"Christopher A. Lee" <calee@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:f5r1s053g8mds4g54vfegii0rj57kdi9l4@4ax.com...

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:22:59 -0600, "Rally"
<Rally_Round@mail.barf.newsfeeds.com> wrote:

<rcman777@excite.com> wrote in message
news:1103157471.098655.143270@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...

Any scholar who believes in a historical Jesus must be a theist. If
they are an atheist, then they must secretly want to be a theist.

Some say jeebus never existed; they have their facts to stand on in
that
claim. Some say jeebus *did exist; they also have some facts to stand on
in
*that claim. Some say jeebus *might have existed, and, yes, they have
examined the facts available to them and have come to this conclusion. I
know of many atheists that admit that an historical jeebus existed, but
remain atheistic. Your first sentence is *****.
Your second sentence, (the one that begins with "If") is just silly.
If
you cannot see that, then you are silly too.

You insist that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence",
then claim that Jesus never existed.

Let me correct you, as if that is at all possible:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
THE EXTRAORDINARY CLAIM IS THAT JEEBUS IS GOD, (for xians) OR THAT GOD
EVEN EXISTS! (For all others.)
*Not the fact of a person existing whose name was Jesus.
If you cannot grasp even that, then please go away and do your own
thing. You are out of your league.

The moron also assumes that having zero reason to presume he did
because there is no evidence, and he is a mish-mash of earlier
hero/demigod/etc figures -is a "claim that Jesus never existed".

The sad part is that I knew ahead of time that my post was not even
going to make a dent in the man's thinking process.

When they are so far gone that they post things like he did, they are
probably out of the reach of reasonable debate.
I posted more out of the frustration of dealing with that mindset than
thinking I might have an impact on the troll's consideration of the world
around him.

On 15 Dec 2004, Al Klein dropped trou, farted, whirled, then shouted:

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 02:36:24 GMT, Douglas Berry
<penguin_boy@mindOBVIOUSspring.com> said in alt.atheism:

4. Geograpical and temporal remoteness. None of the four accepted
gospels were written at the time of the events, or anywhere close to
Jerusalem. It would be like if I were to write a history of Vietnam
based on second-hand accounts forty years after the fact.

Considering the improvements in age and communications, more like ai
few stellar systems away and a few centuries after the fact.

Now imagine four people writing about the same war at the same time.
Somehow they manage to write about the same few battles, and come to the
same few conclusions. Yet they still mangle and contradict each other as
expected.

In our last thrilling episode, Specter133 <specter@hotmail.com> was
pushed over the cliffs of alt.atheism on Thu, 16 Dec 2004 10:18:37
-0500 by Zoog, minion of Zathar. As he fell, he screamed:

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 02:36:24 GMT, Douglas Berry
<penguin_boy@mindOBVIOUSspring.com> wrote:

In our last thrilling episode,

Any scholar who believes in a historical Jesus must be a theist. If
they are an atheist, then they must secretly want to be a theist.

Nonsense.

I base my disbelief in the Jesus of the Bible in a couple of things:

{snip}

3. Lack of historical support. The Romans never mention Jesus,

Tacitus, The Annals, BOOK XV

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and
inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their
abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom
the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign
of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus,
and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment,
again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but
even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of
the world find their centre and become popular."

Tacitus is writing about the period just after the Great Fire in
64AD.. 30 years after the alleged life of Jesus. And he doesn't
mention any coorborating evidence, just repeats what the Christians
claim.

There is not a single mention of Jesus in contemporary Roman works.

Specter133 <spec...@hotmail.com> wrote in responce to
<penguin_...@mindOBVIOUSspring.com

3. Lack of historical support. The Romans never mention Jesus,

Tacitus, The Annals, BOOK XV

Nice way to take a sentence out of context. Let's look at the entire
paragraph.

3. Lack of historical support. The Romans never mention Jesus, and
the only historical references come from decades after the alleged
events of the Gospels when historians begin mentioning this new cult
spreading through the Empire.

and your quotation comes in at 56 A.D, many decades after the posited
death of Christ. Good job at furthering the poster's position.