Gandalfs Beard
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2009
- Messages
- 1,548
With regards to dogmatic atheism, that was a comment on the rampant response I got in comparison with my posting on other threads.
Well you were wrong weren't you. This is a thread about evidence, not speculation.
That atheists often defend this fringe theory to the death can feel like one is up against dogma,
Except we're not defending a "fringe theory," we're asking for evidence. There is nothing "fringey" about that. If it felt dogmatic too you, that simply shows that you don't understand the difference between Exegesis and actual Evidence.
even though a shrug of the shoulders and "ok, Jesus probably existed" changes absolutely nothing about the probable non-existence of God.
Except "probably" isn't evidence, which is what this thread is about.
I don't get what you mean when you say Jesus' existence was "only likely". Isn't that sufficient? it has no major implications, just as the likely existence of anyone else from the time period changes nothing.
Not on this thread!
If a letter is found from, say, 20AD, which says "yesterday I went round to Joseph the tax collectors house and we ate some tasty tasty unleavened bread". I would say ok, there likely was a tax collector called Joseph... The letter could be faked, so I am not sure, but vehemently denying the existence of Joseph the tax collector seems a bit of a pointless and unwarranted stance to take.
Except most people on this thread are not doing that. Finding a letter from Joseph the Tax Collector is not equivalent to finding texts telling a story about Joseph the Tax Collector a hundred years after the fact.
Not to mention that we have no such letters from Jesus saying "I overturned some tables today and killed a fig tree."
GB
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Heck man I didn't mean to offend...