Did Jesus really exist?

Originally posted by Suzianne
So not only will you continue to wallow in your ignorance but you will take pride in doing so.

Check.

I am proud of my ignorance of the contents of the YouTube videos that RJ posts. Are you not proud of such ignorance too? Or do you (a) feel guilty about not watching them. (b) watch them to cure your ignorance of their contents?
I am largely ignorant of the contents of much of the Bible as I have not read it all. What I am proud about is that I know more about it and its origins than you do.

Originally posted by FMF
The video by Richard Charier, for which there is a link in the OP, is the topic of this thread. It is the subject of this discussion. Have you watched it?

The title of the thread is "Did Jesus really exist?" That is the subject of the thread. But yes. I have watched the video. i also watched a debate video between him and a creationists on this subject, and Carter did poorly in that debate in my opinion. 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
The title of the thread is "Did Jesus really exist?" That is the subject of the thread. But yes. I have watched the video. i also watched a debate video between him and a creationists on this subject, and Carter did poorly in that debate in my opinion. 😏

Who is this Carter?

Originally posted by googlefudge
Who is this Carter?

I don't know. I would guess he is probably wise in his own eyes, but a fool in reality. 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
I don't know. I would guess he is probably wise in his own eyes, but a fool in reality. 😏

You were the one to bring this person up in conversation... You aught to know who he is.

Originally posted by RJHinds
The title of the thread is "Did Jesus really exist?" That is the subject of the thread. But yes. I have watched the video. i also watched a debate video between him and a creationists on this subject, and Carter did poorly in that debate in my opinion. 😏

The person who wrote the book and is the subject of the video in question is called Carrier. Try to keep up.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I agree. It is not a particularly good argument, but it is an argument.

Islam is based on the Quran which was dictated by the Angel Gabriel. Do you feel that the existence of Islam about 1.4k years later can be used as an argument to the fact of a historical Angel Gabriel?

It could be used as an argument sure .......and even more so for the existence of a dude / bloke named Mohamed .....If I were going to argue it I would just start with proving the historical existence of any figure in history.....not necessarily the figure's deity or something

Manny

http://www.creationstudies.org/Education/simon_greenleaf.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Greenleaf

I think the challenge is to put it to the test did Jesus really exist or not ?

Manny

Originally posted by menace71
It could be used as an argument sure .......and even more so for the existence of a dude / bloke named Mohamed .....If I were going to argue it I would just start with proving the historical existence of any figure in history.....not necessarily the figure's deity or something

Manny

I wondered about applying the same test to King Arthur. Whether there is any historical basis at all depends on which historian one asks. He fits with the god 'historicized' model JS357 mentioned earlier, but there is also disputed physical evidence.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I wondered about applying the same test to King Arthur. Whether there is any historical basis at all depends on which historian one asks. He fits with the god 'historicized' model JS357 mentioned earlier, but there is also disputed physical evidence.

You can apply a Bayesian analysis to any 'historical/mythical' figure to see whether the
evidence indicates that they really existed [in some form] or are entirely myth.

The methodology is, and should be, universally applicable.

The answer may often be that it's entirely inconclusive, and we can't make any strong
assertion either way. But the strength of the system is not that it guarantees decisive
answers, but that it defines the scope of what you can or cannot justifiably say.
It tells you how confident you should be about any given explanation for any given phenomena.
Sometimes the answer is that you shouldn't be confident, because there are things that we
[currently] don't and cannot know. This helps us tell what they are.


EDIT: It also provides a path to objectively arbitrating these disputes, which history as a subject
currently lacks. The process is completely transparent in that everyone can see all the
evidence being plugged into the equation, and everyone can agree on reasonable upper and/or
lower limits to the probability bias of each piece of evidence. And all can see all the evidence being
taken into account. And then the equation spits out the answer. There is no cherry picking evidence,
there is no accepting the arguments of the greatest authority... All the evidence goes in, and the
impartial equation tells you the result. If someone misses out some evidence in an analysis then
that is immediately apparent, and you can add it in to see what effect it has/had.

Originally posted by googlefudge
You were the one to bring this person up in conversation... You aught to know who he is.

I did not bring him up. It was twhithead in the very first post on this subject when he said the following:

Googlefudge pointed us to Richard Carrier's work on the historicity of Jesus.

😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
I did not bring him up. It was twhithead in the very first post on this subject when he said the following:

Googlefudge pointed us to Richard Carrier's work on the historicity of Jesus.

😏

You said carter not carrier you doofus.

Even when DT spells it out for you, you still can't work it out because you pay no
attention to what other people say.

Originally posted by menace71
It could be used as an argument sure .......and even more so for the existence of a dude / bloke named Mohamed ....

Why would it be a better argument for the existence of Mohammed than for the existence of the Angel Gabriel?

Originally posted by googlefudge
You said carter not carrier you doofus.

Even when DT spells it out for you, you still can't work it out because you pay no
attention to what other people say.

My eyes have degenerated over time and I thought I saw Carter, which is not much different from Carrier. If you run the r and the i together it looks like a t. Many people do the same with my name when they spell it "Hines". So you are the doofus for not being able to figure out that i was referring to the same person as referred to in the OP.

Originally posted by RJHinds
My eyes have degenerated over time and I thought I saw Carter, which is not much different from Carrier. If you run the r and the i together it looks like a t. Many people do the same with my name when they spell it "Hines". So you are the doofus for not being able to figure out that i was referring to the same person as referred to in the OP.

Every one is a doofus. That's why we need Jesus. This thread is proof of that, as are all the other threads.