Do you believe Alexander the Great existed? Then his existence must be falsifiable.
By a historical example that claimed to see Jesus body or showing that it’s likely Christianity started as a hoax.
Do you believe Alexander the Great existed? Then his existence must be falsifiable.
By a historical example that claimed to see Jesus body or showing that it’s likely Christianity started as a hoax.
Well, there’s a wealth of evidence that indicates the existence of a historical Alexander. If you doubt his existence, you have writings, cross-references with other historical events, illustrations on pottery, statues, twenty cities founded by and named after him. It’s understandable; he was royal and the leader of a nation and an army. Also, whilst history tends to get written by the winners, there is no significant attempt at deification (other than his father Philip being cuckolded by Zeus but anyone famous in ancient Greece seems liable to run a similar risk).
Do you think it reasonable for a sceptic such as myself to allow that a historical Jesus could have existed? It isn’t an issue for me. It’s the supernatural stuff I strongly doubt.
Fallacious conclusion.
So @thoughtful, are you really this bad at logic, or are you trolling again?
Bodies decay to the point that they are unrecognisable quite quickly.
How many records of the disposition of the bodies of executed criminals do you think survive for thousands of years?
Nobody who wasn’t a Christian cared at the time what happened to his body. Those who were Christians thought they already had the answer.
Obscure ancient hoaxes would generally be almost impossible to disprove.
I don’t necessarily disagree with many of your substantive points, and I say that as a Christian, but please try to be kind and respectful
That was in direct response to this:
(My emphasis)
No, the point is that since it renders inconsistent answers, it is not a method that should be recommended to anybody. But you already know that.
The one we have in the Bible has.
So you think the Jews at the time were thrilled with this Christian cult that claimed Jesus was Messiah? They just ignored it? For how long?
I agree. You were not being unkind and disrespectful unless I wasn’t either.
It is obvious we both find each other’s beliefs to be ridiculous.
I think it is well-known fact by now that the idea that Christianity was some kind of hoax is completely baseless. In fact, I believe the proofs by theologians in the past 20 years on this very matter are well-with reach of anyone who wants to know the truth. They have made us all - skeptics and believers both - fully informed that Christianity can in no wise be taken as a first-century hoax that somehow caught-hold anyway and persisted. Only the willfully ignorant could still take that failed position.
Is belief or unbelief more reasonable?
The question is suspiciously crafted for bias. To maintain a level playing field, belief and unbelief should not appear together in this discussion. Rather, either-or term should be chosen. Let’s choose “belief”. Now the question becomes, “Is your belief or my belief more reasonable”.
Now both sides equally should have to prove out their beliefs rather than giving undue preference to the unbeliever to sit idly by and force the believer to do all the proving.
I believe God is. You believe God is not.
I must offer proofs of God’s existence. You must offer proofs that God does not exist.
Now the work can begin from both views on an even-handed level.
Please share these “proofs”
This discussion was exactly my intention. However, I figured the atheist would object to the word “belief” to describe his unbelief. So I chose the latter. Perhaps that sowed confusion but I think the answers were still revealing.
Oh sorry. My response was not directed at you. I thought the moderators posed this question. I agree the answers were revealing. And isn’t it odd that the skeptic always gets to hang loose and never defend his beliefs while making our set of beliefs the ones that need to be proved.
You go first.
Ok, I admit that was a one-liner. So let me say it this way. Christianity is the largest worldwide religion today. It has not only persisted for 2000 years but has exploded. In light of these facts, can you offer any proofs of your own that Christianity was a first-century hoax?
The atheist postition (often) is this is a single proposition and it’s negative - not two propositions. Positive proposition are preferred because you can’t prove a negative.
That atheists make other positive propositions, just not ones about gods.
Read the post I was responding to!
Do you agree then it’s begging the question? If someone has a really good explanation why not, then I’d be interested. So far I haven’t been satisfied that any evidence has been given why it isn’t a logical fallacy.
Ahh. So all we would need is another major world religion (so that although only a few partial copies survive from within a century or two of the event, we get thousands of copies a millenium later) to develop, one that was in existence at the time, but one that counts among its central dogma, that Jesus wasn’t resurrected.
To count this as a reasonable example of Falsifiability would be … (oh @swamidass doesn’t want me to use your r-word any more) … so … ridibundal?
It would have taken a few years (decades?) for Christians to get really annoying, by which time the facts would have gotten sufficiently fuzzy for a “hoax” to become unprovable.
Well the book of Acts purports to show that Christians were annoying right away, one of them was stoned by the Jews, so one could prove that to be a later book than others or a forgery of some kind.
Also Paul claimed Christians were annoying right away as well and as a good Jewish scholar he wanted to take down the cult and was hauling them off to prison. But then he was converted and became a Christian preacher to the Gentiles. This is also in the book of Acts, but some references also in other epistles. So a person could see if those Pauline references were late or interpolations.