... And when you say this "Meanwhile you accuse anyone who disagrees with you, of lacking honesty, and impute to them the motive of seeking to sustain Christianity", what I actually said was this -
“ Why would anyone say they believed in Jesus on such complete lack of evidence? That would be highly illogical and lacking objective honesty. There is simply no good reason to believe it.”
Yes, that's what you said
Yes it is indeed exactly what I had said!
I am saying that it is not being objectively honest with yourself if you claim to believe Jesus existed
That's not what you said.
You didn't write "with yourself". Anyway it's crazy. Honest with myself when I claim to believe ... ? nonsense. You're having a laugh.
I did not need to previously write
“with yourself” - look at what I actually wrote (which you yet again, for the umpteenth time, conveniently omitted to actually quote at all … you must have tried that ruse at least a dozen times now). Here is what I had actually written quoted verbatim -
The fact of the matter about that, is not that (as you just said) we therefore conclude strongly that Jesus did not exist or that it is extremely unlikely he could have existed ... what we conclude from that total lack of any reliable or credible evidence, is that there is really no genuine evidence that the Jesus stories were anything more than superstitious religious legend. Why would anyone say they believed in Jesus on such complete lack of evidence? That would be highly illogical and lacking objective honesty. There is simply no good reason to believe it.
What that says is that I am replying specifically to a point made earlier by
Davefoc, and emphasising to him that since there actually is really no reliable or credible evidence of Jesus in the gospel writing (for all the reasons so very clearly explained in full reply to him, as well as many times before in this thread), that it would, on that basis of no credible evidence, be
“highly illogical and lacking objective honesty“ when on that basis
"There is simply no good reason to believe it” for
anyone in general to conclude that such non-evidence is a basis for positive belief in a human Jesus. And that is not only what that sentence very clearly says, but it is also something
you should in all honesty admit if you were not in a state of denial and delusion about the non-existent evidence.
… when there is actually (as I just clearly explained), actually no evidence of Jesus presented in the biblical writing, but only evidence of peoples highly unreliable and non-credible beliefs in a figure none of them ever knew in any way at all.
"No evidence", "only evidence of non-credible beliefs" etc etc, just as I stated.
It was not YOU who stated that . It was
me that stated it right from the beginning of all these three most recent threads, and in fact also in all the previous posts that I have ever written on this subject on this forum (and before that also on RDF and RatSkep) - it was not YOU who stated there is no genuine reliable or credible evidence of Jesus, for all the reasons I have so painstaking explained a hundred times in microscopic detail, it was
me who explained that, not you!
And as far as this comment from you is concerned “… and impute to them the motive of seeking to sustain Christianity”, what I actually said is that those who originally created and have since maintained the idea of a HJ “appear” to have done that as a “fig leaf” to maintain at least some semblance of Christian belief in Jesus from biblical writing which was by say c.1800-1900 being exposed as simply no longer believable in what it says about Jesus, and not by any measure reliable or credible in what it’s anonymous authors said about a messiah that none of them ever knew and for whom they provided no evidence beyond their religious beliefs in earlier messianic legend.
Stripped of verbiage, you're conceding my point, that you do impute to me a motive of seeking to sustain Christianity: for the words
.
maintain at least some semblance of Christian belief in Jesus .
mean exactly the same as the words I wrote, albeit shrouded in your usual verbosity.
No. I just explained the difference to you. Look again very carefully at what I actually wrote, here it is verbatim -
And beyond that I think he takes the view that the biblical figure is actually the only description we ever had for Jesus …. any other proposed Jesus, called a HJ, is absolutely not a figure that was ever described by anyone at the time, and it appears to be just an un-evidenced uncorroborated modern invention created simply in order to maintain a “fig leaf” position for Christianity by saying that he might at least have existed albeit not at all as described in the bible.
Firstly notice that I am talking there about what I think
dejudge has stated as his position throughout this thread. Not necessarily my own position, but saying in specific reply to
davefoc what I understand to be
dejudge’s position on that point.
And what I say there about my impression of what
dejudge has repeatedly emphasised, is that the HJ argument appears to have been deliberately created by people such as bible-scholars, theologians and Christian leaders themselves sometime around say 1800 (I suggested that sort of date in the earlier sentences), without any form of supporting evidence at all for anyone ever claiming to see or know any HJ, and seemingly therefore from that sort of date as a “fig leaf” attempt at maintaining the credibility of Christianity and Christian belief in Jesus even though by that date science was progressively showing that the immediately earlier belief which had stretched back to biblical times and which had always staunchly claimed that Jesus was indeed just exactly as described in the bible with the miracles etc all being believed as literal fact. The sentence is talking about how that idea of HJ appears to have been invented around 200 years ago (or whenever) specifically to counter the growing realisation (from science) that the biblical accounts must actually be untrue.
You have no evidence of anyone knowing a HJ, do you? And what you offer in the bible as evidence, is only evidence of peoples religious beliefs, isn’t it? .
I have stated this dozens of times, but since you won't consider any evidence except these two points, and since I have answered repeatedly that
the evidence is not of that type, I can see no means of progressing further in this matter. Where I disagree with you is whether there is any
other valid evidence. But you will not even read what I have to say about that, so your continued stressing of these points is both abusive and intentionally abusive. For what's its worth, the answer is again, yes, we have no personal acquaintance of Jesus who has left us a contemporary memoir, as the gospels were not written by such persons. People's religious beliefs are in themselves evidence. Though not at all conclusive evidence, of course. But if we had no knowledge of belief in Jesus, we would have no knowledge of even the name and the stories, true or false, not so? Whether the gospels contain any traces of contemporary sources is an interesting question, to others, though not to you, alas.
What I declined to read from you, after we had all already read literally what must be 500 pages of these various threads without any of the promised
“evidence” ever being produced, was something you were claming as evidence
from the bible. I told you there very specifically that if it was from the bible, then I was not interested in reading yet more absurd nonsense like that the 100th time, for the very clearly and frankly unarguable reason that the biblical writing is not, and never could be, reliable and credible evidence for it’s anonymous hearsay authors who never knew Jesus, having any evidence of their own ever to produce for Jesus.
If you have now changed that story to say your evidence comes not from that hopelessly discredited biblical writing of the gospels and Paul’s letters, as you now appear to suggest in the highlight, then instead of doing what you did before (and what indeed someone else just invited me to do a few page back) and just provide me with various links telling me to read all sorts of religious clap-trap, which I am not inclined to waste even more time on, then just name the non-biblical source that you are relying upon for what you just called
“other valid evidence” … because if you mean writing from the likes of Tacitus and Josephus then that is, if anything, as has been explained countless times already, even more laughably absurd than the bible as evidence of either of those authors personally having any evidence at all which they can give about witnessing anything whatsoever to do with Jesus.
