What about the entry in Tacitus's record about Nero pinning the week long fire that burned much of Rome on the Christians? In 64 AD Christians were gruesomely tortured.
Tacitus was born in 56CE,
after all of these events are alleged to have occurred. I'm looking for eyewitness reports. Don't you think something as amazing as walking on water or rising from the dead would have been
reported in real time? Considering, as I already pointed out, that the Romans were as meticulous in their record-keeping as the Nazis.
Do you know what Tacitus's so-called "record" would be called in a modern court of law? "Hearsay"! It would not even be allowed as testimony.
Jan, a few weeks ago my wife's church cleared up any qualms I have about the quotes of Jesus. They efficiently reduced the teachings to "abide in Christ." Everything else Jesus said was to support this concept.
As I said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Jesus's teachings are something we could all stand to integrate into our lives. It doesn't matter if they were said by a real human being named Jesus, some scholars who wanted to change the world for the better, or a felt frog puppet.
We must discover the wisdom in things we read by
analyzing them and
imagining how life would be if we adopted them. Not by assessing the
authority of the person to whom they are attributed. Argument by authority is a classic logical fallacy that we were all taught to look out for in our first-year university classes.
Notice that Buddha (who was certainly a real flesh-and-blood person and is now quite dead) never wanted anyone to adopt his teachings
on his authority. He wanted us to
see the wisdom in them and adopt them because
they will make us better people. The same can be said of the other famous Eastern "prophets," including Kong Fu Zi ("Confucius") and Lao Zi ("Lao Tzu").
The laws are not stated for the children of Christ, instead they are to live through Christ and thereby fulfill the law.
Sure, but what does the gobbledygook phrase "live through Christ" mean to those of us who don't believe in a supernatural universe? Christ is a
metaphor for an ideal human being who can forgive everyone for everything and love everyone despite their sins and flaws--and even accept punishment for the things they have done in order to spare them from punishment. Obviously no real human being can do this, but to
strive to be as close to that ideal as we can... well dude this is what it means to "live through Christ." One does not have to be a Christian to live that way, and on the other hand calling oneself a Christian is no guarantee that one does in fact live that way.
Several of our Christian friends have told Mrs. Fraggle and me that we are "more Christian" than they are. (I don't know how true that is but I admit it's easy to have a deep reservoir of patience and kindness when you don't have children.) They have gone so far as to tell their pastors that if they somehow make it into heaven they expect to see us there because God can't possibly be so proud, arrogant and selfish as to deny us entry just because we don't believe in him. (Although as I've said before, if dogs don't go to heaven, when I die I want to go where they went.
--quote from Will Rogers 
)
But, I think this new information just reaffirms my unbelief in Jesus as the son of God, or that a god exists to begin with. It is more than plausible that God and Jesus are fiction.
And I say that this should have virtually no impact on your behavior. You should want to be a good person, treat people fairly, give a little more back to civilization than you take out, try to leave this place a little better than you found it. That's all any of us can strive for, even though throughout history a few of us have managed to far exceed that. At least try not to be the next Genghis Khan, who killed a full ten percent of the people his armies could reach with the transportation technology of their era.
Whether or not you believe in God and Jesus, doesn't this seem like a pretty good approach to life? Wouldn't God and Jesus approve? Jesus especially was not a proud man and he would not be angry if you did not believe in him, so long as you tried to adopt his teachings anyway. That's pretty much what our Christian friends keep telling my wife and me.
When I apply Occam's Razor to the historical record of Jesus Christ, it makes more sense that the Christians were used and abused leading up to the martyring of a great philosopher.
I certainly appreciate anyone applying the tools of the Scientific Method to the problems of real life. As I've noted before, the Rule of Laplace comes in handy rather often. Nonetheless, don't lose sight of the present. Whether or not Christ was real, Christianity certainly is, and we have to find a way to coexist with it as we wait for it to die out as all religions eventually do. (Remember Zarathustra? I didn't think so.
) Fighting against it is probably not the best thing for your blood pressure--or your marriage.
So, I am considering my options of how to proceed from here.
Start by remembering that you don't have to be a Christian, or even believe that he was real, to take his advice.
Turn the other cheek.
But I like better the morality in this country in the 1950 then in the present . . . .
You obviously didn't live here during that decade. Women were treated like cattle, Afro-Americans were treated like second-class citizens (e.g., the Jews under the Ottoman Empire) and gay people were treated like monsters--most of them had to pretend to be heterosexual to avoid being victims of ostracism and often outright violence.
. . . . and you guys are encouraging to make it even worse.
You appear to be a very selfish person. You don't care how badly people who are different from you are treated. You should be ashamed of yourself. I wish you could see the things that I saw in the 1950s. There were entire towns called "sunset towns" where black people were not allowed to be present at night; they had to leave at sunset or be either put in jail by the police or physically harmed by the citizens. There were stores and restaurants where they were not allowed to enter. They had to sit in the back seats of the movie theaters, in the back of buses and streetcars, and their children couldn't swim in our pools. It was impossible for them to get good jobs and their children weren't admitted to most good universities. In many cities black children had separate schools where the teachers and other resources were not as good as the white kids' schools.
This was all done with the blessing of the Christian churches. There have always been a few churches who fought against this, notably the Quakers, but they were outnumbered by the evil Christians.
Women were treated like slaves. They were expected to do nothing but housework while their husbands had fulfilling, responsible jobs. A few got college educations and decent jobs, but once they got married they were expected to stay at home and be nothing more than "mommies." "Daddies" had only minimal responsibility as parents and could spend their evenings drinking beer with their friends so long as they paid for the family's food and rent. The Christian churches also supported this kind of discrimination. They taught that women are inferior to men, just as black men are inferior to white men.
As for homosexuals, who make up 8 - 12% of our population, the way they were treated was utterly shameful. The Christian churches also condoned this.
You should be ashamed of yourself for saying that you would prefer to live in this kind of country. It was horrible! And it was Christianity that made it possible.
Why is it even plausible that God and Jesus are fiction (let alone ''more plausible'')?
Uh, how about the fact that there is ZERO EVIDENCE for their existence? The only "evidence" we're given is fairy tales handed down from an era in which science had not yet been invented and most people still believed in witchcraft and miracles.
Please try to answer these questions without drawing from the atheist handbook.
I assume you are referring to the Scientific Method, which requires empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and peer review--none of which support belief in supernatural creatures.
If you don't respect the scientific method, you will be treated with contempt on this website, so don't complain.
There are a zillion websites on which supernaturalists are allowed or even encouraged to peddle their foolishness. This one is ours and we try to keep it clean. People who come here to peddle superstition and other nonsense have come to the wrong place.
