On 1/9/2012 8:31 AM, Invisible wrote:
> The contents of the Bible may or may not be real, but the book itself is
> quite real. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia (which is inerrant),
> it seems that at least a few of the things in the Bible might actually
> be true. In particular, there might actually have been a real person
> actually called Jesus, who at least /claimed/ to be a messenger of God.

Based on what? The census data that, supposedly, was collected when he 
was born, but doesn't mention him? The total lack of anything written 
"during his own life", by anyone at all, that mentions him. The 
detailed, complex, and precise data on everything from the guy that 
collected piss for the leather workers, to the one that replaced the 
sponges in the public toilets, which, never the less, fails to mention 
him at all, even as an apprentice carpenter, under his step father, who, 
while living a ways away, and never the less considered a Roman citizen 
(why else have him be traveling for the census)? Hmm, the fact that 
Romans tended to be efficient, and wanted to know where people where, so 
wouldn't have require his step father to travel hundreds of miles, just 
to put his name down, instead of just doing so where he was at the time?

And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed 
about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin 
births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into 
whine). Or, the really big one, that nothing at all in the Bible's NT 
has *ever* been found, in any form, earlier than roughly 50 years 
"after" he was supposedly crucified. You would think someone, some 
place, would have made mention of it, kept and old copy, accidentally 
stuffed a wall with a manuscript that contained mention of "any" of his 
speeches, describing any of the events, etc.

Basically, nothing exists, prior to roughly 50 AD that even mentions 
him. The few 'maybe' exceptions are things, like Josephus's history, 
written within 5-10 years of that same date, to catalog the events of 
Titus Flavius' campaign against the Jews, and its strongly suspected 
that its pre-face, which makes vague mention of Jesus was added later, 
probably *after* one of Flavius' cousins renamed himself after one of 
the, probably equally fake, disciples, and then claimed that one of them 
had "personally" made him the first pope of the true Church. (This took 
place a bit after Titus failed to actually put down the Jewish rebellion 
completely, and someone else because the next Emperor, his fathers 
elevation to godhood, as was the practice for a brief time, having not 
quite panned out.

Interestingly, someone did a look over of Titus' campaign, and found 
interesting parallels, in terms of where, and when, certain major 
engagements took place, and places Jesus was "supposed" to have stopped 
to make sermons. One interesting example was the shores of a certain 
place where Jesus was said to tell people to become fishers of men, and 
Titus used nets to drag his enemies from their boats, before killing 
them. Its hardly clear if one was written, and the other adapted from 
it, or both where done at the same time, or what. The NT might be an 
attempt to invent religion, which Titus tried to take advantage of, or 
something they came up in parody of his real campaign, then decided a 
lot of people liked, so decided to use to gain power that they couldn't 
via politics, or.. who knows. But, there really isn't one single scrap 
of actual evidence, at all, that Jesus himself ever existed.

What people call evidence are documents, like the addendum at the start 
of Josephus' work, which doesn't fit the style of the rest of the 
manuscript, and they can't show existing *earlier* than the rest of it, 
a few mentions of his name, which was not much less common than it is in 
Mexico now, and thus not evidence of anything, and a complete and total 
lack of *anything* from his own life time, which clearly identifies him 
specifically, or even closely enough to be him, and not one of thousand 
of random prophets, seers, magicians, and claimed messiahs, who where 
running around at the time.

In point of fact, assuming that any of the events "sort of" happened, 
for which there isn't any, "from the time they supposedly did", 
documentation of them, its far more likely that someone stitched 
together an absurd number of random bits of stuff, tacked on some common 
stories/traits of existing gods/sons of gods, and when it proved popular 
enough, some group figure that they needed to consolidate power, by 
"reworking" all of it, into something that made more sense than the 
hodgepodge of nonsense that they had originally. Heaven and Hell 
certainly where not places in the OT, they had to have come from the 
Elysian Fields, and Hades, for example. The OT is actually fairly 
explicit that everything about heaven and hell, described later, is 
nonsense, and that you learn, discover, do, and gain, nothing in death 
that you didn't have in life, so you need to accomplish what ever 
wisdom, knowledge, love, happiness, etc. you can *now*. Its why its 
taken 2,000 years for some Christians to get to, "Maybe this heaven and 
hell thing is just myth.", while Jews have had secular (i.e. atheist) 
members for a very long time, by comparison. Taken literally, 
Ecclesiastics describes atheist philosophy, if in confused, and flowery 
words, which someone could stretch to say something else, if they tried 
hard enough, with respect to the value of making *this* world better, 
not some next one, that doesn't exist, quite well.

If there is nothing to look forward to, *now* is more valuable, and thus 
more precious, than, "maybe some time later, if there is later".

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