So you are claiming that the existence of a God who sends himself in the form of his son to Earth through a pregnancy in a woman who did not agree to have that pregnancy so the God could sacrifice himself to himself in order to convince himself to forgive all of humanity for the sins of two people who he practically set up to fail is no more extraordinary than evolution causing the development of simple self replicating molecules into more complex versions?
God, Himself came through a woman that consented to carry the Lord Jesus Christ to give redemption to mankind. You, yourself could have been in the place of Eve, because all human kind is imperfect and incapable of sinlessness. We are not perfect, and of course, God was aware of this when we were created and so He knew that He would take on the transgressions of His created due to the fact that we were incapable of sinlessness.
I am claiming that life is not as simple as self replicating molecules into more complex versions as you seem to imagine. It is one of the most sought after discovery for Scientists and has been almost as long as the Scientific method itself. It is still far from any real answer and is quite a bit more challenging than God who actually created the universe and His plan for Salvation for His created.
In any case, we are having a discussion about evidence for God. If you are going to try to make the conversation about the evidence for the development of life or intelligence, then you are most certainly changing the subject.
Life from non-life and intelligence from non-intelligent matter is as extraordinary as anything in our universe. Yet, you accept it without question. That is the point, and is not like you said, changing the subject. You brought up the extraordinary claim and I was responding to that.
Because you don't explain why we should expect to find a source that points out the non-existence of a person who would later be said to have lived at the time. I raised this point in post 1573.
We have sources that wrote during the time of Jesus, if He didn't exist they would have surely made that point. It wasn't at a later time as you have claimed.
No, explanations why there are no records.
Going back to my example from post 1573, if, in a thousand years time people asked why there were no records of Arthur the Giant poodle who was president of the world, people couild say that the records were destroyed or otherwise lost.
Like I said, the people that have written about Jesus in the Bible lived and followed Him and we have the historical manuscripts, 25,000 of them in fact, that testifies to His life. The Bible as a historical account is confirmed by the accuracy of places, times, rulers and locations. You can dismiss the New Testament as a Historical account but the evidence is that it is.
There are tons of inconsistencies in the Bible. Where it is inconsistent with what we know of the world, and inconsistent with itself.
That is simply false, and to claim some of the things you have posted, you simply have not reached that determination on your own by reading the material contained in it; but have relied on parroting what you think is true from sources that seem to be just as incorrect as you are.
If I was writing a text about my daughjter's punishment, then I would describe her transgressions and then describe the punishments given for them.
I would not describe the punishments and then later, in a different part of the text, talk about the transgressions and not connect them to the punishments she received.
Which didn't happen in the source. I'm done with commenting on your lacking analogy on this subject.
Please show me where you gave me a list of CONTEMPORARY sources.
I don't have time to go back right now and bring it up for you. You are free to look or wait until I actually have time to do so.
I'll remind you that a contemporary source does NOT come from people who weren't eyewitnesses and they do NOT come from several decades after the events they describe.
Again, that is false. The Bible authors were eyewitnesses and they wrote prior to the compiling of all the manuscripts a few decades later.
Because it draws from limited experience, because it can be affected by personal biases...
And you are claiming that you are never affected by personal biases I suppose?
In post 1524, you cited Lucian as part of a series of sources that you presented as evidence Jesus existed, saying that even though Lucian ridiculed Christians, he still believed that Jesus was real.
In post 1526, I pointed out that Lucian's text only showed that there were people who believed that Jesus existed, and it was not evidence that he DID exist.
In post 1546, you pointed out that it also shows that there were people who mocked Christians.
Assuming you actually had some point to make with this comment, I asked in post 1551 if you thought people mocking others for having a belief means the belief is real.
And in post 1557, you asked me why people would mock someone who didn't exist.
And, silly me, I thought you meant that people wouldn't mock believes in Jesus if they knew Jesus didn't exist. So, in post 1560, I pointed out an example of where I myself was mocked for something that wasn't real.
And then in post 1572, you claimed that wasn't your point. Well, it sure came across as your point.
But still, I was willing to entertain the idea that you did have some different point to make. So in post 1573, I asked you what your point actually was.
In post 1577, you said your point was that you wanted me to tell you "...what "evidence" could or would be used to determine this."
And then in post 1582, I said your question does not follow. You want evidence that could be used to determine WHAT? That early Christians were mocked? I'm not disputing that. So what statement is it that you want me to describe the kind of evidence that would support it?
Again, I don't have time to post hop right now. Lucian did mock Christians, the point however is that he was a historian that made certain he knew the facts. If Jesus had not existed I am sure he would have made that point, considering his view on Christians. However, there are two different responses in this and so I am not sure if you have the sequence correct. Getting back to your point, yes people mock people for all sorts of reasons but this man was a historian and if he could have pointed out that these people worshiped someone that didn't exist he would have. He also would have not included how Jesus died and not claimed that it was a myth or something of that sort in his writings.
Multiple sources that come from the time of the events they describe, clearly state who the authors are and are all in agreement with each other.
There are multiple sources that come from the time of the events and while there are a few that don't give their names, the others do. They do agree with each other. Of course, you wouldn't know that since you only take on the talking points of others rather than read it for yourself and think about it.
That's good, because I'd be very disappointed if you did have such a desire and this was the best you could do.
In any case though, what was the purpose of asking me for those sources?
I wanted to know who you look to for your viewpoint.
