Jesus' Historicity

[Anonymous]

How does ancient history work?

We almost never have “contemporary eyewitness news reports.”

For almost every person or event before about 1800 CE, the sources we have are:
Written 20–300 years after the events
Often copied and re-copied by hand (with small errors creeping in)
Frequently written by people who were not the author’s enemies, allies, or later admirers — rarely by neutral journalists.

Examples everyone accepts:
1. Alexander the Great (died 323 BCE): Our main sources (Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus) were written 300–450 years later.
2. Hannibal crossing the Alps (218 BCE): Livy and Polybius wrote 50–180 years later.
3. Socrates (died 399 BCE): Plato and Xenophon wrote shortly after, but the next accounts (Aristotle, etc.) are decades later, and we still trust the core story.
4. Julius Caesar’s assassination (44 BCE): Nicolaus of Damascus wrote ~50 years later; Suetonius and Plutarch 150 years later.

No one says “We have zero contemporary neutral eyewitnesses, therefore Caesar/Socrates/Alexander probably didn’t exist.”


The standard historians use: Multiple attestation + embarrassment + coherence.

Historians ask:
1. Do several independent sources (even hostile ones) agree on the basic facts?
2. Do the sources contain details that would have been embarrassing or inconvenient for the author? (People rarely invent embarrassing stories about their own heroes.)
3. Does the story fit what we know about the time and place from archaeology, other texts, etc.?

Jesus passes these tests better than most 1st-century figures:
- Multiple independent streams: Paul (48–60 CE), Mark (70 CE), Q source, Josephus (93 CE), Tacitus (116 CE) all confirm a Jewish teacher executed under Pilate.
-Criterion of embarrassment: The Gospels say he was baptized by John (implying John was greater), crucified (a shameful death), denied by his own disciples, etc. Early Christians would not make that up.
-Archaeology and context: Pontius Pilate inscription (1961), Caiaphas ossuary, 1st-century crucifixion nails, etc., all confirm the world of the Gospels.

Silence is normal, not suspicious!

Most people in antiquity left zero written trace. We have:
*Only ~10–15 brief mentions of Pontius Pilate outside the New Testament, even though he was the Roman governor.
*Zero contemporary writings from Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee during Jesus’ entire life.
*Onlyone ambiguous line about the famous rabbi Hillel from his own lifetime.

Jesus was an obscure apocalyptic preacher executed for disturbing the peace in rural Judea and was far less likely to be noticed by elite writers than a Roman governor — yet we still have more early evidence for Jesus than for almost any other 1st-century Palestinian Jew.

Jesus actually has unusually early and abundant evidence for a non-elite figure from a marginal province.


Ancient history does not demand — and almost never has — “contemporary neutral eyewitnesses with first-hand knowledge.” It works by piecing together sources that are:
1. As close in time as possible
2. Preferably independent
3. Ideally including hostile or neutral voices
4. Checked against archaeology and what we know about the culture

By those normal standards, the historical existence of Jesus is about as solid as anything from the early 1st century gets.

The people who say “zero evidence” are applying a 21st-century journalistic standard that literally nothing from antiquity could meet.

[Anonymous]

By every normal expectation of ancient history, Jesus should have vanished without a trace, because:

He never led an army
He never held political office
He never wrote anything that survived
He lived and died in a poor, remote corner of the Roman Empire
He was executed as a criminal in the most humiliating way possible (crucifixation was literally for slaves and rebels)

People like that disappear. We have thousands of names of Roman senators, generals, and merchants from the 1st century — but almost zero records of ordinary Galilean carpenters or itinerant preachers.
And yet, within 20–30 years of his death: A former persecutor (Paul) is writing letters mentioning he personally met Jesus’ brother and closest disciples

Within 40–60 years, multiple written biographies (Gospels) are circulating

Within 80–100 years, non-Christian writers (Josephus, Tacitus) treat his execution under Pilate as a known historical fact

That explosion of interest only makes sense if something happened that his followers found absolutely world-changing — something that turned a failed messianic claimant into the center of a movement that wouldn’t shut up about him.

Historians don’t have to believe the resurrection or any miracle to see the evidence trail is extraordinary. A crucified peasant from Nazareth becoming the most famous person in history is, objectively, one of the strangest and most improbable outcomes in the ancient world.

So yeah — the very fact that we’re still talking about this “nobody from a rural dung hole” 2,000 years later is, historically speaking, rare and unique.


From the exact same time and place (1st-century Roman Palestine / Judea-Galilee, roughly 6 BCE – 70 CE), we have zero other individual peasants, carpenters, fishermen, day-laborers, or ordinary villagers who are named in any surviving ancient source — Jewish, Roman, or Christian.



In the entire 1st-century eastern Mediterranean, the only non-elite, non-rebel, non-royal person from Roman Palestine who is securely named and discussed in multiple ancient sources is Jesus (and his brother James).
Everyone else at that social level(99.9 % of the population) is archaeologically invisible and historically nameless.

So yes: the fact that a Galilean tekton (handworker/carpenter) from a tiny village is not only named, but becomes the subject of multiple biographies within a single generation, really is — by the normal rules of ancient evidence — astonishing.

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Anonymous wrote:With his alleged birthday coming up, let's discuss the person that is being celebrated. Present your information and argument for Jesus, fact or fiction.

Jesus was made up -- not of whole cloth, because a messiah was predicted. But those were the olden days, before modern science and running water and a bunch of stuff that we now take for granted.

Kids can't imagine life without the internet. Neither can I! Remember those old movies where people would wait impatiently for the mailman to come?

No he was not made up. His existence and the words he spoke have been proven. What is likely made up is that he was the son of God. Probably not. Then again, how did such an extraordinary person come to have such extraordinary advice on how to be a good person?

In any event he was an amazing man and if we all followed his teachings the world would be a better place.

Link?

Don't hold your breath waiting.

And Ehrman undermines his own argument by stating something as true, when it is not in fact true. Not every scholar believes in a historical Jesus, and there are plenty of scholars now that have made well-reasoned arguments to the contrary. Ehrman also acknowledges there is not evidence, and then he makes his own specious speculation.

Exactly. No evidence. Just stories.

“Just stories” is exactly how we know almost every non-emperor figure from antiquity.

-Socrates: no contemporary documents, only “stories” from Plato and Xenophon 10–40 years later.
-Hannibal: no Carthaginian records survive, only “stories” from Roman enemies 50–150 years later.
-Apollonius of Tyana: miracle-working philosopher, one primary biography written 150 years after his death.
Nobody in classics or ancient history calls these people “mythical” on that basis.

Jesus has more and earlier attestation than most 1st-century Jews.

-Within 20–30 years: multiple letters from Paul (undisputed: Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon) that casually mention Jesus was born as a human, of a woman, descended from David, had a brother named James (whom Paul met), taught specific things, was crucified under Roman authority.

-Within 40–60 years: Mark’s gospel (used by Matthew and Luke).

-Within 60–80 years: a Jewish historian (Josephus) twice mentions Jesus and his brother James.
That timeline beats almost every comparable figure from the Roman provinces.

The “stories” contain details early Christians had no reason to invent and every reason to suppress
(historians call this the criterion of embarrassment):
-Jesus baptized by John (implies he was John’s subordinate and needed repentance).
-Denied by his own disciples.
- Crucified (a shameful, cursed death in both Roman and Jewish eyes).
-Family thought he was crazy (Mark 3:21).
People making up a hero do not write these things.

Independent, hostile sources confirm the basic outline
-Josephus (Jewish, ~93 CE): Jesus executed by Pilate, brother named James, followers still exist.
-Tacitus (Roman, ~116 CE): “Christus” executed under Pontius Pilate in Judea, source of the Christian movement.
These are not Christians repeating their own stories; these are outsiders who had zero interest in promoting Christianity.

A real movement exploded in Jerusalem within months of the supposed events
Thousands of Jews suddenly start worshipping a crucified criminal as the Messiah — in the same city where he was publicly executed. That doesn’t happen with a purely mythical figure. It requires a real, recent, traumatic event that needs explaining.

So no, it’s not “no evidence, just stories.”
It’s multiple, early, independent sources — some hostile — that align on a core set of facts, using the exact same kinds of evidence historians use for everyone else in antiquity.

If you reject that evidence for Jesus, you has to reject the existence of Socrates, Hannibal, Boudicca, Arminius, and dozens of other ancient figures on the exact same grounds. And literally no professional historian does that.
That’s the problem with the “no evidence, just stories” line. It’s not skepticism. It’s a double standard.

And what evidence is there for God? You know, Jesus's Dad.

There is no proof for God in the way there is proof for gravity or that 2 + 2 = 4.

There are arguments (cosmological, fine-tuning, moral, etc.), some of them pretty sophisticated, but none of them are universally accepted as conclusive.

Reasonable, educated people look at the same evidence and arguments and still land on both sides.

I’m not here to convince you. You asked for proof; I’m just telling you the actual state of play: there isn’t any proof that settles the question once and for all.

That’s why billions of people believe and billions don’t, and the philosophers are still arguing about it after 2,500 years.

Believe whatever you find most reasonable. It’s your call, not mine.

Except there is ZERO data supporting gods and plenty to support the existence of gravity or 2+2=4.

The existence of God — in the classical philosophical or theological sense — cannot be definitively proven or disproven by empirical data or the scientific method. Here’s why, broken down clearly:

Most serious arguments (both theistic and atheistic) are about a necessary, uncaused, immaterial, eternal, personal being who is the ultimate ground of all reality (the God of classical theism: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and most philosophy of religion).
This concept of God is outside space, time, and matter by definition.


Science only deals with contingent, physical, measurable phenomena within the universe.

A being that transcends the universe (i.e., not made of matter/energy, not located in space-time) is by definition outside the domain that scientific instruments and experiments can access.

You cannot put “pure act,” “necessary being,” or “the ground of all existence” under a microscope or in a particle accelerator.

This is not a limitation of current technology — it is a category error, like trying to use a ruler to measure temperature or a scale to weigh an idea.

Data and science can:

1. Refute specific religious claims that make testable predictions
→ Young-Earth creationism (refuted by radiometric dating, cosmology, geology)
→ Global flood ~4,000 years ago (refuted by geology, genetics, archaeology)
→ Prayer healing cancer at statistically significant rates (large-scale studies show no effect beyond placebo)
2. Make certain conceptions of God less plausible
→ A deity who constantly intervenes in trivial ways (e.g., finding parking spots) becomes improbable under a universe governed by consistent natural laws.
3. Provide evidence that is compatible with theism or atheism, but not decisive either way
→ Fine-tuning of physical constants (used by theists)
→ Evolutionary suffering and “hiddenness” of God (used by atheists)
None of these move the needle from possible → proven or possible → impossible.

No dataset will ever appear that lets us say “Here is the spreadsheet that proves/disproves God.”
The question ultimately lies in metaphysics, not measurement.
Most professional philosophers of religion (the people who study this full-time) are theists (~70% in recent PhilPapers surveys), but a large minority are atheists, and almost none claim the issue is empirically settled. That distribution itself shows the limits of data.

OK, so we all agree that there is in fact data supporting the theory of gravity and 2+2=4.

Very different than the existence of gods and supernatural forces.

Empirical, knock-down proof is impossible either way. 


God, by (almost every) definition, is not a physical object inside the universe, so you can’t put Him in a particle detector. Science can’t verify or falsify that kind of being. That’s not a dodge; it’s a category difference. Philosophers have known this for centuries.

There are serious arguments that many very sharp people find rationally compelling: Why does anything exist at all rather than nothing? (Leibnizian cosmological)

Why is the universe governed by elegant mathematical laws?
Why are the physical constants fine-tuned for life in a ridiculously narrow range?
Why does consciousness exist in a purely material universe?
Why is there objective morality if we’re just evolved primates? 
These aren’t “God of the gaps”; they’re positive arguments from the existence of the universe, reason, math, and morality to a necessary, immaterial, personal foundation. Reasonable people (including plenty of scientists and philosophers) find them strong; reasonable people (also including plenty of scientists and philosophers) find the counter-arguments stronger.

It’s an open philosophical question, not a closed scientific one.

Belief in God is not like believing in Bigfoot or Zeus
. Bigfoot would be a physical primate — we could in principle find hair, DNA, or a body. Zeus was a body on Mount Olympus who threw lightning bolts and raped mortals — plenty of ways that story could have been confirmed or debunked.


Classical theism isn’t making those kinds of claims. It’s saying reality itself has an ultimate, non-contingent ground that is pure existence. That claim is way more abstract and way harder to falsify.

If your standard is ‘scientific proof identical to the Holocaust or moon landing,’ then no, there’s no evidence for God — and there never will be, because the question is outside science’s scope.

So the honest statement isn’t ‘there’s no evidence.’

The fallacy is believing that there is something that exists outside of science.

Science is a method, not an ontology
.

Science is extraordinarily good at describing how the physical world behaves under controlled conditions. But it deliberately brackets off certain kinds of questions:
What is the meaning or purpose of existence? Are there objective moral truths? What is consciousness, and why does it feel like something to be me? Do mathematical truths exist independently of physical reality?


These are real questions that rational people can investigate, but they lie outside the domain of empirical science by design.

The claim “the only things that exist are those science can investigate” is itself not a scientific claim. You can’t put it under a microscope or test it with a particle collider. It’s a philosophical assertion masquerading as a scientific one. If the statement is true, it saws off the branch it’s sitting on, because philosophy (including that very claim) would then be illegitimate.


History is littered with examples of non-scientific knowledge.

Math proves things (e.g., Gödel’s theorems, the infinitude of primes) with certainty that goes beyond empirical induction.

Logic itself is prior to science—you need it to even do science.

First-person subjective experience (qualia) is real and undeniable, yet not publicly measurable in the way physics demands.

Even scientists don’t actually believe this in practice. 
Most working scientists treat their own moral intuitions, aesthetic judgments, and sense of meaning as real, even though none of those are “scientific” in the strict sense.


Science is the best tool we have for understanding the physical world, but the moment you say nothing exists outside its reach, you’ve stopped doing science and started doing bad philosophy. Reality is bigger than the test tube.

I can daydream about whatever I want. Doesn't make it real.

Anything outside of the physical world exists only in your mind - pure fantasy.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:-Socrates: Everyone accepts he existed, yet we have zero words written by him and zero contemporary documents mentioning him.

-Pythagoras: Famous theorem, religious cult that lasted centuries—yet not a single text or inscription from his lifetime or the century after.

-Spartacus: One of the most famous slave rebels in history, but no Roman historian writing while he was alive or within a century afterward left a detailed account that survives.

Jesus is actually on the stronger end of the spectrum for a non-royal, non-elite person from the early 1st century CE. The combination of multiple independent sources (hostile, neutral, and friendly) appearing within 20–90 years is better than what we have for many other accepted ancient figures who were far more powerful or famous in their own lifetimes.

You seem very smart and you type well, too.

Thanks! I am an old guy who has spent decades studying this stuff. I think the worst thing I have seen is the Horus, Mithras, etc, meme crap that people somehow actually believe. Those are memes that someone probably made as a joke. And they are everywhere on the internet and people use them as “evidence.”

Evidence doesn't matter when it comes to religion. It's what people believe - or not.

Yup. People can believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster if they want.

Do we have any non-religious contemporary writings to prove the Flying Spaghetti Monster existed?

If people told the story of the FSM thousands of years ago, I'm sure some suckers would believe it and repeat the tale.

We have exactly just as much concrete evidence for the FSM as we do for Jesus.

No, we do not have “exactly just as much concrete evidence” for the Flying Spaghetti Monster as for Jesus. That claim is simply false.

Mentioned in multiple 1st–2nd century sources? Jesus: yes. FSM: no.


Referenced by non-followers / hostile sources? Jesus: yes. FSM: no.


Has a specific time and place in history? Jesus: yes. FSM: no.

Left a verifiable historical movement that rapidly grew? Jesus: yes. FSM: no.

Year the figure is first claimed to have existed? Jesus: ~4-6 bce. FSM: 2005 (Bobby Henderson’s open letter)

Serious academic debate about whether the figure existed? Jesus: yes. FSM: no.


The FSM was invented in 2005 explicitly to mock the idea that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. It is a deliberate parody with zero pretense of historicity.

Jesus is a 1st-century Jew whose existence, baptism by John, and crucifixion under Pontius Pilate are accepted by essentially 100% of relevant scholars — including atheist, Jewish, and agnostic ones (Bart Ehrman, Geza Vermes, Paula Fredriksen, etc.).

Saying “we have the same evidence for both” is like saying we have the same evidence for Julius Caesar and Darth Vader. One is a documented historical person; the other is an openly admitted 21st-century joke.

The FSM argument only works if you completely ignore chronology, sources, and basic historical methodology. Once you apply the same standards we use for any other ancient figure, the comparison collapses instantly.

So no — not “exactly the same evidence.”

One has early, multiple, and hostile corroboration.

The other has a 2005 blog post that says “I made this up to make a point.”

That’s the difference.

No, concrete evidence isn't stories retold centuries later.

There is zero concrete evidence that either existed.

The “zero concrete evidence” claim is simply false, and the “centuries later” claim misrepresents the actual timeline of the sources by hundreds of years. The historical existence of Jesus is about as solid as anything from that era gets.

which is....nothing.

zero concrete evidence means zero concrete evidence.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Paul is writing 20 years after Jesus’s death — extremely early by ancient-history standards.

Paul says explicitly that he:
• Met James, the brother of the Lord
• Met Peter
• Joined the movement that already existed shortly after the crucifixion

Historians ask:

How is there a movement centered around a non-existent person within a single generation, led by his “brother”?

Mythicists try to argue that “brother” meant “spiritual brother,” but this collapses because:
• Paul uses the term differently elsewhere
• It appears specifically in a context of identifying a biological family connection

This alone is one of mythicism’s biggest fatal blows.

Historians look for multiple independent attestations — stories that come from different lines of tradition.

For Jesus we have:
• Paul (independent of the Gospels)
• Mark (earliest Gospel)
• Q-like material (sayings source used by Matthew/Luke)
• M material and L material (unique to Matthew and Luke)
• Josephus
• Tacitus
• Early rabbinic traditions

These sources disagree on plenty — which proves they didn’t all copy each other.
But they agree that:
• Jesus was a real Jewish preacher
• He had followers
• He was executed by Roman authority

When multiple hostile or indifferent sources confirm a person existed, historians treat it as strong evidence.

Ancient writers rarely invent things that weaken their own case.

For Jesus:
• Being executed as a criminal is not something early Christians would invent.
• His family not fully believing in him early on.
• His baptism by John (implies inferiority).

These are embarrassing, meaning historically likely.

A mythic figure normally has:
• Glorious birth narrative
• Death in battle
• Triumph

Jesus has:
• Obscure origins
• A humiliating execution

That’s the opposite of typical myth creation.

If Jesus never existed, why did a Jewish sect form instantly around the belief that he was the Messiah?

Mythic heroes usually develop over centuries (e.g., Hercules, Romulus).
But Jesus’s movement exploded:
• In Jerusalem, where he supposedly lived
• Within a few years of his death

Movements based on nonexistent people don’t spring up immediately among people who supposedly knew them.

Here’s the harsh academic truth:
Mythicism fails the basic rules of ancient historical method.

Historians ask:
• What is the simplest explanation that fits the evidence?
• Does this explanation require extra assumptions?

Mythicism requires:
• Reinterpreting Paul unusually
• Dismissing all embarrassing material
• Suggesting coordinated literary invention without motive
• Ignoring how Jewish messianic movements actually worked

It becomes more complicated than simply accepting that a preacher lived and was executed.

When Carrier and Price present mythicist arguments, historians from:
• Princeton
• Yale
• Harvard
• Brown
• Cambridge
• Oxford

…all say the same thing:

“This isn’t how ancient history works.”

Mythicism relies on special pleading, hyper-skepticism, and reading texts against normal linguistic/historical usage.

That’s why scholars in the field consider it fringe.

Tacitus (Roman historian) writes about:
• “Christus” who was “executed under Pontius Pilate”
• The origin of the movement in Judea

Tacitus hated Christians.
He had no reason to repeat Christian myths — he got his information from Roman archives or non-Christian sources.

Josephus (Jewish historian) also mentions Jesus twice.
Even removing Christian edits, the core reference remains widely accepted.

Hostile witnesses rarely treat fictional characters as real recent people.

Bart Ehrman (agnostic/atheist):

“There is no serious historian who doubts Jesus existed.”

Paula Fredriksen (Jewish, non-Christian):

“I don’t know any full professor of ancient history who doubts his existence.”

Maurice Casey (agnostic):

“Mythicism is an embarrassment to real scholarship.”

Michael Grant (secular classical historian):

“The denial of Jesus’s existence is not tenable.”

When even scholars opposed to Christian theology uphold his existence, that’s telling.

Modern mythicism arose from:
• 19th-century anti-Christian activism
• Non-scholarly writers
• People pushing sociopolitical agendas

It didn’t come out of universities or trained historians.

That origin matters.

Why Scholars Reject Mythicism

Because it requires ignoring:
• Early eyewitness-proximate sources
• Embarrassing historical details
• Hostile sources referencing Jesus
• Historical method
• How ancient movements form

…and instead replacing them with a complex conspiracy-like theory without evidence.

The simplest, strongest-supported conclusion is:
A Jewish preacher named Jesus lived and was executed.

Everything else Christians claim is a separate debate — miracles, theology, divinity — but the man himself?
For historians, that part is not controversial.

We have stories about him and/or his followers, but none are written by non-religious contemporaries with first-hand knowledge.

That doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t exist—historians overwhelmingly conclude he did, based on the available evidence and comparisons to other ancient figures.

Why is the lack of contemporary non-religious sources isn’t unusual, you may wonder? —>
In antiquity, written records were rare, often lost, and biased toward elites like emperors or generals. Most people from that era—including teachers, philosophers, and rebels—lack firsthand contemporary accounts. For example:

Socrates (died 399 BCE): No writings from his lifetime survive; everything we know comes from his students Plato and Xenophon, written decades later. Alexander the Great (died 323 BCE): Contemporary writers existed, but none of their works survive; our main sources are from centuries later, like Arrian (2nd century CE). Spartacus (died 71 BCE): No contemporary records at all; details come from later Roman historians like Plutarch (1st-2nd century CE). Even Julius Caesar (died 44 BCE): While he wrote his own accounts, many details rely on later biographies, and some claims (like his famous campaigns) lack direct corroboration from enemies or neutrals. 


Historians accept these figures as real because the cumulative evidence (later writings, archaeological hints, cultural impact) points to a historical core, even if details are embellished. The same logic applies to Jesus: absence of perfect evidence isn’t evidence of absence, especially for a lower-class Galilean preacher in a remote Roman province.


Christian Sources (Closest to Contemporaries)

Paul’s Letters (written ~50-60 CE): Paul, a Jewish convert to Christianity, never met Jesus but knew his brother James and disciple Peter personally (Galatians 1:18-19). He references Jesus’ teachings (e.g., on divorce), last supper, crucifixion under Roman authority, and resurrection claims. These are within 20-30 years of Jesus’ death—earlier than many sources for other figures. 

Gospels (Mark ~70 CE; Matthew/Luke ~80-90 CE; John ~90-100 CE): These draw from oral traditions and earlier written sources (like the hypothetical “Q” document). They include “embarrassing” details unlikely to be invented, like Jesus’ baptism (implying he needed repentance) or his cry of abandonment on the cross. 


Non-Christian Sources (Independent Corroboration)
These come from Jewish and Roman writers who had no stake in promoting Christianity. They’re later but reference Jesus as a historical figure:

Josephus (Jewish historian, ~93 CE): In Antiquities of the Jews, he calls Jesus a “wise man” who performed “startling deeds,” was crucified by Pilate on Jewish leaders’ accusations, and had followers who believed he rose from the dead. A shorter passage mentions James as “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” While parts may have Christian interpolations, scholars agree the core references are authentic.  

Tacitus (Roman historian, ~116 CE): In Annals, he describes “Christus” executed under Pilate during Tiberius’ reign, noting his followers (Christians) were persecuted by Nero. This is a hostile source confirming basic facts. 

Pliny the Younger (Roman governor, ~112 CE): In a letter to Emperor Trajan, he reports Christians worshiping “Christus” as a god and meeting to honor him. 

Others like Suetonius (~120 CE) mention disturbances caused by “Chrestus” (likely Jesus) among Jews in Rome, and Lucian of Samosata (~166 CE) mocks Christians for following a crucified “sophist.” 
These align on key points: Jesus was a real Jewish teacher executed by Romans around 30 CE, founding a persistent movement.

The vast majority of experts—including non-Christian scholars like Bart Ehrman (agnostic), Paula Fredriksen (Jewish), and others—affirm a historical Jesus existed as a Jewish apocalyptic preacher baptized by John, who gathered disciples and was crucified.


Mythicism is a minority view, often compared to denying the Holocaust or moon landing in academic circles—interesting but not credible due to overreliance on silence and ignoring how movements like Christianity arise from real events.

If you like being a peer of Holocaust deniers, and moon landing deniers, then by all means, continue with denial of the existence of Jesus Christ as a man who walked the earth.

We have plenty of physical evidence and contemporaneous reports of the Holocaust and moon landing. Zero evidence of Jesus.

We only have stories retold about Jesus and/or his followers - none are written by non-religious contemporaries with first-hand knowledge.

^^ factually inaccurate


Jesus is not in the same evidential category as “Zero Evidence”

Almost no one in ancient history who wasn’t an emperor or general has “plenty of physical evidence and contemporaneous reports.” By that extreme standard, we would have to deny the existence of:

Socrates (no writings by him, only later students)

Hannibal (no Carthaginian eyewitness documents survive)

Alexander the Great’s daily activities (our main sources are 300–400 years later)

Most 1st-century rabbis, philosophers, or rebels, yet no serious historian doubts these people existed. Jesus is actually better attested than most 1st-century Palestinian Jews.

No contemporary non-religious reports is expected:

Judea was a backwater province. Roman officials didn’t keep daily blogs about every executed troublemaker.

Literacy was low (~5–10%); almost all surviving writing from the period is from elites.

The Jesus movement was tiny and considered a weird Jewish sect for the first 20–30 years. It only became noteworthy to Roman writers after it spread.

Expecting a Roman senator to write a real-time op-ed about an obscure crucified Galilean preacher is like expecting for a 2025 New York Times reporter to file a story about a street preacher in rural Bolivia today — it just doesn’t happen until the movement blows up.


Holocaust/moon landing is a category error

Holocaust: 6 million murdered in living memory, with photos, documents, mass graves, surviving perpetrators and liberators, Nazi records, etc.

Moon landing: 1969, filmed, hundreds of thousands involved, physical samples, ongoing tracking of the landing sites by lunar orbiters.

These are 20th-century events with modern record-keeping and millions of direct participants.

Jesus is a 1st-century religious figure in a pre-modern society. The correct comparison is other 1st-century religious or political figures — and by that standard the evidence is solid.

We actually have more early sources for Jesus than for most people from 1st-century Palestine — several writings from within 20–60 years, plus two non-Christian historians confirming he existed and was executed under Pilate. Expecting 1st-century Roman bureaucrats to write official memos about every crucified Jewish teacher is completely unrealistic. The real scholarly debate is not ‘Did Jesus exist?’ (virtually no one denies that anymore), but ‘What did he teach and do?’”

The historical consensus (even among atheist and agnostic scholars like Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Paula Fredriksen) is clear: Jesus of Nazareth was a real person.

Mythicism is a fringe internet position, not a serious academic one.

FACTS:
We have plenty of physical evidence and contemporaneous reports of the Holocaust and moon landing. Zero evidence of Jesus.

We only have stories retold about Jesus and/or his followers - none are written by non-religious contemporaries with first-hand knowledge.

Can you cite the sources for your facts?

Physical evidence at the Holocaust museum and NASA.

Zero non-religious contemporaries with first-hand knowledge of Jesus.

That is true for virtually every figure from that time and place.

Demanding a non-Christian eyewitness document from the years 27–33 CE is setting an impossible standard that no one from that social level in that region can meet. It’s not how ancient history works.

That's how concrete evidence works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How does ancient history work?

We almost never have “contemporary eyewitness news reports.”

For almost every person or event before about 1800 CE, the sources we have are:
Written 20–300 years after the events
Often copied and re-copied by hand (with small errors creeping in)
Frequently written by people who were not the author’s enemies, allies, or later admirers — rarely by neutral journalists.

Examples everyone accepts:
1. Alexander the Great (died 323 BCE): Our main sources (Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus) were written 300–450 years later.
2. Hannibal crossing the Alps (218 BCE): Livy and Polybius wrote 50–180 years later.
3. Socrates (died 399 BCE): Plato and Xenophon wrote shortly after, but the next accounts (Aristotle, etc.) are decades later, and we still trust the core story.
4. Julius Caesar’s assassination (44 BCE): Nicolaus of Damascus wrote ~50 years later; Suetonius and Plutarch 150 years later.

No one says “We have zero contemporary neutral eyewitnesses, therefore Caesar/Socrates/Alexander probably didn’t exist.”


The standard historians use: Multiple attestation + embarrassment + coherence.

Historians ask:
1. Do several independent sources (even hostile ones) agree on the basic facts?
2. Do the sources contain details that would have been embarrassing or inconvenient for the author? (People rarely invent embarrassing stories about their own heroes.)
3. Does the story fit what we know about the time and place from archaeology, other texts, etc.?

Jesus passes these tests better than most 1st-century figures:
- Multiple independent streams: Paul (48–60 CE), Mark (70 CE), Q source, Josephus (93 CE), Tacitus (116 CE) all confirm a Jewish teacher executed under Pilate.
-Criterion of embarrassment: The Gospels say he was baptized by John (implying John was greater), crucified (a shameful death), denied by his own disciples, etc. Early Christians would not make that up.
-Archaeology and context: Pontius Pilate inscription (1961), Caiaphas ossuary, 1st-century crucifixion nails, etc., all confirm the world of the Gospels.

Silence is normal, not suspicious!

Most people in antiquity left zero written trace. We have:
*Only ~10–15 brief mentions of Pontius Pilate outside the New Testament, even though he was the Roman governor.
*Zero contemporary writings from Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee during Jesus’ entire life.
*Onlyone ambiguous line about the famous rabbi Hillel from his own lifetime.

Jesus was an obscure apocalyptic preacher executed for disturbing the peace in rural Judea and was far less likely to be noticed by elite writers than a Roman governor — yet we still have more early evidence for Jesus than for almost any other 1st-century Palestinian Jew.

Jesus actually has unusually early and abundant evidence for a non-elite figure from a marginal province.


Ancient history does not demand — and almost never has — “contemporary neutral eyewitnesses with first-hand knowledge.” It works by piecing together sources that are:
1. As close in time as possible
2. Preferably independent
3. Ideally including hostile or neutral voices
4. Checked against archaeology and what we know about the culture

By those normal standards, the historical existence of Jesus is about as solid as anything from the early 1st century gets.

The people who say “zero evidence” are applying a 21st-century journalistic standard that literally nothing from antiquity could meet.

I simply said that there is zero evidence. I made no claims about his existence.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With his alleged birthday coming up, let's discuss the person that is being celebrated. Present your information and argument for Jesus, fact or fiction.

Jesus was made up -- not of whole cloth, because a messiah was predicted. But those were the olden days, before modern science and running water and a bunch of stuff that we now take for granted.

Kids can't imagine life without the internet. Neither can I! Remember those old movies where people would wait impatiently for the mailman to come?

No he was not made up. His existence and the words he spoke have been proven. What is likely made up is that he was the son of God. Probably not. Then again, how did such an extraordinary person come to have such extraordinary advice on how to be a good person?

In any event he was an amazing man and if we all followed his teachings the world would be a better place.

Link?

Don't hold your breath waiting.

And Ehrman undermines his own argument by stating something as true, when it is not in fact true. Not every scholar believes in a historical Jesus, and there are plenty of scholars now that have made well-reasoned arguments to the contrary. Ehrman also acknowledges there is not evidence, and then he makes his own specious speculation.

Exactly. No evidence. Just stories.

“Just stories” is exactly how we know almost every non-emperor figure from antiquity.

-Socrates: no contemporary documents, only “stories” from Plato and Xenophon 10–40 years later.
-Hannibal: no Carthaginian records survive, only “stories” from Roman enemies 50–150 years later.
-Apollonius of Tyana: miracle-working philosopher, one primary biography written 150 years after his death.
Nobody in classics or ancient history calls these people “mythical” on that basis.

Jesus has more and earlier attestation than most 1st-century Jews.

-Within 20–30 years: multiple letters from Paul (undisputed: Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon) that casually mention Jesus was born as a human, of a woman, descended from David, had a brother named James (whom Paul met), taught specific things, was crucified under Roman authority.

-Within 40–60 years: Mark’s gospel (used by Matthew and Luke).

-Within 60–80 years: a Jewish historian (Josephus) twice mentions Jesus and his brother James.
That timeline beats almost every comparable figure from the Roman provinces.

The “stories” contain details early Christians had no reason to invent and every reason to suppress
(historians call this the criterion of embarrassment):
-Jesus baptized by John (implies he was John’s subordinate and needed repentance).
-Denied by his own disciples.
- Crucified (a shameful, cursed death in both Roman and Jewish eyes).
-Family thought he was crazy (Mark 3:21).
People making up a hero do not write these things.

Independent, hostile sources confirm the basic outline
-Josephus (Jewish, ~93 CE): Jesus executed by Pilate, brother named James, followers still exist.
-Tacitus (Roman, ~116 CE): “Christus” executed under Pontius Pilate in Judea, source of the Christian movement.
These are not Christians repeating their own stories; these are outsiders who had zero interest in promoting Christianity.

A real movement exploded in Jerusalem within months of the supposed events
Thousands of Jews suddenly start worshipping a crucified criminal as the Messiah — in the same city where he was publicly executed. That doesn’t happen with a purely mythical figure. It requires a real, recent, traumatic event that needs explaining.

So no, it’s not “no evidence, just stories.”
It’s multiple, early, independent sources — some hostile — that align on a core set of facts, using the exact same kinds of evidence historians use for everyone else in antiquity.

If you reject that evidence for Jesus, you has to reject the existence of Socrates, Hannibal, Boudicca, Arminius, and dozens of other ancient figures on the exact same grounds. And literally no professional historian does that.
That’s the problem with the “no evidence, just stories” line. It’s not skepticism. It’s a double standard.

And what evidence is there for God? You know, Jesus's Dad.

There is no proof for God in the way there is proof for gravity or that 2 + 2 = 4.

There are arguments (cosmological, fine-tuning, moral, etc.), some of them pretty sophisticated, but none of them are universally accepted as conclusive.

Reasonable, educated people look at the same evidence and arguments and still land on both sides.

I’m not here to convince you. You asked for proof; I’m just telling you the actual state of play: there isn’t any proof that settles the question once and for all.

That’s why billions of people believe and billions don’t, and the philosophers are still arguing about it after 2,500 years.

Believe whatever you find most reasonable. It’s your call, not mine.

Except there is ZERO data supporting gods and plenty to support the existence of gravity or 2+2=4.

The existence of God — in the classical philosophical or theological sense — cannot be definitively proven or disproven by empirical data or the scientific method. Here’s why, broken down clearly:

Most serious arguments (both theistic and atheistic) are about a necessary, uncaused, immaterial, eternal, personal being who is the ultimate ground of all reality (the God of classical theism: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and most philosophy of religion).
This concept of God is outside space, time, and matter by definition.


Science only deals with contingent, physical, measurable phenomena within the universe.

A being that transcends the universe (i.e., not made of matter/energy, not located in space-time) is by definition outside the domain that scientific instruments and experiments can access.

You cannot put “pure act,” “necessary being,” or “the ground of all existence” under a microscope or in a particle accelerator.

This is not a limitation of current technology — it is a category error, like trying to use a ruler to measure temperature or a scale to weigh an idea.

Data and science can:

1. Refute specific religious claims that make testable predictions
→ Young-Earth creationism (refuted by radiometric dating, cosmology, geology)
→ Global flood ~4,000 years ago (refuted by geology, genetics, archaeology)
→ Prayer healing cancer at statistically significant rates (large-scale studies show no effect beyond placebo)
2. Make certain conceptions of God less plausible
→ A deity who constantly intervenes in trivial ways (e.g., finding parking spots) becomes improbable under a universe governed by consistent natural laws.
3. Provide evidence that is compatible with theism or atheism, but not decisive either way
→ Fine-tuning of physical constants (used by theists)
→ Evolutionary suffering and “hiddenness” of God (used by atheists)
None of these move the needle from possible → proven or possible → impossible.

No dataset will ever appear that lets us say “Here is the spreadsheet that proves/disproves God.”
The question ultimately lies in metaphysics, not measurement.
Most professional philosophers of religion (the people who study this full-time) are theists (~70% in recent PhilPapers surveys), but a large minority are atheists, and almost none claim the issue is empirically settled. That distribution itself shows the limits of data.

OK, so we all agree that there is in fact data supporting the theory of gravity and 2+2=4.

Very different than the existence of gods and supernatural forces.

Empirical, knock-down proof is impossible either way. 


God, by (almost every) definition, is not a physical object inside the universe, so you can’t put Him in a particle detector. Science can’t verify or falsify that kind of being. That’s not a dodge; it’s a category difference. Philosophers have known this for centuries.

There are serious arguments that many very sharp people find rationally compelling: Why does anything exist at all rather than nothing? (Leibnizian cosmological)

Why is the universe governed by elegant mathematical laws?
Why are the physical constants fine-tuned for life in a ridiculously narrow range?
Why does consciousness exist in a purely material universe?
Why is there objective morality if we’re just evolved primates? 
These aren’t “God of the gaps”; they’re positive arguments from the existence of the universe, reason, math, and morality to a necessary, immaterial, personal foundation. Reasonable people (including plenty of scientists and philosophers) find them strong; reasonable people (also including plenty of scientists and philosophers) find the counter-arguments stronger.

It’s an open philosophical question, not a closed scientific one.

Belief in God is not like believing in Bigfoot or Zeus
. Bigfoot would be a physical primate — we could in principle find hair, DNA, or a body. Zeus was a body on Mount Olympus who threw lightning bolts and raped mortals — plenty of ways that story could have been confirmed or debunked.


Classical theism isn’t making those kinds of claims. It’s saying reality itself has an ultimate, non-contingent ground that is pure existence. That claim is way more abstract and way harder to falsify.

If your standard is ‘scientific proof identical to the Holocaust or moon landing,’ then no, there’s no evidence for God — and there never will be, because the question is outside science’s scope.

So the honest statement isn’t ‘there’s no evidence.’

The fallacy is believing that there is something that exists outside of science.

Science is a method, not an ontology
.

Science is extraordinarily good at describing how the physical world behaves under controlled conditions. But it deliberately brackets off certain kinds of questions:
What is the meaning or purpose of existence? Are there objective moral truths? What is consciousness, and why does it feel like something to be me? Do mathematical truths exist independently of physical reality?


These are real questions that rational people can investigate, but they lie outside the domain of empirical science by design.

The claim “the only things that exist are those science can investigate” is itself not a scientific claim. You can’t put it under a microscope or test it with a particle collider. It’s a philosophical assertion masquerading as a scientific one. If the statement is true, it saws off the branch it’s sitting on, because philosophy (including that very claim) would then be illegitimate.


History is littered with examples of non-scientific knowledge.

Math proves things (e.g., Gödel’s theorems, the infinitude of primes) with certainty that goes beyond empirical induction.

Logic itself is prior to science—you need it to even do science.

First-person subjective experience (qualia) is real and undeniable, yet not publicly measurable in the way physics demands.

Even scientists don’t actually believe this in practice. 
Most working scientists treat their own moral intuitions, aesthetic judgments, and sense of meaning as real, even though none of those are “scientific” in the strict sense.


Science is the best tool we have for understanding the physical world, but the moment you say nothing exists outside its reach, you’ve stopped doing science and started doing bad philosophy. Reality is bigger than the test tube.

I can daydream about whatever I want. Doesn't make it real.

Anything outside of the physical world exists only in your mind - pure fantasy.

That’s a philosophical claim, not a fact.


You are repeating a classic philosophical stance called materialism: the idea that only physical matter and energy are real.

Lots of extremely intelligent philosophers, scientists, theologians, and thinkers disagree with this.
There is no proof that materialism is correct, either; it’s an assumption.

Are numbers “physical?” Is morality physical?
Is justice?
Is love?
Is logic itself physical? Are laws of physics physical (they describe matter; they are not matter)?

None of these exist as atoms. Yet they’re not “pure fantasy.”

If you deny these things, you contradict your own ability to argue, reason, or even speak meaningfully.


If only the physical exists, explain: Why does subjective experience (the feeling of “being you”) exist at all, and, why does a physical brain create a non-physical interior world?

Materialism has no answer.

Consciousness is the biggest hole in the worldview.


Hypothetical or mathematical objects are not “fantasies”

Black holes were theoretical before we ever detected them. Negative numbers don’t physically “exist,” yet they correctly describe the world. Quantum states exist as probabilities until measured.

Ideas can be real without being physical.

Non-physical doesn’t mean imaginary

There are three categories:
1.Physical things — atoms, energy
2.Mental things — images, thoughts, memories
3. Abstract/non-physical realities — logic, mathematics, values, meanings, time, identity



You collapses everything into category #2, but categories #1 and #3 clearly exist and interact.


Your statement is self-defeating

If “only the physical world exists,” then the idea that “only the physical world exists” is itself…not physical.

So by your own logic, your own statement is “pure fantasy.”

Most scientists do NOT believe everything is purely physical

Modern physics is not purely materialistic anymore:
Quantum mechanics, Information theory, Mathematical Platonism, Consciousness studies—>

These fields all deal with real things that are not physical objects.

Even Einstein wrote that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible — meaning the laws themselves point to something deeper than matter.

Challenge: If only the physical exists, prove to me that logic, love, numbers, or your own consciousness are made of atoms.

[Anonymous]

“The idea of believing in anything intangible terrifies me so much that I must destroy it to feel safe.”

That’s what I hear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“The idea of believing in anything intangible terrifies me so much that I must destroy it to feel safe.”

That’s what I hear.

“The idea that I believe in an antiquated fantasy terrifies me so much that I will go to great lengths to fight the cognitive dissonance and also copy countless pages from Wikipedia to deflect.”

That’s what I see.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“The idea of believing in anything intangible terrifies me so much that I must destroy it to feel safe.”

That’s what I hear.

“The idea that I believe in an antiquated fantasy terrifies me so much that I will go to great lengths to fight the cognitive dissonance and also copy countless pages from Wikipedia to deflect.”

That’s what I see.

Nothing was copied from Wikipedia.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With his alleged birthday coming up, let's discuss the person that is being celebrated. Present your information and argument for Jesus, fact or fiction.

Jesus was made up -- not of whole cloth, because a messiah was predicted. But those were the olden days, before modern science and running water and a bunch of stuff that we now take for granted.

Kids can't imagine life without the internet. Neither can I! Remember those old movies where people would wait impatiently for the mailman to come?

No he was not made up. His existence and the words he spoke have been proven. What is likely made up is that he was the son of God. Probably not. Then again, how did such an extraordinary person come to have such extraordinary advice on how to be a good person?

In any event he was an amazing man and if we all followed his teachings the world would be a better place.

Link?

Don't hold your breath waiting.

And Ehrman undermines his own argument by stating something as true, when it is not in fact true. Not every scholar believes in a historical Jesus, and there are plenty of scholars now that have made well-reasoned arguments to the contrary. Ehrman also acknowledges there is not evidence, and then he makes his own specious speculation.

Exactly. No evidence. Just stories.

“Just stories” is exactly how we know almost every non-emperor figure from antiquity.

-Socrates: no contemporary documents, only “stories” from Plato and Xenophon 10–40 years later.
-Hannibal: no Carthaginian records survive, only “stories” from Roman enemies 50–150 years later.
-Apollonius of Tyana: miracle-working philosopher, one primary biography written 150 years after his death.
Nobody in classics or ancient history calls these people “mythical” on that basis.

Jesus has more and earlier attestation than most 1st-century Jews.

-Within 20–30 years: multiple letters from Paul (undisputed: Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon) that casually mention Jesus was born as a human, of a woman, descended from David, had a brother named James (whom Paul met), taught specific things, was crucified under Roman authority.

-Within 40–60 years: Mark’s gospel (used by Matthew and Luke).

-Within 60–80 years: a Jewish historian (Josephus) twice mentions Jesus and his brother James.
That timeline beats almost every comparable figure from the Roman provinces.

The “stories” contain details early Christians had no reason to invent and every reason to suppress
(historians call this the criterion of embarrassment):
-Jesus baptized by John (implies he was John’s subordinate and needed repentance).
-Denied by his own disciples.
- Crucified (a shameful, cursed death in both Roman and Jewish eyes).
-Family thought he was crazy (Mark 3:21).
People making up a hero do not write these things.

Independent, hostile sources confirm the basic outline
-Josephus (Jewish, ~93 CE): Jesus executed by Pilate, brother named James, followers still exist.
-Tacitus (Roman, ~116 CE): “Christus” executed under Pontius Pilate in Judea, source of the Christian movement.
These are not Christians repeating their own stories; these are outsiders who had zero interest in promoting Christianity.

A real movement exploded in Jerusalem within months of the supposed events
Thousands of Jews suddenly start worshipping a crucified criminal as the Messiah — in the same city where he was publicly executed. That doesn’t happen with a purely mythical figure. It requires a real, recent, traumatic event that needs explaining.

So no, it’s not “no evidence, just stories.”
It’s multiple, early, independent sources — some hostile — that align on a core set of facts, using the exact same kinds of evidence historians use for everyone else in antiquity.

If you reject that evidence for Jesus, you has to reject the existence of Socrates, Hannibal, Boudicca, Arminius, and dozens of other ancient figures on the exact same grounds. And literally no professional historian does that.
That’s the problem with the “no evidence, just stories” line. It’s not skepticism. It’s a double standard.

And what evidence is there for God? You know, Jesus's Dad.

There is no proof for God in the way there is proof for gravity or that 2 + 2 = 4.

There are arguments (cosmological, fine-tuning, moral, etc.), some of them pretty sophisticated, but none of them are universally accepted as conclusive.

Reasonable, educated people look at the same evidence and arguments and still land on both sides.

I’m not here to convince you. You asked for proof; I’m just telling you the actual state of play: there isn’t any proof that settles the question once and for all.

That’s why billions of people believe and billions don’t, and the philosophers are still arguing about it after 2,500 years.

Believe whatever you find most reasonable. It’s your call, not mine.

Except there is ZERO data supporting gods and plenty to support the existence of gravity or 2+2=4.

The existence of God — in the classical philosophical or theological sense — cannot be definitively proven or disproven by empirical data or the scientific method. Here’s why, broken down clearly:

Most serious arguments (both theistic and atheistic) are about a necessary, uncaused, immaterial, eternal, personal being who is the ultimate ground of all reality (the God of classical theism: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and most philosophy of religion).
This concept of God is outside space, time, and matter by definition.


Science only deals with contingent, physical, measurable phenomena within the universe.

A being that transcends the universe (i.e., not made of matter/energy, not located in space-time) is by definition outside the domain that scientific instruments and experiments can access.

You cannot put “pure act,” “necessary being,” or “the ground of all existence” under a microscope or in a particle accelerator.

This is not a limitation of current technology — it is a category error, like trying to use a ruler to measure temperature or a scale to weigh an idea.

Data and science can:

1. Refute specific religious claims that make testable predictions
→ Young-Earth creationism (refuted by radiometric dating, cosmology, geology)
→ Global flood ~4,000 years ago (refuted by geology, genetics, archaeology)
→ Prayer healing cancer at statistically significant rates (large-scale studies show no effect beyond placebo)
2. Make certain conceptions of God less plausible
→ A deity who constantly intervenes in trivial ways (e.g., finding parking spots) becomes improbable under a universe governed by consistent natural laws.
3. Provide evidence that is compatible with theism or atheism, but not decisive either way
→ Fine-tuning of physical constants (used by theists)
→ Evolutionary suffering and “hiddenness” of God (used by atheists)
None of these move the needle from possible → proven or possible → impossible.

No dataset will ever appear that lets us say “Here is the spreadsheet that proves/disproves God.”
The question ultimately lies in metaphysics, not measurement.
Most professional philosophers of religion (the people who study this full-time) are theists (~70% in recent PhilPapers surveys), but a large minority are atheists, and almost none claim the issue is empirically settled. That distribution itself shows the limits of data.

OK, so we all agree that there is in fact data supporting the theory of gravity and 2+2=4.

Very different than the existence of gods and supernatural forces.

Empirical, knock-down proof is impossible either way. 


God, by (almost every) definition, is not a physical object inside the universe, so you can’t put Him in a particle detector. Science can’t verify or falsify that kind of being. That’s not a dodge; it’s a category difference. Philosophers have known this for centuries.

There are serious arguments that many very sharp people find rationally compelling: Why does anything exist at all rather than nothing? (Leibnizian cosmological)

Why is the universe governed by elegant mathematical laws?
Why are the physical constants fine-tuned for life in a ridiculously narrow range?
Why does consciousness exist in a purely material universe?
Why is there objective morality if we’re just evolved primates? 
These aren’t “God of the gaps”; they’re positive arguments from the existence of the universe, reason, math, and morality to a necessary, immaterial, personal foundation. Reasonable people (including plenty of scientists and philosophers) find them strong; reasonable people (also including plenty of scientists and philosophers) find the counter-arguments stronger.

It’s an open philosophical question, not a closed scientific one.

Belief in God is not like believing in Bigfoot or Zeus
. Bigfoot would be a physical primate — we could in principle find hair, DNA, or a body. Zeus was a body on Mount Olympus who threw lightning bolts and raped mortals — plenty of ways that story could have been confirmed or debunked.


Classical theism isn’t making those kinds of claims. It’s saying reality itself has an ultimate, non-contingent ground that is pure existence. That claim is way more abstract and way harder to falsify.

If your standard is ‘scientific proof identical to the Holocaust or moon landing,’ then no, there’s no evidence for God — and there never will be, because the question is outside science’s scope.

So the honest statement isn’t ‘there’s no evidence.’

The fallacy is believing that there is something that exists outside of science.

Science is a method, not an ontology
.

Science is extraordinarily good at describing how the physical world behaves under controlled conditions. But it deliberately brackets off certain kinds of questions:
What is the meaning or purpose of existence? Are there objective moral truths? What is consciousness, and why does it feel like something to be me? Do mathematical truths exist independently of physical reality?


These are real questions that rational people can investigate, but they lie outside the domain of empirical science by design.

The claim “the only things that exist are those science can investigate” is itself not a scientific claim. You can’t put it under a microscope or test it with a particle collider. It’s a philosophical assertion masquerading as a scientific one. If the statement is true, it saws off the branch it’s sitting on, because philosophy (including that very claim) would then be illegitimate.


History is littered with examples of non-scientific knowledge.

Math proves things (e.g., Gödel’s theorems, the infinitude of primes) with certainty that goes beyond empirical induction.

Logic itself is prior to science—you need it to even do science.

First-person subjective experience (qualia) is real and undeniable, yet not publicly measurable in the way physics demands.

Even scientists don’t actually believe this in practice. 
Most working scientists treat their own moral intuitions, aesthetic judgments, and sense of meaning as real, even though none of those are “scientific” in the strict sense.


Science is the best tool we have for understanding the physical world, but the moment you say nothing exists outside its reach, you’ve stopped doing science and started doing bad philosophy. Reality is bigger than the test tube.

I can daydream about whatever I want. Doesn't make it real.

Anything outside of the physical world exists only in your mind - pure fantasy.

That’s a philosophical claim, not a fact.


You are repeating a classic philosophical stance called materialism: the idea that only physical matter and energy are real.

Lots of extremely intelligent philosophers, scientists, theologians, and thinkers disagree with this.
There is no proof that materialism is correct, either; it’s an assumption.

Are numbers “physical?” Is morality physical?
Is justice?
Is love?
Is logic itself physical? Are laws of physics physical (they describe matter; they are not matter)?

None of these exist as atoms. Yet they’re not “pure fantasy.”

If you deny these things, you contradict your own ability to argue, reason, or even speak meaningfully.


If only the physical exists, explain: Why does subjective experience (the feeling of “being you”) exist at all, and, why does a physical brain create a non-physical interior world?

Materialism has no answer.

Consciousness is the biggest hole in the worldview.


Hypothetical or mathematical objects are not “fantasies”

Black holes were theoretical before we ever detected them. Negative numbers don’t physically “exist,” yet they correctly describe the world. Quantum states exist as probabilities until measured.

Ideas can be real without being physical.

Non-physical doesn’t mean imaginary

There are three categories:
1.Physical things — atoms, energy
2.Mental things — images, thoughts, memories
3. Abstract/non-physical realities — logic, mathematics, values, meanings, time, identity



You collapses everything into category #2, but categories #1 and #3 clearly exist and interact.


Your statement is self-defeating

If “only the physical world exists,” then the idea that “only the physical world exists” is itself…not physical.

So by your own logic, your own statement is “pure fantasy.”

Most scientists do NOT believe everything is purely physical

Modern physics is not purely materialistic anymore:
Quantum mechanics, Information theory, Mathematical Platonism, Consciousness studies—>

These fields all deal with real things that are not physical objects.

Even Einstein wrote that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible — meaning the laws themselves point to something deeper than matter.

Challenge: If only the physical exists, prove to me that logic, love, numbers, or your own consciousness are made of atoms.

These are all real things that exist in the physical world and can be studied.

https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_the_brain_in_love?language=en&subtitle=%28null%29


“Supernatural forces” exist only in your head. A figment of your imagination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With his alleged birthday coming up, let's discuss the person that is being celebrated. Present your information and argument for Jesus, fact or fiction.

dude- everyone knows this is not his actual birthday ok?? the Catholic Church admits that they chose to celebrate his birthday on the somedays as the saturnalia feast to make christianity easier for roman converts. do you also argue the authenticity of all the rest of the prophets?? what historical evidence is there for the 12 tribes of Jacob/Israel?? Jesus fits into what we know about this time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With his alleged birthday coming up, let's discuss the person that is being celebrated. Present your information and argument for Jesus, fact or fiction.

Jesus was made up -- not of whole cloth, because a messiah was predicted. But those were the olden days, before modern science and running water and a bunch of stuff that we now take for granted.

Kids can't imagine life without the internet. Neither can I! Remember those old movies where people would wait impatiently for the mailman to come?

No he was not made up. His existence and the words he spoke have been proven. What is likely made up is that he was the son of God. Probably not. Then again, how did such an extraordinary person come to have such extraordinary advice on how to be a good person?

In any event he was an amazing man and if we all followed his teachings the world would be a better place.

totally agree with this but totally disagree that his advice and wisdom were exceptional. many many different people in different parts of the world had similar beliefs and ideas. I think what makes christianity extraordinary is that it is our newest belief system (the religions of the Egyptians saying be nice, tell the truth, dont steal, feed the hungry are no longer relevant but these ideas existed back then as well) and it was melded with an older belief system in a really effective way- the roman morality and ethics which was influenced by greek religion and philosophy mixed with judaic divinity and spread all over the world in a very effective way- its a successful marriage of time tested morality and ethics.

So many of the ideas that are present in christianity - universalism being the most attractive and obvious come from Roman traditions, the ethics of fairness and justice from greek philosophy. To be honest these influences are more obvious and beneficial then the influence of Judaism since judaism most important thesis " that there is only one God and He belongs to the people of Israel" is not present- if you look at the development of Judaism after the rise of christianity- Christian Universalism has influenced Judaism's notion of the divine, not the other way around. So yeah Jesus was a jewish man living the 1st century but the teachings proscribed to him are actually greco-Roman with the exception of a single God-head as a the head of a universal church which is much more inspiring than the old Roman method where the emperor is god and all citizens should be united in the worship of the emperor. It's the result f the far spreading roman empire and a testament to diversity and what it can achieve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Say what you want, but does anyone really think that through centuries, billions of people have followed a total myth?

yes- billions of people today haver been following an Arab shepherd and merchant for 15 centuries, that does not contribute to your belief that said Arab was correct in his teachings does it??? billions of people have been following a Chinese philosopher for 26 centuries, does the belief of these billions lead credence to the religion being "true" ??? just b/c an idea has been around for a long time and is accepted by a lot of people- does that make it true??? that would mean that the early believers who were persecuted- in pretty much every new faith- are dumb b/c there is no longevity or mass acceptance for their ideas, which is what their contemporaries believed hence the persecution. so good to know that you'd be in the stands watching the christians getting thrown to the lions.

[Anonymous]

Under the water in Turkey at Nicene they found the church where the creed was written. WSJ article yesterday