Jesus?

Byrnzie

Soulfire42 wrote:

Some further fact checking is in order, but it's late and I really am not all that concerned about this particular topic right now. Here's a start:

Dionysus
He was not born to a virgin, his mother was a mortal Semele (daughter of Cadmus) and his father was Zeus. We know that Zeus had other male children so Dionysus is also not his "only begotten son" [22]. Similar to the story of Attis, Dionysus died each winter and was resurrected in the spring. Again, this is hardly December, much less the 25th of said month [23].

So both the Classical playwright Euripedes, Robert Graves - who translated numerous Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts - and most 20th Century historians of the Classical period, are wrong, and your internet blogger is right? I doubt it.

Soulfire42

Well, I wrote a bunch of crap and still have it a word document, but really... I can't stand the juvenile tactics of Byrnzie and have grown tired of the personal attacks he likes to make rather than addressing evidence and facts. I present the following link instead:

http://www.thedevineevidence.com/jesus_ ... ities.html

I have no interest in defending Christianity. I am just interested in rational evaluation of evidence and know that even if two myths are similar, it does nothing to dismiss the existence of a human being named Jesus. Go read up on Osiris and Dionysis and see if you can honestly tell me that they are the same deity. And then you want to tell me that both of these are also Jesus with another name? Absurd, says the atheist with no vested interest. Even the president of Skeptic Magazine thinks it likely that Jesus existed as a man.

Idris

Soulfire42 wrote:

Well, I wrote a bunch of crap and still have it a word document, but really... I can't stand the juvenile tactics of Byrnzie and have grown tired of the personal attacks he likes to make rather than addressing evidence and facts. I present the following link instead:

http://www.thedevineevidence.com/jesus_ ... ities.html

I have no interest in defending Christianity. I am just interested in rational evaluation of evidence and know that even if two myths are similar, it does nothing to dismiss the existence of a human being named Jesus. Go read up on Osiris and Dionysis and see if you can honestly tell me that they are the same deity. And then you want to tell me that both of these are also Jesus with another name? Absurd, says the atheist with no vested interest. Even the president of Skeptic Magazine thinks it likely that Jesus existed as a man.

We got to write something to the people of that web site, as it contains too many contradictions and errors. Which sadly may take away from the better points it try's to make, and in fact does make at times. :ugeek:

I need to get out more

Byrnzie

Soulfire42 wrote:

Well, I wrote a bunch of crap and still have it a word document, but really... I can't stand the juvenile tactics of Byrnzie and have grown tired of the personal attacks he likes to make rather than addressing evidence and facts. I present the following link instead:

http://www.thedevineevidence.com/jesus_ ... ities.html

I have no interest in defending Christianity. I am just interested in rational evaluation of evidence and know that even if two myths are similar, it does nothing to dismiss the existence of a human being named Jesus. Go read up on Osiris and Dionysis and see if you can honestly tell me that they are the same deity. And then you want to tell me that both of these are also Jesus with another name? Absurd, says the atheist with no vested interest. Even the president of Skeptic Magazine thinks it likely that Jesus existed as a man.

Firstly, show me the personal attack I made.

Secondly, I never said that Osiris and Dionysus were one and the same. Go back and read rhe original post again.

MK1980

What about Tacitus, and his mention of Jesus being the Christ & his execution by Pilate. Also Paul in 1 Corintians 2:2 does refer to Jesus being the Christ; '...for I decided to know nothing amoung you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.'

Idris

cajunkiwi wrote:

So... if god and the devil actually do exist... and the stuff from the bible is true... where are they now? God apparently used to talk to people all the time. He used to smite people on a regular basis, didn't he? Where's the big booming voice from the heavens?

I used to go to church on a regular basis as a kid, and then stopped. Cold turkey. There were far too many flaws and WTF moments for my liking. Science provides concrete answers and examples that don't change and can be seen every day. I'll take those explanations over "A magical guy in the sky did it" any day of the week. Religions all stemmed from the same place - primitive societies trying to figure out why things were the way they were. They didn't have access to the resources we have now, so they made up stories to explain things. I REALLY fell out of love with religion when I saw what it did to people who didn't believe those stories over the years. "Oh, you think the earth revolves around the sun? Heretic! Liar! Blasphemer! Lock him up!"

Atheists and agnostics never committed genocide and never locked up scientists, to the best of my knowledge.

Things in science change all the time, and when they get the Hadron Collider working properly, things will change again.

Maybe you should go to a Jewish Synagogue? A Hindu Temple? A muslim Mosque? All your wtf moments you had, that's a good start, work on them.

The great cop out is to look at the people crying Heretic! Liar! Blasphemer! Lock him up!" and to use that, even an atoms worth of that as a decision against your belief in God or the religions sent down, or made up.



Perhaps a mistake you are making is looking for the big booming voice in the heavens (as you say), rather than looking for the soft whisper in your heart?

Smellyman

Soulfire42 wrote:

Some further fact checking is in order, but it's late and I really am not all that concerned about this particular topic right now. Here's a start:

Dionysus
He was not born to a virgin, his mother was a mortal Semele (daughter of Cadmus) and his father was Zeus. We know that Zeus had other male children so Dionysus is also not his "only begotten son" [22]. Similar to the story of Attis, Dionysus died each winter and was resurrected in the spring. Again, this is hardly December, much less the 25th of said month [23]. He did, however perform miracles, mostly things involving wine, because he was the god of wine -- naturally he could turn water into wine. The titles listed above, such as "King of Kings" and "The Alpha and Omega" are not sourced in the movie, nor can I find any evidence that these titles ever applied to Dionysus, but for good measure, I did find "The Alpha and Omega" referring to god of Christianity [24].

-http://conspiracyscience.com/articles/zeitgeist/part-one/#dionysus


This comes from a site which debunks the movie Zeitgeist step by step. I encourage the original poster to read through some of the claims, since part one of the Zeitgesit movie largely presents the argument which is being forwarded by the original poster. And then that argument gets pretty torn apart. I'm sympathetic to some parts of Zeitgeist, but other parts are just absolutely false. The overall website for the debunking is here:

http://conspiracyscience.com/

so he wasn't born from a virgin mother? However, he and Jesus were conceived by Gods?

That is not similar at all..........

Byrnzie

MK1980 wrote:

What about Tacitus, and his mention of Jesus being the Christ & his execution by Pilate. Also Paul in 1 Corintians 2:2 does refer to Jesus being the Christ; '...for I decided to know nothing amoung you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.'

Firstly, Tacitus wrote this in 115 A.D - 80 years after Jesus' supposed death. Secondly, his information was second-hand, and there is no evidence that he aquired this information from any independent sources, but that he simply repeated what Christians at the time were saying.

Also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on ... te_note-32
'Those critical of the passage's authenticity argue that early Christian writers likely would have sought to establish the historicity of Jesus via secular or non-Christian documents, and that their silence with regard to the Annals in this manner may suggest that the passage did not exist in early manuscripts. Furthermore, because the earliest surviving manuscript containing the passage is an 11th century Christian scribal copy, skeptics of the passage's authenticity argue that it may be the result of later Christian editing.'


http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... jesus.html
'The next major ancient historian who supposedly mentions Jesus, and thus provides us with evidence that he was an historical character is Tacitus. Cornelius Tacitus wrote his Annals after 117 A.D. Their exact date of composition is not known, but we do know that it was at least 70 years after Jesus' supposed crucifixion. Jesus is not mentioned by name anywhere in the extant works of Tacitus. There is one mention of "Christus" in Book XV, Chapter 44, as follows:

"Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated by the people for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians. Their founder, one Christus, had been put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. This checked the abominable superstition for a while, but it broke out again and spread, not merely through Judea, where it originated, but even to Rome itself, the great reservoir and collecting ground for every kind of depravity and filth. Those who confessed to being Christians were at once arrested, but on their testimony a great crowd of people were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson, but of hatred of the entire human race."(D.R. Dudley's translation)

While we know from the way in which the above is written that Tacitus did not claim to have firsthand knowledge of the origins of Christianity, we can see that he is repeating a story which was then commonly believed, namely that the founder of Christianity, one Christus, had been put to death under Tiberius. There are a number of serious difficulties which must be answered before this passage can be accepted as genuine. There is no other historical proof that Nero persecuted the Christians at all. There certainly were not multitudes of Christians in Rome at that date (circa 60 A.D.). In fact, the term "Christian" was not in common use in the first century. We know Nero was indifferent to various religions in his city, and, since he almost definitely did not start the fire in Rome, he did not need any group to be his scapegoat. Tacitus does not use the name Jesus, and writes as if the reader would know the name Pontius Pilate, two things which show that Tacitus was not working from official records or writing for non-Christian audiences, both of which we would expect him to have done if the passage were genuine.

Perhaps most damning to the authenticity of this passage is the fact that it is present almost word-for-word in the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (died in 403 A.D.), where it is mixed in with obviously false tales. At the same time, it is highly unlikely that Sulpicius could have copied this passage from Tacitus, as none of his contemporaries mention the passage. This means that it was probably not in the Tacitus manuscripts at that date. It is much more likely, then, that copyists working in the Dark Ages from the only existing manuscript of the Chronicle, simply copied the passage from Sulpicius into the manuscript of Tacitus which they were reproducing.

McDowell is on even shakier ground when he tries to promote the short mention of "Chrestus" in Suetonius. First, any scholar ought to learn to at least spell the name of the person he is writing about correctly. McDowell spells it incorrectly as "Seutonius." Then he makes the unforgivable and dishonest statement that "Chrestus" is "another spelling of Christus." This is not correct. "Chrestus" means 'The Good" in Greek, while "Christus" means "The Messiah." Actually, Chrestus was not an uncommon name in ancient Rome. Since Jesus was admittedly not in Rome instigating the Jews, we are almost definitely talking about someone other than Jesus here. I should mention that the entire relevant quotation from Suetonius which is involved here reads as follows: "As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome." The "he" is Claudius. As just mentioned, not even McDowell claims that Jesus was at Rome in 55 AD, when this incident is alleged to have occurred. It is also difficult to see why Jews would be led by Jesus. That is pretty strong evidence that this passage does not refer to Jesus of Nazareth at all, and so is irrelevant to our discussion of whether Jesus ever lived. We can, however, add the lack of a mention of Jesus in Suetonius to our list of "negative" evidence for the existence of Jesus as an historical person. The reference in Suetonius is Life of the Caesars (Claudius 25:4).

Break The Sky

Weren't the Persians Zoroastrian?

I'm pretty sure they worshipped Ahura Mazda, who, interestingly enough, is usually credited as the first monotheistic god.

Byrnzie

Big Drop wrote:

Weren't the Persians Zoroastrian?

I'm pretty sure they worshipped Ahura Mazda, who, interestingly enough, is usually credited as the first monotheistic god.

Zoroastrianism was founded in about the 6th century BC, whereas Atenism was established in the 14th century BC.

Break The Sky

Byrnzie wrote:

Big Drop wrote:

Weren't the Persians Zoroastrian?

I'm pretty sure they worshipped Ahura Mazda, who, interestingly enough, is usually credited as the first monotheistic god.

Zoroastrianism was founded in about the 6th century BC, whereas Atenism was established in the 14th century BC.

So the Persians before the Zoroastrian Persians?

catefrances

Smellyman wrote:

so he wasn't born from a virgin mother? However, he and Jesus' mothers were conceived from Gods?

That is not similar at all..........

the virgin mary was not conceived from a God.

Byrnzie

Big Drop wrote:

So the Persians before the Zoroastrian Persians?

I've ni idea.

Smellyman

catefrances wrote:

Smellyman wrote:

so he wasn't born from a virgin mother? However, he and Jesus' mothers were conceived from Gods?

That is not similar at all..........

the virgin mary was not conceived from a God.

It wasn't "God"?

Somebody has to own up to it....

catefrances

Smellyman wrote:

catefrances wrote:

Smellyman wrote:

so he wasn't born from a virgin mother? However, he and Jesus' mothers were conceived from Gods?

That is not similar at all..........

the virgin mary was not conceived from a God.

It wasn't "God"?

Somebody has to own up to it....

marys father was joachim, or heli if you prefer.

Smellyman

catefrances wrote:

Smellyman wrote:

catefrances wrote:

the virgin mary was not conceived from a God.

It wasn't "God"?

Somebody has to own up to it....

marys father was joachim, or heli if you prefer.

Jesus' dad was his mothers father?

arq

Just a little break before we start to talk about history and myth and believes



Carry on

catefrances

Smellyman wrote:

catefrances wrote:

Smellyman wrote:

It wasn't "God"?

Somebody has to own up to it....

marys father was joachim, or heli if you prefer.

Jesus' dad was his mothers father?

jesus's 'dad' was joseph.

Break The Sky

arq wrote:

Just a little break before we start to talk about history and myth and believes



Carry on

The bible would make for a bitchin' comic book. I'm just saying. Could you imagine playing The Bible: The Game? Move over Call of Duty!

Idris

arq wrote:

Just a little break before we start to talk about history and myth and believes



Carry on

What are your thoughts of Buddhism? Got any? Perhaps another poster?