I think there are plenty of example of non-existant people starting religionsganesh, shiva, budha, pan, thor etc.
(
maiden is filmed before a live studio audience,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:33,
archived)
buddha's reasonably well-attestedbut i never knew that mithras was a real person, much as his cult shares a few similarities with christianity. the argument "there *had* to be a person at the base of it" is pretty tenuous.
( boris the spider,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:36,
archived)
precisely most religions have been based upon a concept ratherthan a real person. But I will shut up I'm way out of my depth here but until there is tangible undeniable proof I'll stay sceptical.
( maiden is filmed before a live studio audience,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:41,
archived)
This is scepticism beyond the bounds of reason,this kind of proof never exists for anything. Undeniable proof doesn't exist outside of maths and maths isn't tangible.
(
Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:45,
archived)
That doesn't make any sense what so ever!"scepticism beyond the bounds of reason"? what so that means I just have to accept any religion based on some unsubstantiated beliefs and the say so of a few historians? The Turin shroud was proven as a medieval fake, there is no body of Christ, his depiction is of a Caucasian male in the middle of Judaea!? There is no written transcript of his life outside of the bible. I'm sorry but to say I have no reason is just plain offensive! Also Maths is tangible as it's provable through testing, testing anybody can do.
( maiden is filmed before a live studio audience,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:58,
archived)
No it doesn't mean that at all,and there is a great deal of maths that has no physical application at all, but even if it did, that wouldn't be the proof of it. Maths is proved through pure logic. Pythagoras's theorem isn't proven by drawing lots of triangles and measuring them.
What it means is that you should accept statements about history based on the balance of evidence. The Bible counts as evidence. Arguments from ignorance are no good.
(What it means is that you should accept statements about history based on the balance of evidence. The Bible counts as evidence. Arguments from ignorance are no good.
Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 18:17,
archived)
Accepting the Bible as evidence is like accepting that Marvel Comics is evidence that Superman existsThe writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls do not tally with the King James Bible or the Lindisfarne Gospels so where does the modern bible actually exist in history? Sorry if you think I'm too thick to understand your brilliant points of view but there we have it I'm just a stupid pleb go on call me fucking stupid again!
( maiden is filmed before a live studio audience,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 18:24,
archived)
Well no it isn't because we know Marvel comics are a deliberate fiction,whereas the Bible might not be entirely historically reliable because of the class of literature that it is, as well as how it was produced, but it nevertheless counts as evidence. Scholars argue about exactly what it is evidence of but there's no reason to reject it while we accept so much other literature from the period and earlier. Quite a lot of what we know about ancient history comes from what people wrote about it.
The King James Bible isn't a great translation of the Hebrew, although it has a certain charm. The Dead Sea Scrolls differ from the Masoretic text mostly only in very minor ways, and even the major differences are hardly contradictions. I couldn't tell you anything about the Lindisfarne Gospels off the top of my head. I shall make a note to look them up.
I don't know why you think I'm calling you thick, that's certainly not the intention. Neither is it my intention, for the record, to convert you to Christianity. I don't even know if I'm a Christian myself.
(The King James Bible isn't a great translation of the Hebrew, although it has a certain charm. The Dead Sea Scrolls differ from the Masoretic text mostly only in very minor ways, and even the major differences are hardly contradictions. I couldn't tell you anything about the Lindisfarne Gospels off the top of my head. I shall make a note to look them up.
I don't know why you think I'm calling you thick, that's certainly not the intention. Neither is it my intention, for the record, to convert you to Christianity. I don't even know if I'm a Christian myself.
Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 18:32,
archived)
It ceratinly seems at every turn you have rubbished my point of view by saying stuff like"Arguments from ignorance are no good" and such like you don't say the words "You are stupid" but you imply it but at no point do you answer any of my doubts.
( maiden is filmed before a live studio audience,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 19:12,
archived)
mithras was the subject of the religion, not its founder,same as Ganesh et al. The cult of Mithras developed amongst Roman soldiers around a God imported from Persia (probably via pirates), although the similarity stops pretty much at the name as the religion was highly syncretistic, as Roman religion tended to be, and has a lot less in common with Christianity than some people would have you believe.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:42,
archived)
Jesus didn't found ChristianityThat's an immediate, and very strong assumption. You'd be a lot safer saying that Paul founded Christianity since his historicity seems a lot better assured. You'd be even safer saying that no-one founded Christianity and it just grew out of the apocalyptic Jewish cults that infested Judea at that time.
( boris the spider,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:54,
archived)
According to the Gospels Jesus founded Christianity.He is presented as the founder and it is presented by people claiming to be his followers. Mithras is not presented as the founder of anything or even as a real person. I hope you can appreciate there is a difference here. Paul is certainly responsible for a lot of things but even he attributed Christianity to Jesus as if he were a real person, furthermore Christianity already existed (by his own account at least) since he used to persecute Christians himself. Christian doctrine really does depend on Jesus being a real person otherwise the whole idea of redemption doesn't really work. It is not a religion about an "idea" as some other religions were. It is a religion ostensibly about the teachings and sacrifice of a real person and it makes no sense for that religion to exist if the real person did not exist.
Of course it did come about in first century Judaea in the milieu of Messianic sects that were around at that time, and a lot of work on the Dead Sea Scrolls has made it clear that a lot of Christianity wasn't quite as new or original as previously presumed, but the idea that a group of people invented their own teacher to follow just does not make sense. It makes less sense, on balance, than the idea that a guy started preaching the Kingdom and got some followers.
(Of course it did come about in first century Judaea in the milieu of Messianic sects that were around at that time, and a lot of work on the Dead Sea Scrolls has made it clear that a lot of Christianity wasn't quite as new or original as previously presumed, but the idea that a group of people invented their own teacher to follow just does not make sense. It makes less sense, on balance, than the idea that a guy started preaching the Kingdom and got some followers.
Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 18:06,
archived)
Using internal evidence as evidence is circularOutwith the Gospels there is no evidence that Jesus started Christianity. There's basically none that *Paul* started Christianity, but at least his Epistles are attested earlier than the Gospels, and were very influential.
We know the early Church fathers existed, and we know that they all had different beliefs. That's attested even three hundred years later when Constantine was pushing for a unified dogma, and it's attested by the Epistles which discuss theological differences with other Christian leaders.
"Jesus" isn't actually attested outside of the dogma. "Paul", whatever the writer of the bulk of the Epistles attributed to him may have been called (and it seems a consensus that the bulk of them were written by a single man), *is*, by dint of the writings he left behind.
Sorry, but "Paul" has a stronger claim than "Jesus".
The alternative is that I'll accept, on the evidence of the writings "he" left behind, that Moses was the founding father of Judaism. Hell, the Pentateuch is attributed to him, I reckon he's got an even better claim than Jesus! (There is zero proof that Moses existed, either, and it seems frankly unlikely. Likewise Abraham, Isaac, Joseph et. al. Even Solomon and David are on shaky ground.)
(We know the early Church fathers existed, and we know that they all had different beliefs. That's attested even three hundred years later when Constantine was pushing for a unified dogma, and it's attested by the Epistles which discuss theological differences with other Christian leaders.
"Jesus" isn't actually attested outside of the dogma. "Paul", whatever the writer of the bulk of the Epistles attributed to him may have been called (and it seems a consensus that the bulk of them were written by a single man), *is*, by dint of the writings he left behind.
Sorry, but "Paul" has a stronger claim than "Jesus".
The alternative is that I'll accept, on the evidence of the writings "he" left behind, that Moses was the founding father of Judaism. Hell, the Pentateuch is attributed to him, I reckon he's got an even better claim than Jesus! (There is zero proof that Moses existed, either, and it seems frankly unlikely. Likewise Abraham, Isaac, Joseph et. al. Even Solomon and David are on shaky ground.)
boris the spider,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 20:43,
archived)