Convincing a Christian that the Jesus story is false.

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Permalink Reply by michelley on January 10, 2012 at 8:34am

I suppose it depends on how belligerent the believer with which you are arguing happens to be or how personal they take their faith. I've noticed that to really question them fervently, they do tend to take it personal and then I'm enemy number one. After my own "I'm free of religion and now I want to scream about how much I abhor it" phase, I realized it wasn't worth ruining some relationships over trying to convince others that it is so much more freeing and life is better without religion. In a way, I had become like them, wanting to spread the gospel of non-belief. I could very well see, however, had I continued on the path of being somewhat belligerent myself, it could have created provocation for violence. Fortunately, I don't associate myself with people who are so into it that they are completely irrational and aggressive but I can see how it can happen. So, I agree with you that it is good advice to be wise, careful and implement measures of tactfulness to preserve the dignity of the believer and avoid aggressive emotions.

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Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on January 10, 2012 at 8:47am

Nicely stated!

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Permalink Reply by Brian E. Hagmeier on January 10, 2012 at 9:20am

Michelle, 

That early "phase" as you put it is exactly what I was talking about. Now I don't really talk or discuss religion with theists unless they get pushy or approach me about it. I think it's the nature of the beast, that urge to validate beliefs or disbelief's in our case. But once the notions marinated in my head for a few years it became more of an equation than a belief. Similar to the notion of bills don't pay themselves and one and one are two. When I was a believer I never felt that way about spirituality, it was always in a separate container. In hind sight I may have always been to pragmatic to allow it to be cohabitant with my cognitive thoughts. That in itself could be what allowed me to escape from the matrix? 

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Permalink Reply by Russell20 on January 9, 2012 at 5:35pm

The problem with this discussion is not really whether Jesus existed, the evidence (although tenuous ) is in, he did exist But, we then have to confront Christians with our acceptence of his existence, but that there is no evidence to support their claims in the Bible of his supernatural qualities.

 Thus, we tell Christians that we accept he existed, but that he was nothing special, that would be as acceptable to xtians as trying to argue that he did not exist.

 

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on January 10, 2012 at 6:29am

"Thus, we tell Christians that we accept he existed, but that he was nothing special, that would be as acceptable to xtians as trying to argue that he did not exist."

It might be as offensive to them as arguing that he didn't exist, but it's a lot more reasonable than arguing that he didn't exist.

It's a mystery to me why people are so keen on denying Jesus' existence when all that's necessary to rebuke Christianity is denying his supernatural powers, but hey...

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Permalink Reply by Russell20 on January 10, 2012 at 7:11am

 Ah yes simply tell them Jesus lived but was nothing special and Christianity stands rebuked. Have you considered the possibility that others have (and still are ) trying to do just that?

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on January 10, 2012 at 7:20am

Yes.

Are you saying that if it's not working as well as we like, we should just make crap up? Because it seemed like that was what you were trying to do in this thread for a moment.

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Permalink Reply by Russell20 on January 10, 2012 at 7:53am

If you had bothered to read my posts you would find that I was simply pointing out that there was no simplistic uniformity of acceptence of the life and times of Jesus amongst atheists.

 

As for made up crap, show me the Q document that you have been blathering about, and then you can point me to your Gospels.You know the ones I mean, those without the inherent historical contradictions as in the "Cry of desolation"

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on January 10, 2012 at 8:17am

If you had bothered to read my posts you would find that I was simply pointing out that there was no simplistic uniformity of acceptence of the life and times of Jesus amongst atheists.

You actually did quite a bit more of that, but fine.

As for made up crap, show me the Q document that you have been blathering about

We have part of Q because we have the works of the people who copied from Q. See here.

You know the ones I mean, those without the inherent historical contradictions as in the "Cry of desolation"

You realise that the cry of desolation first being recorded in Aramaic and later changed to more theologically acceptable statements, is a prime example of how we can glean historicity from the gospels, right?

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Permalink Reply by Secular Forces 2013 on January 10, 2012 at 10:38am

1st off it's just a story.. most are fake

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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on January 10, 2012 at 4:00pm

What's a way to convince them that the gospels cannot be true?

Convince them to read books by Bart Ehrman.


If you really want to bake their noodle, go after the Old testament too, get 'em to google "The documentary hypothesis" and click the first wikipedia link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

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Permalink Reply by Madhukar Kulkarni on January 15, 2012 at 7:36am

It appears that it is becoming an obsession with atheists to prove that what we do not like actually does not exist. Recently, when I was looking at an Indian atheist site, one atheist was saying that the story of the epic Mahabharata is not true. Nobody is a historian and nobody has any convincing proof. If you are an atheist, it is fashionable to deny everything that is a part of past culture.

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