What do atheists say about jesus

Experiences like these can always be explained away through natural causes. So, if these are the sort of answers you get, push back a little and suggest we really need a higher and more convincing reason to believe in God, something like a philosophical argument. And then again, present such an argument. Not enough evidence! People are open to believing in God, if only there were enough evidence! When your friend or family member asserts that there is no evidence for God, do not panic. Believe it or not, they have already taken an important first step.

It means they are not willing to believe something without support. We should, however, clarify: what do they mean by evidence? Oftentimes what people really want is scientific evidence. In the realm of science, evidence refers to data you can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell—things that directly confirm or undermine a hypothesis.

And in the context of science, such evidence has led to remarkable results. Just look at the advancements in technology and medicine. Many truths that exist we cannot prove through physical evidence. Of course, we understand these statements to be true, but not because we have found physical evidence to support them. We believe these truths on the basis of another sort of evidence. The same holds for the existence of God.

Whether you believe God exists or not, He is, by definition, immaterial and transcendent. He is immaterial because He is not composed of physical matter, not made of material stuff like you and me. And God is transcendent because He exists beyond space and time. This fact is important: it is not just that we have not yet found such evidence, though it may exist, it is that such evidence is impossible , even in principle.

Does that mean it is impossible to demonstrate that God exists? It simply means that science is not the right means, just as a metal detector is not the right tool to find a wooden cup. We need other tools when exploring nonscientific questions. What other tools are there, besides science? One such tool is philosophy. Philosophy typically offers evidence in the form of arguments. In fact, thinkers have identified no fewer than twenty arguments for God, arguments that range from the clear and simple to the extremely complex.

Some of these arguments appeal to the universe or history, others to the existence of reason and beauty. We can approach the God question from many angles, and there is no one best way. However, in this short essay, we are going to look at one of the arguments that I find to be the strongest.

Before we begin, I want to note that if terms like arguments or evidence disconcert you, you might instead consider these arguments as clues that converge and point to a common conclusion, much the way road signs guide you to a specific destination.

These arguments are signposts to God. The Kalam argument dates back to the Middle Ages but has been made popular today by William Lane Craig, an evangelical Christian philosopher. The argument is very simple; in fact, it is probably the easiest of all the arguments to memorize, having two premises and one conclusion:. Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. Premise 2: The universe began to exist. Conclusion: The universe has a cause. If you can memorize these three simple statements, you will be well equipped when dialoguing with a skeptic.

The First Premise. This statement says everything that begins to exist has a cause. Well, if everything that exists has a cause, and God exists, then what caused God? They are literally nonsense because they confuse the meaning of terms. Now that we have cleared away that misunderstanding, let us turn back to the first premise. Personally, I think that it is quite possible that a person named Jesus existed.

There is certainly no definitive proof, but there is anecdotal evidence. For me the question is demonstrating that he was also a deity, or son of a deity depending on which type Christian you may be.

The very earliest one was written some thirty years after the supposed crucifiction. It is also a fact that eye witness testimony is one of the most unreliable forms of testimony. That is why forensics is so important in major criminal trials. Furthermore, the supposed miracles are at the level of modern day parlor tricks and are unimpressive even if it were possible to demonstrate that they actually happened. Thank you Milton. I am not sure whether you have actually read the gospels or the book of Acts?

The gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts clearly include elements of first person account. John likewise makes an autobiographical comment in John I would dispute your assertion about eye-witness testimony insofar as persons involved in an event verses persons that perceived an event.

The Watergate Scandal is a case where a number of men were all involved. Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. Absolutely impossible. Phil, yes, I have read the old and new Testaments several times through.

It admittedly has been quite some time, though. But even if they were written in first person from beginning to end, it would provide questionable evidence at best. However, even Biblical scholars agree generally that we have no idea who the authors of some of the gospels are and that in some instances, one borrows from the other.

If the fact that some people died for what they believed makes the belief true, then it would make Islam true, as well as Hinduism, Bhuddism, and numerous other religions. People die to this day for various religious and political ideologies, that does not establish the truthfulness of their beliefs.

You can Google the accuracy of eyewitness accounts and find ample information demonstrating the questionable value of eyewitness accounts. The guilty go free and the innocent are convicted based on eyewitness accounts. For such a claim as people rising from the grave, far more evidence would be needed to substantiate the claim.

All claims are not equal in terms of weight, and therefore the quantity and quality of evidence needed to support the claims also will vary. If the only claim was that there was a man with the name of Jesus who lived in the middle east 2 thousand years ago, perhaps the gospels would suffice, because such a claim could easily be true and would carry little importance.

But when you throw in the miracles and god claims, the bar is raised substantially. It is the difference between me telling you there was a car in my garage or telling you there was a magical dragon in my garage. Milton, thank you so much for your reply. A few years ago I realised that caring for a person was far more convincing and compelling than arguing with them.

But, I do not feel that you and I are arguing in the negative sense. There is no point in us discussing technical details back and forth as every claim that we each make can be rebutted by a counter claim. Thank for reminding me that, if I truly believe that Jesus is the son of God, and that God exists, it is more powerful for me to live as one who learns from and follows him i.

The narrative of Jesus records a man who loved the outcast and took the religious leaders to task. He was not impressed with knowledge, he was impressed with care and service.

Can you have good without evil? Without evil, how do we know what is good? The whole of human civilization and culture fights against natural selection. We can certainly build a moral framework based on human relations using the Golden Rule, for example, which antedates Christianity and is common to many cultures without invoking a deity at all.

For example, if another species were dominant, that reproduced by some other means, the concept of rape might be meaningless. It is only a crime in a human society that values autonomy. Christians are very ready to thank God for finding them a parking palce or saving one person in a plane-crash, but not to blame Him for letting the plane-crash — or a tsunami killing hundreds of thousands — happen.

In light of the culture of the time, forcing the man who raped the woman to marry her was culturally appropriate as both a solution and a disincentive to rape. Having the rapist marry her would be compensatory to the irreparable damage he caused to her.

Men knowing that they would be forced into a marriage with a woman that may be below his station or ambitions would disincentivize him from raping her in the first place. It is also worth noting that if he would not marry her he would be stoned to death. All of what you articulated there goes back to the main point of the author and the beginnings of her pursuit of God: why should we value these things? Why do we have a sense of right and wrong?

Evolutionary sociological and psychological arguments fail miserably to deal with this, and philosophy takes ardent note of that. From the Christian evaluation, the suffering of this life is infinitesimal compared to the glory of eternity to come. And the suffering of this life is necessary to point us toward God and to terms with the fallen state of humanity and the creation at large.

Chapter and verse for the stoning, please. My reading was that he would just have to pay the bride price without getting the bride. Why would we fight against what is, according to you, essentially who we are? You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what natural selection is.

You seem to think it involved constant physical battles between individuals or species, or tribes, or something. Nothing of the sort. Human consciousness changes everything. The concept that Darwin posited, which was flawed in a number of sense was simply a derivation of earlier work by a man who like many men do not want to accept that they are a created being, and thus accountable to their creator whether we wish to be, choose to be, or not — it just is. As such there is no need for ethics, morality or such, because survival is the only criteria.

I mean, really! The argument is valid. I am only arguing that a being that has the power to stop evil and does not is not a wholly moral being. And this is not an argument against the existence of God, but of the Christian God specifically. But, again, Christianity specifically deals with this. As for the creation, God created it for the purpose of humanity and human free will. Though what we are discussing here is not an issue of free will, but restraint.

Free will is a matter of the ability to make fully autonomous decisions. Restraining those decisions being carried out is another thing altogether. I am arguing against the existence of the Christian god, because the author specifically references the Christian god. If you wish to argue the pros and cons for any one of the thousands of other gods, we can, but not within this thread. Demonstrate your assertion that a god created the universe for humanity and free will.

I was just making an observation on that matter. I know you are arguing against the true God. How would you like me to demonstrate it? What criteria would you like fulfilled?

It would probably be faster for you to just go and read the accounts. My answer would be that an omniscient god would know what that evidence would be in my case. So i will await his submission of that evidence. In the meantime, i have no reason to believe. I think that is fair. Fair enough. I would recommend it to you.

I will pray that God will reveal Himself to you on the grounds that are necessary for you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

What man among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them—this is the Law and the Prophets.

For the gate is wide and the road is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it. If you will concede the possibility that He is there, and if so you would wish to find Him, then He will most surely find you.

CD, I have no problem conceding a god may exist. I just know that there is no convincing evidence for it to be true. Milton, your thinking is still fundamentally anthropocentric, and more specifically Milton-centric. On the justice of suffering: 1 All humankind is in rebellion explicit or otherwise against its creator. This is not a mistake; it too is a lesson in human evil and call to repent. Why do hundreds die in natural disasters? Why are children mistreated and slain? You and me and people just like us.

Why does God not step in and stop it? He will. But in the meantime he wants us to recognise our utter general culpability and turn to him for mercy. Yet we would rather blame him for giving us exactly what we corporately asked for — to rule ourselves and our world in our own way. Now, there are half a dozen possible objections to this.

But if any of them hold, then we are in a worse place — if there is no God who will judge, then there is no justice, no right, no wrong. These are all things we make up to try to make ourselves feel better in a dog-eat-dog world. As for evidence of God, why do you assume the problem is a lack of evidence? There are none so blind as those who will not see. But he does offer some of us two gifts — the gift of realisation that we need him, and the gift of salvation. For those he gifts with the first, the second follows easily.

Perhaps in his mercy and plan he will offer them to you. Finally, let me observe that when the Apostles speak in public in the book of Acts , their ultimate focus in not on the crucifixion of Jesus but on his resurrection. To their thinking, the resurrection of the Christ is the sign that he is King and the judgement of God is coming upon the world Acts , Acts The apparent reign of ignorance and evil is coming to an end; do not be caught up in its fall.

God in his mercy offers you a way back to him. You have actually put thought into your reply. Unfortunately, I disagree with your reasoning. My main point is that if god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent then he has both the ability and the desire to end immorality. He does not. Is he is incapable or unwilling?

It is irrelevant that he may step in at some point in the future and stop it. The point is that he can stop it now and chooses not to. Therefore, if he exists, he is immoral. Let me give my original question to you, because virtually everyone else on this thread has dodged the question and not answered it.

Maybe you will be the first to have the courage. If you could stop a child from being raped without any risk to you or others, would it be immoral not to stop it?

If you think it is immoral, then you and I agree…. If I could stop a child from being raped, without any risk to myself or others, would it be immoral for me not to stop it? In accordance with human conceptions of morality, it would be immoral for me to stand idly by. Is God bound by human conceptions of morality? Did evil break me? Yes, but only until I allowed myself to be loved back to wholeness.

Why do children starve to death? There is ample food to provide for every being on Earth. Look into the vast amounts of perfectly good food disposed of every day because of its aesthetics bananas are a great example! Why is all of this perfectly good food thrown away? Because it is a financial drain to transport this food to the starving, when they cannot pay even a cent towards the cost, significantly impacting profits. True, re: wars, etc. As far as communism is concerned, it works very well in theory, but every failed example throughout history failed because of human greed in those at the centre the greed which also causes capitalism to fail!

He designed the entire system knowing beforehand what the consequences of his choices would be and he was okay with those choices. How is he not culpable? As much as we might like to be, or believe that we are, we are not gods, so cannot perceive nor judge His actions or lack thereof, depending on perception by our own standards. The Bible however, says that God knows our every thought before we have them, not that He chose them for us.

Though, as I said, many people have different perspectives on this topic — many of which make not a shred of sense to me! To follow the logic that God is culpable for sending people into a world in which He knew the cost of our poor actions would be like saying a knife maker is culpable for designing a kitchen knife that someone used to kill somebody, or a teacher is culpable for setting a test that students would fail, if they chose not to study in preparation.

We all have the opportunity to make good choices, or terrible choices. Something is moral or it is,not. Why would you imply it is somwhow moral for your god to allow a child to be raped, but immoral for humans to do so? The act of rape is to me immoral, and so is allowing it to happen when you could easily stop it. Whether god stopped a rape in another instance is irrelevant. I am concerned with the ones he does not stop.

If Christians say human morals are derived from god and are objective in nature, then how can our moral standards be different? In what context is child rape moral? To say your god would allow someone to rape a child just so the child could hit rock bottom and maybe recover sometime in the future to learn some lesson is obscene. Allowing children to be raped to teach then a lesson about life is a horrendous idea. How can you even think that could somehow be moral? Is that the best an all-loving god can do???

What about those who do not recover? Finally, I find it odd that you are telling me you believe it is impossible for an all-knowing, all powerful being to overcome the drawbacks of a human economic system and feed starving children. If that is so, then he is surely no god. I am surprised you are proposing to limit the power of your god in such a manner. On the other hand, if he could have prevented the course of history that brought us to this point, then there would perhaps be no starving children.

If that is so, then he remains responsible for those results. Obviously, I write as a human being, and my opinions and perspectives are my own, which I have formed based on my own limited understanding and life experiences. I may be dead-wrong, and as I am absolutely no theologian, I stress that my perspectives represent only myself, not my family, my church, my denomination, and certainly not Christianity as a whole.

I do have a friend however, who is a very learned woman of God, and a priest. I will send her this link and see if she wishes to answer some of your questions more accurately and concisely than I will ever be able to without years of studying theology! On saying that though, here is my completely worthless! People with faith in God understand that we are nowhere near being on a level playing field with Him, so will not ever assume to judge His actions, based on our limited understanding.

Not only do we have no right, but we are somewhat concerned for the state of our immortal souls! We are each tempted, we each question and doubt, and we each place higher value on human concerns and endeavours, and the pursuit of immediate gratification, rather than the things that really matter. As I said above, I certainly did not mean to imply that a child would go through such an ordeal for any kind of lesson.

Their suffering is as a result of the evil afflicting another individual. I do however, believe that we can learn from all suffering that we experience. I know I sure have. I also posit that anyone who truly finds God can find healing of any and all things that they suffer, experience, or — the most unpopular stance — commit.

What it boils down to, in my humble opinion, is that any situation, no matter how base, how vile, how debilitating, can be injected with hope and eventual healing through faith; that all hurts can be healed through God.

I do not believe it is impossible for God to cure the wrongs of the world. The Earth was created with more than enough for everyone, yet the gift to humanity of free will, along with temptation, caused all of this to crumble. To somebody who does not have faith, death is the endgame, so to think of people dying from starvation, after a life albeit extraordinarily short in far too many cases of suffering is unconscionable and disgusting — hence your mistrust and hostility towards faith, as God is then to blame for this.

When one does not have any faith in anything outside of physical human experience, the ills of life are all that matter; they are the most important and debilitating questions in existence. When one does have faith, the ills of life are infinitely easier to bear. If you imagine the primary purpose of life as an opportunity to experience existence both with and without God, so that when you are faced with an opportunity to choose how to spend your eternity, your choice will be informed by your life experiences, the suffering of a godless world is easier to understand, endure and see through.

I have to distance myself enormously and place this conversation on a hypothetical plane in my mind in order to have this discussion at all, as the reality of suffering and starving children throughout the world causes me significant distress. The fact that there are children in agony due to their lack of food and clean water in parts of the world, whilst people in my own small corner of the globe throw elaborate birthday parties for their dogs, sickens me.

I feel the pain of these people especially the mothers, with whom I can most strongly identify , and I try to help in my small ways, through child sponsorship and feeding some of the local poor, when I can. I also thank God every single day for the riches my family can enjoy.

I see the good that many Christian and non-Christian organisations do to try to remedy the situations and alleviate the suffering, then I also see the individuals affected by greed who exploit even these organisations most often from within.

In these, I again see lives with and without God. I see that free will and life are gifts given to humanity such that we might experience existence both with and without God, and be able to make our decision at the time of judgement.

I also look forward to a world that is free from all of this. He will however, always be there to pick up the pieces and to heal the hurts, as well as to allow good to come from any evil experienced. In my personal experience, my incredible hurts drove me away from the path that I was on to medicine, and instead redirected me to education.

So if you had the power to prevent rapists from brutally raping children without any risk to yourself or to others, would you prevent such heinous acts? Or would you sit there and do nothing? Which of those two courses of action or inaction do you think would present you as a more morally sound person? So you would stop the rape.

The most important question here is the implicit one — what obligates me to act? If the oppressor is powerful, I may draw persecution to myself, or even be unjustly blamed for his offence. Conversely, the more social support I get for intervening, the more likely I am to go out of my way to perform it.

Firstly, this is not a new question. Consider Psalm 10, a lament to God that the powerful are getting away with evil. Secondly, while we act from a very limited moral and temporal perspective, God does not.

Broadly speaking, to turn a blind eye to evil that I could prevent is to condone or even participate in it. If I see one of my enemies mistreating another, am I bound to prevent it? This is the first reckoning. But there is an alternative reckoning. God will not and cannot overlook evil, or dismiss it cheaply. Instead, Jesus, Son of God, comes to be human, to suffer as a human, to be rejected by humans, to die as a human, and to be judged by God as the innocent ideal human in place of all other rebellious evil humans.

In that death, he takes the evil done upon himself. Moreover, he takes the evil suffered upon himself also. For me to overlook evil is immoral. Sorry, but if your god does not intervene and stop an immoral act, then he is complicit in the act. His future acts cannot unrape the child. I think that having another person pay the penalty for your own immorality is a sick concept. If your great grandfather killed someone, would you think it fair that they put you in prison for his transgression?

No, that is the response of a man who is truly unaware of his own depravity. I answered your question, and you complain about it because my answer holds you and I as guilty as the hypothetical rapist. We humans have a wonderful moral system. God has a slightly different system. He starts with his own perfection, compares that to his rebellious, treasonous creation, and withdraws from us because he does not want to destroy us utterly.

Well, many cultures have had some variant on that. It does. But I am saying that, in the scheme of things, our day-to-day evil is not unique — rather, it demonstrates and confirms that we really are cosmically evil. Then he is immoral for doing so. This is precisely what you would expect if there was no god determining outcomes. Your responses to 2,3 and 5 carry no weight whatsoever. If I say that fairies boil water, and you say that giants blowing bubbles boil water, showing that the water boils proves nothing either way, since we already agree on that.

If you want to argue for a moral system which will affirm the goodness of man, the floor is yours. Then why does the Christian god interfere with free will in the Bible, and why do Christians pray in a way that would interfere with the free will of the person being prayed for?

Christians argue that their god values free will above the well being if his creation. My argument was pointing out that such a god evidently places the free will of the offender above that of the victim as well. Take it up with Him. Hugh7, Three objections occur to me: First, It is not clear that the need for free will on the part perpetrators should supersede the need to prevent unjust suffering on the part of their victims—always, sometimes, or as often as seems to be the case.

Second, according to the Bible, God DOES occasionally intervene in the lives of his creations and thus implicitly deny their free will. Third, Believers are constantly praying precisely that God will intervene in the lives of His creations, thus implicitly denying the free will of agents in those cases where prayers are supposedly answered in a positive way. How can you have it both ways? It is not me who needs to explain those things, but you. That is interesting. I do believe God is quite the interventionist.

God intervened in the life of His creation not only when He created us but when He saved us creating the way to be right with Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. And yet he chooses not to intervene to stop child rapists, or to save starving children, or prevent tsunamis or earthquakes or hurricanes….

Thanks for your reply. As to C. Basically, any being that would allow such things when it vould easily stop them is malevolent. No, your crabbed and hidebound viewpoint is that any being that allows any evil to happen is malevolent. This is entirely your own opinion, based on you limiting yourself to the earthly, human effects of any action. There are lots of people who claim,that in an odd way, getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them. There are people who suffered unimaginably yet say it was the best thing that ever happened to them.

Your reasoning is shallow. I disagree, Tyler. What was the thing gained by the child that was raped? What was the big lesson formthe millions of children that starve to desth or die from horrible diseases every year?

What was the big lesson for a quarter million people swept away by a tsunami? That God is supreme. And has divine authority and he can allow evil to touch us if we refuse to turn to him. Explain that to a child that is starveng to death or to infants and todlers killed in the catastrophe your god chose to allow.

You assume that the only thing that matters is what happens here on earth. This is the atheist self referential loop. If you want to argue with religion then you must take it as it is, not cut out parts of it. Your childish imagining is that the only thing that happens is what happens on earth, as if God should be some sort of Big Mommy in the Sky. Whether there is something to worry about other than here on earth is completely beside the point. If you can prevent a child from being raped with no risk to yourself at all and you do not, have you acted morally?

So they try to defuse the query by employing a red herring. IMO, the best counter attack is to keep repeating the question until they admit their tenuous position. Hi Pierre, I was just wondering why you believe suffering occurs? Why do you believe people do horrific things to each other? Annie — It could be for one of a number of reasons or a combination of those reasons. Among those that come to mind are anger, hatred, greed, lack of compassion, revenge, mental illness, lack of empathy, sadism, etc.

I see no differnce between the rate at which evil falls upon beleivers of any religion and the rate at which it falls upon the general population, somthat does not hold up under scrutiny. Do you believe that all evil is the result of your god choosing to allow evil, or only some of it?

If only some, how do you objectively tell the difference? At the end of the day, if you are capable of preventing evil and look the other way, you are complicit in the evil. If I saw a child being raped, I would do all I could to stop it. That is the difference betwee me and your god.

Milton — check this out. Milton — another one for you. You seem to know a lot about God. You do not know the mind of God. Oh, trust me. Evil falls in much greater rates among people who abandon the idea of God and do whatever the hell they want. In fact, we saw some of the greatest evils fall among people who explicitly drove God out of their societies — the communists, who gloried in their atheism.

As a result, they saw no problem terrorizing millions upon millions. They saw no problem killing people who were troublesome. They saw no problem in gulags and massacres. The average attendee at Sunday services commits far less crime, is involved in less of all societies problem makers such as drugs and alcohol. So we have tried that little experiment, it was called Communism and the results are in.

By and large, the people out there doing crime, whoring, taking drugs, committing armed robberies etc have little or no religious belief. It is a well established fact that the more secular a society is, the lower the crime rates tend to be. It is also a well established fact that with regard to prison inmates, Christians represent a larger percentage relative to their percentage of the overall population than atheists represent as a percentage relative to their percent of the overall population.

In either case, this of course demonstrates correlation and not causation. But then I am not claiming religion is necessarily the cause. I would add that doing the right thing out of fear of punishment or hopes of some large reward is not morality.

It is selfishness. Ephesians For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no-one can boast. Hi Hugh7, I ask you in a spirit of humility and questioning, if there is no absolute truth, then how can we know an absolute reality?

I never said there is no absolute truth. I think there has to be a real universe, otherwise what is it that are we arguing about? Over the last few centuries we have discovered that reality is a lot more complicated than we thought — that everything is made of atoms, which are mostly empty space, for example. Or that space and time are more flexible than we thought. I think we will go on discovering more and more of that kind of thing, including how we are deluded.

For example we now know that we begin to move before our conscious minds have formed the intention to move. I think no matter how much we discover, reality will always be more complicated. Romans 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. You simply shift the problem of evil to the easily observable, still with no way to explain it.

So you are claiming that reality itself is evil and life is not worth living for aggregate humanity. The most miserable life that any human ever lived is but a blink of an eye compared to the timespans of heaven.

Yes, some people are born into squalor and misery and torment on this planet from which they never escape—until death. But heaven is available to them, and that is for eternity.

Without the capacity to commit evil and hurt others we would not be human beings with moral agency. But through things like disease, violence, and natural disaster we are motivated to learn about the physical world around us.

If there was no distress and danger in the world, what kind of science would exist? Would there be any reason for scientific research if there were no illness and no natural disaster? Do you desire a world with no problems to solve? And yet I would wager, since you have time to engage in this discussion right here, that your life is already pretty close that as it is. And yet you still view the world itself as full of inexplicable evil and torment.

Are you angry at God for not making you some sort of kept animal in a video game? No, reality is a mixture of good and evil, and for most of the world, the good outweighs the evil. First, because of our natural curiosity to find out how the universe works a universe in which science has yet found no trace of nor need for any supernatural agency.

Then because there are many issues which are not disasters. The good can be improved. The uninvented can be invented. Cellphones would still be useful even if we did not use them to summon rescue helicopters.

John, I am losing track as to who I did and did not answer. I do not see that i responded to you, so here goes:. Your claims are patently absurd. Christianity dictates that one must believe in the Christian god and in Jesus at a minimum, am i not correct? So demonstrate that those billions of people who die of starvation, and cancer, and natural disasters to the person do not fall into that category. But someone might claim that these historians nevertheless had access to reliable sources, now lost, which recorded the existence and execution of our friend JC.

So it is desirable that we take a look at these two supposed witnesses. In the case of Josephus, whose Antiquities of the Jews was written in 93 CE, about the same time as the gospels, we find him saying some things quite impossible for a good Pharisee to have said:.

About this time, there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly.

He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him.

And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. Now no loyal Pharisee would say Jesus had been the Messiah. The fact that Josephus was not convinced by this or any other Christian claim is clear from the statement of the church father Origen ca. It is quite likely that Eusebius himself did some of the forging. Clearly, the testimonial was absent from his copy of Antiquities of the Jews.

Citation 13 The question can probably be laid to rest by noting that as late as the sixteenth century, according to Rylands, Citation 14 a scholar named Vossius had a manuscript of Josephus from which the passage was wanting. Apologists, as they grasp for ever more slender straws with which to support their historical Jesus, point out that the passage quoted above is not the only mention of Jesus made by Josephus.

In Bk. Ananus… convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned. It must be admitted that this passage does not intrude into the text as does the one previously quoted.

The crucial word in this passage is the name James Jacob in Greek and Hebrew. It might even have been a reference to James the Just, a first-century character we have good reason to believe indeed existed. Because he appears to have born the title Brother of the Lord, Note H it would have been natural to relate him to the Jesus character. Pagan Authors Before considering the alleged witness of Pagan authors, it is worth noting some of the things that we should find recorded in their histories if the biblical stories are in fact true.

One passage from Matthew should suffice to point out the significance of the silence of secular writers:. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour… Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; 52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, 53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection [exposed for 3 days?

Wells [p. There are three reasons for holding that Tacitus is here simply repeating what Christians had told him. First, he gives Pilate a title, procurator [without saying procurator of what! FRZ], which was current only from the second half of the first century. Had he consulted archives which recorded earlier events, he would surely have found Pilate there designated by his correct title, prefect. Second, Tacitus does not name the executed man Jesus, but uses the title Christ Messiah as if it were a proper name.

The Historical Evidence for Jesus; p. There are further problems with the Tacitus story. Tacitus himself never again alludes to the Neronian persecution of Christians in any of his voluminous writings, and no other Pagan authors know anything of the outrage either. Most significant, however, is that ancient Christian apologists made no use of the story in their propaganda — an unthinkable omission by motivated partisans who were well-read in the works of Tacitus. Clement of Alexandria, who made a profession of collecting just such types of quotations, is ignorant of any Neronian persecution, and even Tertullian, who quotes a great deal from Tacitus, knows nothing of the story.

According to Robert Taylor, the author of another freethought classic, the Diegesis , the passage was not known before the fifteenth century, when Tacitus was first published at Venice by Johannes de Spire. Taylor believed de Spire himself to have been the forger.

So much for the evidence purporting to prove that Jesus was an historical figure. We have not, of course, proved that Jesus did not exist. We have only showed that all evidence alleged to support such a claim is without substance. But of course, that is all we need to show. The burden of proof is always on the one who claims that something exists or that something once happened.

We have no obligation to try to prove a universal negative. Note J. It might be instructive to consider how a hypothetical but similar problem might be dealt with in the physical sciences. Imagine that someone has claimed that the USA had carried out atomic weapons tests on a particular Caribbean island in Would the lack of reports of mushroom-cloud sightings at the time be evidence of absence, or absence of evidence?

Remember, the Caribbean during the war years was under intense surveillance by many different factions. Would it be necessary to go to the island today to scan its surface for the radioactive contamination that would have to be there if nuclear explosions had taken place there? If indeed, we went there with our Geiger-counters and found no trace of radioactive contamination, would that be evidence of absence, or absence of evidence?

In this case, what superficially looks like absence of evidence is really negative evidence, and thus legitimately could be construed as evidence of absence. Can the negative evidence adduced above concerning Jesus be very much less compelling?

It would be intellectually satisfying to learn just how it was that the Jesus character condensed out of the religious atmosphere of the first century. But scholars are at work on the problem. The publication of many examples of so-called wisdom literature, along with the materials from the Essene community at Qumran by the Dead Sea and the Gnostic literature from the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt, has given us a much more detailed picture of the communal psychopathologies which infested the Eastern Mediterranean world at the turn of the era.

It is not unrealistic to expect that we will be able, before long, to reconstruct in reasonable detail the stages by which Jesus came to have a biography. John E. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ.

Did Jesus Exist? Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God Fortress, For most of my life, I had taken it for granted that Jesus, although certainly not a god, was nevertheless an historical personage — perhaps a magician skilled in hypnosis. Burden of Proof Although what follows may fairly be interpreted to be a proof of the non-historicity of Jesus, it must be realized that the burden of proof does not rest upon the skeptic in this matter. Citation 7 Is there anything advocates of an historical Jesus can produce that could be as compelling as this evidence for Tiberius?

Citation 9 The name Jesus occurs only seven times in the entire book, Christ only four times, and Jesus Christ only twice! Mark But what about the gospel of Mark, the oldest surviving gospel? Wells, the author of The Historical Evidence for Jesus Citation 10 puts it, Such an utterance would have been meaningless in Palestine, where only men could obtain divorce.

John The unreliability of the gospels is underscored when we learn that, with the possible exception of John, the first three gospels bear no internal indication of who wrote them. Jewish Sources It is sometimes claimed that Jewish writings hostile to Christianity prove that the ancient Jews knew of Jesus and that such writings prove the historicity of the man Jesus. Citation 11 Although Christian apologists have listed a number of ancient historians who allegedly were witnesses to the existence of Jesus, the only two that consistently are cited are Josephus, a Pharisee, and Tacitus, a pagan.

In the case of Josephus, whose Antiquities of the Jews was written in 93 CE, about the same time as the gospels, we find him saying some things quite impossible for a good Pharisee to have said: About this time, there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. Citation 12 Now no loyal Pharisee would say Jesus had been the Messiah.

One passage from Matthew should suffice to point out the significance of the silence of secular writers: Matt. A similar argument could be made, however, in the case of the earlier rapid spread of Mithraism. I am unaware of any Christian apologists who would argue that this supports the idea of an historical Mithra! Order No. Apocalyptic writing abounds in hidden meanings and numerological puzzles.

While the arguments to support this nearly universal rejection are too involved to even summarize here, it may be noted that shortening of miracle stories is completely out of keeping with the principles of religious development seen everywhere today.

Like the so-called Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, Q appears to have been a list of wisdom sayings that at some point became attributed to Jesus. Once people started making them up, they sort of got stuck in over-drive. Only later on in Christian history did the number get pared back to four.

According to such analyses, the core Pauline material in these letters is what might be termed a pre-Christian Gnostic product. This material is surrounded by often contradictory material added by proto-Catholic interpolators and redactors who succeeded thus in claiming a popular proto-Gnostic authority for the Church of Rome.