The Atheist 'Pay 50 Shekels for a Rape, Get A Rape' Myth

Jesus as historical myth and The Tabula Rasa Jesus
Remsburg pointed out:
"A Historical myth according to Strauss, and to some extent I follow his language, is a real event colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the human and divine, the natural and the supernatural. The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false.[31]
So even if Jesus is a historical myth (ie was a flesh and blood man) you could have the issue of the Gospel narrative being essentially false and telling you nothing about the actual Jesus other than he existed--effectively putting him on par with Robin Hood or King Arthur, who have had historical candidates suggested as much as 200 years from when their stories traditionally take place.
To make Jesus more than that a researcher has to assume some parts of the Gospels narrative is essentially true. But which parts? In answering that question all supporters of a "historical Jesus" get into the Miner problem of effectively turning Jesus into a Tabula Rasa on which they overlay their own views.
"The "historical Jesus" reconstructed by New Testament scholars is always a reflection of the individual scholars who reconstruct him. Albert Schweitzer was perhaps the single exception, and he made it painfully clear that previous questers for the historical Jesus had merely drawn self-portraits. All unconsciously used the historical Jesus as a ventriloquist dummy. Jesus must have taught the truth, and their own beliefs must have been true, so Jesus must have taught those beliefs."[32]
The fact this keeps happening shows just how little definitive information on Jesus there is in Paul's writings and the Gospels.
Price points out the problem and it result:
What one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the next one takes up and makes its cornerstone. Jesus simply wears too many hats in the Gospels – exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. The Jesus Christ of the New Testament is a composite figure (...) The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time.[33]
My point here is simply that, even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more. All attempts to recover him turn out to be just modern remythologizings of Jesus. Every "historical Jesus" is a Christ of faith, of somebody's faith. So the "historical Jesus" of modern scholarship is no less a fiction."[34]
Source http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eviden...sus_Christ#What_qualifies_as_good_evidence.3F


You need to understand there is not one single eyewitness account of Jesus, everything in the bible is written by people who never met him, every single bit!
Basically a good way is to look at the dates, if you prove one is correct then you prove another is wrong, study it, come back to me if you can prove the biblical timeline for Jesus against the historical records.

 

OK, so you're borrowing from other religions.

 

Obviously I think you're wrong about the eyewitnesses. Got any evidence for your conspiracy theory? All I've seen so far is illogical speculation.

II Peter 1:16

"For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty."

 

No religion owns empathy, or objective moral truth, or the golden rule. Empathy is part of being human. Objective moral truths are independent of any religion. The golden rule is simply logical.

I am not, and atheists in general are not, borrowing from anything.

 

All you have done is say, the gospel writers said peter said. That is third party evidence of an eyewitness account. Are you not able to understand even this very basic concept? I really do not want to be rude to you but it is a simple FACT there is not one single piece of eyewitness account of Jesus. It is all third party.Not one, anywhere. There are over 50,000 alleged pieces of evidence for Jesus ranging from a tiny piece of parchment but there is not one eyewitness account.

 

To repeat, the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses or those who interviewed eyewitnesses. What do you know that Papias, for example, who knew the Apostle John, didn't know? If you're going to dismiss testimony you need a valid reason to do so.

http://carm.org/when-were-gospels-written-and-whom

 

It wasn't logical to the atheists Stalin, Mao, etc. I'm not saying atheism was the sole reason they did what they did, but it was a necessary one.

 

actually it wasn't ANY reason they did what they did. they did what they did because they were insane despots, given far too much power by a populace conditioned to revere and fear authority. despots come in both flavours, religious and non-religious. the common feature is insanity.

if you truly believe that morality comes from god, you're going to need to explain all the good atheists in the world. and more importantly, explain how it is that atheist majority nations are more humane, more egalitarian, kinder, gentler, less violent places to live than religious nations. no theist here has yet even attempted to do this, but I think you should give it a try. in fact, I'm inclined to think you should take over Mitt Ryan's endless 'ask tough questions' threads because you actually do answer, and in mostly straight up terms. far more than he ever does!

 

The ignorance of individuals has no bearing on whether something is or isn't logical.

I notice a distinct lack of anything resembling support for your claims that "there is no basis for a materialist to make ANY moral judgement" or that I (and presumably materialists) borrow from religion. Should I take your digression as a concession on those points?

 

exactly!

 

Your evidence merely says the bible says so.....
It is all third party, tell me what do you not understand about third party evidence? Please read this again http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eviden...sus_Christ#What_qualifies_as_good_evidence.3F
It explains why there is no evidence, it explains what third party evidence is. This is good logical factual stuff it is not biased in any way.
Your have your faith in your god isn't that enough?, why do you persist in trying to prove something that no historian has managed?

 

so much historical nincompoopery!

a huge percentage of what we take for granted today came from the arabs and the chinese. there's a fair bit, too, from the Indus region. then there were the pre-christian celts, the pre-christian romans, and the pre-christian greeks. to suggest that somehow GOD had anything to do with it is clearly idiotic. whatever europeans contributed was residual to the same things which gave rise to innovations in other parts of the world. increasing numbers, development of cities, climate, food supply, the arts, increased understanding of the natural world, etc etc.

now back to my time masheen! it may well suit your purposes to cherry pick only the deep past, but all that does is remind us that EVERYONE was appalling then, no matter where they lived or what they believed. if you want to convince yourself that GOD - and in particular, christianity - made such a big difference, try spending some time in europe (your beloved and perfect west) during any year between 500AD and 1850AD. i.e., the golden years of christianity - before people started waking up to themselves. and you're peasant stock, remember.

 

because faith ISN'T enough ?

faith is a massive liability. or as someone else said, cheap and dangerous.

 

Fail, only if you ignore the 100,000,000 victims of atheistic communist regimes.

 

No, that site isn't biased, LOL.

Its quite good enough for me, just trying to help out the athiests here. And what have historians not managed to do? The Gospel writers WERE historians in a sense.

 

At last we agree.

So why didn't science, our western human rights, the anti-slavery movement, etc. arise in those other places? Even non-Christians like Alfred North Whitehead and J. Robert Oppenhiemer admitted science came out of a Christian world view.

 

I don't ignore any atrocity, but I do recognise that religion or lack of it rarely has anything to do with them. these things are about power and insanity. sometimes money plays a part, but more often it's just small penises.

I'm not sure what you want me to acknowledge regarding these oft repeated 'atheist atrocities'. that the despots in charge claimed to be atheists? happy to. that they killed lot's of people? yes, they surely did. you see the problem?

In return, rather than hit you over the head repeatedly with 'theist atrocities' of the past (when we were ALL stupider), all I ask is that you explain to yourself, if not us, how it is that atheist nations today are doing better than theist nations.

 

You should take it as a busy person not always able to respond to every atheist here, grossly over-represented as they are compared to normal America, where theists are 80%, as opposed to what seems like 80% atheists here.

Here is William Lane Craig addressing that question in a short video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSLxh4FpmW8

He has written quite extensively on this subject.

Another interesting video I came across, there's hope for you atheists yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw8uUOPoi2M

She realized atheists didn't have the lock of reason she used to think they had, and feels much more intellectually alive now as a Christian.

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What is an 'atheist nation'? I know North Korea, China, and Cuba are.

 

a few hundred thousand pre-christian chinese beg to differ. as do arab 'doctors' of the middle ages.

 

This thread seems to have drifted waaayyyy OT.

 

Too busy to respond to everyone (totally understandable), but not too busy to post non sequiturs. That makes sense.

Sorry, I don't watch videos on here. I don't have any interest in discussing things with folks who can't articulate their own points. And atheists having "the lock of reason" or not isn't relevant to anything I've said, so I have no idea why you would post a video about that.

 

>>>Insult Removed<<<

Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication &#8212; after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.



Thomas Paine The age of reason.

Goodnight and may your god go with you.

 

And may it not be the one he thinks it is.

 

Yes. Maybe god should have said to treat rape victims like victims who deserve love and respect; treat them as if they have as much value as anyone else. And hey, maybe make the rapist support her financially withOUT forcing the girl to marry and have sex with her rapist. Is that so difficult?

You act as if a rape victim would not want a choice in the matter and that every single rape victim would be kicked out of her parent's house and left to fend for herself. Or that everyone would automatically know that she had been raped.

Where's the myth?

 

So I can't be too busy, but you can be to watch a few minute video? I'm not going to jump through your hoops personally answering the same questions from the many atheists here, if you don't want answers don't ask questions.

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WHAT is a lie, and you might want to read the forum rules before you call people liars.

What, you want God to appear to all 6 billion people?

Silly book.