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Atheists/agnostics/whoever : Do you believe Jesus ever existed?

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Originally posted by: destrekor
Originally posted by: zinfamous
Originally posted by: loki8481
it's pretty hard to deny the existence of the historical Jesus who walked around the middle east sometime around ~30-35 AD, had some followers, and was crucified.
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this, pretty much.
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Yeah, that.

I mean, I'm pretty much standing firm when I say I'm atheist-agnostic, aka don't believe there is a magical deity, but will not point-blankly say it is impossible there is no God, as I do not believe we are capable of discovering hard evidence that both "sides" would accept. So, my opinion can change to "believer" if all of a sudden this God guy comes down my chimney, but then again, at that point it'd be like being a "believer" in gravity. With actual evidence, proof that cannot be denied, it becomes fact.

Most atheists actually fall under the atheist-agnostic banner. Most of us aren't so blindly devoted to the notion that a Deity of some sort cannot possibly exist, but mostly just devoted to religion being poison and... most of us "believe" one true God cannot really be possible, but the definition is going to vary, and I know I personally could accept the idea that Deities exist, if given some kind of evidence. I say that because my personal assumptions with astronomy is that the Big Bang happened on its own, and the random pockets of life that kind of randomly happened, might have produced - through immense amounts of time - some vastly superior lifeforms that can act like Gods where they want. Say, through supreme knowledge of physics some how shot a few comets toward a planet and made it capable of supporting life (or that happened on its own), and then gave the ingredients for life or helped set up that chain reaction. And maybe even visit from time to time or throw more comets/asteroids to intervene if progress isn't what they would prefer. Say... dinosaurs and their lack of any ability to actually become superior lifeforms sometime down the line.

However, like I said, I'm pretty firm in my stance that everything thus far has been random and well, over 14 billions years later, here we are - what we define as an intelligence species on a life-supporting planet, one that formed roughly 10 billion years into the existence of the universe as we know it.

Maybe a God, or God-like lifeform, sparked our universe and essentially created it. However, that implies some other life-supporting system existed prior, or somewhere else in what we cannot comprehend as space outside the universe. Who knows. However, I have rambled.

My belief of this Jesus guy?
Let's see. Religion was far from new when Jesus was around - religion, in some form(s), had already existed for a LONG time before Jesus came into the picture. Religions had to start somewhere. Typically start with someones characterization of some person. Maybe this person was larger than life. He cared so deeply for the people around him, and had extremely intelligent philosophical discussions with his closest friends. Religious folk of very recent times had burned people they thought to be witches, someone greatly against their beliefs and thought to be evil.
I don't find it too hard to believe that someone that spoke out so greatly against an already established religion, and an empire, had been killed on two wood beams shaped possibly shaped like the modern day "cross" (oh what an original, meaningful symbol, and then the religious stole the Celtic Cross. Bastards. But I digress...).
It's not far fetched at all that such events had occurred. That the guy was magical, and bestowed with the grace of this God fellow... well that's stretching things, greatly. Stories that get handed down always get exaggerated or very convoluted/twisted after a few generations. And this is where religions come from.

There are people who, in my mind, have the same qualities that this Jesus guy most likely had. Very community oriented, will give the clothes they are wearing to someone in need, and are just extremely caring individuals who will go out of their way.
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Well thought out post, I don't agree with it all but you at least understand your own beliefs 🙂 :beer:
 
I think there is a very very small population of people who deny Jesus ever existed.
Yet, there is not a single archeological proof that he did exist.
I guess you could say the same thing about anyone prior to photographs though.
 
As an Atheist, to understand Jesus' teachings it doesn't matter whether he really lived or not. It's irrelevant. I wasn't around back then so I don't see why I should bother determining whether he did or not.
 
I'm agnostic; yes I think there was a historical basis for Jesus, no I do not think he was divine or anything like that.
 
Originally posted by: RichardE
It's a common belief. Many people do not believe in the deity of Jesus yet still feel he was gods son, the second coming ect.
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Umm, nobody I know believes Jesus was the second coming of Jesus.
 
Atheist

as a single person NO I don?t believe he existed, I believe he is the combination of more then one person living around the same time that had the same ideas and was turned into 1 person by the people who wrote the bible for ease of fairy tale telling

 
It's funny to see people are debating a topic which they have to evidence to back their claims. What is this "I believe" crap? you believe you are a monkey and I should accept that?
 
I kind of think of him like Johnny Appleseed. He probably was a real person, or maybe a couple people. He had some pretty good ideas, too. World may have been a better place if he had actually been listened to instead of martyred and his message corrupted.

I often thought it was a huge cope out in the bible when it was said "whatever you hold true on earth, so will it be in heaven". I don't think that actually made it in the original text (no one has that foresight) and often think of it as a sneaky idea insert much later while translating. Basically it could have said "ignore what you want and do what the masses do".
 
I do think he existed.

I don't think: his mom was a virgin, his daddy was an invisible smiter of Philistines, he walked on water, turned water into wine (unless he added grape juice and yeast and waited a few days), healed lepers, or turned into a zombie.
 
I think he actually existed, but he was viewed as more of a political activist than the son of God at the time. I think he was the earliest recorded human rights activist. Kind of like Ghandi.
 
Originally posted by: Babbles
I don't think it really matters if he existed or not. He could have. He could have been created from an amalgamation of multiple people. He could have been 100% invented (knowing how unoriginal people are, I actually think this is the least likely scenario). I just don't think it matters. If you like the ideas of what he allegedly preached then it really shouldn't matter if he was real. Listen to the message and don't worry about the messenger.
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I think most Christians would disagree quite vehemently about that. Socrates may or may not have existed. In this case, you can take his teachings and not worry about whether he was real or not. But Socrates never claimed to be the son of God. And no one belongs to a religion which hinges on that being true.

However, much like Socrates, enough is written about Jesus from separate sources that the simplest explanation is that a man (or men) existed upon whom the writings were based.
 
I'm not an atheist or agnostic (I guess that makes me a "whoever"), but the Jesus of the Bible, the historical Jesus, is nothing like any character of a fictional story. What He said and did, as recorded in the Bible, are so completely radical, divisive, and full of truth that I doubt any person or group would have been able to "create" Him. Most people are familiar with the miracles He did, and the gist of His crucifixion, but reading the entire story of Jesus in the gospels and His words will give you the complete picture of who Jesus is. Comparisons to Gandhi (who himself was influenced in part intellectually, if not spiritually, by Jesus) or other historical figures do not do Jesus justice. There was no one like Him before Him, nor has there been anyone like Him since. Even the greatest of we who are His disciples are merely poor reflections of who He was and is.
 
Originally posted by: destrekor
Originally posted by: zinfamous
Originally posted by: loki8481
it's pretty hard to deny the existence of the historical Jesus who walked around the middle east sometime around ~30-35 AD, had some followers, and was crucified.
Click to expand...

this, pretty much.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that.

I mean, I'm pretty much standing firm when I say I'm atheist-agnostic, aka don't believe there is a magical deity, but will not point-blankly say it is impossible there is no God, as I do not believe we are capable of discovering hard evidence that both "sides" would accept. So, my opinion can change to "believer" if all of a sudden this God guy comes down my chimney, but then again, at that point it'd be like being a "believer" in gravity. With actual evidence, proof that cannot be denied, it becomes fact.

Most atheists actually fall under the atheist-agnostic banner. Most of us aren't so blindly devoted to the notion that a Deity of some sort cannot possibly exist, but mostly just devoted to religion being poison and... most of us "believe" one true God cannot really be possible, but the definition is going to vary, and I know I personally could accept the idea that Deities exist, if given some kind of evidence. I say that because my personal assumptions with astronomy is that the Big Bang happened on its own, and the random pockets of life that kind of randomly happened, might have produced - through immense amounts of time - some vastly superior lifeforms that can act like Gods where they want. Say, through supreme knowledge of physics some how shot a few comets toward a planet and made it capable of supporting life (or that happened on its own), and then gave the ingredients for life or helped set up that chain reaction. And maybe even visit from time to time or throw more comets/asteroids to intervene if progress isn't what they would prefer. Say... dinosaurs and their lack of any ability to actually become superior lifeforms sometime down the line.

However, like I said, I'm pretty firm in my stance that everything thus far has been random and well, over 14 billions years later, here we are - what we define as an intelligence species on a life-supporting planet, one that formed roughly 10 billion years into the existence of the universe as we know it.

Maybe a God, or God-like lifeform, sparked our universe and essentially created it. However, that implies some other life-supporting system existed prior, or somewhere else in what we cannot comprehend as space outside the universe. Who knows. However, I have rambled.

My belief of this Jesus guy?
Let's see. Religion was far from new when Jesus was around - religion, in some form(s), had already existed for a LONG time before Jesus came into the picture. Religions had to start somewhere. Typically start with someones characterization of some person. Maybe this person was larger than life. He cared so deeply for the people around him, and had extremely intelligent philosophical discussions with his closest friends. Religious folk of very recent times had burned people they thought to be witches, someone greatly against their beliefs and thought to be evil.
I don't find it too hard to believe that someone that spoke out so greatly against an already established religion, and an empire, had been killed on two wood beams shaped possibly shaped like the modern day "cross" (oh what an original, meaningful symbol, and then the religious stole the Celtic Cross. Bastards. But I digress...).
It's not far fetched at all that such events had occurred. That the guy was magical, and bestowed with the grace of this God fellow... well that's stretching things, greatly. Stories that get handed down always get exaggerated or very convoluted/twisted after a few generations. And this is where religions come from.

There are people who, in my mind, have the same qualities that this Jesus guy most likely had. Very community oriented, will give the clothes they are wearing to someone in need, and are just extremely caring individuals who will go out of their way.
Click to expand...

I'm 100% with this guy. I started writing something similar, but Destrekor already did it, probably better than I would have.

Sure, there was probably a real person (maybe multiple people) that our current notion of Jesus is based on.
 
Originally posted by: Crono
I'm not an atheist or agnostic (I guess that makes me a "whoever"), but the Jesus of the Bible, the historical Jesus, is nothing like any character of a fictional story. What He said and did, as recorded in the Bible, are so completely radical, divisive, and full of truth that I doubt any person or group would have been able to "create" Him. Most people are familiar with the miracles He did, and the gist of His crucifixion, but reading the entire story of Jesus in the gospels and His words will give you the complete picture of who Jesus is. Comparisons to Gandhi (who himself was influenced in part intellectually, if not spiritually, by Jesus) or other historical figures do not do Jesus justice. There was no one like Him before Him, nor has there been anyone like Him since. Even the greatest of we who are His disciples are merely poor reflections of who He was and is.
Click to expand...

Ugh...
 
This is a stupid thread. Seems like flaimbait. If op knew anything he would not ask such a stupid question if some guy with historical evidence from different cultures ever existed just cus he's tied to some hokey religions.
 
Originally posted by: Mr Pickles
There's no denying that he existed as a historical figure. Many have agreed with that.
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Well there is absolutely no historical reference made to some water walking Jesus by the Romans at all. They kept pretty good records of historical events. The Bible is incomplete and the missing gospels is an interesting read - there are quite a few gospels that were kicked out of the Bible and decanonized. Most of them contradict what other gospels stated about Jesus. One of them talks about how he punished his teacher for repremanding him in school when he was a small boy, or how Mary M was made the leader of the Church by Jesus.

Due to a great lack of historical evidence - unless I believe Jonah was also eaten by a whale and lived. I must consider Jesus to be most likely a fable. At best an exageration. I doubt that anyone ever lived and did the deeds stated in the Bible.
 
Originally posted by: Fritzo
Originally posted by: SphinxnihpS
There is zero, and I mean zero evidence he existed at all.
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Did you think of that all by yourself?

Nevertheless, the historicity of Jesus is accepted by almost all Biblical scholars and classical historians. James Dunn describes the mythical Jesus theory as a 'thoroughly dead thesis'.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...of_Jesus#Jesus_as_myth
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Can't read the article you quoted?

Editors are currently in dispute concerning points of view expressed in this article. Please help to discuss and resolve the dispute before removing this message. (July 2008)

BTW, it's fucking Wikipedia, where the most popular, and not necessarily the correct answer wins.

Your views on Christ are known here. Your argument is emotional. You lose.

Originally posted by: Mr Pickles
There's no denying that he existed as a historical figure. Many have agreed with that.
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There is denying it. I am denying it. I am skeptical. Bring me PROOF!

Good luck with that, since you'd be the 1st person in over 2000 years to do it.

So we are clear here. I think the stories of Jesus are utterly stupid, and I have seen nothing, zero, zip, nada, which would convince me that Jesus existed AT ALL.
 
Originally posted by: shortylickens
I'm not religious but I do get along with god. The real god, not the one they usually teach in church/temple.

Aside from that, there is considerable evidence stating that a man named Jesus Christ did in fact walk the earth at one point in time.

As for him having magic or devine powers: I dont know. And actually I dont care, because I dont believe in the christian god nor do I worship him.
Believing in Jesus does not make me any closer to my god.
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A lot of people in the thread refer to considerable evidence and I would ask that we please display it.
 
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