THERE IS NO EVIDENCE!!

[achilles12604]

I am so tired of hearing this statement asserted as fact dispite its obvious incorrectness.

So I am creating a thread about it.

Atheists please explain to me how you can continually claim there is no evidence when the theists here continually put forth the following:

1) The Gospels
2) Paul's letters
3) Jospehus
4) Letters of church Fathers
5) First cause
6) Moral argument
7) Nazarenes
8) Lime stone outside of Nazareth

And many others.

Perhaps we are tripping over the defintion of evidence.

ev-i-dence /ˈɛvɪdəns/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ev-i-duhns] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -denced, -denc-ing.
noun
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.
3. Law. data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects.

Please take special note of the last definition. Witnesses, records, documents, objects. We theists continually present these exact things and we are greeted with, "there is no evidence."



Ok well now I challange you to explain yourselves. Why do you say there is no evidence to evaluate when there obviously is?

[acamp1]

(oops)

[The Duke of Vandals]

I'll say this. Wouldn't a person (Jesus) of this magnitude and importance have way more documented "evidence" than what we're debating about?

Indeed.

At the least, we'd expect Philo of Alexandria to mention Jesus. He doesn't.

[Easyrider]

At the least, we'd expect Philo of Alexandria to mention Jesus. He doesn't.

Philo didn't write about Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel either, who was the president of the Sanhedrin and the head of the prestigious School of Hillel. So your argument is hardly impressive.

[Cephus]

History itself is our analysis of facts is it not? Our rendition of history wan be altered however we want it to read.

No, history is often simply an accumulation of stories, especially as you go back in time. Historians try to get as many independent accounts as they can and match it up with physical evidence, but in the case of the Bible, you simply do not have those independent accounts and you have no physical evidence, it's all heresay and myth, wrapped up in wishful thinking. Historians do not consider the Bible, in and of itself, to be a historical source.

I can not accept the sentence that there is no evidence to argue over concerning Christianity's validity.

Doesn't really matter what you accept, it only matters what's true. Your acceptance is not necessary.

[Cephus]

Again, at what standards are theists holding their God too?

Desperate clutching at straws, of course. But you have to remember that these are the same sorts of people who dismiss libraries-full of evidence for evolution because they think a few half-assed pokes at it with ignorant assertions somehow proves creationism. It's no surprise that they think any silly claims about their religion somehow mean it must be true.

[scorpia]

6) Moral argument

While I agree that there is evidence, I don't see how this example is evidence

[Easyrider]

1) The Gospels - These are the claim. We know they were written no earlier than 70ce.

Various scholars disagree.

http://www.errantskeptics.org/DatingNT.htm

Your "we know" is not impressive.

We know Mark was the first one and that the others very obviously build from Mark.

No, you don't know any such thing. That charade is built on a highly questionable Q hypothesis (you know, the one no one has ever seen the first trace of historical or archaeological evidence for?). Not only that, but were you familiar with Eusebius (who quotes Origen), you would know that "the first (Gospel) was written by Matthew...and was prepared for the converts from Judaism" (Ecclesiastical History, 6:25).

We know they make nonsensical claims which are obviously false and rely heavily on fallacious reasoning such as appeals to popular opinion and appeals to belief.

No foundation. You claim to know a lot but so far you're about 0-3 in proving it.

2) Paul's letters - Which? The ones we believe Paul wrote or the ones we're pretty sure the early church invented?

Slap another one against the wall. No foundation for the church inventing anything of the like.

4) Letters of church Fathers - Which? Oh... you mean the people who had doctrinal axes to grind and had a vested interest in helping to invent a new religion?

Sure, Vandals. All these guys are mad or dishonest. Scores of them. <chuckle>

5) First cause - Please. I'll let Richard Dawkins demolish this one: most of the traditional arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished. Several of them, such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself. To be sure, we do need some kind of explanation for the origin of all things.

So you don't have a first cause yourself you can pony up for rationalism? That's impressive.

Plenty of fallacies, though... and unsupported claims trying to support other unsupported claims.

You mean like your hypothetical Q fantasy for Mark that you love that no one has ever seen? LOL! Looks like your fallacies are the big pink elephant in the room that you are blinded to!

Jesus IS Lord!

[Lotan]

You opened with some hair-splitting nonsense to try to save face and went on to dismiss evidnece.

What is it that you think I dismissed?

Par for the Christian course you're on.

I think I'm a far better atheist than you'll ever be. For one thing, I don't need to rely on poor arguments like the Christ myth 'theory'. You're not going to convince many people with that one. I'm just interested in the historical aspects of Christianity; how it got started. My ideology is shaped by my conclusions and not the other way around as it is with some.

Duke: "These folks had things happen to them that mirror what happened to Jesus."
Lotan: "So!?"
What's important is that you didn't actually refute any of the events I brought up. So we agree they happened to the other Jesuses. Marvelous.

Why bother? Let's look at that list of similarities again...

Made trouble for the Romans.
Were executed on or around Passover eve.
Made trouble for the Jewish authority.
Preached about the end times.
Were flogged by Romans.
Was crucified by Romans.

That's just eerie! Did they grow beards and eat unleavened bread too? What if they wore...sandals!

If you actually read Josephus (instead of just talking about it) you'll see that those events were rather mundane for 1st century Jewish peasants in Palestine. You can find lots of examples here.

You went on to scoff at the idea of the Jeffersonian bible...

No I didn't. Let me refresh your memory...

Who we have no independent unbiased evidence of is the mythical non-magic godman who is a favorite of AINO's. This is the Jesus from the Jeffersonian bible who didn't do any miracles, yet lived the alleged life out of the gospels.

Who ever said that? You're making your own strawman argument now.

So you are either mistaken, or more likely, a liar.

...which is the stance you've held all along as an AINO.

Again, I've never taken that position. There are traditions in the gospels that might derive from historical actualities, but it is nowhere as simple as just removing the miraculous and accepting the remainder. That has never been my stance and the suggestion that it has is an unevidenced lie. You are a liar.

Your objection is just more evidence of your irrational contradictions of anything I say.

You flatter yourself.

Soon, I could post "down is the opposite of up" and you'd present some unsupported knee-jerk rejection... like this one:

Quote:
Unevidenced tripe.

Again I'll remind you...

He's based on Christian invention and the earlier Jesuses who set the stage for the flourishing Jesus cult in the seventh decade ce.

Unevidenced tripe.

It's still unevidenced, and it's still tripe Duke.

I've already addressed the other Jesuses here.

Really, you didn't.
Your entire objection was to go to each one and say, "This guy wasn't an exact carbon copy of duh gospel jesus so duh gospel jesus wasnt based on him!lol"

Really it was more like ""This guy doesn't even remotely resemble duh gospel jesus so duh gospel jesus wasnt based on him!lol" Go ahead, read it again. Can't hurt, might help.

My favorite is Jesus ben Stada, the only crucifixion victim of the bunch - "But was there a crucified Jesus?
Certainly. Jesus ben Stada was a Judean agitator who gave the Romans a headache in the early years of the second century." ROTFLMAO!!! How does that work Duke?

This is a little like stating because West Side Story doesn't specifically mention Montagues and Capulets there's no way it could be based on Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet.

No Duke, it isn't. Your little analogy misses the very point that you made such a big fuss over. Since you think that Jesus was a composite of "multiple people" then in this example West Side Story would be based on what? The multiple works of Shakespeare? Multiple tragic romances maybe?
By claiming that Jesus was a composite of many people you just increase the size of the sample from which to draw similarities. Even then, the similarities you do come up with are less than thrilling; they're only vague generalizations that could apply to many, many people.

The reason the early Christian fabricators...

That would be 'alleged' early Christian fabricators. Do you know their names?

...used men named "Jesus" to base their godman on is these men existed...

Fiendishly clever! (especially clever to include Jesus ben Stada, too)

...(we know this from Josephus) and their deeds would have been somewhat known...

Excuse me for interrupting, but "somewhat known"? Sorry, go on...

...by Jews living in the area at the time.

What area? Although no one knows exactly where they were written, there is evidence that none of them were written in Palestine.

When you're creating a work of historical fiction, the closer you can get to being accurate the better.

I'll take your word for that, you're the expert!

Josephus' work establishes the existence of Jewish "Jesus cults" as early as 88 bce. The Christians were hoping to cash in.

Hooray! Are you finally going to tell us about those pre 1CE "Jesus cults"! Oh boy! I've been asking for months but you never give any details. Is today the BIG DAY? Are you, at last, going to provide some teensy bit of evidence for a claim that you've been repeating over and over and over...? I don't dare to hope that it might be true!

Or are you just going to continue making empty claims backed only by insults and slurs?

There's evidence of the other Jesuses from Josephus.

There's evidence of other Jesuses from the Guadalajara phone book too. So what? Statistically, 1 out of every 18 first century Jewish males was named Yeshua.

There isn't a scrap of valid evidence for the gospel Jesus, lotan. There never was. There never will be. He's very obviously aan invention.

That's nice. Let's see...do I take the word of the near unanimous consensus of scholars and historians, or should I listen to Zhavric regurgitate some drivel from the jesusneverexisted website... ...that's a toughie!

In the meantime you haven't produced "a scrap of valid evidence" for this multiple Jesus nonsense. I'm sure we would all like to hear about those 'Jesus cults'...

[achilles12604]

I can accept the sentence that there are no good arguments for Christianity's validity. I can not accept the sentence that there is no evidence to argue over concerning Christianity's validity.

For Christianity to be valid two steps in the argument are needed. 1/ Jesus needs to have died on the cross and be resurrected, along with a whole bunch of metaphysics being in place. The metaphysics being soul, spirit, heaven, God, sin, miracles etc etc. 2/ That the available evidence supports all of 1.

I am not so equipped or inclined as others to debate scripture. However lets say that Jesus was indeed an historical character. That he was crucified, and that his tomb was found empty. Granting all that there is still no evidence for Christianitys validity because none of that evidence is adequate for accepting the resurrection as supernatural, or the associated metaphysics of soul, spirit, heaven etc. To buy into all that requires a leap of logic, and thus a dollop of faith.

I am so glad you are on this site. It is so nice to debate with someone who will actually acknowledge the two positions instead of being deaf to any position but their own.


You, (probably unintentionally) have given a perfect example of the dissemination I was trying to make.

You wrote:

Granting all that there is still no evidence for Christianitys validity because none of that evidence is adequate for accepting the resurrection as supernatural, or the associated metaphysics of soul, spirit, heaven etc.

Let me break this down so I can explain my frustrations.

Granting all that there is still no evidence

This is the phrase which I find frustrating. You go on to SHOW why.

because none of that evidence is adequate

This part of the sentence shows that there WAS evidence, but that the evidence which DID exist, was simply inadequate in your opinion. BUT there WAS evidence to discuss.


This dissemination is what I am trying to get across.

There is a major difference between NO evidence to discuss, and inadequate evidence to chose an alternate conclusion.



Thank you for a perfect opportunity to express what I have been trying to say.

[Furrowed Brow]

Hi Achilles,

You on the night shift?

Anyhow

Let me break this down so I can explain my frustrations.

Granting all that there is still no evidence

This is the phrase which I find frustrating. You go on to SHOW why.

because none of that evidence is adequate

This part of the sentence shows that there WAS evidence, but that the evidence which DID exist, was simply inadequate in your opinion. BUT there WAS evidence to discuss.

This dissemination is what I am trying to get across.

Lets take another look at that frustrating phrase with the sentence it came in.

Granting all that there is still no evidence for Christianitys validity

Im happy to admit the historical texts count for something, and though this aint exactly my strong area Id say there is something to be discussed about whether the figure of Jesus is historical or mythical, and whether his tomb was found empty. But.we are talking about the validity of Christianity. And I interpreted that to mean Christianity with the supernatural connotations I.e. God, sin, resurrection etc. The evidence needs to be able to support the inference of the supernatural for Christianity to have made a valid conclusion about the supernatural. And my point is that all those historical texts, Turin shroud and so on on are inadequate for that inference. What I did not make explicit, is that no new discovery of new texts or reinterpretation of known evidence will ever be sufficient for the leap to the supernatural. Simply put - it is the wrong kind of evidence for that purpose. So even if it could be proved that Jesus existed, was crucified and his tomb was found empty - this does not serve as evidence for the supernatural. And thus there is no evidence for the validity of Christianity.

I look at it this way - the Christian needs to be inspired to make a leap and accept the supernatural. They may well find that inspiration in the Gospels, and everything that surrounds those writings. But inspiration and logic are two different things.