Did Jesus Actually Exist?

Praefectus civitatium. This prefect was appointed by the governor of a province to rule a part of it. The most famous example is the praefectus Judaea between 26 and 36: Pontius Pilate.

The emperor Hadrian briefly experimented with proconsular government of Italy, but his successor Antoninus Pius reversed this policy. However, Marcus Aurelius reinstated it.

So anyway...the answer to the question: Did Jesus actually exist?...seems to be something along the lines of...

I really do not know; I suspect neither does anyone else discussing the question here; I can think of no way to every determine if a single individual existed who is the Jesus of the Bible...or if the Jesus of the Bible is an amalgam of several people who were pushing a modified philosophical stance.

Right?

Right?

Quote:

So anyway...the answer to the question: Did Jesus actually exist?...seems to be something along the lines of...

I really do not know; I suspect neither does anyone else discussing the question here; I can think of no way to every determine if a single individual existed who is the Jesus of the Bible...or if the Jesus of the Bible is an amalgam of several people who were pushing a modified philosophical stance.

Right?

Of course Jesus existed... regardless of all those stupid hypothesis (similar to the one written right above) trying to deny his existence.

Conclusion 3: Many people on A2K haven't updated their software since the 1970s.

So have you seen any good movies lately, Carlos?

Rather, the Oxford defines a denialist as “a person who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence,” which represents a whole different level of cognitive bias or rationalization. Think of it as bias on steroids. [...]

The first two things that became clear during our discussions of denialism are particularly disturbing to me as a scientist and philosopher. First, as a scientist: it’s just not about the facts, indeed — as Brendan showed data in hand during his presentation — insisting on facts may have counterproductive effects, leading the denialist to double down on his belief.

This, of course, should not be taken to mean that the facts don’t matter. If I want to push the idea that climate change is real, or that evolution is a valid scientific theory, or that the Armenian genocide was indeed a genocide, I better get my facts as straight as possible. It’s a pure and simple question of intellectual integrity. But if I think that simply explaining the facts to the other side is going to change their mind, then I’m in for a rude awakening.

That was a lesson I learned many years ago while debating creationists. A debate is a fun event, during which your testosterone is pumped into your veins, which can rally your troops (helping, say, with a fund raising), and which may even grab the attention of fence sitters and others who knew little about the subject matter. What it certainly won’t do is to convince your opponent or any of his committed supporters. Indeed, my best moments as a debater (against Institute for Creation Research’s Duane Gish, or Discovery Institute’s Jonathan Wells) came when I was able to show the audience that these people were consciously lying to them. Nobody likes to be treated as a fool, not even a creationist.

As a philosopher, I found to be somewhat more disturbing the idea that denialism isn’t even about critical thinking. Teaching about logical fallacies isn’t going to do any better than teaching about scientific facts. Indeed, the evidence from the literature is overwhelming that denialists have learned to use the vocabulary of critical thinking against their opponents. To begin with, of course, they think of themselves as “skeptics,” thus attempting to appropriate a word with a venerable philosophical pedigree and which is supposed to indicate a cautiously rational approach to a given problem. As David Hume put it, a wise person (i.e., a proper skeptic) will proportion her beliefs to the evidence. But there is nothing of the Humean attitude in people who are “skeptical” of evolution, climate change, vaccines, and so forth. [denialists are called hyper-critics" or "hyper skeptics" -- they doubt beyond reasonable doubt]

Denialists have even begun to appropriate the technical language of informal logic: when told that a majority of climate scientists agree that the planet is warming up, they are all too happy to yell “argument from authority!” When they are told that they should distrust statements coming from the oil industry and from “think tanks” in their pockets they retort “genetic fallacy!” And so on.