this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Religious Cringe
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This is the official Lemmy for the r/ReligiousCringe***** subreddit. This is a community about poking fun at the religious fundamentalist's who take their religion a little bit too far. Here you will find religious content that is so outrageous and so cringeworthy that even someone who is mildly religious will cringe.
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The thing about that is we know the people you're saying that would need to conspire and lie absolutely did because literally everything in their gospels is made up - beside those all you have is few later people vaguely saying Christians exist which no one doubts
Then if he did exist and was in anyway significant we have to ask why did none of the contemporaries write about him or events when we have plenty of writing about less important things from the exact time and region.
You have an entirely invalid understanding of what people actually wrote in that time period and what would survive. This is before the printing press, and nearly everyone was illiterate. As a result, only a tiny fraction of events would be written down, and without the printing press nearly all of it would be lost to time. What we do have are things that were hand-copied by later scribes. This limits most surviving texts to either be about kings or major political events. Every else is a pure dice-roll for survival. So you wouldn’t actually expect anything written about the historical Jesus to survive to the modern day. But seeing text about him showing up a few decades later is consistent with a real person.
Also, no historian is saying that we know all of this for certain. It is merely a reconstruction of what is most likely. On the other hand, the mythicism position produces no coherent alternative explanation. It just insists that a historical Jesus didn’t exist, and replaces it will a thousands different possible answers without ever converging into a single answer.
How is not having a singular answer evidence that he (as written in the Bible) was real? It's only evidence that we don't have enough evidence, and almost certainly never will.
Not being able to explain how the planets moved isn't evidence that the accepted model before Galileo was accurate, even though all agreement then was behind it. The issue is that people had a motive to promote geocentrism. This example could be proven with later observations though. The historicity of Jesus will not have this benefit.
We could accept that there's agreement on one side and trust it, or we can understand that our knowledge is flawed and biased and question it.
Historical scholars do not claim the story from the Bible is real. In fact, they have done a very good job of figuring where they came from and how it likely differs from the real person.
You're also making a lousy guilt by association fallacy by suggesting that since past scientific knowledge was wrong, it therefore must be wrong in this very specific context too.
Very few people in the historical community cares whether a historical Jesus existed. This is a true ad hominem fallacy. They merely point out that the evidence suggests that he existed, regardless of what anyone thinks of that.
Dude, you're just trying to make me sound wrong. I did nothing of the sort. That example was there to say we can be wrong by concensus, not that we are. I don't know how you can even pull that meaning from it if you try. Just stop. I'm not telling you not to believe anything. I'm saying why I don't necessarily believe it and why. I don't think they're wrong. I just don't think they're right either. I don't really have an opinion on it because him existing or not has no bearing on reality.
The people who they're basing their knowledge on for sure had an opinion on it, whether they do or not. We have little to no first hand records. Almost everything is recorded by someone who cared. To ignore this would be a huge issue with the legitimacy of the argument.
Of course, anything can be wrong. But it cannot be the basis of any argument. For one thing, this can easily be applied to your position. You could be wrong too.
Historical scholars will be the first to tell you that this is the problem with all of history. There are almost never first-hand records of any event before the modern era. Their job is to piece together a sequence of events that is most likely based on what evidence they do have. If this isn't sufficient for you, then problem then becomes that nearly all of history before the modern era can no longer be verified.
It can't be applied to my position because my position is just that we don't have enough evidence and can't know. My position isn't that he didn't exist, only that there's no good reason for me to believe he existed. I think I've made that plenty clear by now.
Yep. We can't varify it. That's my whole position. The evidence isn't solid enough for me to believe, and it doesn't change anything either way. We do know much of the Bible is wrong, so people trying to protect it by arguing he was a historical figure at least have a bias. Historical scholars can discuss it all they want, and come to the best conclusions possible. That's great. It still doesn't really solidify anything. If the reason to believe it is for the Bible, it's pointless. If the reason to believe it is because concensus, sure but why?
We have about as good enough reason to believe that he existed as any other historical person. That is my point the whole time. And it is the point of all historical scholars on this topic.
If that isn’t enough evidence, and we instead insist on a standard of proof that puts historical Jesus in the unconfirmed category, then we have to abandon nearly all historical people from the list of confirmed. History before the modern era almost completely vanishes in that case.