Did Jesus ever exist?

[Crayfish 10]

Look at the post I was replying to. In post 68 sccsux spoke of “a supreme being that watches over us, perhaps benevolently or perhaps malevolently?”

 

What I was saying is that God is neither benevolent nor malevolent; he is a just God as in justice. He represents truth, truth is reality, and we live in a real world. So we have a car crash, the next day we win the lottery, that is the reality, that is the truth of the matter and we know the truth is neither benevolent nor malevolent it just IS.

 

Sooo... why does the word god need to come into this at all? You could just as easily say that reality is neither malevolent or benevolent and leave it at that, could you not? There is no reason, observing reality, to reverse your stream and say 'I see reality therefore reality is truth and truth is god' - if they are all the same thing, reality is reality and that's the end of it.

 

Furthermore, there's no need then to bring things like the bible which don't describe reality into the equation. Reality is the beginning and end of the matter, which is why we should work on characterising it and not trying to escape into fantasy worlds.

[Grahame 10]

Well that's rather the point isn't it, ‘those who were around at the time didn’t write a single word aleast that survived on Jesus, though they wrote a fair amount of stuff that did.

 

There's not a single contemporary source which refers to Jesus, the earliest Christian writings came at least a generation after Jesus was supposed to have lived and the earliest (reliable) non-christian source comes from c.116 CE.

 

As such if Quintin Hogg was an apologist (which I vaguely recall him being) I really don’t understand how he thought that comment was of any relevance to the debate.

 

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by the disciples of Jesus who knew him personally and wrote their accounts of his life and his teaching, from first hand experience of knowing him, they were contemporary writers, their writings are source material.

 

Irenaeus, around 180 on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John:

"Matthew published his gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel in Rome and founding the church there. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter's preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who leaned on his breast [John 13:25;21:20], himself produced his gospel, when he was living in Ephesus in Asia. (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.3.4)

http://www.biblestudyplanet.com/q44.htm

 

You and others like you try to deny this and make up every excuse you can, even to the point of introducing untruths.

 

The question that needs answering is why do people do this? If Jesus did not exist and if Jesus were not the son of God in human form then there would be no need for you to worry your little heads. The fact you seek to deny Jesus, his work and his teaching proves the reality of it and proves the teaching and existence of Jesus.

[Crayfish 10]

The question that needs answering is why do people do this? If Jesus did not exist and if Jesus were not the son of God in human form then there would be no need for you to worry your little heads. The fact you seek to deny Jesus, his work and his teaching proves the reality of it and proves the teaching and existence of Jesus.

 

While on the other hand, your need to continually defend and promote what you allegedly consider an infallible and omniscient deity somewhat belies your profession of belief.

 

In addition, as an extension of your argument, your need to continually deny the fuzzy purple unicorns of the yorkshire dales (or whatever people have been on about, I forget) proves the reality of them and proves their teachings and existence.

 

Can you start to see how illogical these arguments are? Only the subject is changing in each case, not the arguments applied to it. Yet when the subject is god you call them truth and when the subject is another imaginary character you call them silly.

[Grahame 10]

Sooo... why does the word god need to come into this at all? You could just as easily say that reality is neither malevolent or benevolent and leave it at that, could you not? There is no reason, observing reality, to reverse your stream and say 'I see reality therefore reality is truth and truth is god' - if they are all the same thing, reality is reality and that's the end of it.

 

Furthermore, there's no need then to bring things like the bible which don't describe reality into the equation. Reality is the beginning and end of the matter, which is why we should work on characterising it and not trying to escape into fantasy worlds.

 

The things that happen to us, the world we live in and our surroundings are the reality. The cosmos, the earth and the planets, they are the reality, but they are distant and cold and are not what real life, our life is primarily about.

 

The Bible is a book for the living and certainly for humans, and I suspect the animal kingdom as well there is another dimension which is our relationship with each other and how we treat and respond to other people. This is what Christianity is mainly about and I submit is on a higher plane than the ground we walk on or the stars above our head. Judging by the posts on the forum our lives, interests and the overwhelming need to be loved and to love are of paramount importance and this is what the teaching of Jesus is mainly about.

[Grahame 10]

While on the other hand, your need to continually defend and promote what you allegedly consider an infallible and omniscient deity somewhat belies your profession of belief.

 

In addition, as an extension of your argument, your need to continually deny the fuzzy purple unicorns of the yorkshire dales (or whatever people have been on about, I forget) proves the reality of them and proves their teachings and existence.

 

Can you start to see how illogical these arguments are? Only the subject is changing in each case, not the arguments applied to it. Yet when the subject is god you call them truth and when the subject is another imaginary character you call them silly.

 

Fuzzy purple unicorns in the Yorkshire dales is about right, the post was about a flying tea pot but it matters not. The thing is people come out with these hair-brained notions brought about because they don't understand Christianity and I feel the need to put the record straight.

[Mr Goose 10]

Fuzzy purple unicorns in the Yorkshire dales is about right, the post was about a flying tea pot but it matters not. The thing is people come out with these hair-brained notions brought about because they don't understand Christianity and I feel the need to put the record straight.

 

Ok - lets be clear about christianty..

 

The bible Jesus figure clearly believed in hell - do you?

[mikey10 10]

i think he does. because ive seen his dad. truth, but i know it will be ridiculed.

[cressida 1,570]

What sort of funeral ceremony are the unbelievers going to have when they die, obviously not a christian one?

[Guest]

What sort of funeral ceremony are the unbelievers going to have when they die, obviously not a christian one?

A Humanist one, perhaps.

 

EDIT: Info here.

[discodown 11]

Ok - lets be clear about christianty..

 

The bible Jesus figure clearly believed in hell - do you?

Thats a faintly ridiculous question. He has to believe in hell or he's unbalanced. The concept of evil and hell only came into being with Abrahamic religion.

 

Paganism and so on don't acknowledge it, neither do I believe did the polytheistic religions of greece and rome that may apply to norse as well (although theres a fair chance i'm wrong about all the above!)

[Heeley tyke 10]

What sort of funeral ceremony are the unbelievers going to have when they die, obviously not a christian one?

 

I wouldn't think that the main participant is unduly worried!

[Mr Goose 10]

Thats a faintly ridiculous question. He has to believe in hell or he's unbalanced. The concept of evil and hell only came into being with Abrahamic religion.

!)

 

I always ask this to "modern" christains - and I NEVER get a straight answer -

 

Why? Well the idea of reward in heaven and eternal punishment for the wicked was a very helpful construct for disempowered underclasses in ancient times. Restrictive socio-political-racial based class systems meant that many (if not the majority) of people would have had a pretty awful life.

 

Living under oppression, with no realistic way out for you or you children, would have made Paul's ideas of the afterlife very attractive.

 

But (and here is the big but) the idea of eternal punishment is so repugnant to ANY form of modern philiophy that the christian church has been forced to rebrand the message in the last 80 or so years. (in the same way that the silly ideas of Noah's ark etc have been quietly rebranded as "parables").

 

Thats why I always ask the question, and that is why I never get a straight answer (apparently because "I dont understand christianity")

 

Honk!