Dear Atheists..

[East Level 2]

It would be technically possible to prove that you didn't cheat from this day forward.

It's not just difficult, but surely impossible, to prove that an imaginary being doesn't exist.

If the being has been imagined then it's a figment of someone's imagination rather than an actual being.

When discussing religion one wonders if some adults still believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa.

 

[Bigg Bigg Blue]

Factual account?! I've read a couple of pages and it's like a Netflix conspiracy show! Who moved the stone? Could have been the scorned wife, or the grieving mother. Could have been some kids playing a prank. Could have been an alien. Accounts at the time even say they saw Tupac and Biggy having a rap battle shortly before they arrived to see the stone removed.

Let's go with Jesus came back from the dead and moved it himself.

Don't drag me into all this.

 

[Bigg Bigg Blue]

Going through all these pages I see a lot of things said about where we go when we die but, no one says where we have been before we were born.

 

[Manc baggie]

Like I said further down in the post you quoted me from, ‘And you may say, but there isn’t truly reliable evidence of many people from that time - and you’d be right - but Jesus is supposed to be the most important human that’s ever lived so I’m looking for much more weighted evidence for his existence than anyone else’s’.

And I may have because - despite being an atheist - I think mythologies and the real history around them is very interesting and I’ve done a lot of reading about it.

For example, there’s no evidence of Hebrews being slaves to Egypt. Also, when the Hebrews supposedly escaped from Egypt, crossed a body of water, wandered for 40 years in the desert and then came upon the Promised Land (some time between 1,400-1,200BCE), the entirety of their journey was actually all in Egypt because Egypt between the reigns of Thutmos III and Rameses II went right across the Levant, up past the Euphrates up towards Armenia.
The story of Moses - just like Jesus - is just an amalgamation of numerous older stories from other mythologies, including Egyptian mythology itself.

I haven’t doubted those historical figures because there isn’t a story of Homer making blind men see and lame men walk, there isn’t a story of Pythagoras walking on water and there isn’t a story of Sun Tzu coming back to life after being executed… so even if the Iliac was written a long time after Homer supposedly lived, Pythagoras thought planets sang to each other or there wasn’t actually anyone called Sun Tzu who masterminded military strategy, they don’t have an entire religion being followed in their name so haven’t made me read too much into their historicity.

At the time of Jesus’ supposed life and a fair while before, there are lots of accounts of people called Jesus or Iesous (Greek Ἰησοῦς, which is an interpretation from our understanding of the ancient Greek word which means ‘healer’), or Yeshua (Hebrew ישוע) or derivatives from around that time.

Just some of them include: Yeshua bin Nun, Jesus ben Phiabi, Yehoshua ben Sec, Jesus ben Damneus, Yeshua bin Sirach, Jesus ben Pandira, Jesus ben Ananias, Jesus ben Saphat, Jesus ben Gamala, Jesus bin Thebuth…

Some of them were High Priests of Judaism, some were writers, one was an interpreter, some were teachers and opened schools in Greece and Egypt, one is said to be the first to want to open schools to children from the age of 6, another was said to travel extensively as he was always in fear of his life, one was a ‘trouble maker’, another a ‘wonder worker’, another gave away treasures from the temple and one (Ben Pandira) is even claimed in the Talmud to be historical Jesus Christ as we know him but is said to have lived from 106-76BCE.

And there are others. There is a written account of someone called ‘Yeshu the Sorcerer’ who had five disciples and was put to death by the Hasmoneans at Passover in 63BCE.

Another story of someone called Ben Sṭada who accused of bringing magic back from Egypt in cuts in his flesh who was hanged at Passover in a town called Lod (near Tel Aviv today).

Along with all the other deities who have earlier similar or partly identical stories to the Jesus story that I mentioned earlier on, and all these Jesuses^, I think people took all of these names and stories and merged them together to create the Jesus story of the Bible. Which is why I’m not convinced by the Gospels or those who’ve claimed Jesus’ historicity. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but there’s never been anything I’ve seen that has convinced me, even if the scholars around this are convinced (although not all of them are).

Brilliant post.
There should be a ‘double like’ option for posts as knowledgeable & well constructed as this.

 

[Manc baggie]

Going through all these pages I see a lot of things said about where we go when we die but, no one says where we have been before we were born.

That’s disturbingly deep

 

[Bigg Bigg Blue]

That’s disturbingly deep

I have no idea about the answer, I was just hoping that someone who knows more about this stuff than I ever will has an answer.

 

[JASR]

Like I said further down in the post you quoted me from, ‘And you may say, but there isn’t truly reliable evidence of many people from that time - and you’d be right - but Jesus is supposed to be the most important human that’s ever lived so I’m looking for much more weighted evidence for his existence than anyone else’s’.

And I may have because - despite being an atheist - I think mythologies and the real history around them is very interesting and I’ve done a lot of reading about it.

For example, there’s no evidence of Hebrews being slaves to Egypt. Also, when the Hebrews supposedly escaped from Egypt, crossed a body of water, wandered for 40 years in the desert and then came upon the Promised Land (some time between 1,400-1,200BCE), the entirety of their journey was actually all in Egypt because Egypt between the reigns of Thutmos III and Rameses II went right across the Levant, up past the Euphrates up towards Armenia.
The story of Moses - just like Jesus - is just an amalgamation of numerous older stories from other mythologies, including Egyptian mythology itself.

I haven’t doubted those historical figures because there isn’t a story of Homer making blind men see and lame men walk, there isn’t a story of Pythagoras walking on water and there isn’t a story of Sun Tzu coming back to life after being executed… so even if the Iliac was written a long time after Homer supposedly lived, Pythagoras thought planets sang to each other or there wasn’t actually anyone called Sun Tzu who masterminded military strategy, they don’t have an entire religion being followed in their name so haven’t made me read too much into their historicity.

At the time of Jesus’ supposed life and a fair while before, there are lots of accounts of people called Jesus or Iesous (Greek Ἰησοῦς, which is an interpretation from our understanding of the ancient Greek word which means ‘healer’), or Yeshua (Hebrew ישוע) or derivatives from around that time.

Just some of them include: Yeshua bin Nun, Jesus ben Phiabi, Yehoshua ben Sec, Jesus ben Damneus, Yeshua bin Sirach, Jesus ben Pandira, Jesus ben Ananias, Jesus ben Saphat, Jesus ben Gamala, Jesus bin Thebuth…

Some of them were High Priests of Judaism, some were writers, one was an interpreter, some were teachers and opened schools in Greece and Egypt, one is said to be the first to want to open schools to children from the age of 6, another was said to travel extensively as he was always in fear of his life, one was a ‘trouble maker’, another a ‘wonder worker’, another gave away treasures from the temple and one (Ben Pandira) is even claimed in the Talmud to be historical Jesus Christ as we know him but is said to have lived from 106-76BCE.

And there are others. There is a written account of someone called ‘Yeshu the Sorcerer’ who had five disciples and was put to death by the Hasmoneans at Passover in 63BCE.

Another story of someone called Ben Sṭada who accused of bringing magic back from Egypt in cuts in his flesh who was hanged at Passover in a town called Lod (near Tel Aviv today).

Along with all the other deities who have earlier similar or partly identical stories to the Jesus story that I mentioned earlier on, and all these Jesuses^, I think people took all of these names and stories and merged them together to create the Jesus story of the Bible. Which is why I’m not convinced by the Gospels or those who’ve claimed Jesus’ historicity. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but there’s never been anything I’ve seen that has convinced me, even if the scholars around this are convinced (although not all of them are).

Ta for all that.

I think their are 2 important points in all that.
1. Homer, Sun tzu, Pythagoras et al, left behind stuff that advanced knowledge, whether it was them, partly them, or someone entirely different and they co-opted them and consigned them to being completely unknown… it doesn’t matter, as none claimed divinity about it.
2. I always wondered about the oft quoted trope about a man called ‘Jesus’ having lots of evidence and youve just laid it bear, that any fragments could be about hundreds if not thousands of different people. I think I asked earlier today, where’s the info about ‘Jesus’ between being born, then nothing till working as a carpenter, then nothing till kicking up a fuss.

 

[GortonBlue62]

Going through all these pages I see a lot of things said about where we go when we die but, no one says where we have been before we were born.

Before you were born you were in your mother's womb.

Before the moment your dad's swimmer fertilized your mother's egg you didn't exist.

When you die, you will cease to exist.

The only soul you ever have is your arse hole.

 

[Bigg Bigg Blue]

Before you were born you were in your mother's womb.

Before the moment your dad's swimmer fertilized your mother's egg you didn't exist.

When you die, you will cease to exist.

The only soul you ever have is your arse hole.

That my friend is a great answer.

 

[M23 Citizen]

Going through all these pages I see a lot of things said about where we go when we die but, no one says where we have been before we were born.

We’ve been passed on through generations of homosapiens, earlier mammals, back to sea life and single cells back to when biology began through our genes, as well as the elements within in us having been forged in Earth, supernovas or collisions of earlier stars right back to the furthest back we can see of the universe where chemistry began and when physics began.

Just like our genes will be passed on to our offspring and theirs and theirs (that’s how we live on after our death) and, even after all human life has long ended, the elements and atoms that were within us will make up the elements and atoms of something else (again, how we live on after our death), whether that be soil or part of a future species of tree.