[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by Nage Waza

I suppose the problem is what religious people accept as evidence. It is a good thing the scientific community has different standards.

Except much of the scientific community doesn't have different standards. There are plenty of scientific theories that are based on similar evidence.

Obviously the story of Jesus was fake, so perhaps we start with how a religion could start with a fake premise? Don't all the religions sort of have the same thing in common? I don't have that answer.

How do you tell the difference between fake and embellished? Of course religions have many things in common. They appeal to the same parts of human experience.

I don't see it that way. We have this massive fake story, so it must be based off a real person? Why? Having Jesus be fake makes the entire story much simpler.

No really it doesn't. It's only simpler if you assume it's all fake. Even Richard Carrier only concludes that Jesus MIGHT not have existed, and hosts of problems have been identified with some of the basic premises.

Blathering? I haven't made sense? Is that your accusation? Or did you simply pick a word you found to insult someone who you are debating with? You can look up 'proof' in a dictionary (or understand it as 'sufficient evidence'). There is much evidence of many other people throughout history, unfortunately for the religion, there is not enough evidence for us to consider Jesus to be real. And I keep repeating: The religion had to have started somewhere, had it not been for the lies and myths that were invented, perhaps the standard for proof may be lower for Jesus.

That evidence is also based on probability. If you apply the same techniques you apply below your left thinking that a great many people historians are confident existed didn't actually exist because so much that was written about him them is beyond belief.

The strong historical consensus? The consensus is on probability of what may have occurred, yet they are not sure. The religion started somewhere, we know that, and we know people documented it after the fact, could the entire tale be fiction? Seems reasonable.

Now you sound like a young earth creationist who says, it's only a probability that evolution is true, but we don't really know, so it's possible that it's false and therefore the world is young. It sounds like your saying that because its possible the consensus is wrong, therefore it is wrong.

The vast majority of science is established using probabilities. So much for scientific evidence being different.

I agree then, I do believe Jesus the man may have existed, but considering the minimal information we have, and the outrageous story, I side with occam's razor - the entire story must be made up.

So you don't really side with Occam's razor. No part of Occam's razor justifies the leap from we don't know very much to therefore it's all false. You might as well be making an argument to irreducible complexity.

Really, which explanation is simpler?

1. Christianity exists because some of Jesus followers were convinced he was raised from the dead (we have witnessed similar things among followers of modern cults)
2. Christianity exists because some Pagan elites decided to be pen pals and write what is effectivly an ancient version of Shrek about some guy that didn't exist by borrowing heavily from pagan traditions?