As my email exchanges with my friend Shawn began to pile up, I could sense he was growing tired of defending the defenseless and struggling to combat my responses. As with most of my debates with people, especially via email, they result to copying huge blocks of text from someone else’s work and pasting it in their emails to me, or they search the Internet for confirmation bias and paste the links into the email and they ask me to look at it.
While I admit I like to look things up when I’m feeling stumped or my recollection is foggy, I am careful to digest what I’m reading and then I apply my own thoughts and reasoning to them as I present them to my friends or debate opponents.
In this case, I asked him to tell me why he believed in Jesus, since no contemporaneous writings describing him and his miracles exist. He sent me a link that discussed Josephus and his works. He described Josephus as a well-respected historian. I destroyed his argument, explaining to him that the references to Jesus in his works were interpolations and likely fake.
HIS RESPONSE: As for the passage in Josephus about Christ, most scholars agree it is not completely genuine. However, the whole passage is not suspect. If you read the passage again and omit the italicized words, this is what most scholars agree was written by Jos. And this passage is not the most important one. Read the article again and this scholar mentions a shorter section that mentions Christ that is widely agreed upon to be genuine.
And no where in the science of history or investigation is there a rule that says a writer needs to be contemporaneous with his subject. It would be nice, but a very well respected historian writing about the Christian movement a few years after it happened is not a problem. These Roman historians and others wrote their accounts too close to the events for any legends to grow about them. Legends take a loooooooooooooooooong time to develop.
As an atheist, you have a certain amount of faith, much like I do. If Christ was God, then He is the Creator amd was able to raise the dead. This would be no problem for an infinitely powerful being. Christ was fully human, but was also perfect and fully God.
You choose to require solid, tangible proof for God’s existence. You ain’t never gonna get it. And as such believe in annihilation after death. I choose to have faith that a Godman named Christ did walk on water, and I believe in certain things happening 1 minute after I die.
There is plenty of ancient documentation that says Christ existed. Even ancient Jewish sources recall a man walking around disturbing their peace and grip on power.
Keep in mind that guys like Dawkins, Erhman, Hitchins, and others are all displaying faith that they have got it right. They are human and are fully imperfect like the rest of us. Remember, to, that for every Dawkins there is an equally competent believing scholar who says these things did take place. No axes here to grind, these guys are theologians or biblical scholars who are simply doing their jobs.
Mr Dawkins isn’t the end of the conversation. He is a human. And has many critics, well qualified at that, who are not impressed with his arguments.
You say God does not exist. You must qualify your statement with a “I believe” and then follow with “God does not exist.” The fact is you do NOT have proof that God does NOT exist, but you exhibit the same kind of faith that I do (in believing He does exist) to believe that He doesn’t. So you do have faith. I as well do NOT have proof God EXISTS, but choose faith. We are 2 sides of the same coin, you and I.
MY RESPONSE: Thanks for the email and before I address the Josephus points you made, I'd like to touch on your remarks about Dawkins, Hitchens and Ehrman. (I'll get to your faith argument at the end of my email).
While I respect much of what they have written, debated and lectured, their influence does not make up my stance on this subject. In what we are discussing, I haven't referenced them so I'm not sure why you introduced them at this stage. In fact, Hitch and Dawkins say very little, if anything at all, about Josephus and his works. Ehrman, does say plenty, though that is not where I have obtained my sole education on this subject.
Again, the contention that a man named Jesus who was a teacher in the first century isn't being challenged on this end, it's the divine nature that is up for discussion and what obviously would make him a god. And while I appreciate the article you linked to, I was actually supplying the much more popular, meaty and oft-referenced paragraph that Christians use as their proof. The graph you feel is more important is, in fact, not thought of as beyond dispute and is one of the references that clearly shows interpolation by later Christian scribes.
The passage in question again sends up the same red flags when using the historic method. The reference to Jesus can only be seriously entertained if Jesus had been mentioned in some earlier account, which he wasn't since the Testimonium Flavianum was written later and clearly proved to be an interpolation where Jesus was referenced. Josephus would never use a totally unknown person (Jesus) to describe James' lineage. And the line, "Jesus, who was called Christ (or messiah)" is so blatantly an interpolation. If Josephus truly believed Jesus was the messiah, he would have written so much more about him, since his sole purpose was to be a historian of these people. And it's worth remarking here that "messiah," in regards to the Jewish nation and its Hebrew bible, merely means leader or king. It in no way means miracle worker or divine. Nor does the term Christ mean anything other than the chosen one (and in the Jewish case, chosen to lead their army). There is no divine implication associated with this term.
The bigger point here is, if Jesus was a miracle worker and divine, certainly anyone in charge of recording the history of the Jews during this period would write much more than two almost-afterthought references. Josephus spilled rivers of ink describing extremely minor players in Jewish history yet can only muster up one throwaway phrase in one work and one clearly suspect paragraph in a later work, which doesn't exist in earlier copies, by the way.
This leads back to your statement about the "rule" about contemporaneous writers. While I completely agree with this, it has missed the point entirely. It's not that people aren't capable of writing about history after the fact, it's that NO ONE who lived DURING Jesus' time on earth, whose job it was to record history, wrote one word about him. Documents exist from this time, especially historical ones from this region, and yet not one word about him or his miracles. Certainly, if someone is curing leprosy, raising people from the dead, walking on water and turning water into wine, it deserves at least one mention from historians living in the region charged with recording its history. Yet not one word.
Your reference to Josephus being a well-respected historian writing about Christianity misses the mark, too. Christianity didn't begin to take shape until well into the second century, long after Josephus died. He didn't write at all about Christianity, nor was his works a "few years" after it happened. We are talking decades (nearly six to be more succinct), and his credibility has long come into question since he was quite often caught falsifying his works and used his own political slant to taint his writings.
And don't you think something as important as an eternity should not be resting on such flimsy proof? I find it fascinating how many Christians use these two highly suspect references, which still don't show he was divine or a miracle worker, as their line in the sand.
Now, let's address your "faith" remarks and burden-of-proof misstep. Faith, in religious circles, means believing in something without evidence for it. Given this definition, I, and my atheist cohorts, do not have faith. We require evidence to believe things. This is in direct conflict with faith. Now, using the definition of faith as meaning "confidence or trust" then yes, I have faith in the scientific and historic method. I don't have faith that a god exists or doesn't. Atheism means a lack of belief in any god. Agnosticism means lack of knowledge pertaining to a subject, in this case any god. The terms aren't mutually exclusive. I am, by definition, an agnostic atheist. I am open to evidence. What has been presented at this moment in history is zero evidence of anything or anyone being supernatural.
I don't have to prove a god doesn't exist, as I am not claiming anything. I certainly don't need proof that a god doesn't exist as that would be ludicrous. Prove nurples don't exist. What's a nurple? Doesn't matter. I need you to prove they don't exist. It's impossible. But I can prove a banana exists. See the difference? We aren't two sides of the same coin as it pertains to this.
I'm not asking you to prove a god exists, but I am asking that he/she/it proves it before I believe, and that is a rational behavior.
Ask yourself this, if you were born in the Middle East, would you be a Christian? If you were born in India, would you be a Christian? If you were born in Ancient Greece would you be a Christian? Why is it that exactly WHERE/WHEN you were born dictates your belief, especially if Jesus really was the one and only creator? You just happen to be born in a country that is predominantly Christian and that religion was forced upon you at an age when you believed everything you were told. If you were born in India, your parents would have raised you Hindu and you would believe in Krishna right now. Why is it that you believe Jesus is god, other than because that is what you were taught, or more accurately, indoctrinated to believe? Is it the evidence? Definitely not. I contend it's because you were told a story was true when you were a child.
And why do you use faith solely in this area of your life and nowhere else? Why give religion and divinity a pass, but research the hell out of which car or gun to buy? Seems skewed to me. And I'm not trying to shake your faith, I just want you to examine it like you would anything else.
HIS REPLY: You have asked one of the great questions of all time: was Jesus who He said he was (God) or merely a wise man? Unfortunately for each one of us, we have to decide if we agree with Jesus’ claims and the claims of His apostles, or reject His claims, pretty much based on no evidence.
If you are looking for God to appear in front of you and say “ Believe in Christ," it will never happen. The eternal wait of the agnostics is for God to appear before them and say, “Here I Am.”
This will never happen. The reason why this will never happen is that God has a rule that He will never ever break: the violation of human free will.
If God appears in front of a man and says, “See, I exist,” then the free will of that man has been breached. Then at that point, the man has no choice but to accept God and God is merely reduced to a dictator, forcing allegiance and worship. (Think about it, if an infinitely powerful and holy being appeared in front of us, we would not reject him. And remember, the Bible is clear that no man in his flesh can look upon God and live. How’s that for power and glory.)
And you are correct, Josephus should not be used by Christians at all, for any type of teaching. I merely look at Josephus as an historical curiosity.
You mentioned that something as important as eternity should not rest on such flimsy proof. Agreed. Then why do you bet your eternity on something that will never be proven while you walk on the earth, specifically that God does not exist and Christ was just a man?
Why not hedge your bets and say I will believe in Christ and have some peace of mind that 1 second after you breathe your last breath and you meet your Creator, He wont reject you. Being a Christian (I did not say Catholic) is not a bad thing. I’m talking about a genuine Christian, not a hypocrite Catholic. Or one of them health and wealth freaks like Joel Osteen. Or my buddy Benny Hinn.
I will make the following statement as clear and precise as possible: Nothing from my childhood church days has influenced me as an adult. I have systematically purged all that I have learned in the Methodist Church and based my decision to believe in Christ solely on research and thought.
The certainty of death is the spring of action. And I chose to act and believe in Christ’s claims, since I’m starting to feel old.
ME: You have fallen victim to the classic, albeit tired, apologetic blunder of raising Pascal's Wager, named after Blaise Pascal, the 17th Century French Christian philosopher. He posited that it is better to believe in god, be wrong and lose nothing than it is to not believe, be wrong and face infinite suffering.
Where do I start? First, which god should I believe in? Yahweh? Allah? Jesus? Krishna? Ra? Zeus? Thor? Apollo? There are thousands. For not believing in any of these would have grave consequences should you follow the religions that created them. I'll quote Homer Simpson for you since I know you'll appreciate it: "What if we are praying to the wrong god and just getting him angrier and angrier?" Even if we believe in Jesus, how do we know which sect or denomination? There are literally tens of thousands of them.
Also, I presume your god is omniscient, knows all, sees all, is in your head, etc.? Do you really think me saying I believe will convince this god who can read my mind? You can't just believe and "hedge my bets" as you appropriately put it.
This wager argues that you lose nothing if you're wrong about there being a god. I couldn't disagree more. You lose THIS lifetime, to countless hours of worship, worry and false feelings. You lose pieces of your life that you devoted to a lie. To spend a precious life believing in something that isn't real and devoting yourself to it, is sad.
I would never accuse you of being dishonest and I believe you when you say you've discarded the Methodist teachings you learned as a youngster. But I would have to venture a guess that while the dogma of the Methodist Church may be pure bullshit to you now, there is no doubt the seeds of fear and indoctrination of this threat of eternal hellfire grabbed hold of you and still clutch your thoughts. Not because you as an adult chose to believe it, but that it never left you. You can dismiss their rules and interpretations, but the idea that god punishes you eternally for not believing stays with you until you can use rational thought and reason.
When you dismissed Methodism, did you dismiss all belief in any God to force yourself to be born again, or did you say, "I still believe in Jesus and/or God, I just want to find which Christian dogma makes the most sense?"
