Atheist Memes

It sounds to me like you want to argue about the second point more than the first one.

You appear to have issues with how historical research is performed, and you have difficulty accepting secondary sources in historical records. You have repeatedly asked for primary sources. It appears that you, falsely, believe that primary sources are more valuable than secondary sources in historical context. (A reasonable discussion of how and why neither is more valuable/reliable than the other: https://www.historyskills.com/2023/05/02/primary-or-secondary-sources-which-are-more-reliable/ )

The issue, primarily, is that any and all probable first hand accounts of Jesus are part of the new testament, but have been so heavily edited as to be removed from being reliable first hand accounts. Basically we can't trust the recorded "first hand accounts" because the people who copied them had very heavy imputes to embellish or rewrite them to create a convincing first hand narrative.

Tl;Dr: the first hand accounts were edited by secondary sources creating an unreliable first hand narrator. Basically what we always say, the people who wrote the new testament a couple hundred years after Jesus life lied and wrote a bunch of garbage and obliterated any reliable first hand account.

To be crystal clear, what this means is that first hand accounts probably existed but were so heavily editorialized that they became invalid.

Basically, what you are asking for no longer exists (or does and is intentionally hidden by the Catholic church, since they are the ones who might have any documents that old) in any credible form.

That only leaves us with secondary sources. Of which, one is the bible itself. We know that the bible does contain some historical events, but that it is also a fairly poor source for historical accuracy. We know this because we can compare it to other secondary sources and we evaluate their congruency.

There are only two pieces of information that all known secondary sources agree upon with respect to Jesus.

1. there was a man who was baptized by John the Baptist.

2. that same man was executed by the Romans via crucifixion.

There is enough secondary evidence to have reasonable certainty that this man existed, was baptized and was crucified.

That's it.

This is a reasonably small claim and this requires reasonably small evidence to accept.

Under no circumstances am I asking you accept or believe that any of the other claims about Jesus life are real or valid. There is no other corroboration for any other events.

The argument is a pointless one to have for most of us as it holds no bearing on anything. There are a couple million people named Jesus today... And some of them probably think they are the son of god. That doesn't make their existence less real. It doesn't make their delusions more real. It doesn't mean a god exists.

Historical Jesus most likely existed. So what?

With regards to your assertion that "You link dumped."

Your arguments were poor and continue to be poor. Poor arguments don't deserve more than a cursory dismissal. I dismissed your argument, made positive statements and provided sources for my position.

I know you feel strongly about this, but that doesn't mean jack shit.

I know what you want, but asking for it shows a distinct dismissal of historical research and the way you demanded it demonstrated a lack of willingness to participate, if not an intentional facade to advance a tenuous position.

Either you already knew that any primary sources that might have existed for Jesus were obliterated in the churches re-write of the new testament during its construction by the secondary authors and instead of engaging in a good faith argument as to the validity of secondary sources cross referencing or the validity of using the christian bible as a secondary source at all you demanded a thing you knew to be impossible to obtain... Or you were ignorant of the existing historicity discussion.

At the end of the day, you were either ignorantly defending a fringe position or you are actively baiting people into a bad faith discussion trying to further a fringe position.

A fringe position that is irrelevant to the discussion of if the historical Jesus has anything to do with a god.

Jesus H Christ man. What the fuck do you want? At this point you are an asshole either way. Either you are willfully ignoring the arguments people are making (not just me) or you are actively trying to make them mad.

Like I said. You are at a bad place here in the discussion.

With the gospels, I don't think there's any debate that it comes from an oral history. As for their influences - ever notice the old testament has 2 overlapping creation stories? People spend their lives analyzing the text through various lenses, there's tons of material on how Jewish oral tradition worked and picking apart the markers of it. The rest of the new testament starts to diverge, there's a pretty stark difference between them and the rest of the books

As for lowering your standards of evidence, I really don't understand your point. There's no pictures of Caesar or George Washington, if they existed today the lack of pictures would be pretty suspect.

Jesus was an artisan and orator from an age when writing was expensive and only available to the nobility, and the vast majority of it was lost to time. It's expected that there's no written records of him during his lifetime - he was just some backwater carpenter whose importance wasn't clear until after his death

Context is everything in history. It's like asking "where is his birth certificate?" when someone is born in a time and place where that wasn't a thing

The time frame matters because Pompeii is a time capsule - human hands couldn't have manipulated the evidence past that date up. That's one generation - there would have been people around who met the guy (or should have).

And yet, neither followers or opposing institutions ever questioned his existence, details of the account of his life line up with historical records

Ultimately, what's more likely: there was a man known as Jesus of Nazareth (even if he took up the name and role in someone else's plan), or there was a conspiracy to fake the existence of a man who was a threat to both the Jewish leadership and Roman rule, and neither of those parties (who had people still alive as the movement became a problem) "what do you mean I had him executed? I never met the guy"

Maybe he died, maybe a stand in died, maybe he faked his death with the help of Roman soldiers and fled to Asia. But someone had to have played the role - otherwise a lot of people would have had to flawlessly keep up a conspiracy, many of which weren't believers

You can spend hours digging into every single detail I've brought up, it's literally the most studied historical subject ever with a ton of secular historical work done in the last century. But the consensus is that he definitely existed, there's just too many corroborating details that line up