If Jesus wasn’t a real historical figure, where did Christian theology come from?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always thought it was a combination of religious ideas at the time
The region was at crossroads of cultures, so influences from eastern religions and Hinduism
The wise men from the east.
Religion needed to be reformed. Jews used to sacrifice animals in the temples and send goats to the desert

? So was Jesus a real historical figure or not?

No mainstream scholar today argues against Jesus’ historical existence. In fact, nearly all New Testament scholars today, many of whom are non-Christians and skeptics, consider not only Christ’s existence but his crucifixion to be “historical bedrock.” Critic John Dominic Crossan writes that “Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be” (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography). With similar conviction, atheist scholar Gerd Lüdemann concludes, “Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable” (The Resurrection of Christ).

Even if they feel very, very strongly about his existence, it’s impossible to definitively prove. Most likely existed? Sure.

And that’s not as important as the story of Jesus. People love a good story. And his story has had quite a big impact.

No mainstream scholar today argues against Jesus’ historical existence. In fact, nearly all New Testament scholars today, many of whom are non-Christians and skeptics, consider not only Christ’s existence but his crucifixion to be “historical bedrock.” Critic John Dominic Crossan writes that “Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be” (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography). With similar conviction, atheist scholar Gerd Lüdemann concludes, “Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable” (The Resurrection of Christ).

Jesus was a man who walked the earth. Why you deny Him is that you fear Him. Why put all this effort into denial of Him, especially when mainstream atheist scholars also agree Jesus existed? Do you think your Wikipedia research shows you the “real” truth that somehow all the big guns missed or are ignoring?

Yes, you have copied and pasted that blurb multiple times. That doesn’t make it any more convincing. Or demonstrate that he definitively was a real person.

I DGAF if he lived or not. Most likely he did.

But people shouldn’t falsely claim he was a real person as 100% fact. We only have circumstantial evidence.

And I didn’t post anything from Wikipedia - there are multiple posters.

We have more evidence that Jesus actually existed as a man that walked the earth than for 99.9% of people who existed in his timeline. So yeah, that’s a big deal.

A large amount of circumstantial evidence is still circumstantial.

Most likely he existed.

We also have a lotnofnrecords for people who lived at that time. The Roman's were very good at keeping records. We know minute about the lives of many many Roman's. We have transcripts of speeches given by Cicero that were actually taken at the time he delivered them.

I personally don't doubt there was a historical Jesus. I just don't believe that in any way proves his divinity.

My mom would also say you're missing the point. If there was scientific proof of God, believing in God would be like believing in gravity. There's be no real faith.

[Anonymous]

There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

This is a bad argument. Plenty of people died for Julius Caesar or Attila the Hun or Boudica.

You either have faith or you don't. You're not going to have definitive proof of God. Either you believe or you don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

This is a bad argument. Plenty of people died for Julius Caesar or Attila the Hun or Boudica.

You either have faith or you don't. You're not going to have definitive proof of God. Either you believe or you don't.

Actually it’s 5 great arguments, and I noticed you aren’t attempting to refute any of it.

Atheists want proof. Evidence. Facts. Then switch to “it’s faith only, no facts needed” on a whim in their next comment. They can’t make up their minds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

This is a bad argument. Plenty of people died for Julius Caesar or Attila the Hun or Boudica.

You either have faith or you don't. You're not going to have definitive proof of God. Either you believe or you don't.

Actually it’s 5 great arguments, and I noticed you aren’t attempting to refute any of it.

Atheists want proof. Evidence. Facts. Then switch to “it’s faith only, no facts needed” on a whim in their next comment. They can’t make up their minds.

I'm actually not an atheist. But I find this whole "here, I've proved God, checkmate atheists" stuff pretty gross. It cheapens faith, IMO and is usually based on junk history and science. It makes Christians look bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

Santa and fairies don't ask or require people to die for them. Unlike God, they just bring gifts and don't make any after-death promises.

Santa has a few rules, true, but nothing like the 10 commandments, and only kids believe in Santa. Unlike God, there's no punishment for people who stop believing in Santa or fairies. In fact, kids are expected to stop believing in them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

Josephus recounted stories about Jesus a hundred years later. That’s not evidence.

Where was this tomb? Who investigated it?

Who are these eyewitnesses? Unbiased?

People are willing to die for a POS like Trump so that just says people will die for various lies they want to believe.

It’s most likely that a man named Jesus lived. Nothing you posted provides definitive proof.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

This is a bad argument. Plenty of people died for Julius Caesar or Attila the Hun or Boudica.

You either have faith or you don't. You're not going to have definitive proof of God. Either you believe or you don't.

Actually it’s 5 great arguments, and I noticed you aren’t attempting to refute any of it.

Atheists want proof. Evidence. Facts. Then switch to “it’s faith only, no facts needed” on a whim in their next comment. They can’t make up their minds.

There are multiple people posting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

This is a bad argument. Plenty of people died for Julius Caesar or Attila the Hun or Boudica.

You either have faith or you don't. You're not going to have definitive proof of God. Either you believe or you don't.

Actually it’s 5 great arguments, and I noticed you aren’t attempting to refute any of it.

Atheists want proof. Evidence. Facts. Then switch to “it’s faith only, no facts needed” on a whim in their next comment. They can’t make up their minds.

I'm actually not an atheist. But I find this whole "here, I've proved God, checkmate atheists" stuff pretty gross. It cheapens faith, IMO and is usually based on junk history and science. It makes Christians look bad.

DP. How would you respond to a direct request from an atheist asking for “proof,” then. Also, are you Christian?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always thought it was a combination of religious ideas at the time
The region was at crossroads of cultures, so influences from eastern religions and Hinduism
The wise men from the east.
Religion needed to be reformed. Jews used to sacrifice animals in the temples and send goats to the desert

? So was Jesus a real historical figure or not?

No mainstream scholar today argues against Jesus’ historical existence. In fact, nearly all New Testament scholars today, many of whom are non-Christians and skeptics, consider not only Christ’s existence but his crucifixion to be “historical bedrock.” Critic John Dominic Crossan writes that “Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be” (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography). With similar conviction, atheist scholar Gerd Lüdemann concludes, “Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable” (The Resurrection of Christ).

Even if they feel very, very strongly about his existence, it’s impossible to definitively prove. Most likely existed? Sure.

And that’s not as important as the story of Jesus. People love a good story. And his story has had quite a big impact.

No mainstream scholar today argues against Jesus’ historical existence. In fact, nearly all New Testament scholars today, many of whom are non-Christians and skeptics, consider not only Christ’s existence but his crucifixion to be “historical bedrock.” Critic John Dominic Crossan writes that “Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be” (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography). With similar conviction, atheist scholar Gerd Lüdemann concludes, “Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable” (The Resurrection of Christ).

Jesus was a man who walked the earth. Why you deny Him is that you fear Him. Why put all this effort into denial of Him, especially when mainstream atheist scholars also agree Jesus existed? Do you think your Wikipedia research shows you the “real” truth that somehow all the big guns missed or are ignoring?

Yes, you have copied and pasted that blurb multiple times. That doesn’t make it any more convincing. Or demonstrate that he definitively was a real person.

I DGAF if he lived or not. Most likely he did.

But people shouldn’t falsely claim he was a real person as 100% fact. We only have circumstantial evidence.

And I didn’t post anything from Wikipedia - there are multiple posters.

We have more evidence that Jesus actually existed as a man that walked the earth than for 99.9% of people who existed in his timeline. So yeah, that’s a big deal.

Historians have not tried to find other people who "walked the earth" over 2,000 years ago the way they've scoured every corner looking for this Jesus guy - and still it's conjecture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

This is a bad argument. Plenty of people died for Julius Caesar or Attila the Hun or Boudica.

You either have faith or you don't. You're not going to have definitive proof of God. Either you believe or you don't.

Actually it’s 5 great arguments, and I noticed you aren’t attempting to refute any of it.

Atheists want proof. Evidence. Facts. Then switch to “it’s faith only, no facts needed” on a whim in their next comment. They can’t make up their minds.

I'm actually not an atheist. But I find this whole "here, I've proved God, checkmate atheists" stuff pretty gross. It cheapens faith, IMO and is usually based on junk history and science. It makes Christians look bad.

DP. How would you respond to a direct request from an atheist asking for “proof,” then. Also, are you Christian?

Why do you care if an atheist asks for proof. Ask them to respect your faith and respect their nonbelief and move on. I'm part of an interfaith family and we've dealt just fine thisnway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

This is a bad argument. Plenty of people died for Julius Caesar or Attila the Hun or Boudica.

You either have faith or you don't. You're not going to have definitive proof of God. Either you believe or you don't.

Actually it’s 5 great arguments, and I noticed you aren’t attempting to refute any of it.

Atheists want proof. Evidence. Facts. Then switch to “it’s faith only, no facts needed” on a whim in their next comment. They can’t make up their minds.

I'm actually not an atheist. But I find this whole "here, I've proved God, checkmate atheists" stuff pretty gross. It cheapens faith, IMO and is usually based on junk history and science. It makes Christians look bad.

DP. How would you respond to a direct request from an atheist asking for “proof,” then. Also, are you Christian?

Why do you care if an atheist asks for proof. Ask them to respect your faith and respect their nonbelief and move on. I'm part of an interfaith family and we've dealt just fine thisnway.

I have heard atheists here say that there is no proof for beliefs that are based completely on faith, like Jesus rose from the dead, etc. People of faith are not expected to provide proof for beliefs that are based strictly on faith - and atheists are well aware of that. People of faith are usually quite proud of their ability to believe things without proof - it's what faith is all about.

Atheists expect proof only of things that are based on science. They don't expect proof of faith-based issues, because they know there can't be any. Jesus is the son of god? His mother was a virgin? These are stories to atheists and matters of faith to Christians.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is “faith” that he existed and “faith” that he was supernatural.

Anything supernatural requires faith, because there can be no scientific proof. Belief in Santa Claus and fairies and God requires faith. When people grow up - and even when they are older children - they no longer believe in Santa or fairies, but some of them maintain their belief in God. This is in part because God promises much more (eternal life) than Santa or fairies (occasional gifts, that keep coming even when belief ends).

How is Jesus different from faries?


Non-biblical sources confirm Jesus at least died.

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century who wrote a history of Judaism around AD 93. In his history he twice mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. Additionally, as former atheist Lee Strobel writes, "we not only have multiple, early accounts of Jesus’ death in the New Testament, but we’ve also got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution. No wonder the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded: 'Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted.'" One thing that is agreed upon is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the first century.

The news of Jesus' resurrection spread too quickly to be a legend.

Again from Lee Strobel, "Famed classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said it took more than two generations in the ancient world for legends to develop and wipe out a solid core of historical truth." A good example of this the legend of King Arthur, an English king who supposedly lived around AD 500. The first stories of King Arthur didn’t appear until 300 or 400 years after he supposedly lived, long enough for anyone who could have contradicted the legend to die off. So if the stories of Jesus rising from the dead would have appeared 100 years or more after the resurrection took place, enough time would have passed so that church fathers could rewrite history. But the letter Paul wrote to Corinth (known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians) is dated to the 50s AD, a mere twenty years after the resurrection. 1 Corinthians makes definitive claims about the resurrection, while countless people who could have disproven it would have still been alive. Jesus' resurrection was not a legend claimed centuries later but an eyewitness account documented within the lifetime of everyone who experienced it.

The tomb of Jesus was empty.

The easiest way to disprove the resurrection of Jesus would be to produce a body, but no one ever did. Even the opponents of early Christianity, the Jewish leaders who had so much to lose if Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, could not point to a body. An eyewitness account states, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The body of Jesus was never produced by the opponents of early Christianity, either the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

We have eyewitness accounts of people seeing Jesus alive after His death.

Again from former atheist and now Christian apologist Lee Strobel, "While we only have one or two sources for much of what we know from ancient history, we have nine ancient sources –inside and outside the New Testament – confirming the testimony of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus." One thing that is undeniable is that numerous people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, including over 500 people at one time. A mass hallucination like that is not possible. Reports of multiple people hallucinating (either from drugs or extreme stress) have been documented, but in every case each person claimed to have seen something completely different. You do not have a mass of people all hallucinating about the exact same thing, yet hundreds and hundreds of people all claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

The earliest disciples died for their claim of a resurrected Jesus.

If the resurrection of Jesus was a hoax, the disciples would have been the ones to make it up. They would have known (even if no one else did) that the whole thing was a lie. And yet they allowed themselves to be arrested, tried, tortured and executed for their claims about the resurrection. And think about it from what you know about human nature: you'll die for the truth. You'll die for a lie that you believe to be the truth. But you won't die for a lie that you know is a lie. If it was a lie, the disciples would have been the ones to create it and spread it. And yet they endured untold suffering and pain for their claim, and so did hundreds of other eyewitnesses who suffered at the hands of early Jewish and Roman persecution. Their lives and ultimate deaths are perhaps the greatest testimony to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/5-evidences-that-the-resurrection-of-jesus-is-not-a-fairy-tale.aspx

Meanwhile: who has died for faries? Or Santa Claus?

This is a bad argument. Plenty of people died for Julius Caesar or Attila the Hun or Boudica.

You either have faith or you don't. You're not going to have definitive proof of God. Either you believe or you don't.

Actually it’s 5 great arguments, and I noticed you aren’t attempting to refute any of it.

Atheists want proof. Evidence. Facts. Then switch to “it’s faith only, no facts needed” on a whim in their next comment. They can’t make up their minds.

I'm actually not an atheist. But I find this whole "here, I've proved God, checkmate atheists" stuff pretty gross. It cheapens faith, IMO and is usually based on junk history and science. It makes Christians look bad.

DP. How would you respond to a direct request from an atheist asking for “proof,” then. Also, are you Christian?

Why do you care if an atheist asks for proof. Ask them to respect your faith and respect their nonbelief and move on. I'm part of an interfaith family and we've dealt just fine thisnway.

I have heard atheists here say that there is no proof for beliefs that are based completely on faith, like Jesus rose from the dead, etc. People of faith are not expected to provide proof for beliefs that are based strictly on faith - and atheists are well aware of that. People of faith are usually quite proud of their ability to believe things without proof - it's what faith is all about.

Atheists expect proof only of things that are based on science. They don't expect proof of faith-based issues, because they know there can't be any. Jesus is the son of god? His mother was a virgin? These are stories to atheists and matters of faith to Christians.

Okay but who cares if someone doesn't share your beliefs?

Don't tell people they're going to hell. Don't mock other people's beliefs. Basically don't be rude, don't force your belief or non belief in anyone else and everyone gets along fine.