had my faith very aggressively tested tonight.

[SpaceDinosaur]

This is not about the action, I'm fine with what happened. This is about how I feel now.

What's just happened.
I gave a friend a lift home as I was driving and he was quite drunk.
Midway home he asked how we (group of friends) cope with a mutual friend being religious...she's getting married in a church.
I replied that I was religious, he attended my church wedding 6 months ago.
"You can't be religious, you're supposed to be intelligent"
Sorry?
"You're a scientist, you have an analytical mind, why are you acting like a brainwashed idiot?"
God love him he loves a soap box so I was then treated to a tirade of how there was no God, how if there was a God we would be perfect, how God couldn't exist because of the diseases babies in Africa die of. (That was his pet topic)

No responses from me were heard so I allowed him to rant himself out including a full session of calling God all the names under the sun, asking God to smite or kill him now and laughing at me.

I am at peace with the event. Shocked but not upset. He'll apologise for being so aggressive, confrontational and rude tomorrow (if he remembers)

I felt tested. I wanted to come home and open my bible and see where it fell (something I did a lot as a teenager) but I can't find it which makes me sad. I wanted to find the verse and chapter about not testing God.

I would like to ask for a verse or chapter to read. I have a digi bible. I can't explore the book, I can't find it right now.

Oh, right. Well, I'm happy to come down on the side of him existing as a historical figure if it helps. I don't know. Neither can anyone. There just isn't enough evidence one way or the other.

Oh and I do wish people didn't think that disagreement is the Sam as dismissal and ridicule

Is the same. I don't know who Sam is........

If my ds's school wasted money on offering Mandarin I would be very cross indeed.

Sorry, wrong thread!

Oh, BigDorrit, that's hilarious. People who post in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones! And have you never come across the standard form for essay writing in all academic disciplines, in which you outline your argument in the introduction, then go through it step by step giving your evidence, and then draw your conclusion?

Cannot you see how your own metaphysical commitments (your atheism, that is) determine your own sense of what is reasonable and persuasive?

I haven't read Ehrman, and to be frank, I'm not that interested in doing so. I'm much less interested in the historical Jesus question than you are! I did look at the blog littlejeopardy linked to, which seemed to me fairly reasonable. I noted that the writer doesn't have anything to say about questions which are crucial for Christians, most importantly the reality of the resurrection or the divinity of Christ. He limits himself to the areas on which there is scholarly consensus, that is that Jesus lived and came from Galilee, he was baptised by John, and that he died by crucifixion.

I couldn't see any evidence, however, that the writer was not an atheist. I don't know why you used scare quotes. Is that because to be a real atheist it is not enough not to believe in God, but you also have to think that the very idea of the existence of Jesus is a conspiracy by Christians?

Well, it's you and the Jesus-myth people (none of them reputable scholars) against the weight of peer-reviewed scholarship published in reputable academic journals and university presses then.

OK- if Jesus could somehow be categorically proved to be real, exactly whwt difference would it make?

If he could be proved to be entirely mythological then I could see no it would make a difference, but obviously that's impossible.

So he existed. So what?

We don't know who wrote the New Testament, but we know that they were almost certainly Jewish. The character is radical and confronts the status quo. Goes against the culture of his time, mixes with the untouchables of society; lepers and prostitutes. Antagonises the priests and shakes up religious ideals, a man who is finally outed by his own people and executed. Oddly enough these stories were also clearly written by well read and possibly devoted Jews, not someone who knew nothing about Judaism. So why do that?

These stories were not accepted. If Jesus was made up, then someone made up a character that shook up their religion. 2000 years ago telling these stories was punishable by death. They risked a lot for a made up man! You don't need evidence to know that something inspired the stories and it was something pretty significant and not just a nice little story to make the Jews comply with the Romans or something of a similarly ridiculous nature.

Cool. Jesus was an historical figure. So what?

We know that people are willing to risk their lives and die for all sorts of nonsensical ideals so behaviour being risky doesn't make it any more likely to based in truth, just fanaticism.

BigDorrit, given that there haven't been any reported cases of people being tortured or killed for disagreeing that Jesus was a historical figure, I'm inclined to take your point as hyperbole.

It certainly is interesting, sociologically speaking, that the internet has provided a certain amount of oxygen for the views of ancient-history hobbyists. But in history as in science, peer review really is the best mechanism for ensuring that research is reliable. And I am afraid the Jesus-myth people just don't cut it on that criterion. They're the historical equivalent of people such as Andrew Wakefield. I would never say that all the research has been done. But if you review the research that has been done and that has been peer-reviewed, the consensus is that Jesus existed, he came from Galilee, he was baptised by John and died by crucifixion.

"given that there haven't been any reported cases of people being tortured or killed for disagreeing that Jesus was a historical figure"

Well, plenty have been tortured or killed for saying that he wasn't the son of God, so they probably didn't get as far as discussing whether he actually existed or not.......!

But as I said. He existed as a historical figure. So what?

Have they really, Betrand? The wikipedia article on discrimination against atheists names only three. Further searches on wikipedia under 'persecution of atheists' turn up a fairly small number of others - most of whom were imprisoned (some for short periods) rather than being either tortured or killed. The article on persecution of Christians, on the other hand, lists many thousands of victims in all historical periods and across the globe.

Fascinating that no one wants to address the issue of why it matters....

It matters to me as a Christian because of the incarnation.

nice little story to make the Jews comply with the Romans or something of a similarly ridiculous nature.

You don't know your Bible very well if you can't think of any bits where it tries to influence thinking about the Romans. Who killed Jesus? The Romans. Who gets the blame? The Jews! They ask for his blood to be on him and their descendants. Pilate on the other hand washes his hands of the guilt and some early traditions make him a saint!

But the Incarnation is a completely different debate.

BigDorrit, of course I have.

I refer you once more to wikipedia, which explains that the numbers tortured and executed were actually far lower than once thought, around 3,000 between 1478 and 1800 - the majority being conversos, that is, converted Jews who were accused of carrying on Jewish practices despite their conversion. That is ghastly and a terrible blot on the history of Christianity.

Nevertheless, I would point out that in the French revolutionary period, hundreds of priests were executed, tens of thousands forced from their livings, and those priests or those who sheltered them who refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the revolutionary constitution liable to death on sight.

Let's not let historical myths cloud our thinking.