• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Self-Professed ‘Bible Scholar’ Makes Explosive Allegation About Jesus

Hatuey said:
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.
Click to expand...

However much I've read on this, it's absurd to think that the Romans concocted 'Jesus' which they then went to oppose to control their own people which didn't work. :roll:
 
Summerwind said:
You've got it backwards. Christianity was the last of a long line of similar stories, not the original by any stretch of the imagination. It's mythology just as the rest are.
Click to expand...

The point is there is an alternative view that can account for this.
 
laska said:
The point is there is an alternative view that can account for this.
Click to expand...
You're not making any sense, but that's okay, maybe another time.
 
laska said:
In regards to aspects of Christ's life being in many other religions, if the gospel of Christ and knowledge of His mortal life was taught in it's purity from the beginning, then that would explain so many religions having similarities to the original.
Click to expand...

1.) its wasnt always "christ" there were many names and setups (immaculate conception, real conception),(son of god, god himself), (wise men, kings, sisterhood) etc etc
2.) the so called birth, conceptions etc were 100s of years off
3.) so that doesnt explain anything

now mind you im still a christian but the platform for Christianity existed way before Christianity many times in many forms which makes everything suspect and even more thin that it already was.

but im also not a person that must fake, believe or act it all has to be true. Thats NOT what religion is about nor does it need to be.
 
AGENT J said:
1.) its wasnt always "christ" there were many names and setups (immaculate conception, real conception),(son of god, god himself), (wise men, kings, sisterhood) etc etc
2.) the so called birth, conceptions etc were 100s of years off
3.) so that doesnt explain anything

now mind you im still a christian but the platform for Christianity existed way before Christianity many times in many forms which makes everything suspect and even more thin that it already was.

but im also not a person that must fake, believe or act it all has to be true. Thats NOT what religion is about nor does it need to be.
Click to expand...



Though there is some some very rare academic material ( Update on Historicity of Jesus » Richard Carrier Blogs ) taking up the mythicist position, it's usually stuff like what is mentioned in the OP and solely confined to pseudio-scientific crap relegated to the conspiracy section of the bookstore
 
I always thought that it was entirely possible that a singular figure who did many or all of the things that Jesus is credited to do (minus the obviously false attribution of magic and miracles) didn't exist. There were, as has been previously said in this thread, many messiahs and prophets in the area at the time. It is not unreasonable at all that stories blended and were embellished over time. The story evolved, you might say, taking on the more successful characteristics and absorbing them into itself. It sounds an awful lot like memetic natural selection.

That it was a deliberate fabrication, all done at once for a specific agenda, is far less reasonable than slow, gradual changes by many people, for a variety of reasons. We even know the source of some of the modifications, such as the famous Council of Nicaea, but also the origins for some of the elements, like the virgin birth and demigodhood of Jesus, both taken directly from Greek and Roman myths to better relate to those audiences. It's a very successful memetic story, drawing on inspiration and elements from many previous successful ones. I doubt very much that one single preacher named Joshua from Nazareth was actually at all of the events described in the gospels and did all the things he supposedly did. Probably its an amalgamation of half a dozen people's lives.

But again, a deliberate fabrication is just silly. Conspiracy theories, which this is, are silly.
 
Dr. Chuckles said:
Because if you realize it or not, your basically voicing the mythicist position
Click to expand...

ok so it it had nothing to do with my post directly as usual since all (or at least a super vase majority) talk about religion is a mythicist position thanks
 
AGENT J said:
1.) its wasnt always "christ" there were many names and setups (immaculate conception, real conception),(son of god, god himself), (wise men, kings, sisterhood) etc etc
2.) the so called birth, conceptions etc were 100s of years off
3.) so that doesnt explain anything

now mind you im still a christian but the platform for Christianity existed way before Christianity many times in many forms which makes everything suspect and even more thin that it already was.

but im also not a person that must fake, believe or act it all has to be true. Thats NOT what religion is about nor does it need to be.
Click to expand...

You and Summerwind are not understanding my point. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints teaches that the gospel of Jesus Christ is eternal and existed prior to the creation of the earth. From a LDS perspective our spirits are the literal offspring of God and all of us existed and lived with our heavenly parents prior to being born on the earth. In the pre-mortal world God offered to us to accept or not the Plan of Salvation which entailed we fall and become mortal, use our free agency to choose between good and evil. The central part of the Plan of Salvation is that our eldest brother, God's first born, the great Jehovah volunteered to perform an Atonement so that the effects of the fall from eternal sphere, becoming mortal which brings death, could be overcome. Without an Atonement we couldn't on our own erase the fact that we will break laws that pertain to eternal light of our spirits, sow the seeds of death, as we have walked off the cliff and can't take back that fact.

The LDS scriptures teach that after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden of Eden they were commanded by God to sacrifice a first born male lamb without blemish on a routine basis. Later, maybe after several years of routinely doing this sacrifice God asked them if they knew why they were doing this. They said no. He then explained to them that this was symbolic of Christ who would be born in the future. They were taught the gospel of Christ in its fullness. They knew that the Savior would be born of a virgin, be the Only Begotten Son of God in the flesh, and a bunch of other details about His earthly mission that would come thousands of years later. Adam and Eve taught their offspring the gospel. Many of the offspring of Adam and Eve fell away from the true gospel, some never accepted it, many others left over time. The LDS believe there were even complete apostasies where the legal gospel from Heaven was no longer on the earth and the Heavens had to restore it.

The LDS and many other Christians see the Old Testament as not a different religion from the NT religion but the same. The Old Testament is pre-Christ and is looking towards the Savior. The mood of the text is justice, because that is why we need a Savior, natural laws because of the fall have been broken. All the prophets testify of Christ and the Biblical characters are symbolic of Him. That is why you see so many similarities to stuff that happened in Jesus' mortal life and their lives. The NT is the Savior arriving in the world and the mood of the text is mercy. Anyway since Adam and Eve knew from the beginning many of the details of Jesus' life thousands of years before it happened, you would expect, if this is true, that there would be traces of the original religion found in later religions.
 
Last edited:
tererun said:
Though I am very skeptical of the actual existence of a christian figure known as jesus, and i am positive that even if there was this guy preaching some of this stuff that the church and authors of the bible had little to nothing to do with him and it is all just a myth like zeus or any other god of the time. I have to say that as long as people are taking those stories to heart and believing in the loving caring jesus that accepted and forgave I don't actually care if they want to believe there was actually that guy. If they want to get into an actual scientific claim of that idea they have to face the standard of scientific method and peer reviewed findings. People believing is not good enough to get it taught in science class. Also, if they wish to push that belief on me they had better damn well have something better than the bible to back themselves up. It is far more likely that it is true the bivble was written by a group of people who saw the power religion held over people and used it to start up a religion that would empower them in the world. It is much more likely that happened than the son of god actually came down and performed miracles that have no evidence to support them, and even evidence contradicting them

The religious have to realize that they bring things like this upon themselves when they stray into the area of science. These things are not looked into because people hate christianity, but rather because they are treating the stories with scientific quests for evidence. If they want to maintain their faith with out this scrutiny they have to withdraw from scientific claims. If you want to go to your church and sing songs to god and jesus and uplift your heart and make yourself feel better about your place in the world and the universe I want you to enjoy. Even if you are fooling yourself as long as it stays personal and you are not giving all your money to a cult leader, or hurting others enjoy the heck out of it. I am even good with people coming over and inviting me to join them. Just take no thank you for an answer. Don't threaten me with hell because your argument sucked. Just go have some fun, and I will go have my fun. Keep it for yourself and not for me.
Click to expand...

Brava! Brava! Excellent post! :applaud
 
Dr. Chuckles said:
You mean the guy who wrote this book? He's not a historian, and actual historians and bible scholars compare him to Dan Brown
Click to expand...

And you make these statements without personal knowledge and without due diligence having not read the book. :roll: You state as fact something some other guy, who may in fact not have read the book either, states a factual. You question the shoddy research of Atwell while not doing any research yourself. You are willfully ignorant by your own admission and yet you expect people here to see your position. You don't really have a position other than being a boisterous contrarian.
 
laska said:
You and Summerwind are not understanding my point. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints teaches that the gospel of Jesus Christ is eternal and existed prior to the creation of the earth. From a LDS perspective our spirits are the literal offspring of God and all of us existed and lived with our heavenly parents prior to being born on the earth. In the pre-mortal world God offered to us to accept or not the Plan of Salvation which entailed we fall and become mortal, use our free agency to choose between good and evil. The central part of the Plan of Salvation is that our eldest brother, God's first born, the great Jehovah volunteered to perform an Atonement so that the effects of the fall from eternal sphere, becoming mortal which brings death, could be overcome. Without an Atonement we couldn't on our own erase the fact that we will break laws that pertain to eternal light of our spirits, sow the seeds of death, as we have walked off the cliff and can't take back that fact.

The LDS scriptures teach that after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden of Eden they were commanded by God to sacrifice a first born male lamb without blemish on a routine basis. Later, maybe after several years of routinely doing this sacrifice God asked them if they knew why they were doing this. They said no. He then explained to them that this was symbolic of Christ who would be born in the future. They were taught the gospel of Christ in its fullness. They knew that the Savior would be born of a virgin, be the Only Begotten Son of God in the flesh, and a bunch of other details about His earthly mission that would come thousands of years later. Adam and Eve taught their offspring the gospel. Many of the offspring of Adam and Eve fell away from the true gospel, some never accepted it, many others left over time. The LDS believe there were even complete apostasies where the legal gospel from Heaven was no longer on the earth and the Heavens had to restore it.

The LDS and many other Christians see the Old Testament as not a different religion from the NT religion but the same. The Old Testament is pre-Christ and is looking towards the Savior. The mood of the text is justice, because that is why we need a Savior, natural laws because of the fall have been broken. All the prophets testify of Christ and the Biblical characters are symbolic of Him. That is why you see so many similarities to stuff that happened in Jesus' mortal life and their lives. The NT is the Savior arriving in the world and the mood of the text is mercy. Anyway since Adam and Eve knew from the beginning many of the details of Jesus' life thousands of years before it happened, you would expect, if this is true, that there would be traces of the original religion found in later religions.
Click to expand...

this doesnt impact anythign "i" said in anyway what so ever :shrug:
did you have a point that relates to what i said
 
AGENT J said:
ok so it it had nothing to do with my post directly as usual since all (or at least a super vase majority) talk about religion is a mythicist position thanks
Click to expand...

I don't think you understand what that word means
 
Risky Thicket said:
And you make these statements without personal knowledge and without due diligence having not read the book. :roll:
Click to expand...

We already covered this on the other thread A) the man has made his theories and positions known outside the book. B) he is not a historian C) Actual biblical scholars and historians have addressed his work, from a variety of backgrounds, and have nothing positive to say about it.

So between the facts that he has no real background in the area of study, the issues I can recognize even with my paltry knowledge of the field, the well worn "conspiracy" formula to his claims and means of promotion, and the fact that actual experts compare him to dan brown, make me pretty confident in dismissing his work

You state as fact something some other guy, who may in fact not have read the book either, states a factual.
Click to expand...

They are familier enough with his theories to actually address them and are actual experts in the field. So yes, I tend to concede to their knowledge


You question the shoddy research of Atwell while not doing any research yourself.
Click to expand...

I did do research


You are willfully ignorant by your own admission and yet you expect people here to see your position. You don't really have a position other than being a boisterous contrarian.
Click to expand...

You seem pretty emotionally invested in Atwill's theories. Maybe do a bit of self-examination and ask yourself if you are being objective in your analysis of it. As for me, Jesus being a myth, or not, doesn't matter to me. But, I will address an argument when I see issues with it and doubly so when it takes on the character of conspiracy chatter
 
AGENT J said:
has usual what you think would be factually wrong :shrug:
Click to expand...

you know what else is factual? That claiming and asserting things as factual does not make them so. In common usage, particularly in this context, mythicist refers to the type of chatter about jesus contained in films like Zeitgeist and claims things like

AGENT J said:
1.) its wasnt always "christ" there were many names and setups (immaculate conception, real conception),(son of god, god himself), (wise men, kings, sisterhood) etc etc
2.) the so called birth, conceptions etc were 100s of years off
3.) so that doesnt explain anything

now mind you im still a christian but the platform for Christianity existed way before Christianity many times in many forms which makes everything suspect and even more thin that it already was.

but im also not a person that must fake, believe or act it all has to be true. Thats NOT what religion is about nor does it need to be.
Click to expand...
 
Dr. Chuckles said:
1.)you know what else is factual? That claiming and asserting things as factual does not make them so.
2.) In common usage, particularly in this context, mythicist refers to the type of chatter about jesus contained in films like Zeitgeist and claims things like
Click to expand...

1.) very true, good thing that has nothing to do with anything i said
2.) thanks for your opinion on its common usage but this also doesn't impact anything i said
do you ever make posts that actually have to do directly with what you quote?

Fact is i understand the word, its definition and used it properly. Hopefully your confusion is cleared up now.
 
AGENT J said:
1.) very true, good thing that has nothing to do with anything i said
2.) thanks for your opinion on its common usage but this also doesn't impact anything i said
do you ever make posts that actually have to do directly with what you quote?

Fact is i understand the word, its definition and used it properly. Hopefully your confusion is cleared up now.
Click to expand...

actually you were advocating the mythicist position. I pointed out how very few academics give it credence and the majority of type on it is conspiracy non-sense. So clearly if I was directly addressing what you wrote, then "it has something to do with something you said"
 
Dr. Chuckles said:
1.)actually you were advocating the mythicist position.
2.)I pointed out how very few academics give it credence and the majority of type on it is conspiracy non-sense.
3.) So clearly if I was directly addressing what you wrote, then "it has something to do with something you said"
Click to expand...

1.) you are welcome to this opinion
2.) which is meaningless to what i said
3.) hence you dilemma since it didnt you assumed and what i actually said wasnt related to your assumption.
I wonder if you have this communication issue in person too? Ive seen you have it in print with many posters.
 
Dr. Chuckles said:
We already covered this on the other thread A) the man has made his theories and positions known outside the book. B) he is not a historian C) Actual biblical scholars and historians have addressed his work, from a variety of backgrounds, and have nothing positive to say about it.

So between the facts that he has no real background in the area of study, the issues I can recognize even with my paltry knowledge of the field, the well worn "conspiracy" formula to his claims and means of promotion, and the fact that actual experts compare him to dan brown, make me pretty confident in dismissing his work



They are familier enough with his theories to actually address them and are actual experts in the field. So yes, I tend to concede to their knowledge




I did do research




You seem pretty emotionally invested in Atwill's theories. Maybe do a bit of self-examination and ask yourself if you are being objective in your analysis of it. As for me, Jesus being a myth, or not, doesn't matter to me. But, I will address an argument when I see issues with it and doubly so when it takes on the character of conspiracy chatter
Click to expand...

LOL! Weak and pithy.
 
AGENT J said:
this doesnt impact anythign "i" said in anyway what so ever :shrug:
did you have a point that relates to what i said
Click to expand...

You stated: "now mind you im still a christian but the platform for Christianity existed way before Christianity many times in many forms which makes everything suspect and even more thin that it already was." My response was that Christianity existed from the beginning so there was no before Christianity.
 
laska said:
1.) You stated: "now mind you im still a christian but the platform for Christianity existed way before Christianity many times in many forms which makes everything suspect and even more thin that it already was."
2.) My response was that Christianity existed from the beginning so there was no before Christianity.
Click to expand...

1.) yes that is exactly what was stated
2.) and your response doesnt change anything

you referred to a teaching that has zero factual support
you referred to a teaching that came into existence itself in modern times

so your reference has zero impact to anything i said. Do you disagree? if so please explain why your reference has an impact.
 
AGENT J said:
1.) yes that is exactly what was stated
2.) and your response doesnt change anything

you referred to a teaching that has zero factual support
you referred to a teaching that came into existence itself in modern times

so your reference has zero impact to anything i said. Do you disagree? if so please explain why your reference has an impact.
Click to expand...

The NT text itself implies that it is not a new religion but that it began with Adam. Jesus stated Abraham saw His day. Pre-existence of the human spirit and aspects of what Joseph Smith received through revelation can be found implied in the Bible and in other ancient historical sources outside the Bible. To say it is all modern is not true. The point remains valid whether you see it or not that if the religions devolved from an original religion, and the gospel of Christ was that religion, that that would explain seeing aspects of it in so many religions. Just as you can go the other way without proof also that Christianity borrowed from older traditions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom