Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (715847)	5/16/2013 6:03:22 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583681

Z, You just gave me three links that proved that Christians existed in the late 1st century. And these Christians were considered to be reliable witnesses to the EXISTENCE of Jesus Christ, if not the divinity thereof. This evidence is in addition to the first-hand accounts of Jesus' existence by the Christians themselves. The four canonized Gospels themselves should be sufficient evidence of his existence, but there are many other non-canonized records which also makes the same assumption. Plato seems to have written a lot and probably existed. Aristophanes wrote about Socrates during Socrates' supposed lifetime... he may have existed. It doesn't matter that much to me. Yet disproving the existence of Jesus matters so much to you that you claim to have spent hours researching the topic. I think you pretty much made my point for me, especially here: But no one (or very few) are creating their entire worldviews around any of those three people, anyway. Sounds like you hate the notion of people creating their entire world views around one man who claims to be the son of God. And that would explain your predisposition to believe that Jesus never existed. How you work your relationship out with your Christian GF is none of my business, but I do think you have some serious issues with the very existence of Christianity. Tenchusatsu

To: SilentZ who wrote (715847)	5/16/2013 6:38:52 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1583681

The Raelian and Scientologist examples are poorly thought out by Z. They don't have parallels of historical personages comparable to Jesus. They were founded by historical personages though (ie L Ron Hubbard etc) and those people do in fact exist and no one disputes that. We can archaeologically track Alexander's conquests and there are contemporary records of his existence. All that shows that such and such city was destroyed about a certain date by someone. No proof who led the army that destroyed the cities. Even the sculptures of Alexander don't constitute proof - they could have been statues of some other ancient person who was later identified as the "mythical" Alexander. And the contemporary records aren't really contemporary: Take Plutarch, for example:, who lived centuries after Alexander's time: Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus c. 46 – 120 AD [ Note that Alexander died in 323 BC. ] ..... Plutarch's Life of Alexander, written as a parallel to that of Julius Caesar, is one of only five extant tertiary sources on the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great. ..... More: Apart from a few inscriptions and fragments, texts written by people who actually knew Alexander or who gathered information from men who served with Alexander were all lost. [14] Contemporaries who wrote accounts of his life included Alexander's campaign historian Callisthenes; Alexander's generals Ptolemy and Nearchus; Aristobulus, a junior officer on the campaigns; and Onesicritus, Alexander's chief helmsman. Their works are lost, but later works based on these original sources have survived. The earliest of these is Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), followed by Quintus Curtius Rufus (mid-to-late 1st century AD), Arrian (1st to 2nd century AD), the biographer Plutarch (1st to 2nd century AD), and finally Justin, whose work dated as late as the 4th century. [14] Of these, Arrian is generally considered the most reliable, given that he used Ptolemy and Aristobulus as his sources, closely followed by Diodorus. [14] en.wikipedia.org So we see that, like virtually all ancient history, the things we know about Alexander are based on second hand sources written centuries after Alexander's time. Someone who wanted to be a skeptic could easily claim the historians could have based their work on myths and fables handed down by monarchs who wished to establish themselves as successors of a heroic figure of the past. As it happens, Jesus is better attested by recent historical sources than virtually anyone in ancient times.