I'm truly stunned.
I can't believe that. I can't bring myself to believe that. This piece can't be presented -- and agreed with -- as "evidence". Please tell me this is a joke?
There wasn't one single piece of evidence in the piece. Just conjecture based upon an ancient piece of literature. At best heresay with an unreliable source. At worst, either it's pure propaganda or relates a big 'scam'. Maybe Jesus didn't really die. Maybe he did, and someone just stole the body. Maybe it never happened at all, and is just a 'local legend' gone wild.
All of these possibilities are totally rejected out of hand?
Someone said they didn't see the need for non-biblical, unbiased sources? I didn't realize it was that bad. Truly, I didn't. Perhaps I better understand party partisans, now. The highly relelvant, repeated point about Atta, etc, also seems to be completely disregarded, too. Not even discussed, simply dismissed. Dang. Must re-evaluate. I'm stunned.
Have we not come any farther than that, really? Forgive this rant. But this thing with Islamic fundamentalists who have been convinced by their priests that they will go to heaven to ravish virgins in reward for killing innocents has got me *really* questioning the thinking of all religous people.
And no, this is not 'Christian' bashing. Christians are typically wonderful people, citizens, parents. This is about the nature of religous belief, and the true value of 'reason'.
Under your "reasoning" then we can conclude that no accounts of History are correct unless verified by first hand account.
Then refute it's points, rather than reject it out of hand(as you falsely accuse us of doing).
Maybe Jesus didn't really die. Maybe he did, and someone just stole the body. Maybe it never happened at all, and is just a 'local legend' gone wild. All of these possibilities are totally rejected out of hand?
These were considered in the article itself and in the following discussion. Christians reject them, but not out of hand. I don't think you even intend to discuss them, though, so much as you intend to create a fog of indeterminacy.
Someone said they didn't see the need for non-biblical, unbiased sources? I didn't realize it was that bad. Truly, I didn't. Perhaps I better understand party partisans, now.
The existence of the New Testament proves there were Christians shortly after Jesus' time of Earth. There are certain implications that follow from that. There were people around who were in Jerusalem at the time. If it had not been the case that, at the very least, something like the Gospel happened, these people would have made the start of Christianity impossible. Here, we're faced with the question of how the demoralized followers(or, rather, former followers) of an executed "criminal" became white-hot missionsaries willing to suffer death for the cause. There's a "factor X" here, as the article puts it, that, if not the resurrection, did the work of the resurrection. The article explains why the other possibilities are implausible.
There are, BTW, Roman and Jewish sources referring to Christianity.
The highly relelvant, repeated point about Atta, etc, also seems to be completely disregarded, too. Not even discussed, simply dismissed. Dang. Must re-evaluate. I'm stunned.
It most certainly was discussed, by myself and others, albeit in dismissive tones. There's a reason for that: it's a fundamentally stupid point. There's a difference between a dupe and a liar. If Mohammad Atta had, instead of being a murderous thug, a missionary for a faith he knew to be a lie put under torture and the threat of death, you might have a point. You still wouldn't address the fact of how many early Christians would have to have been in on it without telling the truth, even under the threat of fire and sword, for it all to have been made up.
"Reason" has become a worthless term. We aren't Vulcans.