christianity did for its first 2 centuries.

So by comparison, what was the unique element that produced the similar sudden rise of the Christ cult(s) after 30 AD? There was no singular message, and no single tie-in to previous decades or centuries of tradition, except that the new "gospel" or writings absorbed many of the already-existing teachings from diverse sources, many of them conflicting with each other, with several new cults suddenly appearing and claiming to have the true Christ teaching. But what new teaching did Christ introduce? What new phenomenon took place to cause the new Christ cult(s) to emerge suddenly?

What happened to cause LDS to suddenly appear is that a long-standing Christ-belief tradition had come into abrupt contact with the New World having new populations far-removed from where the Christ gospel originated, which disturbed millions of Christ believers who wondered how these native populations had any chance for salvation, including those of the previous 18 centuries, unless they somehow had Christ's gospel presented to them also.

WTF? What arse did you pull out the notion that bumping into lots of new natives “disturbed” millions of Christians? Reference? Christian apologists had and still have lots of ready answers built right into that jumbled mess of words called the Bible.

Why not a John the Baptist cult, e.g., which attributed miracles to John the Baptist and made him into a god like the Christians made Jesus into a god? Or some other mythic hero figure? We should have several of them, if it's so easy for any charismatic bloak to come along and get himself made into a god and have miracle stories attributed to him.

Actually, there is a John the Baptist cult, just not like how you try to make it a carbon copy of yours, it is called Mandaeism.

Yes, but there is no record of him performing miracle acts. If miracle stories were so easy to concoct and get people to believe, why didn't these John the Baptist followers make their hero into a miracle-worker? Why is there no other miracle-worker legend in this period for whom we have written accounts, such as we have in the case of Jesus? if it was so easy to produce such accounts and there was such a demand for them?

Rinse, wash, repeat….again this is your hobby horse not mine. Why does one need duplicates? As has been shown over and over, miracle acts are completely unnecessary when building gods.

Thousands of gods and theologies have been birthed and have died. Some borrow more from others, and some borrow less. Some last for millennia, some barely last more than a lifetime. Some mutate into thousands of variants, some stay to just a few variants.

And none of them presents any credible evidence of contact with a superhuman power, such as we have in the case of the Jesus miracle acts.

Spin control to Major Tom…you don’t have credible evidence for your Jesus-god either. And again, it is your hobby horse demand, completely unrelated and disconnected to the reality of the thousands of gods we humans have built.

Why is Christianity on the wane in the western world? Why is it dying more rapidly in northern Europe, England, Canada, and Australia?

The evidence for Christ goes back 2000 years and perhaps loses impact over passing centuries or during certain periods. If Christ-belief is decreasing now, that doesn't tell us what did or did not happen back in 30 AD.

But it can tell us that the evidence is lacking…and the purported power of the Christ demigod and his holy minions is not real, but it is part of the ebbs and flows of human history.

As I said earlier, your purported God sure has a funny way of revealing itself, and seems to let the humans do most of his talking for him, BS and all.

So what you mean is that IF Christ really had power, then there would be a booming Voice from the sky telling us so and demanding that we believe. And signs to prove it, like striking dead or torturing those who don't believe, especially the atheists, or non-Christians. Direct action from on high instead of BS coming indirectly through humans.

Admittedly, there could be more evidence. But there's no basis for saying how much evidence is required of a God, if there is a God, to convince humans. We have to look at the evidence we actually have. There's much truth for which we have limited evidence. It's appropriate to believe based on the limited evidence, even though it'd always be nice to have more.

Some people think they need a booming voice from the sky, but it seems that it wouldn’t have been hard at all for a real god to provide at least a few decent crumbs. Never mind not letting his playwrights, add in BS fantasy stuff. But if this purported god had some particular requirements for us silly humans, in order to get the E-ticket for a magical life after death, it seems it did a pretty shitty job as the large majority of humans don’t find any variant of Christian theology to be believable. I posted this last March, not that I would expect you to remember:

- There was never anything even close to the Noah Deluge fable
- The Tower of Babel fable...is well babel BS
- Moshe and his Exodus fable is at least 99.9% BS
- The whole conquering of Canaan is largely made up
- There was never any day the Earth stood still for Joshua
- The sun wasn’t set back 10 degrees for Hezekiah
<snip>
A god not playing hide-n-seek, might have nudged Pontius Pilate, to write back to Rome commenting on having to execute a crazy Jew who claimed to be their King; and then god could have protected it within the Roman archives. A god not playing hide-n-seek, could have inspired one of the first dozen disciples to sit down and write a Gospel in the 30’s, within a few years of God’s death/resurrection. God could have nudged them to send copies outward, to initiate a historical record.

Just imagine, Yahweh being true to his word, and leaving a permanent mark on the Egyptians and then they wrote some stuff about being scared shitless of this Jewish god and we later found the clay tablets. Or how about Chinese and Egyptians writing of that scary day some 3 millennia ago when the sun stood still, which we later get to find, as these empires were watching the skies back then, and they both were literate among other empires. Or Yahweh could just make sure the writers didn’t add such BS.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Do people believe anything without evidence? no matter how absurd?

Televangelists out the wazoo constantly claim to perform miracles. They heal "lame" people, they make the deaf hear, the mute talk, the blind to see.

But do they really? Is there reason to believe they really perform these healings? In the case of Jesus, there is reason to believe he really did perform those acts. We have the evidence in writings that appeared, which were written sooner than was normal for historical events to be subsequently recorded in writing.

If some evangelists today are healing people, there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't mean Jesus did NOT do healings. In fact, these healers you're talking about claim to get their power from Jesus. I am doubtful that they really have any unusual power. But if they really are doing miracle healings, maybe it's evidence of the power of Christ, from whom they claim to get this power. So it's not clear what your point is.

Do these evangelists reputedly have power to bring the dead back to life? Or rise from the dead?

Give us the details about what these miracle-workers have done, or are doing, and let's look at them case by case. It means nothing to just say they're doing this constantly, out the wazoo, without giving the details of an individual case.

Pick out the best case you know of and give us some details about it.

I'll pick out a case for you, since you don't want to.


Did Sai Baba perform miracle cures?

There are many anecdotes of miracle cures performed by Sai Baba, the Hindu "Avatar" who was very popular.

Let's assume it's fiction, deception, whatever -- no miracles really happened.

The question is: How is it that the followers of this guru gave the deceptive reports, or were misled, or imagined something that didn't really happen?

The answer is that this guru had a reputation and long career, teaching and inspiring his disciples for many decades, and they became greatly impressed by him over such a long time, and his reputation spread worldwide, attracting much attention outside India, in the West, so that it became easy for him to become mythologized.

Mythologizing generally happens with a charismatic figure who wins thousands of followers over a long career. If he has a strong inspiring appeal to them, they begin to imagine miracle events happening and interpret some events as miracles and even imagine something to happen which did not really happen.

Virtually all reputed miracle-workers fit into this description. It's the long career and long period of impact on the followers, and the guru's charisma, that influences the followers to see miracles that did not really happen. But this does not apply to the case of Jesus, whose public career was too short -- less than 3 years.

They speak in tongues and do other silly stuff all to prove the great power of god to perform miracles. Yet none of them can stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Actually you don't know none of them can stand up to scientific scrutiny.

However, let's assume they can't and that they don't really have any special power. You need to give us one example and show the claims about the miracles they performed.

In the case of Jesus, we have 4 or 5 accounts which relate the miracle acts he performed. Let us see the similar evidence for these evangelists who reportedly showed miracle power. Just give us one example -- the best example that would be analogous to the case of Jesus.

It's best to give an example of a non-Christian evangelist, because a Christian evangelist is relying on the Jesus healing tradition to promote belief in his power, and it's probably this which creates the psychological condition leading to the belief that a miracle took place.

But Jesus did not rely on a previous tradition to perform his healing acts. He was not part of a line of faith-healers doing reported miracles in the name of a previous healing entity, such as the Christian televangelists do.

If -- and that's a really big IF -- There was a Jesus who performed magic and people talked of these parlor tricks as for years afterwards the single most likely explanation is that these events were no more the result of actual magic than David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear.

But then what is the explanation for these events, or reported events? It's not the same as the explanation for the reported televangelist healing events, which are based on belief in an earlier healing tradition tracing back to Jesus 2000 years ago.

It's not good enough to say "these events were no more the result of actual magic than . . ." -- tell us what these events were caused by. What caused the Jesus miracle healing stories to get started and spread and be believed and recorded?

Those televangelists are falling back on the well-established Jesus healing tradition. But what did the Jesus healing stories fall back on in the period after 30 AD? How does an instant healer cult pop up out of nowhere? with nothing leading up to it, as the Christian healing belief system led up to today's televangelists?

I've already presented copious evidence as to why it is a veritable certainty that these miracle myths about Jesus were fabricated in the late 1st century so I won't rehash that.

No, there's no such evidence, from you or anyone else.

All you argued is that Paul never mentioned the miracles (other than the resurrection). But Paul omits EVERYTHING biographical about Jesus. Except only the night he was "handed over" and the "Lord's Supper" when Paul quotes Jesus saying "this is my body . . . this is my blood . . ." And nothing else, and so therefore Jesus did not exist prior to this event? He not only did no miracles, but he did no acts at all, and did not even exist prior to this one night that Paul mentions?

The Jesus miracle accounts were circulating in the 50s AD. They are mentioned in the Q document, which is earlier than the official date of Mark and the others. And almost certainly they began earlier, in earlier written reports that were lost and in oral reports. There is no evidence for placing the origin of them in the late 1st century.

Increases in technology, printing, education, the Internet, etc., do not change human nature. Some people will believe anything no matter how absurd.

But most people will not. And those who believe anything no matter what are not the ones who wrote the gospel accounts or anything else, as those who could write were a tiny percent of the population.

And even most of the illiterate did not believe anything no matter how absurd. There is no reason to believe these accounts would have circulated so easily, in oral and written reports, if there was no truth to them. Most people would not have believed them and the stories would have died out.

And they will believe absurd stuff just because someone else says it's true without ever doing anything to investigate for themselves.

No they won't -- not the vast majority. They will not believe if there's no evidence. It's only a small minority who believe without evidence, today and also in 30 AD. If large numbers believed it and even written reports of it circulated more and more, it indicates that the events really did happen.

That is the reality of things. It was true back then and it is true today.

Yes, that people generally do not believe miracle claims without evidence -- that's the reality. They didn't back then and they don't today. And you cannot cite examples to prove otherwise. It's only a tiny minority who believe without any evidence, and any examples you have are atypical and reflect a tiny minority of kooks only, and 2000 years ago such kooks did not get their claims published.

Whereas the Jesus accounts were published because there was real evidence and credibility to them.

Appealing to the invention of the printing press as some magic panacea that increases the gullibility of people is absurd.

It doesn't increase the gullibility, but modern publishing capability makes it easier for propagandists of any kind to circulate their crusade and reach a much wider audience much sooner. So the conditions of starting up a new cult and spreading miracle claims are different today than in the 1st century.

Today we learn of the kookie cults because of the increased media, whereas 2000 years ago they died from lack of media to spread their propaganda.

Fortunately today, the Internet has given us a ready tool to investigate absurd claims. In spite of that incredibly large numbers of people forward chain emails every day telling of yet another absurd urban legend. They do so without taking even a moment to search for any corroboration. They do so without checking into who, exactly is making these claims, and whether or not that individual actually said what others claim was said. This is true in spite of how blindingly easy it is to check the facts.

Back then it was not nearly so easy to check the facts.

But it was overall less likely that false claims would circulate. And those people did not believe without any evidence. That the Jesus miracle reports did circulate so widely and gained believers, and that there was NO OTHER rival cult doing the same, strongly suggests that there must be some truth to the Jesus miracle reports. Because it is too difficult to explain the singular spread of the new Christ cults, and absence of rival miracle cults, unless there was some truth to these claims.

People believed things for no other reason than they heard it somewhere.

Not the vast majority. It's only a tiny minority who believe something for no reason.

And this could not be how the Jesus miracle stories got started, because if such stories could pop up and circulate so fast, we should have more miracle-workers than only one. Who is another reported historical miracle-worker legend who healed large numbers? If people just believed anything for no reason, we should easily have hundreds of others in the written documents. Yet there is only this one for whom we have credible evidence, i.e., in multiple documents, written near to the time of the reported events.

And again, if anyone came even close, let's have the example. Or, just give us the best example of a parallel to the Jesus case, i.e., a reputed historical figure who reportedly performed miracle acts.

The absence of any examples that have survived proves that people generally are NOT gullible and do NOT believe anything without evidence. Whatever goofy cults there were just died out for lack of credibility.

The vast preponderance of human history is filled with examples of hoaxes being perpetrated on large numbers of people and it still goes on today.

No, not instant miracle hoaxes like the Jesus example would have to be. Not an instant miracle-worker who pops up out of nowhere. The vast majority of people reject instant miracle-worker charlatans.

What we do have a preponderance of are cases of miracle legends/hoaxes which are grounded in long tradition and also in well-established charismatic gurus with a long career behind them. Stories of the saints doing miracles are accepted because they are grounded in a long-established religious tradition. Those are the kind for which there is wide acceptance by (gullible) believers, but not an overnight miracle-worker who pops up out of nowhere, as in the case of the Jesus miracles.

There are some instant miracle hoaxes, but not that gain any wide acceptance -- only a tiny band of kooks. Nothing that would have gained any traction 2000 years ago before modern publishing.

What accounts are there of a hoax perpetrated on large numbers of people? You can't give any example that is comparable to the case of the Jesus miracle acts reported in the gospel accounts. Your repeated failure to give any examples proves the point that there are no comparable cases.

It is truly amazing that someone would attempt to argue that there is credibility behind anonymous gospels making extraordinary and unsubstantiated claims, written by unknown people . . .

Once again, anonymity is not evidence that a report is false or less credible.

We know who wrote the biography of the alleged miracle-worker Apollonius of Tyana. The miracles of this character are not made more believable simply because we have the author's name, nor the fact that we know something about him, his other works, and that he was a person of high status. There are reasons to distrust this author and his motives. And if instead he had published his biography anonymously, his account would actually be MORE credible, not less.

. . . at unknowable times in unknowable places . . .

We can identify the times and places these were written as well as we can for most documents of this period. Simply because the exact time and location of the document is in doubt does not mean it lacks credibility or is rejected.

. . . who exhibit (and shamelessly claim) an agenda that "these things were written that you may believe, and that believing you might have life in his name." It is absolutely the worst possible sort of basis for believing an extraordinary claim.

That makes sense, IF you start out with the fundamental dogmatic premise that the "extraordinary claim" must be false. But if one does not begin with this premise, but rather, leaves open the possibility that the miracle reports could be true, and that truth is to be judged based on the evidence rather than the dogmatic premise that a miracle event ipso facto can never be true regardless of any evidence, then there is nothing wrong with the above quoted words "that you may believe" etc., and it's not an unreasonable basis for believing.

Our best guide for evaluating the miracle claims and other content in the gospel accounts is to consider the evidence and apply reason to the claims made, not impose onto it a dogmatic ideology which blindly condemns all miracle accounts as necessarily false and intolerantly exclude these documents from the historical record based on this doctrinaire ideology.