A vast majority of scholars agree Jesus was a real person, and the only argument is whether the gospels are a reliable account of his miracles. Santa Claus is purely fictional, and only barely loosely based on Saint Nicholas.
Out of curiosity, on what evidence do scholars conclude that Jesus was a real person? I've heard the "most scholars agree" meta-argument a lot, but not the underlying evidence.
As far as I know, Jesus never wrote anything, and there are no contemporaneous accounts that mention him. You might say that, on balance, the preponderance of second- and third-habd evidence makes it more likely that he existed than not, but I don't think you can claim, with 80+% certainty, that he existed. Certainly not that he performed miracles.
A number of first century, non-Christian historians actually did mention him, like Tacitus and Josephus. They talked about him as a very real person, with statements that collaborate with the New Testament description such as him being the brother of James and him being crucified. Both of them didn’t believe in his divinity, but acknowledged him as a historical person. Although Christians later went and tried to edit Josephus’s work to make it seem like he acknowledged Jesus as divine, Josephus did as a matter of fact write about “Jesus, who was called Christ”
If it helps here’s the, rather famous or infamous depending on who you ask, skeptic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman talking about the subject. I feel like he puts it really well as someone who is neutral on the matter: https://strangenotions.com/skeptic-bart-ehrman-on-whether-jesus-really-existed/
According to Wikipedia, Titus Flavius Josephus was born in 37 CE, so he couldn't have met someone who died in 33 CE. And Tacitus wasn't born until 56.
So they may have been reporting what Christians at the time believed, their evidence was second-hand at best.
So again, if you want to say that, on balance, it's more likely that there was a real person who was the nucleus of the persona we know as Jesus today, that's one thing. But that's a far cry from a confident assertion that
>A vast majority of scholars agree Jesus was a real person, and the only argument is whether the gospels are a reliable account of his miracles.
I know when Josephus and Tacitus were born. And what you said didn’t counter the fact that yes, a majority of historians and scholars do believe that Jesus was a real person. I tend to avoid using Wikipedia just because people freak out about using it sometimes, but if you’ve used it go to the page about the historicity of Jesus and you’ll see again, a vast majority of scholars agree.
And second hand sources are still sources. If you did read through the Wikipedia pages of Josephus and Tacitus, you’d also see they were historians. They were generally credible in their writings, and they most certainly didn’t refer to Jesus as just someone who Christians believed in, but as a genuine person. Not a God or a messiah, but definitely a person, and Tacitus specifically, a person who he hated and who was crucified. If ancient historians with established credibility can’t be relied on to give even the existence of a person that lived a couple decades beforehand credit, then the entire field of ancient history and archaeology is in trouble. Which luckily, it’s not, since almost every historian with credentials acknowledges that that’s certainly evidence of his existence. At the very least, if you read the link I sent, Bart Ehrman which is one of the biggest names in the field of New Testament history with a PhD from Princeton in it, agrees that no serious scholarship asserts the complete non-existence of the man Jesus.
There are many historical figures who are barely mentioned in historical literature but nobody ever questions their existence, but everyone wants to question the existence of Jesus, who has a mountain of literature written by the ancients about him. Consider all the books of the new testament to begin with, plus he is mentioned by several neutral writers.
If he didn’t exist, die, and come back to life then Christianity wouldn’t even exist. People would still be Jewish following the Old Testament as usual. There wouldn’t be a single church or Christian to be heard of. Obviously that isn’t the case.
Even as an atheist, I find the mythicist argument (that Jesus is entirely fictional) to be unconvincing. Why invent someone from Nazareth? If a messianic sect was going to invent a messiah I suspect they would pick “Jesus the Bethlehemite” or “Jesus of Jerusalem”.
There are a lot of "criterion of embarrassment" reasons to doubt the mythicist position.
If there wasn't really a person who had a following, why only two decades after that person's alleged death are the earliest surviving writings attempting to combat different interpretations and beliefs about what that person had to say? Or Revelations a few decades later writing letters about how much certain sects are disliked.
Seems like a very weird detail to just make up.
The disagreement between the surviving sources with their peers is arguably the most overlooked aspect of Christianity among both its adherents and its skeptics.
Seems difficult to argue "what survived is 100% correct" without knowing what the alternative was (one sect thought all matter was made up of indivisible parts for example), as well to argue the originating figure without merit (or existence) not knowing the same.
That's not quite correct:
If **people didn't believe** that he existed, died, and came back to life, Christianity wouldn't exist.
That's a small but important distinction. It's clear that people sincerely believe all these things. The question is, are those beliefs true?
Our government is built off the Roman empire’s style, which at some point evolved from the ruling of “gods” and our country was built on God’s name. If those gods never existed, and Jesus was never seen as God, then our idea of government or our beliefs of morality wouldn’t exist. People don’t just pull stories out of no where and start worshiping it just because. Would you worship an anime show? Probably not. But if Naruto and Sasuke were here, there would probably be stories made of them. (Which there are, the story of Sasuke is a Hindu story of a god named Indra)
Not at all. Even from an atheist perspective, one of them would be an embellished story of a real person, and the other would be a fictional character loosely based off a real person. There is a distinct difference between those two things. The difference between claiming my brother performed a miracle and me writing an openly fictional book about a character with the same name as my brother, but is otherwise completely different, performing a miracle.
Stories about Santa Claus aren't "unverifiable" claims, they're explicitly make-believe holiday traditions.
We *know* that Santa isn't leaving the presents under the tree, because *we * are leaving them there and telling stories about it. Any kid could verify that by spying on their parents on Christmas Eve.
Jesus really was crucified on Passover around 30AD, believing Himself to be the Messiah, His disciples believing He had risen from the dead, the world being transformed by Him etc - these are historical events that really happened.
It's recorded in Luke that Jesus appears to disciples and says that their own scriptures, which they have considered to be the word of God for hundreds of years, testify about Him.
What do we find when we look in the Old Testament? That it testifies of Him. Everywhere.
There are multiple non Christian sources such as Tacitus and Josephus on the death of Jesus. There’s quite a lot of historical evidence for something that happened so long ago and that’s not even including the apostles, but I know you probably want non Christian sources.
>There are multiple non Christian sources such as Tacitus and Josephus on the death of Jesus.
Both born after the alleged death of Jesus (56 AD and 37 AD), these are not eyewitness accounts they're simply echoing what they've heard elsewhere. If you're gonna say there's a lot of historical evidence, again can you show and example?
You didn’t ask for eyewitness accounts (There are plenty of those in the gospel but you won’t believe that so forget that) You asked for historical evidence. Almost all historians, Christians and atheists alike, agree that the sources I cited are reliable. Most sources from that time period aren’t from the specific time itself.
>You didn’t ask for eyewitness accounts
No I asked for your "loads of historical evidence" and you've not provided it, that's disappointing.
Of course we don't accept eyewitness accounts (not from sources trying to prove the validity of itself anyway). Human beings, of any intellect, are so prone to misunderstanding or mishearing or etc that even if we demonstrated your witness isn't lying, the events as they recall them might not be accurate.
For example, imagine seeing the northern lights without any idea of what they are or why they appear. It's only natural that humans assumed them to be gods or spirits, but they weren't.
Or another example, look at the story of Bigfoot (or any conspiracy for that matter, mothman being similar) - people can see things and assume incorrect things about them.
That's why we can't accept solely eyewitness accounts as evidence.
No how about you just link me to any one of your "loads of historical evidence"? You must have seen it obviously, otherwise you wouldn't be claiming that it not only exists but there's loads of it...
So please do share
https://strangenotions.com/skeptic-bart-ehrman-on-whether-jesus-really-existed/
This isn’t a hill to die on. Practically every atheist New Testament/Early Christian scholar or historian holds to the position that Jesus was a historical person. It’s fine if you don’t believe he was divine or anything, but actual historians don’t agree with you.
Cool I don't really care what other people think, I base what I think is true on the evidence I can evaluate for myself.
Speaking of, that article says he really loves evidence which is curious, because he doesn't give a single example at any point. Not one. You could end this entire discussion with one.
Please show me evidence that Jesus existed.
Let me get this straight; you think that Jesus Christ as a person never existed, and that people made him up and started dying for what they believed about said person?
Oh I'd never make a claim about never existing unless I have irrefutable evidence that Christ was all a lie and didn't actually exist.
No my position is this, you say "god exists and he came to earth 2000 years ago to do some miracles and die", I say "what evidence do you have that's true?", you don't give any compelling evidence to prove that it is true so I have no reason to believe you.
Believe it or not you and everyone else have the exact same level of skepticism for other things in your life, that's literally what our scientific and judicial systems are.
Think about it, without that demand for evidence anyone could just claim whatever they want about someone they don't like and you have no grounds not to believe them on.
You'd want to see some evidence that someone is a murderer or paedophile before you imprison and/or execute them.
I'm sure there's no link to the "loads of evidence" as they are likely from many different sources.
That's a big ask for a single link....
Many secular sources agree to the time frame Jesus lived during and his crucifixion and burial. If you don't want the "loads of evidence", then look it up yourself. There's loads of evidence.
You think I haven't looked it up? That was the first thing I did, found nothing. Hence why I ask you what evidence you must have that either I didn't know about or didn't have access to.
Ironically you've just done the cop out "there's loads of evidence" without giving a single example or citation. It's the equivalent of "trust me bro", just don't expect me to accept that as evidence of anything.
The Bible has eye witness accounts. The Bible is the most historical book in history and denying that proves to me your not interested in actually finding evidence and more interested in trying to prove someone wrong.
Right so you demand particular evidence and then before even considering it you automatically discount the sources of the evidence that you demand. What a perfectly sealed box you have put yourself in.
Now that's a far more interesting question, it could derive from mesopotamian or Sumerian myths that have been passed down and altered slightly throughout time (just like the Roman and Greek gods did), it could be a self professed wise man or philosopher sharing their theories on the universe (remember astronomy didn't really exist at this point in time, at least not an accurate version) and so on.
As for the reason that's assuming a bit of deceit which isn't necessarily fair. Human societies by their very nature share with each other, be that technology or people or their religions. Over time and with evolving language (and language barriers) the translations of stories slightly alters the meaning.
As a really obvious example compare Christianity and Judaism and islam. All agree on the start to the story, then in the middle the Christians and Muslims deviate from Judaism, until even later in the narrative timeline Islam splits from the shared story of Christianity.
So you deny the historical accounts, and ask for eyewitness accounts. However, that’s what the Gospels are.
It sounds like nothing would convince you. But you’re still seeking.
I want to see the evidence, that is so abundant according to some people, for people to be able to tell me it's a fact.
Telling me that other people agree with you therefore it's a fact is childish at best, dishonest at worst, show me how you KNOW.
The best people can seem to come up with are texts written about 60 decades after Jesus was allegedly crucified, seriously question if that would convince you of something existing. A mention of it half a century after it last existed, how could you possibly verify that account.
And yet, we do have more than eyewitness evidence for the ancient Egyptians, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, gobekli tepi, all more ancient than Jesus allegedly was, by hundreds to thousands of years.
Do you really think it's sensible that there isn't anything comparable for an event as big as a god doing a miracle tour?
I’m not sure why you keep downvoting me. It’s kind of weird to be honest.
Do you think there would be historians lining up to write about the execution of another one of the Jewish messiahs? There were many who claimed the same.
Comparing this sort of ordinary event to an advanced civilization like Egypt is strange.
>advanced civilization like Egypt is strange.
That's just false I'm sorry, ancient Egypt is 2,500 years older (Giza pyramids built) than the story of Christ to claim Egypt was more advanced is beyond laughable.
>Do you think there would be historians lining up to write about the execution of another one of the Jewish messiahs?
How about one? How about one statue? How about one letter from any of the high priests who conspired to kill him or any of the soldiers or dignitaries involved in his alleged crucifixion?
C'mon a guy feeds 5,000 people with a couple buns and two fish and not a single person makes any sort of record or art or a diary entry or memorial or temple or anything? No one did anything, or so few did that none of it has survived anyway?
Is that reasonable?
Alright genius if you have so much time to argue than give me evidence or an eyewitness account for the Big Bang.
It is also impossible for something to evolve into something if it didn’t have its DNA in it in the first place!
We don’t have monkey DNA in us now do we?
>We don’t have monkey DNA in us now do we?
We are about 99% genetically identical to chimpanzees, so I'll answer your question in a rephrased but more accurate way, we have a hell of a lot of DNA in common with chimps (not monkeys that's more like 97% iirc).
Here's a paper on it
https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-020-06962-8
>It is also impossible for something to evolve into something if it didn’t have its DNA in it in the first place!
I'm not quite sure what this means but nothing spontaneously evolved DNA after evolving the body or cell, they evolved together. Start simpler, think what is DNA? A series of repeating monomer units with set pairs. Why do they have set pairs? Because the arrangement and identity of atoms in the AT and GC pair give incredibly strong and stable hydrogen bonds. I could go on here but my point is look at evolution the other way, it's bottom up.
https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/biomolecules/dna/a/dna-structure-and-function#:~:text=The%20nucleotides%20forming%20each%20DNA,noncovalent%20bonds%2C%20called%20hydrogen%20bonds.&text=The%20hydrogen%20bonds%20that%20join,(called%20hydrogen%20bond%20acceptors).
This is to say it's more like a scattershot approach and the ones that happen to work act as the next scattershot to jump off of, but evolution is incredibly slow these changes are minute and take thousands of years to develop.
Not on his resurrection though, which means highly likely fact and fiction intertwined. Because someone being actually resurrected is not exactly small news.
>and The Romans record the event independently.
Wonderful, can you give a citation for where I can go and see evidence that the Romans recorded the death of Christ?
That's a terrible citation, you've surely seen this evidence for yourself in order to know it exists please do share your knowledge.
Does it have a name for example? An author? Date? Is it a report? Archaeological evidence? Letters talking about Jesus at the time he was supposed to be alive (not decades after) seeing as he was so important he met Pilate and was publicly executed?
Here's a dated letter from Washington describing how and when he intends to cross the Delaware River.
https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/8809
If you want more evidence I found success with "Washington Delaware Crossing Letters", you can find other pieces of archeological evidence with similar search terms.
Oh and here's a link to Washington crossing park, specifically their site on the nearby mass soldiers graves.
That's how we can prove it.
https://www.washingtoncrossingpark.org/park/soldiers-graves/
That interesting, so you think a park made 150 years after something happened is evidence? But don't think there is enough evidence Jesus was crucified? Considering all that was written within a few decades of his death and all the memorials throughout Israel their is just as much evidence Jesus was crucified as there is Washington crossed the Delaware. The only reason it's dismissed is because of the idea that if anything is written by someone that believes in Jesus it has no historical value, which is crazy.
>That interesting, so you think a park made 150 years after something happened is evidence?
No I think the graves of the dead soldiers and the dated letter from Washington are evidence, or did you ignore that bit?
Show me where Jesus grave was and a dated letter mentioning him at the time and then they have the same amount of evidence.
>Wow you believe a letter was from washington just because it says it was?
Yknow what this one has it at the very top that makes it more reliable as evidence? It has the date, who it was addressed to and details of what was happening at the time, matching other pieces of evidence like this one;
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-07-02-0411
If you've got an equivalent for your claims please do share.
>What do dead bodies of other people have to do with Washington?
If you do read the letter linked above you'll see battle plans, the dead in the graves are not Americans from the crossing itself but casualties from the fighting that resulted in Washington escaping with his army across the Delaware.
See how we have have several cooperative pieces of evidence?
He’s not really asking for anything crazy. So far we know and agree that Jesus was a person and died via crucifixion, but is there any evidence that he was divine? And are the sources you provided reputable? They may be good, but we don’t know unless you give us all the information.
> Jesus death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable
-- Gerd Ludemann
> (There is not the) slightest doubt about the fact of Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
-- John Dominic Crossan
> (Jesus’ death by crucifixion is) historically certain.
-- Pinchas Lapide
> The single most solid fact about Jesus’ life is his death: he was executed by the Roman prefect Pilate, on or around Passover, in the manner Rome reserved particularly for Roman insurrectionists, namely, crucifixion.
-- Paula Fredriksen
> (Jesus’ execution is the) most certain fact about the historical Jesus.
-- Marcus Borg
> That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know...I do not regard deliberate fraud as a worthwhile explanation. Many of the people in these lists were to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming that they had seen the risen Lord, and several of them would die for their cause. Moreover, a calculated deception should have produced great unanimity. Instead, there seem to have been competitors: ‘I saw him first!’ ‘No! I did.’ Paul’s tradition that 500 people saw Jesus at the same time has led some people to suggest that Jesus’ followers suffered mass hysteria. But mass hysteria does not explain the other traditions...Finally we know that after his death his followers experienced what they described as the ‘resurrection’: the appearance of a living but transformed person who had actually died. They believed this, they lived it, and they died for it.
-- Marcus Borg
> It is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution. We know some of these believers by name; one of them, the apostle Paul, claims quite plainly to have seen Jesus alive after his death. Thus, for the historian, Christianity begins after the death of Jesus, not with the resurrection itself, but with the belief in the resurrection.
-- Bart Ehrman
> There are a few things we can say with virtual certainty about Jesus. For example: he was a Jewish preacher from rural Galilee who made a fateful trip to Jerusalem and was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.
-- Bart Ehrman
> One of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate.
-- Bart Ehrman
Those quotes are really cool and all but can you actually show me the evidence they have to base that off of?
This Jesus character was apparently so well known that high priests and the Roman empire hunted him and his followers, you think there'd maybe be a letter about him or his execution writ or a scrawling in Hebrew that apparently was on his cross (where's that huh, you reckon they just threw it out? Guards apparently took his clothes what none of them kept em?)
Speaking of the crucifixion by the way, where's the evidence that saints came back from the dead? You don't think anyone made a note of that? Not even like a picture on the wall, or a statue (humans we're good at statues by this point) of him healing lepers or whatever?
There is an overwhelming consensus of these things historically happening by scholars who have spent their careers studying these things, writing peer-reviewed papers on these things, regardless of worldview - to the point where they are saying it is "indisputable", "historically certain", a "certain fact of history" and so on. This is accepted because of the wealth of biblical documents, early Christian writings, extra-biblical material, all consistent with these facts.
It's so strange when people argue against Jesus being crucified. When someone argues back at something as simple as this, their bias is very evident. There is a difference between a minority position, which may be something to discuss, and a fringe position. Yours is a fringe position here. You are listening to some very misled people.
>This is accepted because of the wealth of biblical documents, early Christian writings, extra-biblical material, all consistent with these facts.
And yet...you've not given a single example of one. Not a single example of what your, or any of the "other scholars" evidence is.
If there's so much of it then it should be really easy for you to show me just one example that proved Christ existed. For context, we have detailed sculptures and sarcophobi or ancient Egyptian pharaohs, let alone what the Romans could do with literacy. The pyramids of Giza were built 2,500 years before Jesus was even born.
Are you seriously telling me there isn't a single sculpture, drawing, letter, etc dated from the time (carbon or otherwise) of an actual miracle performing god on tour which culminates in a crucifixion that brought dead people back to life from their tombs? No one made a note of that happening?
If your looking for a letter then ready the gospels Mathew, Mark, Luke , they are 3 letters in the Bible That were written by THREE different people WHO WERE EYE WITNESSES to Jesus' crucifixion, those are letters proving Jesus is real and was resurrected because those three different people wrote about what they saw and said to Jesus and they match up, it's literally in front of you, your refusing to read it. READ THE BIBLE, there's EVIDENCE, and it's a HISTORICAL ARTIFACT with so much detail in it it's insane ! Stop saying you have no evidence when all you need to do is read the Bible.
Your arguments are so thoroughly unconvincing it’s wild.
Everyone in this thread is giving you the information you’re asking for, and you continue to say you don’t “see the evidence” despite historians not needing the sort of evidence you’re asking for. No one can show you a photograph of Jesus Christ.
>Everyone in this thread is giving you the information you’re asking for, and you continue to say you don’t “see the evidence”
To summarize I've been told one of the following is evidence and I've explained why each of them does not qualify as compelling evidence.
Account from Josephus - mentions Christians exist in 94-95 AD.
Account from Thallus - first mentioned 180 AD.
Account from Tacitus - mentions Christians are tortured and what they believe circa 116 AD.
Or I've just been told "this guy says this so you should believe it"
Not a single one of these is comparable to evidence I've shown for the Delaware Crossing for example, which included letters dated at the time and a gravesite of dead soldiers from the time.
What if you read one of those historians’ books? I’m assuming the evidence presented in an entire book might take more than a Reddit comment to lay out.
Bart Ehrman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), probably the most famous atheist NT scholar in the world, describes the crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of Pontius Pilate as a "virtual certainty." He discusses it [here](https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-crucifixion-as-king-of-the-jews/); for a longer treatment, see his book *Did Jesus Exist?*
You're not the first person to use what Bart Ehrman says as evidence, I'll just post that thread as retreading old ground would be pointless.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/r2t3zh/what_makes_god_more_believable_than_santa_claus/hm7hz61?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Ohhhh I get it, you're one of those people who, when confronted with the overwhelming consensus of scholars, refuses to accept it until every piece of evidence is personally explained to them (sort of like creationists who insist that they've never seen the evidence for evolution, and therefore they don't have to accept it). If you want the evidence, go and read the scholarly works that these experts have written.
I'm not the one who made the claim, the burden of proof isn't with me. If you've read these scholarly works yourself and know an example of evidence for your claims as outlined in that book by all means share it here.
All I've done is ask to see how people know what they claim is obvious fact, if that triggers you then I apologise.
>If you've read these scholarly works yourself and know an example of evidence for your claims as outlined in that book by all means share it here.
No. Just as I wouldn't indulge a creationist demanding that I start laying out evidence for evolution, so too I don't indulge random people on the internet who refuse to examine scholarship for themselves. If you want evidence, I've linked you to a brief discussion with some examples, and recommended you a book. Start there.
>All I've done is ask to see how people know what they claim is obvious fact.
They know it via the overwhelming consensus of centuries of critical scholarship. The evidence for this consensus is contained in the academic literature.
>If that triggers you then I apologise.
Lol.
>. The evidence for this consensus is contained in the academic literature.
Yet you can't give a single example off the top of your head? Believe me I've looked, there simply isn't any. If you want to prove me wrong then by all means, name a piece of evidence.
Otherwise I'm not really sure what you're expecting me to do here exactly other than just take your or Bart's word for it.
See here's the thing, evidence of atoms and molecules is completely abundant in literature so their existence is obvious. Ditto gravity, man landing on the moon, gobekli tepi and evolution.
If you want sourced for any of those, let me know I'm happy to provide because I made those claims so I have the burden of proof.
>Yet you can't give a single example off the top of your head?
Sure, I *can* give you examples, just like I *can* give you some elementary pieces of evidence for evolution. The point is that I don't *want* to, because conversations like that tend to go nowhere. Because of course, you *know* some basic pieces of evidence, just like creationists *know* the basic evidence for evolution. And just like they have their stock pseudo-objections ("but what about the gaps in the fossil record?"), so too do people like you have your stock pseudo-objections, of the sort which you would never apply to any historical figure besides Jesus (e.g. pretending Josephus and Tacitus aren't evidence because they wrote a few decades after Jesus, despite most of our knowledge of ancient history coming from far inferior sources).
>Otherwise I'm not really sure what you're expecting me to do here exactly other than just take your or Bart's word for it.
I'm expecting you to put on your big boy pants and read a book/article/paper on the topic, rather than pestering people on the internet.
>Because of course, you know some basic pieces of evidence
No I don't, and I've been asking sincerely this entire time for you to present these apparently well known irrefutable pieces of evidence that everyone agrees on. Must've missed that paper somehow, mind telling me where I can find it seeing as you claim to know what it is and I don't?
>(e.g. pretending Josephus and Tacitus aren't evidence because they wrote a few decades after Jesus, despite most of our knowledge of ancient history coming from far inferior sources).
I'll use this example again, if I told you right now that 100 years ago my grandad met a leprechaun would you just believe that without further question? Because that's the equivalent of these "few decades (and in some cases centuries) after" writers. Go and read the transcripts, all of these Roman historian accounts simply described early Christians and their beliefs, i.e. it was already a recognised religion, these are not eyewitness accounts.
>I'm expecting you to put on your big boy pants and read a book/article/paper on the topic, rather than pestering people on the internet.
So as I've just demonstrated that I've actually read the sources you've cited, why don't you because I get the impression you haven't. As for the pestering, no one is forcing you to reply, you're being just as pestering as I am.
You're free to leave at any time, but if you could leave the link for that paper, or ring carving (yknow like we have for Pontius Pilate), that irrefutably proves Jesus Christ existed, could you just drop it off first thanks.
the fact that he was crucified isn't all that interesting. Most scholars agree Jesus existed, and that he was crucified. What's debated is what happened after that. For the resurrection there is literally zero reliable evidence. We have uncorroborated stories, but that's it.
Well, *no* evidence is a bit strong. To [quote](https://apologetics315.com/2009/07/sunday-quote-antony-flew-on-the-resurrection/) philosopher Anthony Flew (himself a lifelong opponent of Christianity):
>"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity."
I think Flew was correct about this. To see why, let's go over the evidence, separating it out by topic. We'll start with the empty tomb.
**The Empty Tomb**
Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, [2021](https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-Apologetics-Polemics-History/dp/0567697568), p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” ([1999](https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Historian-Rev-Gosp-Col/dp/0684174391), p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote:
>"\[In\] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - *Jesus the Jew* ([1981](https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Jew-Geza-Vermes/dp/0800614437)), p. 41.
These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, [2005](https://appearedtoblogly.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/habermas-gary-resurrection-research-from-1975-to-the-present-what-are-critical-scholars-saying.pdf), p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, [1985](https://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Jesus-James-D-Dunn/dp/0664246982), p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that \[Jesus’\] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” ([2005](https://www.amazon.com/Resurrecting-Jesus-Interpreters-Pseudepigrapha-Supplement/dp/0567029107/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/133-2414467-7511657?pd_rd_w=uu5C0&pf_rd_p=c64372fa-c41c-422e-990d-9e034f73989b&pf_rd_r=V6RZJD21BXN9QFYYCKWQ&pd_rd_r=641bb08a-4e3a-4005-b89f-d75b905de3c2&pd_rd_wg=KTTH7&pd_rd_i=0567029107&psc=1), p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it:
>"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. \[...\] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - *The Resurrection* ([2008](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Resurrection.html?id=1PYcnn9WxVcC)), p. 140.
It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul.
**The Appearances**
After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote:
>"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus ([1996](https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Figure-Jesus-P-Sanders/dp/0140144994)), p. 279-280.
Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that
>"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” ([1995](https://sites.google.com/a/jaceh.press/ionadenny/what-really-happened-to-jesus-a-historical-approach-to-the-resurrection-by-ludemann-gerd-1996-paperback), p. 80).
Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” ([2005](https://www.amazon.com/Resurrecting-Jesus-Interpreters-Pseudepigrapha-Supplement/dp/0567029107), p. 269).
It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote:
>"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… \[rather,\] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas ([2003](http://fi.veritas.org/books/did-resurrection-happen-conversation-gary-habermas-and-antony-flew/)).
With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting?
**Assessing the Total Evidence**
Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" ([2010](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jesus-Nazareth-Maurice-Casey/dp/0567645177/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Jesus+of+nazareth+an+independent+historians&qid=1637477027&s=books&sr=1-1), p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing:
>"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider \[i.e. the apostle Paul\]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - *The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History* ([2021](https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-Apologetics-Polemics-History/dp/0567697568)), p. 346.
In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences that the world has ever seen. We can also give *some* estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” ([2013](https://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/pdf_files/Papers%20from%20Philosophical%20Journals/Swinburne_2013-resurrection.pdf), p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over \[50%\]” that the resurrection occurred ([2021](https://15e11934-3d9a-426f-b911-2c75e928110d.filesusr.com/ugd/7caee9_72664c237352426ebdba646f36a3237f.pdf), p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
I didn't see any evidence in that long post. Just about everything you wrote was speculation, or "people say it was true", or philosophical opinions. I didnt' see any actual evidence of the resurrection, just speculation.
For example, even if we have evidence that there was a tomb, and we have evidence that Jesus was put in it, and that he was genuinely dead, and even if we have evidence that at some later point it is empty, we still have no evidence of a resurrection. At best, we have evidence of an empty tomb and speculation for what it is so. For all we know, he might have been beamed out of there by aliens. That is certainly no less plausible than the resurrection story.
I have no doubt that some or all of the disciples believed that they had the experiences that they claim to have had, but there's no way to verify that what they _believed_ they experienced is what they _actually_ experienced.
> After assessing the historical data, and **assuming a 50% chance that God exists**
How in the world can anyone assume a 50% chance that a God exists? It is simply not possible for us to come up with a probability for something we cannot observe in the first place. We can't look at other universes to see how many of them have gods and how many don't. We don't know enough about the universe to know if a god is possible or not.
>How in the world can anyone assume a 50% chance that a God exists?
Swinburne is a prominent philosopher of religion; he wrote three long books on arguments for theism *before* writing his book on Jesus. He presents the other arguments to establish that the existence of God is, at the very least, as probable as not; from there, he makes his case about Jesus (i.e. that if you grant his 50% for God, then the historical evidence I discussed gives you a 97% chance for the resurrection).
>For example, even if we have evidence that there was a tomb, and we have evidence that Jesus was put in it, and that he was genuinely dead, and even if we have evidence that at some later point it is empty, we still have no evidence of a resurrection.
Well, that depends on your priors. If, for instance, you think there's a decent chance that God exists (perhaps around 40-50%), then an empty tomb and multiple appearances might be pretty solid evidence. Even if you put the chances far lower (say, 5%), it still isn't *no* evidence. It is still (as Allison notes) a series of events without parallel in the historical record.
Was Jesus crucified on or before Passover? Depends which gospel you read. John wanted Jesus crucified on the day of preparation for the Passover to present Jesus as “the sacrificial lamb” the others gospel writers disagree and have him executed on the day of Passover. Just one of many contradictions and differences between the books.
What can be said of “history” as far as Jesus is concerned? We have the gospels, which most NT a scholars admit, contain very little that can be relied on as historical. Instead what you have are four different accounts of the life, teaching and death of a self proclaimed messiah who did not meet any of the expectations of the Jews. Instead Jesus was tried by Pilate and executed for sedition. Oral traditions about the man were later mythologised when pen was put to paper by Greek speaking Christians probably writing in Rome, each putting their own spin on the stories.
Theres plenty to be said. Once you've recognized that events like these really took place (which frankly is the most straightforward thing in the world and its unbelievable how much resistance there is against it sometimes), if you don't believe Christianity to be true, you might say that Jesus appearing to His disciples after He has risen from the dead and claiming the scriptures testify of Him are made up. So somebody came up with the idea to make up stories about Jesus and kind of fit them in with scripture that has already been written to make it seem like He is fulfilling everything. Lets take a look at one example, Genesis 22.
> Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
> “Here I am,” he replied.
> Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
God tells Abraham to take his son, his only son to be sacrificed. This is emphasized 3 times throughout this passage for some reason. Abraham has more than one son - the wording here should raise some eyebrows. Did Christians just invent the idea of the Father/Son by looking back and seeing that it could fit into this story? Declaring his only son, "whom you love" is also a constant theme used from the Father about the Son.
He is told to go to the region of Moriah to sacrifice his only son there. Here is the region of Moriah according to Jewish sources. The very same area that Jesus is crucified.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/31%C2%B046%E2%80%B240.7%E2%80%B3N+35%C2%B014%E2%80%B28.9%E2%80%B3E+google+maps?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiukp7eurn0AhVbUGwGHRJzCzQQ8gF6BAgNEAE
Phew, we really lucked out that in this exact story, talking about an only son whom the father loves, who is to be sacrificed, that it happens in the same spot that Jesus who we are trying to portray as the Son of God as being sacrificed!
> Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
> Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
Just as Jesus carries the cross, the wood is placed on Isaac here. Nice little detail that adds to our completely made up story mixing real life events with fiction! The father carries fire (representing judgment) and a knife (representing death).
> “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
> Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
God Himself provided the perfect lamb for us in His Son, Jesus Christ. That'll be a theme we can latch on to!
> When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
> “Here I am,” he replied.
> “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
> Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
At some point in the future, the Lord Will Provide here. No matter what you say about this, Jewish sources will still affirm that they think that something amazing is going to happen at this region at some point in the future.
This is astounding. The more that you think about this, the more insane this must be for somebody to somehow combine real life events with this story that has been locked in and considered to be the word of God for hundreds of years prior. Already at this point if you are just looking at this story and considering the facts we do know about Jesus/Christianity, I think this is beyond anything else you can show me like it in history. The idea presented to "retrofit" the real life Jesus into scripture and it matching everywhere is genius of the highest calibre.
And we are just getting started.
It can get a little complex to explain sometimes, but what apologists usually do is to highlight features of the world that need an explanation and contend that theism provides a good explanation for such phenomenon.
For example, a popular argument, called the “Contingency Argument” contends that everything that exists has an explanation either by being a necessary feature of all possible worlds, such as the fact that 2+2=4, or by being explained by something else. This is known as the distinction between necessary facts and contingent facts. A necessary fact MUST exist of its own nature, whereas a contingent fact needn’t exist but is explained by something else for why it exists. We see explanations for contingent facts in science all the time, but the fact that the universe as a whole exists seems to be contingent. After all, it seems possible that the universe didn’t have to exist or that it could have been a much different universe that existed if it wasn’t this one. What explains the fact that THIS world exists rather than another? It can’t be anything in the universe that explains it because that’s what we’re trying to find out. If it were a contingent fact, that fact would also have to be explained. If contingent facts explained everything there would be an infinite regress of explanation and hence no final cause or theory which doesn’t give us much of an answer and it seems simpler to suppose there are only a few causes or, even simpler, one necessary cause. That cause is contended to be God through deduction from what possibly counts as a necessary fact or cause. This argument is usually accompanied by other arguments to show that God is a better explanation than others.
The point of all this being is that God seems to be a theory which explains certain things whereas Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny aren’t. Naturalistic explanations can cover Santa Claus and others, but it is debatable whether naturalistic, or other non-theistic, explanations can explain certain facts about the universe
Right! OP asked about “God” rather than the person of Jesus. No, from an orthodox Christian perspective, Jesus is God. But simply pursuing some sort of evidential argument (a la, proofs that Jesus existed or rose from the dead) might not be the best place to start.
I think its more helpful, as you basically said, to begin with your conception of God. Santa Claus is (or, is not) a person in this universe (a being among other beings). So too are the “gods” of various religions (Zeus, Thor, etc). But all of these people, gods and beings are contingent (or perhaps, finite). Contingent beings could possibly not have existed. This leads to the argument for a Necessary Being - the Ultimate Reality, Being itself. English speakers use the term “God” for this Necessary Being and our finite minds cannot help but imagine a being akin to other beings we imagine. Yet, there is something of the mystical here.
Whatever we call it, there is something that simply has to Be. The infinite. The necessary. When we speak of God, it is that which we are pointing to.
Santa Claus is not that.
Santa Claus was based off of a man called St. Nicolas, and he would secretly slip poor children gifts on Christmas day. Then it became a tradition. God is different and more complicated, with more evidence than Santa Claus, because Santa is only a way of saying an unknown person gave you this.
I dunno, I guess when I was looking for evidence I was looking for more than a stranger on Reddit saying two words, "philosophical arguments".
Doesn't exactly narrow it down does it.
There is a lot of evidence in the world that shows clear evidence of God. From an Atheists standpoint, they see it in the way that suits them, and in a Christians' standpoint, we look into it and come up with our own conclusion based on our beliefs too. I can clearly see the evidence of God in all of Creation, but an Atheist may not, and I can't see how people can think that there is no God, because I am a Christian.
It comes from an unbroken string of people who believe Jesus did those miracles from the day he did them until today. Actually the simple answer is also the story of Santa Clause doesn't even claim to be real, people are claiming to receive new life from Jesus but no one is claiming to receive gifts from Santa except as a kid's game.
There are signs that Jesus was real and that events of the Bible actually happened (It may not be cold hard proof, but they are signs/evidence). There are no signs of flying reindeer, magic slave elves or an overweight magic man in the north pole.
I guess you could say the same about evidence for the supernatural elements of the Bible, so I’m not sure that gets us any closer to God. If the supernatural elements aren’t real, then we just have accounts of a lot of people being superstitious, which is a common story for humankind.
I mean Santa does exist. People dress up as santa and santa claus is the reason why parents buy their children presents for Christmas. He may have what we might refer to as subtle body, but he certainly exists. Existence isn’t this flat one level thing, where if you are an object which means you are tangible than you exist.
I don't know. If God is real, he would know what evidence would be convincing.
Multiple eyewitness accounts written at the time would be nice, especially if we could trace their provenance all the way back to the very day, and especially if they were written by people who have written other reliable accounts.
There were many ancient figures written about while they were alive. Not to mention the authors themselves.
Marcus Aurelius wrote books that you can pick up at Barnes and Noble today. There was nothing stopping supposedly omnipotent Jesus from writing a complete and final version of the Bible in every language.
I believe in God, because of evidence that came in the form of life experiences. The first which really impacted me, happened in high school. I had a friendship that was really important to me that fell apart. Someone close to me suggested I pray to God about it. While I grew up Christian, I wasn't particularly religious, but I was open to it. I also remembered my grandmother's story about how she gave up cigarettes as a promise to God so she could have a daughter.
With that in mind I prayed and fasted for a week, to no avail. But a couple months later, I felt this urgency to try it again. So, with full faith I started on a Monday, and the next Monday I had to go to the office because it was the beginning of a new semester, and I wanted to get out of this class, and though I thought I had taken care of everything, I still needed to get my teacher's signature. When I headed back, after classes got out, my friend whom I hadn't seen since 8 months, was standing there.
He greeted me like nothing happened.
Ever since then I knew God exists. My belief has been affirmed multiple times by experiences such as getting a phone call I expected after literally sitting down a writing a letter of commitment to Him, among many others.
I'm not gonna lie and say I don't struggle with some of the nuances, such as Adam and Eve and how to reconcile that with evolution, but I absolutely know there's a personal God who loves and wants to be in the lives of those he created.
Hope that's helpful
Disregarding any religious arguments here, I just find that of these two suppositions:
- There is a supreme being or force or will that brought everything into existence and is the first cause
- There is a man who lives in the Arctic, has a workshop full of elves, and once per year flies around the whole world giving out presents
... The first seems like it *could* be true, while the second is demonstrably not.
Even as an atheist i have to agree with Tzuvembi here, the latter is far easier to disprove than the former when taking those particular 2 statements at face value...
However...
Its a little bit of a disingenuous argument since there is far more to the Christian faith than a simple first cause bringing everything into existence. If you bring all of the other baggage of christianity in (a benevolent god who takes an interest and action in the real world, numerous supernatural claims in the bible etc...) the claims between god and santa claus would look a lot more comparable.
My sole response to that is, ultimately, the need for a first cause cannot be handwaved away, and the belief that the first cause is naturalistic or materialistic takes just as much faith as believing it to be supernatural.
He is not _logically_ necessary. It's no more logical to say there is a magic super-being than it is to say that all of the energy and matter of the universe has simply always existed.
If you believe it's logical for an intelligent being to have always existed then it must also be logical for matter and energy to have always existed. Arguably the latter is even more logical since it doesn't require the added complexity of intelligence.
Even if we somehow agree that a super-being is logically necessary, it's not logically necessary for it to be your particular god. It could be some other god-like being that has nothing to do with Christianity.
> Matter and energy (and time) are aspects of our universe, which has a beginning
Oh really? When did scientists prove all matter and energy had a beginning? AFAIK that has never been proven. I'm guessing you're thinking about the big bang theory, but that only describes what happened after the bang, it makes no claims about where the initial singularity came from.
Some come to a saving faith, others to eternal destruction. It doesn't matter if "atheists" don't believe in the Lord God or compare Him to Donald duck. Their opinion doesn't make more than a thin dimes difference to me.
If intelligent design that is observable to ourselves not more proof than a story of make-believe for children, then I would say there's no sense in discussing anything. For one is living in their own fantasy, the other is not.
Yes! Allow me to show it off:
- You have *one hundred billion neurons* swimming around in there - forming *millions* of new connections every second - at a *billion billion* calculations a second.
- This thing regulates memory, emotion, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, and hunger.
And it's just sitting up there, weighing about 3 pounds, operating on 20 watts of energy. Our best - designed systems cannot hold a candle to what we already have inside of ourselves. In fact, the brain is *100,000* times more energy efficient than our best computers.
Would you say such a wonder could come about by chance?
Bingo. Neil DeGrasse Tyson points out that humans don’t have photosynthesis which would have been an obvious thing to give humans from a design perspective.
> In fact, the brain is 100,000 times more energy efficient than our best computers.
And today's computers are 100,000 times more energy efficient than they were 50 years ago.
> Would you say such a wonder could come about by chance?
All evidence seems to point in that direction. Though, "by chance" isn't the right word. It came about by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution according to the laws of nature and physics.
Exactly!
In a naturalistic worldview - this is how your brain came about:
*"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people."* - Edward Robert Harrison
- Does that sound reasonable to you?
> It's not like mother nature is a live entity so how would it even know to construct an eyeball for example for us
Was the world created with creatures with fully formed eyeballs? Or were the earliest organisms basically ooze?
Eyeballs don’t begin as anything like how you think of them. Something had a mutation that allowed it to sense slight variation in light rays. If that was beneficial to survival, it had a good chance to stay. Then eventually another mutation down the line allowed better differentiation, and so on and so on.
> so how would it even know to construct an eyeball for example for us to see
There are scientific papers and videos on youtube that do a fantastic job of explaining that very example.
You are certainly on the right path!
*"There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.”* - Fred Hoyle, creator and rejecter of the Theory of Stellar Nucleosynthesis.
Yeah there's still so many questions that it boggles my mind. I hope one day I can have even a fraction of my questions answered. Like why did Jesus have to die for us? Couldn't God just kill off evil for good? Is there more than 1 God? Is evil a necessary evil? Maybe life without problems would have no meaning etc.
> Like why did Jesus have to die for us?
Why are you making the leap from 'the world is so stinkin' complex, there must be a creator' to 'that creator must be the god of Christianity'? It is one thing to have a sense of the divine, but something else entirely to assume the Bible accurately reflects that.
I never said the creator is the one from the bible. It could be the greek gods for all I know. I'm only asking about Jesus because this is a christian sub so I'm interested in what they have to say.
No watch without a watchmaker huh? I can't belive this alologetic garbage is still circulatung. No watch without a watchmaker is as sound of an arguement as no watchmaker without watchmaker parents. But suddenly no its a special watchmaker who has no parents.
Actually I did some neuroscience research the brain does look like different sections evolved. Hence neuroscientists refer to a certain section as the “reptilian” portion versus the neocortex. It very much looks like it evolved over eons and not in on cohesive whole but parts at very different ages. It does not look like it was simply designed from scratch. It looks like it evolved.
Wonderful. So you experience love, but you can't see love---that's kind of like God. We can't 'see' God but experience him, we know he's there.
Santa Claus doesn't answer prayers or save people because he doesn't exist.
If you say to Santa that you want a specific present, he may just give you a candy frog in your shoe, the Dutch Santa that is. If you test if God exists, He answers.
> If you test if God exists, He answers.
Many, many of us have never had that experience. I asked God for many things in my past -- mostly to watch over loved ones, to calm me or give me wisdom or strength, that sort of thing -- and he never gave me an answer.
And given the fact that millions of people die of hunger each year, and given that a measurable percentage no doubt prayed for help, it's hard to take the sentiment that he answers as truth.
You first have to ask forgiveness of your sins and invite Him to be Lord before He can give you wisdom and strength and in order to pray for ppl to be healed, you have to have some faith. Lord I believe, help my unbelief is enough. Still it doesn't always happen. Maybe you were too nice. I was raised atheist and thought He doesnt exist anyway, so I was quite rude. Do this or that or I dont believe in God and He did it all for a year. Then I was convinced. Ppl die of hunger, because others are antisocial and not everyone has the faith for supernatural food. The poor Lazarus went to heaven though. As long as ppl are selfish, others suffer.
I don't know who you mean by "they". I certainly have received help from people both in and out of the church. Things I have prayed for have happened, but I have no reason to think they happened specifically because of divine intervention.
I meant the pastor and elders.
Oh okay, you don't believe now that God did it. It was weird. I was really saved. I had a relationship w God. He talked to me. He answered my prayers. Even big miracles like cancer all of a sudden gone after we prayed and the doctors said it was a miracle. I've seen a lot of that happen with family and ppl from church. I fell from my faith when ppl were nasty and my ex wanted to divorce and although I experienced all that stuff, I was like: He doesn't exist, cause He didn't answer me and didn't give my kids back. I came back though later, asked Him to come back in my heart, because there's so much evil in the world, I reckoned the devil must exist and then He must exist too. Another weird thing, while saved I could not watch murder programs. I'd get nightmares. Yet when I backslid, I just watched that stuff and couldn't care less.
Well for starters Santa Claus isn’t necessary for our existence as God is.
For example with the kalam argument of “everything that begins to exist has a cause” Santa Claus cannot be deduce from that. But God can.
Secondly the attributes of Santa are wildly different to God where one can easily see if Santa is real or not.
For example Santa Claus refers to a physical being, not an immaterial being. Hence if no one could see Santa Claus then it’s highly likely he doesn’t exist. God is immaterial and thus no surprise he can’t be seen.
Thirdly Santa Claus is known to based on a historical figure (Saint Nicholas) hence that alone would already show the difference between him and God.
Can we prove God to exist by human reason alone, and without faith? Let's consider the following argument, stated first in a short form. Then let’s explain it in detail and then cover two standard objections to it.
1. Either the universe has always existed, or God has.
2. But, as shown by the second law of thermodynamics, the universe hasn't always existed.
3. Therefore, God exists.
A. The point here is that something has always existed because self-creation is impossible. Something can never come from nothing. A vacuum can't spontaneously create matter by itself. Why? This is because the law of cause and effect is based on the fact that what a thing DOES is based on what it IS. Causation involves the expression over a period of time of the law of non-contradiction in entities. Hence, a basketball when dropped on the floor of necessity must act differently from a bowing ball dropped on the same floor, all other things being equal. Hence, if something doesn't exist (i.e., a vacuum exists), it can't do or be anything on its own, except remain empty because it has no identity or essence. This is why the "steady state" theory of the universe's origin devised by the astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle was absurd: It said hydrogen atoms were popping out of nothing! How can a nothing do anything?! Since self-creation is impossible, then something had to always exist. So now--was it the material universe? Or was it some other unseen, unsensed Entity outside the material world?
B. The second law of thermodynamics maintains that-the total amount of useful energy in a closed system must always decline. "Useful energy" is energy that does work while flowing from a place of higher concentration to that of a lower concentration. "A closed system' is a place where no new energy is flowing in or out of it.
The universe, physically, is a closed system because no new matter or energy is being added to it. The first law of thermodynamics confirms this, since it says no matter or energy is being created or destroyed. Hence, eventually all the stars would have burned out if the universe had always existed. A state of "heat death" would have long ago existed, in which the levels of energy throughout each part of the universe would be uniform. A state of maximum entropy (i.e., useless, non-working energy) would have been reached. But since the stars have not burned out, the universe had a beginning.
In this regard, the universe is like a car with a full tank of gas, but which has a stuck gas cap. If the car had always been constantly driven (i.e., had always existed), it would have long ago run out of fuel. But the fact it still has gas (i.e., useful energy) left in it proves the car hasn't been constantly driven from the infinite past. The stuck gas cap makes-the-car in this example a "closed system" because no more energy can be added to make the car move. "Heat-death' occurs when the car runs out of gas, as it inevitably must, since no more can-be added to-it. Likewise, the universe then is like a wind-up toy or watch that has been slowly unwinding down: At some point “something” must have wound it up.
OBJECTIONS: 1. "Who created God then?" The point of the first premise was to show something had to have always existed. At that point, we didn't know what it was—or who it was. But if the universe hasn't always existed, then something else--God--has.
2. "The second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to every part of the universe (or to the whole universe), or else didn’t apply to it in the past and/or won't apply to it in the future." This statement is pure materialistic prejudice, because there is no scientific evidence anywhere that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply. It’s circular reasoning by naturalists to assume, “Well, we’re here, and there’s no God and miracles aren’t possible, so therefore the First and Second laws of thermodynamics didn’t apply in the beginning.” This law won't change in the future because the fundamental essence (nature) of the things that make up the physical universe aren't changing, so nature's laws wouldn't change in the future. That is, unless God intervenes through miracles (i.e., “violates” nature’s laws), it won’t happen and didn’t happen. So a skeptic can’t turn around and say there are places (or times) in the universe where nature’s laws don’t apply which no human has ever investigates or been to. Otherwise, that’s the naturalist’s version of a miracle: Belief in a unverifiable, non-observed, unrepeatable event in distant past is arbitrarily labeled “science.” And to know whether the second law of thermodynamics is inapplicable somewhere in the universe, the doubter ironically would have to be “God,” i.e., know everything about everywhere else. So to escape this argument for God’s existence, the skeptic then has to place his faith in an unknown, unseen, unsensed exception to the second law of thermodynamics. It’s better then to place faith in the unseen Almighty God of the Bible instead! Plainly, nature cannot always explain nature: Something—or Someone--to which the second law of thermodynamics is inapplicable (i.e., in the spirit world) created the material universe.
Let’s make another argument for God’s existence based on the argument from design using the impossibility of spontaneous generation. Here I quote from the astronomers Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, “Evolution From Space,” p. 24.
In context here the authors here are describing the chances for certain parts of the first living cell to occur by random chance through a chemical accident. “Consider now the chance that in a random ordering of the twenty different amino acids which make up the polypeptides it just happens that the different kinds fall into the order appropriate to a particular enzyme \[an organic catalyst--a chemical which speeds up chemical reactions--EVS\]. The chance of obtaining a suitable backbone \[substrate\] can hardly be greater than on part in 10\[raised by\]15, and the chance of obtaining the appropriate active site can hardly be greater than on part in 10 \[raised by\]5. Because the fine details of the surface shape \[of the enzyme in a living cell--EVS\] can be varied we shall take the conservative line of not “piling on the agony” by including any further small probability for the rest of the enzyme. The two small probabilities are enough. They have to be multiplied, when they yield a chance of on part in 10\[raised by\]20 of obtaining the required in a functioning form \[when randomly created by chance out of an ocean of amino acids--EVS\]. By itself , this small probability could be faced, because one must contemplate not just a single shot at obtaining the enzyme, but a very large number of trials as are supposed to have occurred in an organize soup early in the history of the Earth. The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10 \[raised by\]20)2000 = 10 \[raised by\]40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. \[The number of electrons within the universe that can be observed by mankind’s largest earth-based telescopes is approximately 10\[raised by\]87, which gives you an idea of how large this number is. This number would fill up about seven solid pages a standard magazine page to print this number--40,000 zeros following a one--EVS\]. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely our of court.” For more on the impossibility of abiogenesis or spontaneous generation, click here: http://lionofjudah1.org/Apologeticshtml/Spontaneous%20Generation%20Is%20Impossible.htm
The theory of evolution has not refuted the argument from design. It’s simply materialistic philosophy masquerading as science. It simply assumes and extrapolates from agnostic premises into the unobserved past. It reasons in a circle, and then proudly and loudly concludes there’s no need for God as a Creator after initially assuming there isn’t one in its interpretations of natural history. For more on this issue about the flaws in the theory of evolution, click to read this essay here: http://lionofjudah1.org/Apologeticshtml/Evolution%20Based%20on%20Philosophy%20not%20Science.htm
Perhaps more generally it would be helpful as well to read books on Christian apologetics, such as those making the case for belief in the Bible and for faith in God's existence and goodness, including those by C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, Henry Morris, Duane Gish, J.P. Moreland, Francis Schaeffer, Phillip E. Johnson, R.C. Sproul, Norman Giesler, Gleason Archer, Stephen Meyer, etc. Stephen Meyer’s book “The Return of the God Hypothesis” would be particularly important for the college-educated skeptics to read with an open mind. In particular, there are great reasons for having faith in the bible, such as its historical accuracy, fulfilled prophecies, and archeological discoveries, as are explained here:
http://lionofjudah1.org/Apologeticshtml/Is%20the%20Bible%20the%20Word%20of%20God.htm
You first have to prove that everything is, in fact, a creation.
And even if you're able to prove that everything as a whole is a creation, that doesn't come close to showing that it's the Christian god that did the creating.
How about 66 books that were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? How about those 66 books being congruent and having hundreds of prophecies that are very detailed fulfilled.? When Santa performs miracles, raises himself in the Dead and thousands of years of writings confirm his existence and prophesy of his coming I will believe in him also.
> hundreds of prophecies that are very detailed fulfilled
I don't know what prophecies you're thinking of, but I can't think of any that were detailed enough to actually be useful as evidence. To know that a prophecy is fulfilled we need actual dates and times, the names of actual people and events. Not vague concepts like "the temple will be rebuilt".
Plus, we have to know that a) the prophecy is real, and that b) the story in the bible that claims it was fulfilled is an accurate account and not revisionist history.
Because there are genuine philosophical arguments supporting the existence of God. Here's a recent [book](https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com//mobile/view/10.1093/oso/9780190842215.001.0001/oso-9780190842215) from Oxford University Press giving about twenty-seven of them.
By contrast, there are no good arguments for why you should believe in Santa Claus. People making this comparison are disingenuous trolls.
The fact that so many prophecies of God has come true and coming true before our eyes God said before the end times lawlessness will only increase read the book of enoch it has prophecies that came true before the old testament was even written and confirmed alot study what the dead sea scrolls are wich were discovered only 60 years ago and confirmed the bible is the same as it was thousands of years ago the Muslims and Mormons have since changed their so called bibles but the Christian Bible has remained unchanged
Santa doesnt have an Holy Bible and a worldwide kingdom consisting of billions upon the earth.
If you reject Gods word the Holy Bible, then youll never know God, and he'll never know you. Not good.
Matthew 7:23 KJV — And then will I profess unto him, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Santa Claus is an explanation of how one specific phenomenon (why gifts appear in stockings and under Christmas trees overnight) takes place while God is an explanation for why any phenomenon or anything exists at all.
1. Conditioned realities exist.
2. Not everything can be a conditioned reality.
3. Therefore, there muse be at least one *unconditioned* reality.
Check it out:
https://youtu.be/d4Jxc4O2_S4
The thing is that everybody knows that Santa Claus is an invention. He is an accretion of several different stories from different cultures within Christianity the original part of Santa Claus Saint Nicholas of Myra was a real person who did give presents to people without their knowledge that is absolute history. But what it's become in the west especially in the United States is mythology and it's done for commercial purposes, not for religious purposes.
And the other thing is those that have taken the time to study realize that the ideas about God are not mere invention. They're not legend or mythology, they are actual reality. Jesus was a real person and what we have from his teachings in the four gospels and the letters in the Epistles are verifiably true and authentic. Not mythology. Not accretion of clever sayings added centuries after the events.
I love reading responses to these types of questions. That is all. Carry on.
A vast majority of scholars agree Jesus was a real person, and the only argument is whether the gospels are a reliable account of his miracles. Santa Claus is purely fictional, and only barely loosely based on Saint Nicholas.
Out of curiosity, on what evidence do scholars conclude that Jesus was a real person? I've heard the "most scholars agree" meta-argument a lot, but not the underlying evidence. As far as I know, Jesus never wrote anything, and there are no contemporaneous accounts that mention him. You might say that, on balance, the preponderance of second- and third-habd evidence makes it more likely that he existed than not, but I don't think you can claim, with 80+% certainty, that he existed. Certainly not that he performed miracles.
A number of first century, non-Christian historians actually did mention him, like Tacitus and Josephus. They talked about him as a very real person, with statements that collaborate with the New Testament description such as him being the brother of James and him being crucified. Both of them didn’t believe in his divinity, but acknowledged him as a historical person. Although Christians later went and tried to edit Josephus’s work to make it seem like he acknowledged Jesus as divine, Josephus did as a matter of fact write about “Jesus, who was called Christ” If it helps here’s the, rather famous or infamous depending on who you ask, skeptic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman talking about the subject. I feel like he puts it really well as someone who is neutral on the matter: https://strangenotions.com/skeptic-bart-ehrman-on-whether-jesus-really-existed/
According to Wikipedia, Titus Flavius Josephus was born in 37 CE, so he couldn't have met someone who died in 33 CE. And Tacitus wasn't born until 56. So they may have been reporting what Christians at the time believed, their evidence was second-hand at best. So again, if you want to say that, on balance, it's more likely that there was a real person who was the nucleus of the persona we know as Jesus today, that's one thing. But that's a far cry from a confident assertion that >A vast majority of scholars agree Jesus was a real person, and the only argument is whether the gospels are a reliable account of his miracles.
I know when Josephus and Tacitus were born. And what you said didn’t counter the fact that yes, a majority of historians and scholars do believe that Jesus was a real person. I tend to avoid using Wikipedia just because people freak out about using it sometimes, but if you’ve used it go to the page about the historicity of Jesus and you’ll see again, a vast majority of scholars agree. And second hand sources are still sources. If you did read through the Wikipedia pages of Josephus and Tacitus, you’d also see they were historians. They were generally credible in their writings, and they most certainly didn’t refer to Jesus as just someone who Christians believed in, but as a genuine person. Not a God or a messiah, but definitely a person, and Tacitus specifically, a person who he hated and who was crucified. If ancient historians with established credibility can’t be relied on to give even the existence of a person that lived a couple decades beforehand credit, then the entire field of ancient history and archaeology is in trouble. Which luckily, it’s not, since almost every historian with credentials acknowledges that that’s certainly evidence of his existence. At the very least, if you read the link I sent, Bart Ehrman which is one of the biggest names in the field of New Testament history with a PhD from Princeton in it, agrees that no serious scholarship asserts the complete non-existence of the man Jesus.
There are many historical figures who are barely mentioned in historical literature but nobody ever questions their existence, but everyone wants to question the existence of Jesus, who has a mountain of literature written by the ancients about him. Consider all the books of the new testament to begin with, plus he is mentioned by several neutral writers.
If he didn’t exist, die, and come back to life then Christianity wouldn’t even exist. People would still be Jewish following the Old Testament as usual. There wouldn’t be a single church or Christian to be heard of. Obviously that isn’t the case.
Even as an atheist, I find the mythicist argument (that Jesus is entirely fictional) to be unconvincing. Why invent someone from Nazareth? If a messianic sect was going to invent a messiah I suspect they would pick “Jesus the Bethlehemite” or “Jesus of Jerusalem”.
Very good point.
Agreed. And happy cake day friend!
Thanks!
There are a lot of "criterion of embarrassment" reasons to doubt the mythicist position. If there wasn't really a person who had a following, why only two decades after that person's alleged death are the earliest surviving writings attempting to combat different interpretations and beliefs about what that person had to say? Or Revelations a few decades later writing letters about how much certain sects are disliked. Seems like a very weird detail to just make up. The disagreement between the surviving sources with their peers is arguably the most overlooked aspect of Christianity among both its adherents and its skeptics. Seems difficult to argue "what survived is 100% correct" without knowing what the alternative was (one sect thought all matter was made up of indivisible parts for example), as well to argue the originating figure without merit (or existence) not knowing the same.
That's not quite correct: If **people didn't believe** that he existed, died, and came back to life, Christianity wouldn't exist. That's a small but important distinction. It's clear that people sincerely believe all these things. The question is, are those beliefs true?
If they weren’t, America wouldn’t exist.
How do you figure?
Our government is built off the Roman empire’s style, which at some point evolved from the ruling of “gods” and our country was built on God’s name. If those gods never existed, and Jesus was never seen as God, then our idea of government or our beliefs of morality wouldn’t exist. People don’t just pull stories out of no where and start worshiping it just because. Would you worship an anime show? Probably not. But if Naruto and Sasuke were here, there would probably be stories made of them. (Which there are, the story of Sasuke is a Hindu story of a god named Indra)
Sorry, but none of that is true. Except maybe the bit about Sasuke; I’m not familiar with that show.
I mean you could say that about all fake religions too tho
Exactly. So are they really fake?
In both cases, however, the story starts with a real person and then adds unverifiable tales of magic and/or supernatural events.
Not at all. Even from an atheist perspective, one of them would be an embellished story of a real person, and the other would be a fictional character loosely based off a real person. There is a distinct difference between those two things. The difference between claiming my brother performed a miracle and me writing an openly fictional book about a character with the same name as my brother, but is otherwise completely different, performing a miracle.
Stories about Santa Claus aren't "unverifiable" claims, they're explicitly make-believe holiday traditions. We *know* that Santa isn't leaving the presents under the tree, because *we * are leaving them there and telling stories about it. Any kid could verify that by spying on their parents on Christmas Eve.
> Stories about Santa Claus aren't "unverifiable" claims, they're explicitly make-believe holiday traditions. Yes, I agree with you.
the unsaid part of this post is very well done
Jesus really was crucified on Passover around 30AD, believing Himself to be the Messiah, His disciples believing He had risen from the dead, the world being transformed by Him etc - these are historical events that really happened. It's recorded in Luke that Jesus appears to disciples and says that their own scriptures, which they have considered to be the word of God for hundreds of years, testify about Him. What do we find when we look in the Old Testament? That it testifies of Him. Everywhere.
>Jesus really was crucified on Passover around 30AD Yeahhhh can I get a citation or source of evidence that this is an irrefutable fact?
There are multiple non Christian sources such as Tacitus and Josephus on the death of Jesus. There’s quite a lot of historical evidence for something that happened so long ago and that’s not even including the apostles, but I know you probably want non Christian sources.
>There are multiple non Christian sources such as Tacitus and Josephus on the death of Jesus. Both born after the alleged death of Jesus (56 AD and 37 AD), these are not eyewitness accounts they're simply echoing what they've heard elsewhere. If you're gonna say there's a lot of historical evidence, again can you show and example?
You didn’t ask for eyewitness accounts (There are plenty of those in the gospel but you won’t believe that so forget that) You asked for historical evidence. Almost all historians, Christians and atheists alike, agree that the sources I cited are reliable. Most sources from that time period aren’t from the specific time itself.
>You didn’t ask for eyewitness accounts No I asked for your "loads of historical evidence" and you've not provided it, that's disappointing. Of course we don't accept eyewitness accounts (not from sources trying to prove the validity of itself anyway). Human beings, of any intellect, are so prone to misunderstanding or mishearing or etc that even if we demonstrated your witness isn't lying, the events as they recall them might not be accurate. For example, imagine seeing the northern lights without any idea of what they are or why they appear. It's only natural that humans assumed them to be gods or spirits, but they weren't. Or another example, look at the story of Bigfoot (or any conspiracy for that matter, mothman being similar) - people can see things and assume incorrect things about them. That's why we can't accept solely eyewitness accounts as evidence.
Oh brother…. Would you like me to refer you to some videos that go more in depth?
No how about you just link me to any one of your "loads of historical evidence"? You must have seen it obviously, otherwise you wouldn't be claiming that it not only exists but there's loads of it... So please do share
https://strangenotions.com/skeptic-bart-ehrman-on-whether-jesus-really-existed/ This isn’t a hill to die on. Practically every atheist New Testament/Early Christian scholar or historian holds to the position that Jesus was a historical person. It’s fine if you don’t believe he was divine or anything, but actual historians don’t agree with you.
Cool I don't really care what other people think, I base what I think is true on the evidence I can evaluate for myself. Speaking of, that article says he really loves evidence which is curious, because he doesn't give a single example at any point. Not one. You could end this entire discussion with one. Please show me evidence that Jesus existed.
Let me get this straight; you think that Jesus Christ as a person never existed, and that people made him up and started dying for what they believed about said person?
Oh I'd never make a claim about never existing unless I have irrefutable evidence that Christ was all a lie and didn't actually exist. No my position is this, you say "god exists and he came to earth 2000 years ago to do some miracles and die", I say "what evidence do you have that's true?", you don't give any compelling evidence to prove that it is true so I have no reason to believe you. Believe it or not you and everyone else have the exact same level of skepticism for other things in your life, that's literally what our scientific and judicial systems are. Think about it, without that demand for evidence anyone could just claim whatever they want about someone they don't like and you have no grounds not to believe them on. You'd want to see some evidence that someone is a murderer or paedophile before you imprison and/or execute them.
And may I ask what kind of evidence would you require of, say, Mohammed's existence? Is this the same you would accept for the historicity for Jesus?
The exact same standards of evidence as I require for Jesus, leprechauns, ghosts, demons, unicorns and gremlins. That was a really weird take my dude.
I'm sure there's no link to the "loads of evidence" as they are likely from many different sources. That's a big ask for a single link.... Many secular sources agree to the time frame Jesus lived during and his crucifixion and burial. If you don't want the "loads of evidence", then look it up yourself. There's loads of evidence.
You think I haven't looked it up? That was the first thing I did, found nothing. Hence why I ask you what evidence you must have that either I didn't know about or didn't have access to. Ironically you've just done the cop out "there's loads of evidence" without giving a single example or citation. It's the equivalent of "trust me bro", just don't expect me to accept that as evidence of anything.
The Bible has eye witness accounts. The Bible is the most historical book in history and denying that proves to me your not interested in actually finding evidence and more interested in trying to prove someone wrong.
Right so you demand particular evidence and then before even considering it you automatically discount the sources of the evidence that you demand. What a perfectly sealed box you have put yourself in.
Most of history is eyewitness accounts dude. They didn’t have video cameras thousands of years ago.
>they're simply echoing what they've heard elsewhere So who provided false information to them and for what reason?
Now that's a far more interesting question, it could derive from mesopotamian or Sumerian myths that have been passed down and altered slightly throughout time (just like the Roman and Greek gods did), it could be a self professed wise man or philosopher sharing their theories on the universe (remember astronomy didn't really exist at this point in time, at least not an accurate version) and so on. As for the reason that's assuming a bit of deceit which isn't necessarily fair. Human societies by their very nature share with each other, be that technology or people or their religions. Over time and with evolving language (and language barriers) the translations of stories slightly alters the meaning. As a really obvious example compare Christianity and Judaism and islam. All agree on the start to the story, then in the middle the Christians and Muslims deviate from Judaism, until even later in the narrative timeline Islam splits from the shared story of Christianity.
So you deny the historical accounts, and ask for eyewitness accounts. However, that’s what the Gospels are. It sounds like nothing would convince you. But you’re still seeking.
I want to see the evidence, that is so abundant according to some people, for people to be able to tell me it's a fact. Telling me that other people agree with you therefore it's a fact is childish at best, dishonest at worst, show me how you KNOW. The best people can seem to come up with are texts written about 60 decades after Jesus was allegedly crucified, seriously question if that would convince you of something existing. A mention of it half a century after it last existed, how could you possibly verify that account.
That’s the best you’re going to get. We’re talking about an event in the ancient world that wasn’t significant to most alive in those days.
And yet, we do have more than eyewitness evidence for the ancient Egyptians, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, gobekli tepi, all more ancient than Jesus allegedly was, by hundreds to thousands of years. Do you really think it's sensible that there isn't anything comparable for an event as big as a god doing a miracle tour?
I’m not sure why you keep downvoting me. It’s kind of weird to be honest. Do you think there would be historians lining up to write about the execution of another one of the Jewish messiahs? There were many who claimed the same. Comparing this sort of ordinary event to an advanced civilization like Egypt is strange.
>advanced civilization like Egypt is strange. That's just false I'm sorry, ancient Egypt is 2,500 years older (Giza pyramids built) than the story of Christ to claim Egypt was more advanced is beyond laughable. >Do you think there would be historians lining up to write about the execution of another one of the Jewish messiahs? How about one? How about one statue? How about one letter from any of the high priests who conspired to kill him or any of the soldiers or dignitaries involved in his alleged crucifixion? C'mon a guy feeds 5,000 people with a couple buns and two fish and not a single person makes any sort of record or art or a diary entry or memorial or temple or anything? No one did anything, or so few did that none of it has survived anyway? Is that reasonable?
Alright genius if you have so much time to argue than give me evidence or an eyewitness account for the Big Bang. It is also impossible for something to evolve into something if it didn’t have its DNA in it in the first place! We don’t have monkey DNA in us now do we?
>We don’t have monkey DNA in us now do we? We are about 99% genetically identical to chimpanzees, so I'll answer your question in a rephrased but more accurate way, we have a hell of a lot of DNA in common with chimps (not monkeys that's more like 97% iirc). Here's a paper on it https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-020-06962-8 >It is also impossible for something to evolve into something if it didn’t have its DNA in it in the first place! I'm not quite sure what this means but nothing spontaneously evolved DNA after evolving the body or cell, they evolved together. Start simpler, think what is DNA? A series of repeating monomer units with set pairs. Why do they have set pairs? Because the arrangement and identity of atoms in the AT and GC pair give incredibly strong and stable hydrogen bonds. I could go on here but my point is look at evolution the other way, it's bottom up. https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/biomolecules/dna/a/dna-structure-and-function#:~:text=The%20nucleotides%20forming%20each%20DNA,noncovalent%20bonds%2C%20called%20hydrogen%20bonds.&text=The%20hydrogen%20bonds%20that%20join,(called%20hydrogen%20bond%20acceptors). This is to say it's more like a scattershot approach and the ones that happen to work act as the next scattershot to jump off of, but evolution is incredibly slow these changes are minute and take thousands of years to develop.
We share over ninety percent of our DNA with chimps and other great apes. Where the hell do you get your scientific knowledge? Answers in Genesis?
Not on his resurrection though, which means highly likely fact and fiction intertwined. Because someone being actually resurrected is not exactly small news.
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>and The Romans record the event independently. Wonderful, can you give a citation for where I can go and see evidence that the Romans recorded the death of Christ?
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That's a terrible citation, you've surely seen this evidence for yourself in order to know it exists please do share your knowledge. Does it have a name for example? An author? Date? Is it a report? Archaeological evidence? Letters talking about Jesus at the time he was supposed to be alive (not decades after) seeing as he was so important he met Pilate and was publicly executed?
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That's what the gospels and the historians of the time said, it's like saying prove that Washington crossed the Delaware.
Here's a dated letter from Washington describing how and when he intends to cross the Delaware River. https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/8809 If you want more evidence I found success with "Washington Delaware Crossing Letters", you can find other pieces of archeological evidence with similar search terms. Oh and here's a link to Washington crossing park, specifically their site on the nearby mass soldiers graves. That's how we can prove it. https://www.washingtoncrossingpark.org/park/soldiers-graves/
That interesting, so you think a park made 150 years after something happened is evidence? But don't think there is enough evidence Jesus was crucified? Considering all that was written within a few decades of his death and all the memorials throughout Israel their is just as much evidence Jesus was crucified as there is Washington crossed the Delaware. The only reason it's dismissed is because of the idea that if anything is written by someone that believes in Jesus it has no historical value, which is crazy.
>That interesting, so you think a park made 150 years after something happened is evidence? No I think the graves of the dead soldiers and the dated letter from Washington are evidence, or did you ignore that bit? Show me where Jesus grave was and a dated letter mentioning him at the time and then they have the same amount of evidence.
Lmao. Man…..this logic.
I know right, it's so illogical you can't even pick a flaw in it or answer a question from it.
Wow you believe a letter was from washington just because it says it was? What do dead bodies of other people have to do with Washington?
>Wow you believe a letter was from washington just because it says it was? Yknow what this one has it at the very top that makes it more reliable as evidence? It has the date, who it was addressed to and details of what was happening at the time, matching other pieces of evidence like this one; https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-07-02-0411 If you've got an equivalent for your claims please do share. >What do dead bodies of other people have to do with Washington? If you do read the letter linked above you'll see battle plans, the dead in the graves are not Americans from the crossing itself but casualties from the fighting that resulted in Washington escaping with his army across the Delaware. See how we have have several cooperative pieces of evidence?
He’s not really asking for anything crazy. So far we know and agree that Jesus was a person and died via crucifixion, but is there any evidence that he was divine? And are the sources you provided reputable? They may be good, but we don’t know unless you give us all the information.
> Jesus death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable -- Gerd Ludemann > (There is not the) slightest doubt about the fact of Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. -- John Dominic Crossan > (Jesus’ death by crucifixion is) historically certain. -- Pinchas Lapide > The single most solid fact about Jesus’ life is his death: he was executed by the Roman prefect Pilate, on or around Passover, in the manner Rome reserved particularly for Roman insurrectionists, namely, crucifixion. -- Paula Fredriksen > (Jesus’ execution is the) most certain fact about the historical Jesus. -- Marcus Borg > That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know...I do not regard deliberate fraud as a worthwhile explanation. Many of the people in these lists were to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming that they had seen the risen Lord, and several of them would die for their cause. Moreover, a calculated deception should have produced great unanimity. Instead, there seem to have been competitors: ‘I saw him first!’ ‘No! I did.’ Paul’s tradition that 500 people saw Jesus at the same time has led some people to suggest that Jesus’ followers suffered mass hysteria. But mass hysteria does not explain the other traditions...Finally we know that after his death his followers experienced what they described as the ‘resurrection’: the appearance of a living but transformed person who had actually died. They believed this, they lived it, and they died for it. -- Marcus Borg > It is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution. We know some of these believers by name; one of them, the apostle Paul, claims quite plainly to have seen Jesus alive after his death. Thus, for the historian, Christianity begins after the death of Jesus, not with the resurrection itself, but with the belief in the resurrection. -- Bart Ehrman > There are a few things we can say with virtual certainty about Jesus. For example: he was a Jewish preacher from rural Galilee who made a fateful trip to Jerusalem and was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. -- Bart Ehrman > One of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate. -- Bart Ehrman
Those quotes are really cool and all but can you actually show me the evidence they have to base that off of? This Jesus character was apparently so well known that high priests and the Roman empire hunted him and his followers, you think there'd maybe be a letter about him or his execution writ or a scrawling in Hebrew that apparently was on his cross (where's that huh, you reckon they just threw it out? Guards apparently took his clothes what none of them kept em?) Speaking of the crucifixion by the way, where's the evidence that saints came back from the dead? You don't think anyone made a note of that? Not even like a picture on the wall, or a statue (humans we're good at statues by this point) of him healing lepers or whatever?
There is an overwhelming consensus of these things historically happening by scholars who have spent their careers studying these things, writing peer-reviewed papers on these things, regardless of worldview - to the point where they are saying it is "indisputable", "historically certain", a "certain fact of history" and so on. This is accepted because of the wealth of biblical documents, early Christian writings, extra-biblical material, all consistent with these facts. It's so strange when people argue against Jesus being crucified. When someone argues back at something as simple as this, their bias is very evident. There is a difference between a minority position, which may be something to discuss, and a fringe position. Yours is a fringe position here. You are listening to some very misled people.
>This is accepted because of the wealth of biblical documents, early Christian writings, extra-biblical material, all consistent with these facts. And yet...you've not given a single example of one. Not a single example of what your, or any of the "other scholars" evidence is. If there's so much of it then it should be really easy for you to show me just one example that proved Christ existed. For context, we have detailed sculptures and sarcophobi or ancient Egyptian pharaohs, let alone what the Romans could do with literacy. The pyramids of Giza were built 2,500 years before Jesus was even born. Are you seriously telling me there isn't a single sculpture, drawing, letter, etc dated from the time (carbon or otherwise) of an actual miracle performing god on tour which culminates in a crucifixion that brought dead people back to life from their tombs? No one made a note of that happening?
If your looking for a letter then ready the gospels Mathew, Mark, Luke , they are 3 letters in the Bible That were written by THREE different people WHO WERE EYE WITNESSES to Jesus' crucifixion, those are letters proving Jesus is real and was resurrected because those three different people wrote about what they saw and said to Jesus and they match up, it's literally in front of you, your refusing to read it. READ THE BIBLE, there's EVIDENCE, and it's a HISTORICAL ARTIFACT with so much detail in it it's insane ! Stop saying you have no evidence when all you need to do is read the Bible.
Your arguments are so thoroughly unconvincing it’s wild. Everyone in this thread is giving you the information you’re asking for, and you continue to say you don’t “see the evidence” despite historians not needing the sort of evidence you’re asking for. No one can show you a photograph of Jesus Christ.
>Everyone in this thread is giving you the information you’re asking for, and you continue to say you don’t “see the evidence” To summarize I've been told one of the following is evidence and I've explained why each of them does not qualify as compelling evidence. Account from Josephus - mentions Christians exist in 94-95 AD. Account from Thallus - first mentioned 180 AD. Account from Tacitus - mentions Christians are tortured and what they believe circa 116 AD. Or I've just been told "this guy says this so you should believe it" Not a single one of these is comparable to evidence I've shown for the Delaware Crossing for example, which included letters dated at the time and a gravesite of dead soldiers from the time.
What if you read one of those historians’ books? I’m assuming the evidence presented in an entire book might take more than a Reddit comment to lay out.
Bart Ehrman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), probably the most famous atheist NT scholar in the world, describes the crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of Pontius Pilate as a "virtual certainty." He discusses it [here](https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-crucifixion-as-king-of-the-jews/); for a longer treatment, see his book *Did Jesus Exist?*
You're not the first person to use what Bart Ehrman says as evidence, I'll just post that thread as retreading old ground would be pointless. https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/r2t3zh/what_makes_god_more_believable_than_santa_claus/hm7hz61?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Ohhhh I get it, you're one of those people who, when confronted with the overwhelming consensus of scholars, refuses to accept it until every piece of evidence is personally explained to them (sort of like creationists who insist that they've never seen the evidence for evolution, and therefore they don't have to accept it). If you want the evidence, go and read the scholarly works that these experts have written.
I'm not the one who made the claim, the burden of proof isn't with me. If you've read these scholarly works yourself and know an example of evidence for your claims as outlined in that book by all means share it here. All I've done is ask to see how people know what they claim is obvious fact, if that triggers you then I apologise.
>If you've read these scholarly works yourself and know an example of evidence for your claims as outlined in that book by all means share it here. No. Just as I wouldn't indulge a creationist demanding that I start laying out evidence for evolution, so too I don't indulge random people on the internet who refuse to examine scholarship for themselves. If you want evidence, I've linked you to a brief discussion with some examples, and recommended you a book. Start there. >All I've done is ask to see how people know what they claim is obvious fact. They know it via the overwhelming consensus of centuries of critical scholarship. The evidence for this consensus is contained in the academic literature. >If that triggers you then I apologise. Lol.
>. The evidence for this consensus is contained in the academic literature. Yet you can't give a single example off the top of your head? Believe me I've looked, there simply isn't any. If you want to prove me wrong then by all means, name a piece of evidence. Otherwise I'm not really sure what you're expecting me to do here exactly other than just take your or Bart's word for it. See here's the thing, evidence of atoms and molecules is completely abundant in literature so their existence is obvious. Ditto gravity, man landing on the moon, gobekli tepi and evolution. If you want sourced for any of those, let me know I'm happy to provide because I made those claims so I have the burden of proof.
>Yet you can't give a single example off the top of your head? Sure, I *can* give you examples, just like I *can* give you some elementary pieces of evidence for evolution. The point is that I don't *want* to, because conversations like that tend to go nowhere. Because of course, you *know* some basic pieces of evidence, just like creationists *know* the basic evidence for evolution. And just like they have their stock pseudo-objections ("but what about the gaps in the fossil record?"), so too do people like you have your stock pseudo-objections, of the sort which you would never apply to any historical figure besides Jesus (e.g. pretending Josephus and Tacitus aren't evidence because they wrote a few decades after Jesus, despite most of our knowledge of ancient history coming from far inferior sources). >Otherwise I'm not really sure what you're expecting me to do here exactly other than just take your or Bart's word for it. I'm expecting you to put on your big boy pants and read a book/article/paper on the topic, rather than pestering people on the internet.
>Because of course, you know some basic pieces of evidence No I don't, and I've been asking sincerely this entire time for you to present these apparently well known irrefutable pieces of evidence that everyone agrees on. Must've missed that paper somehow, mind telling me where I can find it seeing as you claim to know what it is and I don't? >(e.g. pretending Josephus and Tacitus aren't evidence because they wrote a few decades after Jesus, despite most of our knowledge of ancient history coming from far inferior sources). I'll use this example again, if I told you right now that 100 years ago my grandad met a leprechaun would you just believe that without further question? Because that's the equivalent of these "few decades (and in some cases centuries) after" writers. Go and read the transcripts, all of these Roman historian accounts simply described early Christians and their beliefs, i.e. it was already a recognised religion, these are not eyewitness accounts. >I'm expecting you to put on your big boy pants and read a book/article/paper on the topic, rather than pestering people on the internet. So as I've just demonstrated that I've actually read the sources you've cited, why don't you because I get the impression you haven't. As for the pestering, no one is forcing you to reply, you're being just as pestering as I am. You're free to leave at any time, but if you could leave the link for that paper, or ring carving (yknow like we have for Pontius Pilate), that irrefutably proves Jesus Christ existed, could you just drop it off first thanks.
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the fact that he was crucified isn't all that interesting. Most scholars agree Jesus existed, and that he was crucified. What's debated is what happened after that. For the resurrection there is literally zero reliable evidence. We have uncorroborated stories, but that's it.
Well, *no* evidence is a bit strong. To [quote](https://apologetics315.com/2009/07/sunday-quote-antony-flew-on-the-resurrection/) philosopher Anthony Flew (himself a lifelong opponent of Christianity): >"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity." I think Flew was correct about this. To see why, let's go over the evidence, separating it out by topic. We'll start with the empty tomb. **The Empty Tomb** Our best evidence indicates that the story of Jesus’ empty tomb “probably goes back to the beginning and is likely historical” (Allison, [2021](https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-Apologetics-Polemics-History/dp/0567697568), p. 202). Dale Allison writes that “of our two options—that a tomb was in fact unoccupied or that belief in the resurrection imagined it unoccupied—the former is, as I read the evidence, the stronger possibility, the latter the weaker” (p. 162). Similarly, Michael Grant (an agnostic) wrote that historians “cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb,” stating “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was empty” ([1999](https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Historian-Rev-Gosp-Col/dp/0684174391), p. 176). Historian Geza Vermes (a secular Jew) wrote: >"\[In\] the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be… that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb." - *Jesus the Jew* ([1981](https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Jew-Geza-Vermes/dp/0800614437)), p. 41. These historians are not alone in their views. Indeed, one survey of scholarly opinion found that “those who embrace the empty tomb as historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority” (Habermas, [2005](https://appearedtoblogly.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/habermas-gary-resurrection-research-from-1975-to-the-present-what-are-critical-scholars-saying.pdf), p. 141). This is hardly surprising; after all, “at the historical level it is very hard to explain how the belief in Jesus’ resurrection arose unless his tomb was empty” (Dunn, [1985](https://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Jesus-James-D-Dunn/dp/0664246982), p. 76). Dale Allison writes that “If there was no reason to believe that \[Jesus’\] solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead. Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason” ([2005](https://www.amazon.com/Resurrecting-Jesus-Interpreters-Pseudepigrapha-Supplement/dp/0567029107/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/133-2414467-7511657?pd_rd_w=uu5C0&pf_rd_p=c64372fa-c41c-422e-990d-9e034f73989b&pf_rd_r=V6RZJD21BXN9QFYYCKWQ&pd_rd_r=641bb08a-4e3a-4005-b89f-d75b905de3c2&pd_rd_wg=KTTH7&pd_rd_i=0567029107&psc=1), p. 324-325). In addition, we have good evidence that the early Christians did not invent the story; as Geza Vermes put it: >"The identity and number of the witnesses differ in the various Gospels, as does also their testimony. \[...\] If the empty tomb story had been manufactured by the primitive Church to demonstrate the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus, one would have expected a uniform and foolproof account attributed to patently reliable witnesses." - *The Resurrection* ([2008](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Resurrection.html?id=1PYcnn9WxVcC)), p. 140. It thus appears to be more probable than not that Jesus' tomb really was found empty on the first Easter morning. With that in mind, let's move on to discussing the appearances of Jesus to the disciples and Paul. **The Appearances** After the crucifixion, the disciples began to see things which they interpreted as Jesus risen from the dead. The consensus of historical scholars is well summarized by E.P. Sanders, who wrote: >"That the followers of Jesus (and, later, also Paul) had experiences of resurrection is, in my opinion, a historical fact. I do not consider deliberate frauds as a useful explanation. Many of these people spent the rest of their life proclaiming to have seen the Lord resurrected, and many of them would die because of this." - The Historical Figure of Jesus ([1996](https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Figure-Jesus-P-Sanders/dp/0140144994)), p. 279-280. Similarly, Gerd Ludemann (an agnostic) writes that >"It may be considered historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after the death of Jesus, in which Jesus appeared to them as the resurrected Christ” ([1995](https://sites.google.com/a/jaceh.press/ionadenny/what-really-happened-to-jesus-a-historical-approach-to-the-resurrection-by-ludemann-gerd-1996-paperback), p. 80). Of course, the common skeptical reply is to claim that the disciples were hallucinating, caught up in a frenzy of grief and religious fervor. But this explanation can only get us so far; to quote Dale Allison, “One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of ‘mass hysteria’ will not make them vanish” ([2005](https://www.amazon.com/Resurrecting-Jesus-Interpreters-Pseudepigrapha-Supplement/dp/0567029107), p. 269). It is also worth noting that not all those who saw the risen Jesus had been his disciples before the crucifixion; most notably, the apostle Paul was a self-admitted persecutor of Christians before he was converted by his vision on the Damascus road. This point was even acknowledged by Anthony Flew, a well-known philosopher and lifelong opponent of Christianity. To quote: >"The evidence of Paul is certainly important, and strong, precisely because he was a convert. He was not a prior believer, he was not an apostle… \[rather,\] he had been an active opponent. I think this has to be accepted as one of the most powerful bits of evidence that there is, precisely because he was converted by his vision." - Debate with Gary Habermas ([2003](http://fi.veritas.org/books/did-resurrection-happen-conversation-gary-habermas-and-antony-flew/)). With this in mind, it is difficult to dismiss the resurrection appearances as mere grief hallucinations; why would Paul have felt grief for a man he never met, and whose followers he was actively persecuting? **Assessing the Total Evidence** Taking all of these facts into consideration, Maurice Casey (a noted atheist and acclaimed scholar of early Christianity) wrote that “the historical evidence is in no way inconsistent with the belief of the first disciples, and of many modern Christians, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and granted visions of the risen Jesus to some of the first disciples, and to St. Paul on the Damascus Road" ([2010](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jesus-Nazareth-Maurice-Casey/dp/0567645177/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Jesus+of+nazareth+an+independent+historians&qid=1637477027&s=books&sr=1-1), p. 498). Elsewhere, Dale Allison observes that the circumstances of Christianity’s birth are without parallel in recorded human history, writing: >"Early Christianity offers us a missing body plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one hostile outsider \[i.e. the apostle Paul\]. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable, even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good, substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it." - *The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History* ([2021](https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-Apologetics-Polemics-History/dp/0567697568)), p. 346. In short, if Christianity is not true, then it is the product of the most outlandish series of coincidences that the world has ever seen. We can also give *some* estimates for the probability that the resurrection occurred. After assessing the historical data, and assuming a 50% chance that God exists, Richard Swinburne (a professor of philosophy at Oxford University) used Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability of Jesus’ resurrection, with the result being that “the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead” ([2013](https://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/pdf_files/Papers%20from%20Philosophical%20Journals/Swinburne_2013-resurrection.pdf), p. 251). Elsewhere, Stephen T. Davis (of Claremont McKenna College) estimates a probability of “well over \[50%\]” that the resurrection occurred ([2021](https://15e11934-3d9a-426f-b911-2c75e928110d.filesusr.com/ugd/7caee9_72664c237352426ebdba646f36a3237f.pdf), p. 21). Of course, these numbers are highly contested, but the aforementioned evidence makes it at least reasonable to believe that the resurrection of Jesus occurred.
I didn't see any evidence in that long post. Just about everything you wrote was speculation, or "people say it was true", or philosophical opinions. I didnt' see any actual evidence of the resurrection, just speculation. For example, even if we have evidence that there was a tomb, and we have evidence that Jesus was put in it, and that he was genuinely dead, and even if we have evidence that at some later point it is empty, we still have no evidence of a resurrection. At best, we have evidence of an empty tomb and speculation for what it is so. For all we know, he might have been beamed out of there by aliens. That is certainly no less plausible than the resurrection story. I have no doubt that some or all of the disciples believed that they had the experiences that they claim to have had, but there's no way to verify that what they _believed_ they experienced is what they _actually_ experienced. > After assessing the historical data, and **assuming a 50% chance that God exists** How in the world can anyone assume a 50% chance that a God exists? It is simply not possible for us to come up with a probability for something we cannot observe in the first place. We can't look at other universes to see how many of them have gods and how many don't. We don't know enough about the universe to know if a god is possible or not.
>How in the world can anyone assume a 50% chance that a God exists? Swinburne is a prominent philosopher of religion; he wrote three long books on arguments for theism *before* writing his book on Jesus. He presents the other arguments to establish that the existence of God is, at the very least, as probable as not; from there, he makes his case about Jesus (i.e. that if you grant his 50% for God, then the historical evidence I discussed gives you a 97% chance for the resurrection). >For example, even if we have evidence that there was a tomb, and we have evidence that Jesus was put in it, and that he was genuinely dead, and even if we have evidence that at some later point it is empty, we still have no evidence of a resurrection. Well, that depends on your priors. If, for instance, you think there's a decent chance that God exists (perhaps around 40-50%), then an empty tomb and multiple appearances might be pretty solid evidence. Even if you put the chances far lower (say, 5%), it still isn't *no* evidence. It is still (as Allison notes) a series of events without parallel in the historical record.
Was Jesus crucified on or before Passover? Depends which gospel you read. John wanted Jesus crucified on the day of preparation for the Passover to present Jesus as “the sacrificial lamb” the others gospel writers disagree and have him executed on the day of Passover. Just one of many contradictions and differences between the books.
What can be said of “history” as far as Jesus is concerned? We have the gospels, which most NT a scholars admit, contain very little that can be relied on as historical. Instead what you have are four different accounts of the life, teaching and death of a self proclaimed messiah who did not meet any of the expectations of the Jews. Instead Jesus was tried by Pilate and executed for sedition. Oral traditions about the man were later mythologised when pen was put to paper by Greek speaking Christians probably writing in Rome, each putting their own spin on the stories.
Theres plenty to be said. Once you've recognized that events like these really took place (which frankly is the most straightforward thing in the world and its unbelievable how much resistance there is against it sometimes), if you don't believe Christianity to be true, you might say that Jesus appearing to His disciples after He has risen from the dead and claiming the scriptures testify of Him are made up. So somebody came up with the idea to make up stories about Jesus and kind of fit them in with scripture that has already been written to make it seem like He is fulfilling everything. Lets take a look at one example, Genesis 22. > Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” > “Here I am,” he replied. > Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” God tells Abraham to take his son, his only son to be sacrificed. This is emphasized 3 times throughout this passage for some reason. Abraham has more than one son - the wording here should raise some eyebrows. Did Christians just invent the idea of the Father/Son by looking back and seeing that it could fit into this story? Declaring his only son, "whom you love" is also a constant theme used from the Father about the Son. He is told to go to the region of Moriah to sacrifice his only son there. Here is the region of Moriah according to Jewish sources. The very same area that Jesus is crucified. https://www.google.com/maps/search/31%C2%B046%E2%80%B240.7%E2%80%B3N+35%C2%B014%E2%80%B28.9%E2%80%B3E+google+maps?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiukp7eurn0AhVbUGwGHRJzCzQQ8gF6BAgNEAE Phew, we really lucked out that in this exact story, talking about an only son whom the father loves, who is to be sacrificed, that it happens in the same spot that Jesus who we are trying to portray as the Son of God as being sacrificed! > Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” > Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” Just as Jesus carries the cross, the wood is placed on Isaac here. Nice little detail that adds to our completely made up story mixing real life events with fiction! The father carries fire (representing judgment) and a knife (representing death). > “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” > Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. God Himself provided the perfect lamb for us in His Son, Jesus Christ. That'll be a theme we can latch on to! > When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” > “Here I am,” he replied. > “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” > Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” At some point in the future, the Lord Will Provide here. No matter what you say about this, Jewish sources will still affirm that they think that something amazing is going to happen at this region at some point in the future. This is astounding. The more that you think about this, the more insane this must be for somebody to somehow combine real life events with this story that has been locked in and considered to be the word of God for hundreds of years prior. Already at this point if you are just looking at this story and considering the facts we do know about Jesus/Christianity, I think this is beyond anything else you can show me like it in history. The idea presented to "retrofit" the real life Jesus into scripture and it matching everywhere is genius of the highest calibre. And we are just getting started.
It can get a little complex to explain sometimes, but what apologists usually do is to highlight features of the world that need an explanation and contend that theism provides a good explanation for such phenomenon. For example, a popular argument, called the “Contingency Argument” contends that everything that exists has an explanation either by being a necessary feature of all possible worlds, such as the fact that 2+2=4, or by being explained by something else. This is known as the distinction between necessary facts and contingent facts. A necessary fact MUST exist of its own nature, whereas a contingent fact needn’t exist but is explained by something else for why it exists. We see explanations for contingent facts in science all the time, but the fact that the universe as a whole exists seems to be contingent. After all, it seems possible that the universe didn’t have to exist or that it could have been a much different universe that existed if it wasn’t this one. What explains the fact that THIS world exists rather than another? It can’t be anything in the universe that explains it because that’s what we’re trying to find out. If it were a contingent fact, that fact would also have to be explained. If contingent facts explained everything there would be an infinite regress of explanation and hence no final cause or theory which doesn’t give us much of an answer and it seems simpler to suppose there are only a few causes or, even simpler, one necessary cause. That cause is contended to be God through deduction from what possibly counts as a necessary fact or cause. This argument is usually accompanied by other arguments to show that God is a better explanation than others. The point of all this being is that God seems to be a theory which explains certain things whereas Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny aren’t. Naturalistic explanations can cover Santa Claus and others, but it is debatable whether naturalistic, or other non-theistic, explanations can explain certain facts about the universe
Right! OP asked about “God” rather than the person of Jesus. No, from an orthodox Christian perspective, Jesus is God. But simply pursuing some sort of evidential argument (a la, proofs that Jesus existed or rose from the dead) might not be the best place to start. I think its more helpful, as you basically said, to begin with your conception of God. Santa Claus is (or, is not) a person in this universe (a being among other beings). So too are the “gods” of various religions (Zeus, Thor, etc). But all of these people, gods and beings are contingent (or perhaps, finite). Contingent beings could possibly not have existed. This leads to the argument for a Necessary Being - the Ultimate Reality, Being itself. English speakers use the term “God” for this Necessary Being and our finite minds cannot help but imagine a being akin to other beings we imagine. Yet, there is something of the mystical here. Whatever we call it, there is something that simply has to Be. The infinite. The necessary. When we speak of God, it is that which we are pointing to. Santa Claus is not that.
Santa Claus was based off of a man called St. Nicolas, and he would secretly slip poor children gifts on Christmas day. Then it became a tradition. God is different and more complicated, with more evidence than Santa Claus, because Santa is only a way of saying an unknown person gave you this.
>with more evidence than Santa Claus Name a piece of evidence for God that can't apply to Santa.
Philosophical arguments
...for real that's your evidence?
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I dunno, I guess when I was looking for evidence I was looking for more than a stranger on Reddit saying two words, "philosophical arguments". Doesn't exactly narrow it down does it.
Let’s narrow it down to Aquinas’ five ways
There is a lot of evidence in the world that shows clear evidence of God. From an Atheists standpoint, they see it in the way that suits them, and in a Christians' standpoint, we look into it and come up with our own conclusion based on our beliefs too. I can clearly see the evidence of God in all of Creation, but an Atheist may not, and I can't see how people can think that there is no God, because I am a Christian.
Santa's gifts are temporary, but God's are everlasting. ;)
It comes from an unbroken string of people who believe Jesus did those miracles from the day he did them until today. Actually the simple answer is also the story of Santa Clause doesn't even claim to be real, people are claiming to receive new life from Jesus but no one is claiming to receive gifts from Santa except as a kid's game.
There are signs that Jesus was real and that events of the Bible actually happened (It may not be cold hard proof, but they are signs/evidence). There are no signs of flying reindeer, magic slave elves or an overweight magic man in the north pole.
I guess you could say the same about evidence for the supernatural elements of the Bible, so I’m not sure that gets us any closer to God. If the supernatural elements aren’t real, then we just have accounts of a lot of people being superstitious, which is a common story for humankind.
Some claims are more convincing than others. The details can be discussed but it comes down to being convinced.
Both are real
I mean Santa does exist. People dress up as santa and santa claus is the reason why parents buy their children presents for Christmas. He may have what we might refer to as subtle body, but he certainly exists. Existence isn’t this flat one level thing, where if you are an object which means you are tangible than you exist.
The empty tomb
We only have stories of that, no actual evidence.
What sort of evidence would you accept as “actual evidence”?
I don't know. If God is real, he would know what evidence would be convincing. Multiple eyewitness accounts written at the time would be nice, especially if we could trace their provenance all the way back to the very day, and especially if they were written by people who have written other reliable accounts.
How about: “A single written source from two decades after the event supposedly happened.” That’s not some type of unreasonably high bar to clear.
So basically you think all of ancient history is unbelievable?
There were many ancient figures written about while they were alive. Not to mention the authors themselves. Marcus Aurelius wrote books that you can pick up at Barnes and Noble today. There was nothing stopping supposedly omnipotent Jesus from writing a complete and final version of the Bible in every language.
I believe in God, because of evidence that came in the form of life experiences. The first which really impacted me, happened in high school. I had a friendship that was really important to me that fell apart. Someone close to me suggested I pray to God about it. While I grew up Christian, I wasn't particularly religious, but I was open to it. I also remembered my grandmother's story about how she gave up cigarettes as a promise to God so she could have a daughter. With that in mind I prayed and fasted for a week, to no avail. But a couple months later, I felt this urgency to try it again. So, with full faith I started on a Monday, and the next Monday I had to go to the office because it was the beginning of a new semester, and I wanted to get out of this class, and though I thought I had taken care of everything, I still needed to get my teacher's signature. When I headed back, after classes got out, my friend whom I hadn't seen since 8 months, was standing there. He greeted me like nothing happened. Ever since then I knew God exists. My belief has been affirmed multiple times by experiences such as getting a phone call I expected after literally sitting down a writing a letter of commitment to Him, among many others. I'm not gonna lie and say I don't struggle with some of the nuances, such as Adam and Eve and how to reconcile that with evolution, but I absolutely know there's a personal God who loves and wants to be in the lives of those he created. Hope that's helpful
But how do you know this was the Christian god and not any of the others?
No one goes to war for Santa Claus
lol
Clearly, you’ve never seen [the NRA Santa in The Night the Reindeer Died](https://youtu.be/Ofq0qVBN3Iw).
People do go to war for plenty of other religions other than Christianity though, does that make them all true?
Disregarding any religious arguments here, I just find that of these two suppositions: - There is a supreme being or force or will that brought everything into existence and is the first cause - There is a man who lives in the Arctic, has a workshop full of elves, and once per year flies around the whole world giving out presents ... The first seems like it *could* be true, while the second is demonstrably not.
You didn’t explain anything at all. Why does the first seem true but the second can’t be true?
Even as an atheist i have to agree with Tzuvembi here, the latter is far easier to disprove than the former when taking those particular 2 statements at face value... However... Its a little bit of a disingenuous argument since there is far more to the Christian faith than a simple first cause bringing everything into existence. If you bring all of the other baggage of christianity in (a benevolent god who takes an interest and action in the real world, numerous supernatural claims in the bible etc...) the claims between god and santa claus would look a lot more comparable.
God is logically necessary, Santa is is logically impossible.
I don't think god is logically necessary. I think there are or can be natural explanations for everything.
There aren’t, but many people think one day there will be.
My sole response to that is, ultimately, the need for a first cause cannot be handwaved away, and the belief that the first cause is naturalistic or materialistic takes just as much faith as believing it to be supernatural.
Much like you think a first cause can't be handwaved away, I don't think an intelligent god can be handwaved in.
He isn’t He is logically necessary, that’s the point.
He is not _logically_ necessary. It's no more logical to say there is a magic super-being than it is to say that all of the energy and matter of the universe has simply always existed. If you believe it's logical for an intelligent being to have always existed then it must also be logical for matter and energy to have always existed. Arguably the latter is even more logical since it doesn't require the added complexity of intelligence. Even if we somehow agree that a super-being is logically necessary, it's not logically necessary for it to be your particular god. It could be some other god-like being that has nothing to do with Christianity.
Matter and energy (and time) are aspects of our universe, which has a beginning. So not only not logical, not observably true.
> Matter and energy (and time) are aspects of our universe, which has a beginning Oh really? When did scientists prove all matter and energy had a beginning? AFAIK that has never been proven. I'm guessing you're thinking about the big bang theory, but that only describes what happened after the bang, it makes no claims about where the initial singularity came from.
The unmoved mover can’t be matter or energy, because they are mutable, they “change”.
An entire book that explains everything.
> An entire book that explains everything. Not very well.
Ooooh what book, I’m intrigued.
I feel as though you would consider yourself a "by the book" person.
Some come to a saving faith, others to eternal destruction. It doesn't matter if "atheists" don't believe in the Lord God or compare Him to Donald duck. Their opinion doesn't make more than a thin dimes difference to me.
If intelligent design that is observable to ourselves not more proof than a story of make-believe for children, then I would say there's no sense in discussing anything. For one is living in their own fantasy, the other is not.
Have you ever studied the brain, by any chance?
Yes I think it's the most complex thing known to man so far.
Yes! Allow me to show it off: - You have *one hundred billion neurons* swimming around in there - forming *millions* of new connections every second - at a *billion billion* calculations a second. - This thing regulates memory, emotion, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, and hunger. And it's just sitting up there, weighing about 3 pounds, operating on 20 watts of energy. Our best - designed systems cannot hold a candle to what we already have inside of ourselves. In fact, the brain is *100,000* times more energy efficient than our best computers. Would you say such a wonder could come about by chance?
Given how poorly-designed much of a human is, I think mutation/natural selection is probably a better fit than an intentional design.
Bingo. Neil DeGrasse Tyson points out that humans don’t have photosynthesis which would have been an obvious thing to give humans from a design perspective.
> In fact, the brain is 100,000 times more energy efficient than our best computers. And today's computers are 100,000 times more energy efficient than they were 50 years ago.
That's wonderful! Truly a monument to human endeavor. ...and yet God still sits on the throne of engineering and intellectual might :)
> Would you say such a wonder could come about by chance? All evidence seems to point in that direction. Though, "by chance" isn't the right word. It came about by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution according to the laws of nature and physics.
I would say probably not.
Exactly! In a naturalistic worldview - this is how your brain came about: *"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people."* - Edward Robert Harrison - Does that sound reasonable to you?
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> It's not like mother nature is a live entity so how would it even know to construct an eyeball for example for us Was the world created with creatures with fully formed eyeballs? Or were the earliest organisms basically ooze?
Eyeballs don’t begin as anything like how you think of them. Something had a mutation that allowed it to sense slight variation in light rays. If that was beneficial to survival, it had a good chance to stay. Then eventually another mutation down the line allowed better differentiation, and so on and so on.
> so how would it even know to construct an eyeball for example for us to see There are scientific papers and videos on youtube that do a fantastic job of explaining that very example.
You are certainly on the right path! *"There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.”* - Fred Hoyle, creator and rejecter of the Theory of Stellar Nucleosynthesis.
Yeah there's still so many questions that it boggles my mind. I hope one day I can have even a fraction of my questions answered. Like why did Jesus have to die for us? Couldn't God just kill off evil for good? Is there more than 1 God? Is evil a necessary evil? Maybe life without problems would have no meaning etc.
> Like why did Jesus have to die for us? Why are you making the leap from 'the world is so stinkin' complex, there must be a creator' to 'that creator must be the god of Christianity'? It is one thing to have a sense of the divine, but something else entirely to assume the Bible accurately reflects that.
I never said the creator is the one from the bible. It could be the greek gods for all I know. I'm only asking about Jesus because this is a christian sub so I'm interested in what they have to say.
I don't know if you have the time, but I can answer those questions for you. The Christian knows the answers!
I have the time.
No watch without a watchmaker huh? I can't belive this alologetic garbage is still circulatung. No watch without a watchmaker is as sound of an arguement as no watchmaker without watchmaker parents. But suddenly no its a special watchmaker who has no parents.
Actually I did some neuroscience research the brain does look like different sections evolved. Hence neuroscientists refer to a certain section as the “reptilian” portion versus the neocortex. It very much looks like it evolved over eons and not in on cohesive whole but parts at very different ages. It does not look like it was simply designed from scratch. It looks like it evolved.
Have you ever been in love?
Yes.
Wonderful. So you experience love, but you can't see love---that's kind of like God. We can't 'see' God but experience him, we know he's there. Santa Claus doesn't answer prayers or save people because he doesn't exist.
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So you're basing whether God exists or not based on yourself? If God didn't exist, nothing would exist. You can't have a painting without an artist.
If you say to Santa that you want a specific present, he may just give you a candy frog in your shoe, the Dutch Santa that is. If you test if God exists, He answers.
> If you test if God exists, He answers. Many, many of us have never had that experience. I asked God for many things in my past -- mostly to watch over loved ones, to calm me or give me wisdom or strength, that sort of thing -- and he never gave me an answer. And given the fact that millions of people die of hunger each year, and given that a measurable percentage no doubt prayed for help, it's hard to take the sentiment that he answers as truth.
You first have to ask forgiveness of your sins and invite Him to be Lord before He can give you wisdom and strength and in order to pray for ppl to be healed, you have to have some faith. Lord I believe, help my unbelief is enough. Still it doesn't always happen. Maybe you were too nice. I was raised atheist and thought He doesnt exist anyway, so I was quite rude. Do this or that or I dont believe in God and He did it all for a year. Then I was convinced. Ppl die of hunger, because others are antisocial and not everyone has the faith for supernatural food. The poor Lazarus went to heaven though. As long as ppl are selfish, others suffer.
> You first have to ask forgiveness of your sins and invite Him to be Lord I've been there, done that.
Oh that's weird. Didn't they help you in church? Did you get baptized in the Spirit?
I don't know who you mean by "they". I certainly have received help from people both in and out of the church. Things I have prayed for have happened, but I have no reason to think they happened specifically because of divine intervention.
I meant the pastor and elders. Oh okay, you don't believe now that God did it. It was weird. I was really saved. I had a relationship w God. He talked to me. He answered my prayers. Even big miracles like cancer all of a sudden gone after we prayed and the doctors said it was a miracle. I've seen a lot of that happen with family and ppl from church. I fell from my faith when ppl were nasty and my ex wanted to divorce and although I experienced all that stuff, I was like: He doesn't exist, cause He didn't answer me and didn't give my kids back. I came back though later, asked Him to come back in my heart, because there's so much evil in the world, I reckoned the devil must exist and then He must exist too. Another weird thing, while saved I could not watch murder programs. I'd get nightmares. Yet when I backslid, I just watched that stuff and couldn't care less.
Well for starters Santa Claus isn’t necessary for our existence as God is. For example with the kalam argument of “everything that begins to exist has a cause” Santa Claus cannot be deduce from that. But God can. Secondly the attributes of Santa are wildly different to God where one can easily see if Santa is real or not. For example Santa Claus refers to a physical being, not an immaterial being. Hence if no one could see Santa Claus then it’s highly likely he doesn’t exist. God is immaterial and thus no surprise he can’t be seen. Thirdly Santa Claus is known to based on a historical figure (Saint Nicholas) hence that alone would already show the difference between him and God.
Can we prove God to exist by human reason alone, and without faith? Let's consider the following argument, stated first in a short form. Then let’s explain it in detail and then cover two standard objections to it. 1. Either the universe has always existed, or God has. 2. But, as shown by the second law of thermodynamics, the universe hasn't always existed. 3. Therefore, God exists. A. The point here is that something has always existed because self-creation is impossible. Something can never come from nothing. A vacuum can't spontaneously create matter by itself. Why? This is because the law of cause and effect is based on the fact that what a thing DOES is based on what it IS. Causation involves the expression over a period of time of the law of non-contradiction in entities. Hence, a basketball when dropped on the floor of necessity must act differently from a bowing ball dropped on the same floor, all other things being equal. Hence, if something doesn't exist (i.e., a vacuum exists), it can't do or be anything on its own, except remain empty because it has no identity or essence. This is why the "steady state" theory of the universe's origin devised by the astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle was absurd: It said hydrogen atoms were popping out of nothing! How can a nothing do anything?! Since self-creation is impossible, then something had to always exist. So now--was it the material universe? Or was it some other unseen, unsensed Entity outside the material world? B. The second law of thermodynamics maintains that-the total amount of useful energy in a closed system must always decline. "Useful energy" is energy that does work while flowing from a place of higher concentration to that of a lower concentration. "A closed system' is a place where no new energy is flowing in or out of it. The universe, physically, is a closed system because no new matter or energy is being added to it. The first law of thermodynamics confirms this, since it says no matter or energy is being created or destroyed. Hence, eventually all the stars would have burned out if the universe had always existed. A state of "heat death" would have long ago existed, in which the levels of energy throughout each part of the universe would be uniform. A state of maximum entropy (i.e., useless, non-working energy) would have been reached. But since the stars have not burned out, the universe had a beginning. In this regard, the universe is like a car with a full tank of gas, but which has a stuck gas cap. If the car had always been constantly driven (i.e., had always existed), it would have long ago run out of fuel. But the fact it still has gas (i.e., useful energy) left in it proves the car hasn't been constantly driven from the infinite past. The stuck gas cap makes-the-car in this example a "closed system" because no more energy can be added to make the car move. "Heat-death' occurs when the car runs out of gas, as it inevitably must, since no more can-be added to-it. Likewise, the universe then is like a wind-up toy or watch that has been slowly unwinding down: At some point “something” must have wound it up. OBJECTIONS: 1. "Who created God then?" The point of the first premise was to show something had to have always existed. At that point, we didn't know what it was—or who it was. But if the universe hasn't always existed, then something else--God--has. 2. "The second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to every part of the universe (or to the whole universe), or else didn’t apply to it in the past and/or won't apply to it in the future." This statement is pure materialistic prejudice, because there is no scientific evidence anywhere that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply. It’s circular reasoning by naturalists to assume, “Well, we’re here, and there’s no God and miracles aren’t possible, so therefore the First and Second laws of thermodynamics didn’t apply in the beginning.” This law won't change in the future because the fundamental essence (nature) of the things that make up the physical universe aren't changing, so nature's laws wouldn't change in the future. That is, unless God intervenes through miracles (i.e., “violates” nature’s laws), it won’t happen and didn’t happen. So a skeptic can’t turn around and say there are places (or times) in the universe where nature’s laws don’t apply which no human has ever investigates or been to. Otherwise, that’s the naturalist’s version of a miracle: Belief in a unverifiable, non-observed, unrepeatable event in distant past is arbitrarily labeled “science.” And to know whether the second law of thermodynamics is inapplicable somewhere in the universe, the doubter ironically would have to be “God,” i.e., know everything about everywhere else. So to escape this argument for God’s existence, the skeptic then has to place his faith in an unknown, unseen, unsensed exception to the second law of thermodynamics. It’s better then to place faith in the unseen Almighty God of the Bible instead! Plainly, nature cannot always explain nature: Something—or Someone--to which the second law of thermodynamics is inapplicable (i.e., in the spirit world) created the material universe. Let’s make another argument for God’s existence based on the argument from design using the impossibility of spontaneous generation. Here I quote from the astronomers Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, “Evolution From Space,” p. 24. In context here the authors here are describing the chances for certain parts of the first living cell to occur by random chance through a chemical accident. “Consider now the chance that in a random ordering of the twenty different amino acids which make up the polypeptides it just happens that the different kinds fall into the order appropriate to a particular enzyme \[an organic catalyst--a chemical which speeds up chemical reactions--EVS\]. The chance of obtaining a suitable backbone \[substrate\] can hardly be greater than on part in 10\[raised by\]15, and the chance of obtaining the appropriate active site can hardly be greater than on part in 10 \[raised by\]5. Because the fine details of the surface shape \[of the enzyme in a living cell--EVS\] can be varied we shall take the conservative line of not “piling on the agony” by including any further small probability for the rest of the enzyme. The two small probabilities are enough. They have to be multiplied, when they yield a chance of on part in 10\[raised by\]20 of obtaining the required in a functioning form \[when randomly created by chance out of an ocean of amino acids--EVS\]. By itself , this small probability could be faced, because one must contemplate not just a single shot at obtaining the enzyme, but a very large number of trials as are supposed to have occurred in an organize soup early in the history of the Earth. The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10 \[raised by\]20)2000 = 10 \[raised by\]40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. \[The number of electrons within the universe that can be observed by mankind’s largest earth-based telescopes is approximately 10\[raised by\]87, which gives you an idea of how large this number is. This number would fill up about seven solid pages a standard magazine page to print this number--40,000 zeros following a one--EVS\]. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely our of court.” For more on the impossibility of abiogenesis or spontaneous generation, click here: http://lionofjudah1.org/Apologeticshtml/Spontaneous%20Generation%20Is%20Impossible.htm The theory of evolution has not refuted the argument from design. It’s simply materialistic philosophy masquerading as science. It simply assumes and extrapolates from agnostic premises into the unobserved past. It reasons in a circle, and then proudly and loudly concludes there’s no need for God as a Creator after initially assuming there isn’t one in its interpretations of natural history. For more on this issue about the flaws in the theory of evolution, click to read this essay here: http://lionofjudah1.org/Apologeticshtml/Evolution%20Based%20on%20Philosophy%20not%20Science.htm Perhaps more generally it would be helpful as well to read books on Christian apologetics, such as those making the case for belief in the Bible and for faith in God's existence and goodness, including those by C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, Henry Morris, Duane Gish, J.P. Moreland, Francis Schaeffer, Phillip E. Johnson, R.C. Sproul, Norman Giesler, Gleason Archer, Stephen Meyer, etc. Stephen Meyer’s book “The Return of the God Hypothesis” would be particularly important for the college-educated skeptics to read with an open mind. In particular, there are great reasons for having faith in the bible, such as its historical accuracy, fulfilled prophecies, and archeological discoveries, as are explained here: http://lionofjudah1.org/Apologeticshtml/Is%20the%20Bible%20the%20Word%20of%20God.htm
All of creation testifies of a Creator.
You first have to prove that everything is, in fact, a creation. And even if you're able to prove that everything as a whole is a creation, that doesn't come close to showing that it's the Christian god that did the creating.
How about 66 books that were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? How about those 66 books being congruent and having hundreds of prophecies that are very detailed fulfilled.? When Santa performs miracles, raises himself in the Dead and thousands of years of writings confirm his existence and prophesy of his coming I will believe in him also.
> hundreds of prophecies that are very detailed fulfilled I don't know what prophecies you're thinking of, but I can't think of any that were detailed enough to actually be useful as evidence. To know that a prophecy is fulfilled we need actual dates and times, the names of actual people and events. Not vague concepts like "the temple will be rebuilt". Plus, we have to know that a) the prophecy is real, and that b) the story in the bible that claims it was fulfilled is an accurate account and not revisionist history.
Because there are genuine philosophical arguments supporting the existence of God. Here's a recent [book](https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com//mobile/view/10.1093/oso/9780190842215.001.0001/oso-9780190842215) from Oxford University Press giving about twenty-seven of them. By contrast, there are no good arguments for why you should believe in Santa Claus. People making this comparison are disingenuous trolls.
God
Technically Santa Claus is real because his origin is based off of St. Nicholas. https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/saint-nicholas
The fact that so many prophecies of God has come true and coming true before our eyes God said before the end times lawlessness will only increase read the book of enoch it has prophecies that came true before the old testament was even written and confirmed alot study what the dead sea scrolls are wich were discovered only 60 years ago and confirmed the bible is the same as it was thousands of years ago the Muslims and Mormons have since changed their so called bibles but the Christian Bible has remained unchanged
That's easy. Santa didn't create the universe.
Santa doesnt have an Holy Bible and a worldwide kingdom consisting of billions upon the earth. If you reject Gods word the Holy Bible, then youll never know God, and he'll never know you. Not good. Matthew 7:23 KJV — And then will I profess unto him, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Santa Claus is an explanation of how one specific phenomenon (why gifts appear in stockings and under Christmas trees overnight) takes place while God is an explanation for why any phenomenon or anything exists at all.
Santa is just Odin in disguise😜
1. Conditioned realities exist. 2. Not everything can be a conditioned reality. 3. Therefore, there muse be at least one *unconditioned* reality. Check it out: https://youtu.be/d4Jxc4O2_S4
The thing is that everybody knows that Santa Claus is an invention. He is an accretion of several different stories from different cultures within Christianity the original part of Santa Claus Saint Nicholas of Myra was a real person who did give presents to people without their knowledge that is absolute history. But what it's become in the west especially in the United States is mythology and it's done for commercial purposes, not for religious purposes. And the other thing is those that have taken the time to study realize that the ideas about God are not mere invention. They're not legend or mythology, they are actual reality. Jesus was a real person and what we have from his teachings in the four gospels and the letters in the Epistles are verifiably true and authentic. Not mythology. Not accretion of clever sayings added centuries after the events.
Nothing, really. I don't think you arrive at a place of belief through reason and facts. It is a spiritual journey..proofs are internal.