Did Jesus Actually Exist?

So which television programs do you watch?

Goodnight sweet Frank. I get the hint...

I don't have a problem with your view, just the dismissive way you expressed it.

If you've read the entire thread, why not challenge some of the specific points that have been made doubting Jesus' existence?

Because it's 1.20 am and I'm too tired.

That didn't stop you pontificating though.

I am resurrecting this thread. Ha ha see how I did that?

I have probably mentioned this before. There are two aspects to this that NEED to be taken into account.

1. If Jesus existed it IN no way says that he also did miracles or was divine. It just says there was a person.

2. If Jesus existed it IN no way says that christianity is therefore valid.

You are being logically dishonest if you gloss over these and set them to true that if Jesus existed then both are true, christianity is now valid and he was divine. You can't logically get there but it doesn't stop believers from just making these assumptions anyways.

No, but if Jesus was a pure invention, it would prove that Christianity is invalid... Hence the discussion.

More than likely there was a simple person of no real great importance but was sentenced to death. Because we know that Jesus was not written about during he was a live. It was at least 40 years after he was murdered before things were being recorded. It seems rather strange that if he was such a great, amazing person surely some scribes would have jotted down this interesting person but no. It takes 40 years after events happen before anyone takes notice? That seems suspect.

To give an equivalent it would be like 9-11 happens yet no one records it until 40 years later. It hasn't even been 20 years since 9-11 yet there already are people who are making up **** about it.

I'm wary about a claim that's based on absence of evidence as evidence of absence (not saying anybody here is doing that), but the absence of evidence for someone who was allegedly of such social and political moment does justify a healthy skepticism, I think.

(I think I just paraphrased Krump.)

There was a book that came out a few years ago called the Myths of George Washington. I use this book as a way to show that people will make up stuff about a person that are just not factual. The thing is we know that George Washington existed and it was not that long ago. Yet there are hundreds of myths built around him. Accomplishments, things he supposedly did and things about his character that were not accurate.

I can only come to the conclusion that the same sort of behavior happened around the Jesus figure. He was distorted and facts were constructed around his character that were simply not true. Yet later generations take these same things as being true.

All I wanna know, Krumps, is two things:

1. Did he really chop down a cherry, then declare he "couldn't tell a lie" when confronted, and then get the living **** whipped out of him by his Pappy?

2. Did he really throw a coin across the Potomac River, and, if so, did he swim over to retrieve it?

Inquiring minds wanna know.

Years ago, I asked a class if they believed their foundation story was literally true or a myth. These were university students. I recall about half of them saying it was a myth, but the other half had to think about it. Some of that half declared it to be literally true while the others suddenly developed some degree of skepticism about it. Here's the myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangun

I doubt that there are literally hundreds of myths about George Washington. Most of them, in fact, come from a single source, Parson Weems, who not only made **** up, but made up a source (unnamed) for the stories he peddled. It is probably true that, as is the case with most influenticl people, there were many apocryphal stories which were, to a greater or lesser extent, based on actual incidents.

I think that it is interesting that the Altaic people who became the Koreans, in fact, arrived there a ten thousand years or more earlier than that.

It is interesting, yeah. But it's not very flattering compared to coming down from heaven.

But Dangun isn't treated like a god or even a currently active spirit, demi-god or what have you. The story is just part of their cultural identity.

What's our "cultural identity?"

Descending from a monkey?

If I was gunna make some **** up then, for self-image purposes, I would have to go with God's grandson, I spect.

The Japanese had a similar cosmogony myth, with their Jimmu. What is interesting is how powerful the concept of the sanctity of the Emperor still was right up to 1945 (and for a while, afterward). In 1941, the Imperial General Staff and the Imperial Navy were ready to launch thei "Southern Operation." Actually a series of dozens of operations, the goal was to take the oil and mineral-rich areas south of China and the Philippines. Yamamoto knew that it would be necessary to attack the Philippines, and therefore that it would be necessary to neutralize the American Pacific Fleet. So, he ordered the planning and assembly of resources for the attack on Hawaii.

According to custom, they must present their plans to the Emperor, who would, according to tradition, approve them and give the order to proceed. But Hirohito became angry. He berated his officers, he shouted at them (to these men, that must have been like physical blows); in a matter of minutes, the meeting was a shambles, and none of them would look up, none of them would look at the Emperor. Hirohito became silent, which spooked them even more. Finally he asked what guarantees they had that the operations would succeed, and how they intended to protect Japan against the inevitable retaliation. No one spoke. He began shouting at them again, he reminded them that he was the son of heaven and that he had a sacred responsibility to protect his people. It was some time before any of these men, all of them the veterans of combat, and most of them the veterans of bloody combat, were able to face their Emperor and attempt to answer his demands. When he finally consented, most of them were such nervous wrecks that they were unable to work for the rest of the day, and several resigned within the next few days. No amount of sophisticated skepticism could entirely overcome more than 2500 years of intense cultural conditioning.

At that time, did Hirohito still have the power to have their heads displayed on a pike in the courtyard?

I think the Japs' ultimate rationale was that Americans were known to be candy-asses who would run away from a fight. They counted on the U.S. opting for a "peace treaty" as soon as they encountered any serious difficulties.

It didn't work. Back then, anyway. Today, well, that's a different story probably.

If you want to discuss this topic with me, don't refer to those people as "Japs." While the Japanese had counted on being able to negotiate their way out of war as they had in 1895 and 1905, this was an entirely different matter, and most high-level, intelligent officers knew this would not work with the United States. Yamamoto wrote to a friend that they would only defeat the Americans when they dictated terms to them in the White House. Idiots since that time have used this as evidence that Yamamoto was a crazed war-monger. We had one such idiot here for a while, and he used a distorted version of what Yamamoto wrote to make him out to be some kind of fascist monster. (The clown who did this was a racist and fascist creep who thought that white men should rule the world, exterminating other people if necessary.)

What Yamamoto was saying was that in order to defeat the United States, it would be necessary to cross thousands of miles of ocean, destroying their navy along the way; to effect landings of the west coast, and then to fight their way across three thousand miles, including two mountain ranges. He had no illusions, and i suspect that many others had none either. Those who were optimistic probably had to tell themselves that hey could negotiate an end to the war.

No high-ranking Japanese officer who was intelligent enough to be a member of the Imperial General Staff would have been stupid enough to think that the Americans were either cowards or too soft to fight. The plan to take the island of Luzon originally gave two weeks to overrun the island, but most officers of the IGS knew better. The final version budgeted five weeks to overrun Luzon. They did overrun most of the island in about siz weeks--but it took five months to beat the Americans into submission.

You should not come here and post if you think you can just make up your version of events on the fly and not be challenged. If i read **** like "Japs" again in what you post, i'll waste no more time on you.