It’ll be difficult to find any scholars of note that don’t think there was a historical Jesus.
I suspect the exorcisms are a confusion of language and translation but I broadly take the miracles as miracles. If you believe in God then it’s not really much of a stretch to assume that miracles are within his remit.
Christians believe because of faith, that faith comes from God and is bolstered by things like prayer. It’s a terrible answer for an atheist as they start with an entirely different world view and so can’t understand that faith isn’t built on evidence alone. That’s the gap.
I find this quote by Karl Barth interesting:
“The Resurrection is the revelation: the disclosing of Jesus as the Christ, the appearing of God, and the apprehending of God in Jesus. The Resurrection is the emergence of the necessity of giving glory to God: the reckoning with what is unknown and unobservable in Jesus, the recognition of Him as Paradox, Victor and Primal History. In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it.”
Isn’t it normal to find people ramming religion down others throats offensive?
When evangelicals get all evangelical does it not make you slighlty uneasy?
They said the same thing about many of the major biblical characters at one time. Moses until the last century or so, his historicity was all but certain by the general consensus of scholars. A few centuries before that Noah’s historicity was certain, even appearing in early editions of Britannica. So I’m not that impressed with many scholars, especially if they hold a divinity degree.
Do you know of any credible scholar that thinks every single translation today got it wrong and that the confusion is over the language and translations when it comes to how many times Jesus performed an exorcism? You know this how? If you want to give that much latitude, why don’t just throw in that they probably got the resurrection wrong too?
I found Joseph Campbell’s take on the resurrection of Jesus more credible, when he said he thought the whole thing was a clown act, and this is from somebody that generally had positive things to say for the power of myth.
Sorry, this is really pure gibberish. I don’t know the heck who Karl Barth is, though the name sounds familiar… Ok, looked it up, of course he’s a theologian, it’s typical. I’m an telecommunication engineer, so I can tell with confidence that the information content of this cite is close to zero. Care to elaborate?
The variation on “The Fall” that Ursula K. LeGuin presents in the novel “The Farthest Shore” (third book in the original Earthsea trilogy) is a pleasant (and somewhat Jewish) approach.
She suggests that only humans can commit wrongful acts, because we’re the only ones who can comprehend right and wrong. Sharks kill because they must, but humans sometimes kill, even while fully knowing we should not. The “fall” comes along with the knowledge of good and evil, because we know…and do it anyway.
(One interesting problem with this is that dogs, at very least, and perhaps some other animals, also know “right and wrong.” Dogs can steal, lie, and act in anger…and can sometimes show, by their shame and contrition afterward, that they know what they did was wrong.)
(The “knowledge” metaphor is also scary: what if you raised a child in total isolation from moral values? In perfect innocence, the result would be a perfect monster. This is why Christianity posits that sin is innate, but is that the best explanation/model?)
I am also an atheist but have also read the bible from beginning to end and can tell you that the great majority of what you said is based on misconceptions that Catholics and other religions teach and are not based on what the bible says which is what “christian” religions should be basing their teachings on, if you are too lazy to read the whole bible talk to a Jehovah’s Witness about all this and you’ll get the most biblicaly curate answers. I know this because I have studied the believes of all major christian religions and non christian as well and found the Jehovah’s witnesses to be the most close to the real bible teachings.
You think that little doomsday cult, that keeps changing its ‘accurate’ teachings around (and around and around) is the closest to ‘real’ bible teachings? The one that can’t even bother to discuss Luke 21 with its followers, since it specifically says to beware of cults like the JW and not to follow them?
Yeah - you need to restudy or provide some cite to back that claim up.