which people?
Well, It’s a given that since there are ‘words written down’ that some people existed to write the words - so some people existed. Whether or not the subject(s) of the book(s) themselves existed - that is debatable.
Do try and keep up - we’re talking about the gospel authors here - you know, from the bible.
Any of them. The apostles, the disciples, any of them. For all we know, they are all fictitious. Why draw the line at Jesus?
If people had simply showed up to English class on the day their teacher introduced the concept of metaphor, this whole mess could have been avoided.
A literal resurrection does no one any good anyway (except for the resurrectee, and according to the published accounts he didn’t even seem that thrilled. I mean, imagine the complexity of that year’s income tax).
A metaphorical resurrection is a powerful image and an inspiring example.
Same with a literal virgin birth - it’s just a really odd story in a creepy kind of way, nothing better than that. But a metaphorical virgin birth, maybe that’s helpful to someone.
If the whole Bible is a big metaphor about what it means to be alive, it’s at least potentially good for something.
If the Bible is literal history, then it’s a useless shitty history filled with lies and irrelevant stuff, and all the important parts left out.
Signed,
A Christian, Sort Of, Maybe. 
Not Paul, the most believable and likely to have existed of the big five authors. He had an apparent epileptic seizure with an aura, and he heard a voice, which can happen when your brain goes haywire. I just pass out–BORING!
Unfair rhetorical maneuver, as you were the one who posed the initial bit of nonsense.
I endorse senoy’s POV, up to a point. There is all manner of evidence that exists for most beliefs. Whether the evidence is convincing is a separate question. To say that no evidence exists for any miracle in the Bible is silly - the evidence is in the gospel, which is an historical document like any other. It’s just not very good or convincing evidence. There is a long tradition in mainstream Christianity that emphasizes the many ways of interpreting the Bible, only one of which is historical.
He really isn’t.
Some have replied with the statement, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” That’s the way to go. Or one way anyway.
Greetings senoy and welcome to the Straight Dope Message board!
That was my take for a while, but I backed away from it after discussion with the mythicists on this message board.
The 4th link in the thread shows other discussions of the mythicist view. I’ll call your attention to the posts of the ex-poster Diogenes the Cynic, who was familiar with the mythicist position, but did not endorse it.
But I think these links are better, especially the 2nd. Dio remains skeptical of the mythicist position in 2004, but plays Devil’s advocate in 2010. He places a higher probability on the mythicist position than I do.
2004 discussion: Jesus: Man or Myth? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board
Continued in 2010, in a thread about St Paul: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=553596&page=3
Regarding mythicism vs historicism:
Settling that question one way or the other can only be a matter of idle curiosity, unless one worships the Bible (yes, words correctly chosen).
Christianity has no real reason to care one way or the other. Jesus is just Jesus to a Christian, and that’s that. Biblianity (my name for the modern pseudo-Christian idolatry that sets up a supposedly inerrant Bible as its new improved golden calf) may indeed have a desperate need to get to that answer.
As someone who has discussed religion with the man (no humble, only brag), I’m still tickled by the idea that anyone would assert that Freeman Dyson believes in a literal resurrection of Christ or that he was somehow persuaded to his faith by evidence.
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Ambrose Bierce discusses the admissibility of evidence in his famous dictionary.
The physical laws of the universe were suspended for the benefit of 504 witnesses. 500 of whom go on with their lives, never to mention a word of it again, except maybe when raving drunk in a pub on a Saturday night. But not the special 4. Those 4 go on record with their story but wait 25 to 80 years before doing so. Unfortunately, life changing as their story is, they get virtually every detail wrong. Worse than that, not a single one actually witnessed the blessed event in first person.
That’s your evidence? That’s what you choose to believe? Well, that’s fine, but don’t insult the intelligence of those who aren’t quite so easily convinced.
Go on, dismiss me with a wave of the hand and air of superiority of a true believer. Call me ignorant about some irrelevant detail that I missed because I haven’t spent sufficient time in bible study. Or even better yet, tell me how Pascal and Newton are rationally and objectively superior on the subject of religion and faith and then fail to explain how their contributions to science make them a reliable authority on Jesus. Then, just for fun and confusion, deny you ever made that claim.
Do all that. You must. Because if that’s all that you’ve got then you may as well put your best foot forward.
Closing in on 2 days since the OP’s last post. Has he shaken the dust from his feet and moved on?
A hell of a lot of people have seen Elvis since he died. And the evidence is better. Heck, we even have him on film in Home Alone!
Newton thought he could discover the Philosopher’s Stone, and possibly believed in Atlantis, so, yeah, “rational” isn’t really something I associate with him.
So few pearls, so many swine…
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Chemistry was a total mystery at that time; that alchemists had views now known to be incorrect doesn’t mean much — everyone who had ideas about chemistry in those days had incorrect ideas. Sir Isaac Newton is widely judged to be the greatest scientist who ever lived. Anyone who disassociates him from “rational” is showing his own confusion.
There’s alchemy-as-protochemistry, and then there’s looking to turn lead into gold and eternal life. Also, Atlantis and Bible codes. “not rational” is putting it mildly. Newton was a contemporary of Boyle and Hooke, he doesn’t really get to play the “it was a different time” card.
And I definitely *don’t *consider Newton the greatest scientist who ever lived. Great, but not the greatest (that’s Darwin, for me). That doesn’t necessarily make him rational, though, any more than Pythagoras was rational when he went on about numerology.
If no one still believed these stories, I’d be happy to call them just myths. Given that some people do, I think harsher language is appropriate.
I would go one step further.
Highly religious Person A writes a fanciful story, predicting the sun will rise in the west someday.
Religiously-motivated Person B, wanting the story to be true, writes another fanciful story describing the day the sun rose in the west as predicted.
Long after Persons A & B are gone, Person C points to the two complementary stories and says each proves the other to be true.
We now have a Sun God Bible.
I have alot of trouble believing that this religion was able to spread throughout the world and billions around the world would still be following it, if it was all a big fake. Why did most of the roman empire and the world adopt it?
Later we had governments who tried to ban it. We’ve had supposedly great philosophers like Voltaire who said in the 1700’s it would be fade away and just be another myth of the past, but its still here almost 300 years later.
I just dont think that would happen if it was all a big phony.
Why? Do you doubt that people make things up? That people believe stories without proof and pass them along? Even the most bizarre and unlikely stuff ever?
Hasn’t the Internet – fake news, etc. – shown that to be ubiquitous? That phony things are believed all the time, in massive numbers of people? Even though we now have ways to investigate the truth that were not available 2000 years ago?