Kinda irrelevant if existed or not, does it matter? Despite all the Jezus bashing in 'Merkia, the “Jezus people” I’ve met actually seem like the most normal balanced individuals. So, as a pragmatist, I’m reluctantly pro-Jezus.
“there once existed of a religious leader named Jesus who caused a lot of headaches and was eventually crucified for his heretical beliefs.” This is pretty much a fact that is generally accepted and not debated amongst scholars.
Whether he was a god-man, born of a virgin, or supernaturally resurrected is another question altogether.
The statement above can be applied to anything. Because there is no evidence the Joseph Smith wasn’t God’s messenger, we should accept it because a book says so.
I don’t expect to convince a Christian, but having no evidence in a culture that documented everything is evidence enough without some sort of proof for the other side. I’ve always thought writing a book named there were no Jews in Egypt could do well. Maybe I’ll tie it into fake news lol
Not really. You’re conflating a purely religious and unprovable thing involving God with an actual human historical event. False equivalency.
In history, particularly in a culture that documents everything as you say, you’d expect observable evidence to the contrary. Duh. Pretty understandable that slaves on the move as nomad’s went a little light on the records. If you found records that showed the Israelites were living in a city in Palestine during that period that would be proof. The other is just lack of proof. See the concept of Black Swans.
Another thing we should consider and I didn’t see in the comments all over this thread is that, if Jesus didn’t exist, then how was it possible that Christian Religion became the largest religion around the world? I know it is diminishing nowadays, but surely it has been one of the strongest religions around the world since centuries.
My question is, Is it possible such a human coordination & commitment to be possible without a leader or an important event that led people to that belief?
Mahoma existed, Buddha existed, Jesus most likely existed…
What is the further reason for trying to demonstrate Jesus didn’t exist? Any conspiracy theory that belief Christianity was invented to control mass people?
Somebody doesn’t understand the premise of Christianity very well…
Some of the criticisms raised against Christianity by atheists sound as oafish as bible belt folks laughing at scientists “cause y’all sayin ma daddy was an ape.”
Many people understand the problem with inductive reasoning when they hear the story of the black swan (guy has never seen a black swan, and takes this lack of proof of black swans and erroneously tries to use it as proof that black swans don’t exist. I’m assuming this was what you’re going for). The problem is they can’t apply this kind of thinking in everyday life. This is actually the same problem people fall prey to in statistics when they don’t have a decent understanding of it. They fail to reject the null hypothesis and they erroneously conclude there is evidence of the null hypothesis or that the null has been proven since there wasn’t enough evidence in contradiction to the null (i.e. I didn’t see a black swan, therefore no black swans exist). Incredibly incorrect, and pretty poor logic.