Originally Posted by mushymanrob:
“oh lord... at least learn to post a reply with a quote properly... otherwise it makes your waffle look like even more gibberish.
the actual facts exist, they are there for all to see, to examine, to test.
a silence that screams highlights the FACTS of what we know, just go and check out what asts says... its no conspiracy, no biased atheist blog, it makes no difference who wrote it , it coiuld be ronald mc donald ! it doesnt matter as long as what is written can be confirmed or refuted.
no one has nor can refute what asts says, because its dealing with known facts, not opinion, not biased, but facts that can be checked.
as such it highlights the huge elephant in the room.... the way there is no contemporary accounts for this supposed high profile magician, and the only accounts there are come from later biased sources.
by anyones standards, that is very weak, dodgy 'evidence', and it is perfectly plausible that jesus did not ever exist..... the biblical character certainly didnt.”
I said I was bowing out of this thread but I must address this again.
You act as though TSTS has stumbled on some sort of holy grail of factual information that proves Jesus didn't exist.
It does no such a thing.
All it does is
interpret the same facts we use to prove Jesus DID exist in an entirely different way. The references from Tacitus, for example, are interpreted as interpolations - there is NO EVIDENCE from TSTS to back this up. Only conjecture.
Please, please PLEASE stop going on about the "hard evidence" that Christ mythicists apparently have for proving he didn't exist. There is no such a thing. It is pure conjecture and interpretation.
For example, there is a wild claim made in TSTS:
Quote:
“ It is very implausible, for instance, that a biography would be written for the obscure itinerant philosopher Demonax in his own lifetime (by Lucian), yet God Incarnate, or a Great Miracle Worker who riled up all Judaea with talk, should inspire nothing like it until decades after his death.”
Richard Carrier describes Demonax as an "obscure" philosopher.
Yep, so obscure the people of Athens gave him "gave him a magnificent public funeral, long lamented him, worshipped and garlanded the stone seat on which he had been wont to rest when tired".
He also casually name-drops Lucian, who was actually Demonax's pupil. And you know what? The only evidence we have that Demonax ever existed comes from Lucian! There are even some who believe that Demonax is just a character invented by Lucian - here was someone who supposedly had a massive public funeral and yet is not mentioned by any other contemporary writer, or indeed at all until the fifth century. This is pitiful compared to the evidence that we have for Jesus' existence, yet Richard Carrier uses the example of Demonax to try and make his argument stronger?! It beggars belief. Use your brain and actually research the claims made in TSTS and it absolutely falls apart.