How do you "know" that Jesus/Christianity is not just a crazy story?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:25 pp, as I said, the OP is free to ignore my recommendations. Perhaps you have better suggestions?
I hope the OP finds what he/she is looking for.

OP was asking for a narrative, and you gave her a book title. You could have at least bothered to type up a short review.

OP here -- I stepped away for many years and I think that is what has given me a skeptic's eyes as I re-introduce myself to various churches. I was away for so long that I am looking at it more as a neutral party rather than one who was born and raised and just kept doing it. When I look at the actual words of the Apostle's Creed and such, I just don't feel them flowing off my tongue -- Because I'm not just spitting them out by rote memory, I'm actually looking at the words and listening and thinking about whether I really mean what the words are saying. And that's why I have this question about how you came to conclude that this Christianity thing was solid for you.... b/c from an outsiders standpoint, it does seem kind of crazy.

As an aside, an acquaintance recently commented on Romney's Mormonism beliefs, saying "that's some weird stuff." And I was like, "well, all religions are pretty strange if you think about it. Christianity is supporting the idea of cannibalism -- "eat my body." I'm sure that sounds pretty whacky to other people too.

But, I don't want to just dismiss Christianity out of hand b/c clearly there are smart, analytical people who have investigated and come to embrace it. That's why I'm wondering if I'm missing a few key details.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As regards taking on Jesus "directly", what would that look like exactly? I'm honestly curious to know.

It's not hard. Take Jesus, and decide if he was just a man, or if he really was God, and why. There's no need to bring up other topics. That's the essence of Christianity right there. Take it, examine it, then accept it or reject it.

I think a grand total of one PP dismissed Jesus directly, and the reason given? Biblical accounts are unreliable. Are they really? And is that all you've got?

I'm not insulted when people change the subject, but I am a bit frustrated. But it's understandable. When I was intensely working my way through these questions, my friends would patiently work through each and every objection I had, and when I had nothing left, I would just shrug and say, "It's still theoretically possible you're wrong.". Because I didn't want to share their conclusion.

On the flip side, I'm honestly curious to know what your #1 direct objection to Jesus might be?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:25 pp, as I said, the OP is free to ignore my recommendations. Perhaps you have better suggestions?
I hope the OP finds what he/she is looking for.

OP was asking for a narrative, and you gave her a book title. You could have at least bothered to type up a short review.

OP here -- I stepped away for many years and I think that is what has given me a skeptic's eyes as I re-introduce myself to various churches. I was away for so long that I am looking at it more as a neutral party rather than one who was born and raised and just kept doing it. When I look at the actual words of the Apostle's Creed and such, I just don't feel them flowing off my tongue -- Because I'm not just spitting them out by rote memory, I'm actually looking at the words and listening and thinking about whether I really mean what the words are saying. And that's why I have this question about how you came to conclude that this Christianity thing was solid for you.... b/c from an outsiders standpoint, it does seem kind of crazy.

As an aside, an acquaintance recently commented on Romney's Mormonism beliefs, saying "that's some weird stuff." And I was like, "well, all religions are pretty strange if you think about it. Christianity is supporting the idea of cannibalism -- "eat my body." I'm sure that sounds pretty whacky to other people too.

But, I don't want to just dismiss Christianity out of hand b/c clearly there are smart, analytical people who have investigated and come to embrace it. That's why I'm wondering if I'm missing a few key details.

OP, I often have the same reaction to the Apostle's creed. Which parts do you find the most difficult to profess? (I'll leave the Eucharist alone for now.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As regards taking on Jesus "directly", what would that look like exactly? I'm honestly curious to know.

It's not hard. Take Jesus, and decide if he was just a man, or if he really was God, and why. There's no need to bring up other topics. That's the essence of Christianity right there. Take it, examine it, then accept it or reject it.

Sure, let's unpack this a bit. There's little direct evidence that the story of Jesus is literally true. By that I mean, born in a manger, became a carpenter, assembled a following of 12 disciples, preached as a rabbi, threw money-changers out of the Temple, and was crucified. Were there itenerant holy-men wandering in the area of modern day Israel at that time? Lots. The story of Jesus is likely an agglomeration of such stories into a single mythological person.

I think a grand total of one PP dismissed Jesus directly, and the reason given? Biblical accounts are unreliable. Are they really? And is that all you've got?

Since it's the Biblical account that is pretty much the sole evidence that Jesus lived, and further, had a set of supernatural powers ascirbed to him, I'm curious why you think their innate unreliability of those accounts is trivial. It's as though you claimed to discover a new planet with a telescope, then when I pointed out that your telescope is not, in fact, a telescope at all but a paper-towel tube wrapped in duct-tape, and you responded: "Really? Is that all you've got?" What more is needed?

The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]

Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]

Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels existed during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.

The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.

...

Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.

As far as non-Christian sources that are claimed to support the existence of Jesus (Josephus Flavius, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, etc...) all lived after the alleged life of Jesus.

I'm not insulted when people change the subject, but I am a bit frustrated. But it's understandable. When I was intensely working my way through these questions, my friends would patiently work through each and every objection I had, and when I had nothing left, I would just shrug and say, "It's still theoretically possible you're wrong.". Because I didn't want to share their conclusion.

On the flip side, I'm honestly curious to know what your #1 direct objection to Jesus might be?

My main objection is this: there's no hard evidence he existed, less that he had supernatural powers, and it's actually *less* likely that he was some sort of divinely inspired prophet than, say, Joseph Smith. At least we know from many first-hand, non-biased sources that he existed. And there's every bit as much eyewitness evidence that Smith was the conduit through which miracles were performed.

You get into a problem of infinite recursion when you try to use the Bible as an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus, since the books of the Bible were written by multiple people at different times, they were also rewritten, modified, some elevated to the canon, others relegated to the apochrypha (or worse discarded). It makes total sense that they form something of a coherent and internally consistent narrative. Why wouldn't they?

[Anonymous]

One last thing: it's a cop-out to call it "changing the subject" when non-believers use counter-examples that show that the Jesus Hypothesis is likely false. It's completely relevant. For any subject other than Jesus, it's fairly obvious how a mythology springs up to support belief in a given figure.

For example, if Jesus, then why not Hercules?

If a person accepts hearsay and accounts from believers as historical evidence for Jesus, then shouldn't they act consistently to other accounts based solely on hearsay and belief?

To take one example, examine the evidence for Hercules of Greek mythology and you will find it parallels the "historicity" of Jesus to such an amazing degree that for Christian apologists to deny Hercules as a historical person belies and contradicts the very same methodology used for a historical Jesus.

Note that Herculean myth resembles Jesus in many areas. The mortal and chaste Alcmene, the mother of Hercules, gave birth to him from a union with God (Zeus). Similar to Herod who wanted to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled the earth as a mortal helping mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Similar to Jesus who died and rose to heaven, Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Hercules gives example of perhaps the most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories about him, worshiped him, and dedicated temples to him.

Likewise the "evidence" of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have historical people like Hesiod and Plato who mention Hercules in their writings. Similar to the way the gospels tell a narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic stories of Homer who depict the life of Hercules. Aesop tells stories and quotes the words of Hercules. Just as we have a brief mention of Jesus by Joesphus in his Antiquities, Joesphus also mentions Hercules (more times than Jesus), in the very same work (see: 1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus, so does he also mention Hercules many times in his Annals. And most importantly, just as we have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses about Hercules, we also have nothing about Jesus. All information about Hercules and Jesus comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical Hercules, simply because ancient historians mention him and that we have stories and beliefs about him? Of course not, and the same must apply to Jesus if we wish to hold any consistency to historicity.

Some critics doubt that a historicized Jesus could develop from myth because they think there never occurred any precedence for it. We have many examples of myth from history but what about the other way around? This doubt fails in the light of the most obvious example-- the Greek mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed that there must have existed a historical root for figures such as Hercules, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, etc. These writers put their mythological heroes into an invented historical time chart. Herodotus, for example, tried to determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed, "The whole approach earned the name of Euhemerism, from Euhemerus who originated it." [Price, p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling historicized mythologies: UFO adherents whose beliefs began as a dream of alien bodily invasion, and then expressed as actually having occurred (some of which have formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started as pure fiction or hoaxes; propaganda spread by politicians which stem from fiction but believed by their constituents.

People consider Hercules and other Greek gods as myth because people no longer believe in the Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so do their gods. Christianity and its church authorities, on the other hand, still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and colleges. Anyone doing research on Jesus, even skeptics, had better allude to his existence or else risk future funding and damage to their reputations or fear embarrassment against their Christian friends. Christianity depends on establishing a historical Jesus and it will defend, at all costs, even the most unreliable sources. The faithful want to believe in Jesus, and belief alone can create intellectual barriers that leak even into atheist and secular thought. We have so many Christian professors, theologians and historical "experts" around the world that tell us we should accept a historical Jesus that if repeated often enough, it tends to convince even the most ardent skeptic. The establishment of history should never reside with the "experts" words alone or simply because a scholar has a reputation as a historian. Historical review has yet to achieve the reliability of scientific investigation, (and in fact, many times ignores it). If a scholar makes a historical claim, his assertion should depend primarily with the evidence itself and not just because he or she says so. Facts do not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably without evidence at all, facts depend on evidence.

Make sense?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:25 pp, as I said, the OP is free to ignore my recommendations. Perhaps you have better suggestions?
I hope the OP finds what he/she is looking for.

OP was asking for a narrative, and you gave her a book title. You could have at least bothered to type up a short review.

I believe I did. In any event I really don't want to argue with you. I hope OP takes a look at the books I suggested. Perhaps you could also suggest some literature for the OP to ponder to help her/him in her/his quest. I'll leave you to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:25 pp, as I said, the OP is free to ignore my recommendations. Perhaps you have better suggestions?
I hope the OP finds what he/she is looking for.

OP was asking for a narrative, and you gave her a book title. You could have at least bothered to type up a short review.

I believe I did. In any event I really don't want to argue with you. I hope OP takes a look at the books I suggested. Perhaps you could also suggest some literature for the OP to ponder to help her/him in her/his quest. I'll leave you to it.

Fair enough. Don't want to argue with you either, if you don't want to. And I have already suggested a title OP might be interested in. Have a good night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:God/Jesus may not be real, but if you act as if he's real, we'll all be better off. (The New Testament's love "thy neighbor and turn the other cheek and meek shall inherit the earth" God, not the "fire and brimstone and you shall sin and be damned" God that many "religious" leaders claim they represent).

Generally I agree with you. The problem I see in this country at least is that RELIGION is not pure enough There's a lot of dogma that comes along with many Christian faiths.

Also, too many people who profess to believe in Jesus do NOT follow his example. I'm reminded of my very Christian friends who were so angry about health care reform. I actually posted on their page, "Can anybody please point me to the part in the Bible where Jesus says, 'every man for himself' of some similar sentiment? Seems to me there could be nothing moe Christian than Universal Health Care. Just as one example of hypocrisy.

If you can really boil it down to ONLY what Jesus said, I agree with you. But his whole philosophy really contradicts the values of America - profits, individualism, self-reliance. Jesus was a Communist.

[Anonymous]

Religion & "special pleading". If there's a religious DCUMer for who "respect" etc.., means anything, they'll respond to this. Of course they won't because they don't have the basic convictions that a real "believer" does, so they'll end up accusing the non-believer of being "insensitive". It's political correctness gone wild.

[Anonymous]

Why the Christianist "special pleading" is irrational. "What if you're wrong?" etc, etc...

[Anonymous]

First hand accounts of miracles are quite common, even in the 21st century. We have "gurus" and their followers honestly believe in their supernatural powers. People who believe those stories show an uncanny ability to not look for naturalistic causes. The Hindu guru Satya Sai Baba has countless thousands of followers who will swear to his ability to perform miracles. If you ask a large number of them, their stories will all be very similar to one another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHYUzwHnaCY

One could argue that there's no difference between this guy and Jesus other than a few millennia of official sanction by the powers that be,

[Anonymous]

"A athiest can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."
C. S. Lewis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:God/Jesus may not be real, but if you act as if he's real, we'll all be better off. (The New Testament's love "thy neighbor and turn the other cheek and meek shall inherit the earth" God, not the "fire and brimstone and you shall sin and be damned" God that many "religious" leaders claim they represent).

Generally I agree with you. The problem I see in this country at least is that RELIGION is not pure enough There's a lot of dogma that comes along with many Christian faiths.

Also, too many people who profess to believe in Jesus do NOT follow his example. I'm reminded of my very Christian friends who were so angry about health care reform. I actually posted on their page, "Can anybody please point me to the part in the Bible where Jesus says, 'every man for himself' of some similar sentiment? Seems to me there could be nothing moe Christian than Universal Health Care. Just as one example of hypocrisy.

If you can really boil it down to ONLY what Jesus said, I agree with you. But his whole philosophy really contradicts the values of America - profits, individualism, self-reliance. Jesus was a Communist.

You are confusing universal truth with political systems and methods. Saying Jesus was a communist shows you do not know Jesus, nor communism.

I will grant you the problem with Christians, though not for the example you cited. “There is only one unanswerable argument against Christianity: Christians." --G.K. Chesterton

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
First hand accounts of miracles are quite common, even in the 21st century. We have "gurus" and their followers honestly believe in their supernatural powers. People who believe those stories show an uncanny ability to not look for naturalistic causes. The Hindu guru Satya Sai Baba has countless thousands of followers who will swear to his ability to perform miracles. If you ask a large number of them, their stories will all be very similar to one another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHYUzwHnaCY

One could argue that there's no difference between this guy and Jesus other than a few millennia of official sanction by the powers that be,

Perhaps. Except for the Resurrection.

[Anonymous]

To the PP who did a lot of copying and pasting:

Can you choose your favorite point from all that? Time is short, so just pick one, and I will respond the best I can. Thank you.