Re: Did Jesus exist?

This is completely another topic and not relevant to the original video. Most people (including religious skeptics) agree that there was a historical Jesus. If you watched the video, none of the religious experts are even debating the issue if a historical Jesus existed, they are debating only the details of his life (and these are obviously not Christians as you can tell from their comments). There is no physical evidence for tons of historical figures but we still believe they existed due to all the historical documents. I know all non-Christians want to discount the Gospels as historical documents because they are part of Christianity, but they are certainly also historical documents, and so many historical documents from so many different sources cannot just be discounted as nothing. Even though the most recent versions of the Gospels that we have today are from 200 years or so after Jesus lived, there is much evidence suggesting these were copied from earlier documents originating from much closed to the time of the life of Christ. Some of the people that wrote the documents that are contained in the New Testament are first-person accounts. People that lived with Jesus while he was alive. You can claim that they are liars, just as anyone could claim that anyone writing any historical document is a liar. But to say that they were writing from Hearsay is not accurate. Aside from the scriptures contained in the New Testament, there are also the documents that mainstream Christianity does not accept as scripture but are also historical documents, accounting the life of Jesus. Some of these documents may be hearsay, but many of them are written by people that claimed to be present during the life of Jesus. You can call them liars if you want, then just say that. All the documents detailing the life of Jesus, they are all liars, they just made him up. If that is your argument, then just say it, that is your opinion. But then, what can we ever know about history if we can just accuse the people writing about what happened as being liars?

If we look at another popular religious character, that is Siddhartha who later became known as the Bhudda. There is also basically no physical evidence of his life but tons of historical documents showing that this person did live (although there is disagreement of the specifics). Unfortunately, when we go back even 1000 years into the past, it becomes very difficult to find physical evidence of much of anything. During my travels in India (a place that we know civilization has existed for thousands of years), it is difficult to find anything that is more than 1000 years old. If we want to stop looking at historical documents and only looking at what we have actual physical evidence, then we will have to get rid of the majority of what we know about the world over 2000 years ago. The fact that Roman documents don't mention Jesus is not a surprise, as Jesus would have barely been a blip on their radar. According to what is written in the Gospels, Tweet