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Self-Professed ‘Bible Scholar’ Makes Explosive Allegation About Jesus
Let me start off by saying that I am as big an atheist as they come. I have no belief in gods or any mythology associated with them. I choose facts and empirical evidence over faith. However, I find there is a strong amount of evidence from both primary and secondary sources to support the claims of a figured called Jesus during the 1st century C.E. Not only do I find there is a strong amount of evidence, I would even concede he was, in his time, a moderately popular religious figure.
That said, we now enter a path led by people both secular and religious who do not understand how researching works. Every time I turn on the History Channel there is some ridiculous show promoting Atlantis, aliens or bigfoot. Every time I hear some Christian on TV telling millions that humans and dinosaurs walk together, I cringe. Every time I read about the latest Muslim scholar proclaiming that Islamic scholars in the 5th century understood the workings of the Big Bang, I laugh. Every time I hear some hippie claim that Mayans/Aztecs/Nostradamus predicted great catastrophes in the 21st century, I simply walk away.
This is the abomination we've been lead to by allowing anybody to call their copy & paste jobs "theories". We now live in a world where the most spurious associations of secondary sources can be considered to be enough for a "theory". The media in general has been invaded by a freemarket phylosophy. If it's stupid but it sells, it's not stupid. The media has ignored the work of objective scientists (due to what I think is lack of attention grabbing headlines) and put any idiot on the stage to sell his latest book and documentary. I suspect it is because journals in these disciplines are at times boring to read. It's simply easier and far more profitable to grab the magical bits of a story put them in a blender and sell it to the highest bidding TV network.
Rather than a theology, Atwill believes that Christianity was concocted as a government project that was used to control Roman citizens. During a time in which Jewish residents were waiting for their Messiah, he says they were a constant source of insurrection, leading the Romans to seek out an equalizing and tempering force.
"When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare," Atwill explains in the press release. "They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system."
And that's when Jesus was allegedly created - a man who advocated peace rather than violence. Atwill contends that the Christ that billions embrace never actually existed and that he is a "fictional character."
He bases his theory on a study of "Wars of the Jews," a book by Josephus, a scholar who provided insight and documentation first-century Judea. The historian contends that the prophesies of Jesus line up with Josephus' writings about the Jewish-Roman war and are, thus, proof that "the biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar."
Let me start off by saying that I am as big an atheist as they come. I have no belief in gods or any mythology associated with them. I choose facts and empirical evidence over faith. However, I find there is a strong amount of evidence from both primary and secondary sources to support the claims of a figured called Jesus during the 1st century C.E. Not only do I find there is a strong amount of evidence, I would even concede he was, in his time, a moderately popular religious figure.
That said, we now enter a path led by people both secular and religious who do not understand how researching works. Every time I turn on the History Channel there is some ridiculous show promoting Atlantis, aliens or bigfoot. Every time I hear some Christian on TV telling millions that humans and dinosaurs walk together, I cringe. Every time I read about the latest Muslim scholar proclaiming that Islamic scholars in the 5th century understood the workings of the Big Bang, I laugh. Every time I hear some hippie claim that Mayans/Aztecs/Nostradamus predicted great catastrophes in the 21st century, I simply walk away.
This is the abomination we've been lead to by allowing anybody to call their copy & paste jobs "theories". We now live in a world where the most spurious associations of secondary sources can be considered to be enough for a "theory". The media in general has been invaded by a freemarket phylosophy. If it's stupid but it sells, it's not stupid. The media has ignored the work of objective scientists (due to what I think is lack of attention grabbing headlines) and put any idiot on the stage to sell his latest book and documentary. I suspect it is because journals in these disciplines are at times boring to read. It's simply easier and far more profitable to grab the magical bits of a story put them in a blender and sell it to the highest bidding TV network.
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