You're going to feel awfully silly in a mere 15-20 years when we're growing new bodies in labs for head transplants and other such wetware.

In the following argument of nine premises, I will aim to convince you that Jesus of Nazareth was a fictional character, and not a real person. Read on dear theist, if you dare.

I do not intend to sway the beliefs of many of you, nor even budge them - I know this to be an impossibility, for if the religious mind is well-trained at anything, it is circumventing rational argument. I only intend to sew seeds of doubt, in the hopes that perhaps some of you will nurture them and let them grow. Here goes.

1. Much, if not most, of the Bible is arguably fiction. Quit being so intellectually dishonest, Christians - this is the twenty-first century. That means the burden of proof is on YOU. If you make a claim about the universe, it is up to you to prove it is true, not the other way around. It is not up to us, the rest of the world, to prove your claims false - that is not scientific thinking, that is anti-scientific thinking. Because I am a man of my times, and believe in correcting ignorance, what I am doing here is out of courtesy to YOU, just as if I were to argue publicly that there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster orbiting Venus preparing to blow up Planet Earth, one of you would probably, out of simple human decency attempt to correct me and point me towards the truth. This is my way of doing that. Now, back to the Bible being fiction... that part's easy. Find me a snake with vocal chords, water that is dense enough for a human being to walk on, or a chemical process that converts complex carbohydrates to fish. Until then, you're out of luck, sucker. The evidence wins, and the evidence sides with me. These are invented stories... fictional dramas meant to impart some moral lesson. They are not real.

2. Following point two: from an objective, scrutinizing view, there is no reason to believe one story in the Bible over another. We cannot honestly engage shades of truth here - either the books in the Bible are historically true or they are not. Since they almost ubiquitously contain material to make the scientific person skeptical, we can chance to say the same is true of the entire book: either it happened, or it didn't. Therefore, it is no less plausible to disbelieve the Jesus myth than the myth about Enoch the nine-hundred year old man or the creation myth wherein God pats the first humans out of clay. Here's a hint: humans, like all other complex organisms, reached their present condition by millions of years of natural selection through the self-preservation of certain greedy genes. We can observe this happening today; anti-biotic resistant bacteria are a good example. Plus, we've mapped the human genome - we know our ancestry, and it's simian. Even Pope John Paul II said evolution is a historical fact. People did not come from clay.

3. By definition, intellect, or "reason" is the ability to revise one's beliefs in light of better argumentation. Taking simple, empirical data from the the world around you should make it easy to determine that the physical laws of the universe DO NOT CHANGE. It therefore stands to reason that "miracles" can only possible be one of two phenomena: A, an outside agent actually interfering with the laws of the universe; or B, hyperbolized coincidences. Considering the Bible was written in a time when allegory was the most common form of journalistic reporting and most people still believed spitting on a wound was an appropriate way to cure it, it is far more reasonable to assume the latter.

*Side note: Seriously Hoss, let me clue you in on something: things that are impossible to do now - like walking on water, resuscitation after days of biological death, and wine magically turning into blood - were just as impossible 2,000 years ago. There's a much greater power in the universe than "belief." It's called "observation."

4. To believe these stories, you must create strange rationalizations that do not hold up to true intellectual scrutiny. This brings us to the issue of honesty. Without deluding yourself, can you honestly answer the following questions? Such as, why doesn't God heal amputees? He heals everyone else miraculously, right? But neither you nor I have ever seen an amputee grow back a leg. Oh wait, God has a special plan for them. But isn't he supposed to be loving and just? What's with the discrimination, man? Or how about Jonah surviving in the belly of that whale? Wouldn't he be partially digested after three days? Maybe Baby Balooga had a slow metabolism?

5. Following four, and this one is my favorite: if Jesus is the one true messiah, the only God, whom you shall hath no other gods before him, yada yada, how come so many gods DID come before him having nearly identical biographies? There are no less than two dozen god-men of the ancient Mediterranean whose birth was heralded by a bright star in the East (Sirius, for those who don't practice astronomy), who were also adored by wise men, walked on water, fed the hungry, resurrected the dead, were crucified and rose again, etc. Many even had the same birthday as Jesus - December 25th! Not coincidentally, this was the Roman Holiday of Saturnalia centuries before the clergy decided to call it Jesus' birthday. Surprise! Christians plagiarized earlier religions. I cannot spell it out any clearer than that. Knowing that, how can one believe anything Christian doctrine teaches? How do you even begin to separate what was invented from what was borrowed? You don't. The cold, hard truth is, it was an old story then, and it's an old story now. These messianic archetypes - the man that is god, the man who conquers death - existed long, long before Jesus came around. They were old news when soap was a cutting-edge technology, before written language was even invented. They are ancient fucking history. Jesus was not the antitype of these messianic figures, he was their distillation.

7. Following point 6. If you are skeptical of this information (and you should be, as doubt is the seed of all knowing), investigate the matter for yourself. One hugely recurring problem I find when debating with Christians is that they either know very little about other religions or are ignorant of their existence entirely. This is counter-intuitive to me, and perhaps my own fault in failing to understand the religious mind. Shouldn't it be fairly crucial to make the most educated decision in choosing a religion, if practicing the "right" one is important to you? For example, you wouldn't want to choose a religion based on plagiarism, would you? Or one that literally absorbed every earlier belief system it encountered through endless politicizing or the diplomacy of the sword? Well, better crack those books then - there's a whole heap of gods who fit the Christ mold long before Christ. I suggest you begin by researching Mithra of Rome, Attis of Frigia, Dionysis of Greece, Krishna of India, and Horus of Egypt. The last should be of particular interest to you, as his mythology is almost an exact carbon copy of Jesus', right down to the twelve apostles and three-day rebound time after being murdered by jealous clergy. Though, I should point out that Horus was worshipped nearly 1000 years BEFORE Christianity began spreading through the Hebrew-populated Roman colonies. This should come as no surprise to you, as it's written right in the bible that the Hebrews came out of Egypt.

8. On a more serious note. Western civilization may have been "built" on Judeo-Christian values (at least the "don't kill" and "don't steal" parts), but we have become a modern society and have adopted the scientific way of thinking. While the aforementioned values have indisputable merits, maintaining the dogma in its entirety is no longer necessary, especially when we consider the violence and segregation it has caused throughout the ages. Furthermore, philosophically speaking, Christian ethics are severely outdated. Since the Enlightenment, the Western World has seen far superior ethicists to Jesus of Nazareth. Kant and Mill, for example, created life-affirming ethical systems that can be applied to a wider range of people without destroying their culture or beliefs about where the universe came from and what kind of sex they should consider perverse. Truly, there is no reason to cling to the old way any longer. We have adopted science and reason in every other aspect of our lives... yet somehow we have retained Bronze Age ethics? It makes no sense. Why should we continue to believe it is better to be tribalists than to be humanists? This mentality is not compatible with a just, egalitarian society. Besides, Jesus may tell us to love one another, but he also says we should maintain the Old Testament in its entirety - no cherry-picking - which means we technically must condone rape, incest, slavery, and genocide (!). If we can do away with these parts (and we have), why not do away with the whole thing?

9. In the grand scheme of things, it would be generally permissible for one to believe in Christian ethics if it were readily understood that Jesus was not a historical person, and the story is allegory. However, if you are a Christian, you probably do believe that Jesus was a real human being. This is a threat to both the advancement of science and the absolution of religious conflict in the world, two issues that are paramount to our survival as a species as our planet nears carrying capacity and is dangerously on the brink of overheating. It creates too slippery a slope for other theocratic nonsense to take hold; for example, tthe mindset that human beings can literally live after death (how many soldiers would we send to die if everyone believed this is the only life?); or that preserving the existence of cell clusters which bear no conceivable human traits is somehow a better aim than alleviating actual human suffering; or that sex is harmful, but killing, bigotry, and total obedience to clandestine authority are healthy practices; or that blood sacrifice is a value modern societies should endorse. But Jesus WAS a real person, you say! There's a plethora of evidence! No, not really, outside of the gospels. And those hardly count as "evidence." They are secondary sources at best. Here's why: if a historical Jesus really lived and died between 0 and 33 CE, then we know beyond a doubt that at least forty years passed before the earliest gospel - the one written by Mark - was scribed. Because the aforementioned gospel discusses the destruction of Solomon's temple, we know it was written in or sometime after 70 CE. Given the lifespan of the period, that means the author or authors were at best infants or young children when Jesus of Nazareth was supposed to have been crucified. Moreover, the gospel writers are not themselves mentioned in the gospels, and they make no claim to actually having met Jesus. None of the apostles who walked with Jesus nor anyone who even met him wrote accounts to that effect. Granted, there are certain mentions of a "Christ" in the writings of Mediterranean historians from that period (not Justin Martyr or Pontius Pilate - sorry, but those are proven forgeries). However, if are a serious Christian, these should be of little consideration to you, as you know "the Christ" is really a title that simply means "the Anointed," and was taken up by many rabbis of that time. In not ONE of these documents is a man named Jesus, or Yeshua of Nazareth mentioned.


In conclusion, the gospels which discuss the life of Jesus of Nazareth are at best hearsay, almost certainly hyperbolized, and at worst complete fabrications. What we can determine beyond a doubt is that for at least four decades after his death, everyone in the world, including his sworn followers and students, simply forgot their messiah existed. If that doesn't cast on you a serious shade of doubt, then nothing will.

Yes, of course we're all doomed to die. It's not about life and death, it's about maximizing quality of life and minimizing suffering for the greatest number of people possible - efficiency of happiness.

You write much, but understand little.

Hate-fueled fear-mongering 101

QFT we know the world will end when Sol eventually cools and expands to Red Giant form. The close proximity heat will boil away this planet's oceans, and Earth will become like Mars, totally devoid of life.


http://www.space.com/22471-red-giant-stars.html

The Stanford marshmallow experiment[1] was a series of studies on delayed gratification in the late 1960s and early 1970s (...)

A child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards if they waited for a short period, approximately 15 minutes, during which the tester left the room and then returned.

In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores,[2] educational attainment,[3] body mass index (BMI),[4] and other life measures.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment

Obligatory video with adorable children attempting to resist sweets

IF we assume the Christian version of God is the One True God. [premise 1]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching of the importance of everyone accepting The Lord into our hearts, for the fates of our Immortal Souls depend on it. [premise 2]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching that [premise 2] is of utmost important to God, who Loves us infinitely and desperately wants to save us from an Eternity in Hell. [premise 3]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching that God is the sole omniscient/omnipotent creator of The Universe and Everything. [premise 4]


HOW, then, do we account for the fact that our One True God failed to provide us with unique, undeniable evidence of the fact that The Teachings in these Holy Books are the One True Path to salvation, which we must follow to save our souls?

WHY would a Loving God allow 3.5 billion+ non-Christian people alive today (more than half!) of his beloved Children to burn in eternal hellfire for their heathen beliefs, when it would be a simple matter for He Who Created All to will undeniable evidence into existence at any time?


Folks, these kinds of logical inconsistencies are fatal flaws for any system of belief attempting to describe reality.

Inevitable internet-driven expansion of empathy, equality was coming sooner or later for these sexuality-minorities. It will come next to transfolk and polyfolk, and the religious nutjobs will lose their shit yet again.

By the time monogamy feels old-fashioned and silly, gender itself will have begun melting away, along with all the other awful fictional divisions of human beings religion-driven culture has cooked up over the past two thousand years.

This insight is a very real possibility, but I think you're overlooking something important. Political power has never before been granted on the basis of raw intelligence, benevolence is not unlikely here.

I think often about how global bitcoin adoption might be humanity's first step toward transcending capitalism. I imagine hundreds of suddenly super-rich smart people begin funding new types of schools, which focus on critical reason, empathy, civics, ethics, ecology, and conflict resolution skills. Most modern nationalized schoolsystems teach obedience and conformity first and foremost, with bureaucratic dogma one-size-fits-all teaching systems that force kids to memorize and regurgitate information on command as if these young minds are military trainees or zoo animals.

I mean this very seriously: World Peace and permanent environmental sustainability are both possible in a future when we teach our children to distinguish the Stuff That Matters from distraction bullshit.



Yours in compassion and solidarity,

World Citizen Beliathon

2,000 years ago slavery,  torture, rape, and violent conquest of neighbors were all socially acceptable and commonplace.

For entertainment, these people forced slaves to butcher each other in gladiatorial combat, boiled cats alive in oil, publicly crucified political opponents, and burned heretics alive at the stake.

The Long Reach of Reason explains well why we've socially progressed nonstop since the dawn of the age of reason.

Exhibit A: butthurt theist displaying willful ignorance. Classic theist denial of reality. Easily debunked, easily despised.

Haven't read the bible lately,  have you?

It's chock full of violence, how about when God sent those bears to maul and kill the kids making fun of the bald old man?

Sooner or later you're going to have to accept that any book written 2,000 years ago is going to contain ethics lessons that are outdated by 2,000 years.

I asked for a clear definition of a word, not this vague mushy bullshit about responsibility.

I say a child becomes an adult when he or she reaches puberty, this definition relies on the science of biology.

What's your definition?

I like to call it "hate bait"

As a scientist it seems abundantly clear that nature's only definition is the transformation of puberty, which usually happens between ages 11-14.

It's easy for you to say because you haven't actually defined the word child. Please enlighten us, when does a child become an adult? Perhaps you have a better definition than nature has provided us after five hundred thousand years of evolution (trial and error)?

This one is very generous for religion in the coming century. Note the Internet blew up in the 90s, and the subtle shift in the graph around that time.

Wow, that's fucked, but thank you for sharing this. Good thing everybody has bitcoin.

If you read any of the books I linked, you'd know that none of them are speculating on future legality, all of them are discussing scientific evidence of how and why we mate, and/or the ethical considerations therein.

From Pew's The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050

The number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world. (perhaps Allah is trying to tell you something?)

Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion – though increasing in countries such as the United States and France – will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.

The global Buddhist population will be about the same size it was in 2010, while the Hindu and Jewish populations will be larger than they are today.

In Europe, Muslims will make up 10% of the overall population.

India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia.

In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050, and Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion. Muslims will be more numerous in the U.S. than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion.

Four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.

We need only wait for time to do its work. The death of all superstition is an inevitability in the information age.

Where exactly do you think these trends lead?