God Talk: Debates and Discussions with Believers

The following is from a correspondence I had with a Christian who was debating my article Did Jesus Really Exist?. The arguments in this discussion may no longer reflect my views. For my more recent take on the matter, see the article on The Extrabiblical Sources on Jesus.

Expectations of Evidence for Jesus

Christian: You seem to offer a test for historical truth in your comments: it is that if the written accounts of the historians do not clearly uphold the Jesus of the Bible, or in other words are vague and ambiguous in their description, it cannot be used to corroborate our belief in the biblical account of Christ. It may be shorted to say: A clear, well-written, first-hand reference is needed to heed something as historically veritable.

Based on your reasoning, please reference me to an evolutionary mutation.

Rebuttal: You're making a lot of assumptions about what I'm saying. If Jesus were just another philosopher or something, I probably wouldn't care whether or not he existed. I'm a big fan of Socrates, but whether or not he existed doesn't honestly matter to me, because someone somewhere still wrote the insightful material attributed to him. The bible, however, claims that Jesus was not just God in the flesh, but that he is also the sole source of salvation. I'm not going to take such a grandiose claim lightly, because such an individual would obviously be very unique and important. Jesus' existence has to meet a hefty burden of proof because we're not just talking about an influential person. I'd be fine with accepting the historical existence of someone named Jesus, but he would still have to meet a huge burden of proof for me to believe he was God. Jesus' Aramaic name Yeshua is actually properly translated as Joshua, by the way. I don't have any problem believing a Joshua existed in the first century, but that was a fairly common name back then too.

Do you understand that a mutation is simply a change in DNA? We've observed this in the nylon-eating bacteria, sickle cell anemia, chimps (who have two of our chromosomes fused as one), and many other examples.

Christian: Yes, mutations occur, but no evolutionary mutation has been documented. The claim that all species evolved from mutated DNA supposes that the one making the claim believes all the mutations needed are historical events. I am asking for you to show me, by your test of reference, where one occurred. Maybe you actually have an answer for me; I am genuinely asking.

My assumptions are validated by your words. If you have no answer, but believe they occurred, then your test can, either, not be used, or not be used alone. Obviously something can be a historical fact without being documented as you desire Jesus to be. (By presenting me with the etymology of His name, you are presupposing His existence as well).

"Jesus' existence has to meet a hefty burden of proof because we're not just talking about an influential person." Ahh, as I suspected, proof is a burden you place on the Christian. As is true with all systems of thought, every answer to the question of God's existence must be testable logically, empirically, and existentially, yet I am still unfulfilled by the evidence to atheism's claims (notice I did not say proof). Now if proof is needed, why do you not ask it of your own worldview? Without proof, belief becomes a necessary component to bridge the gap to truth; but all systems must be testable, and indeed tested.

It seems to me that His existence is a lesser issue to you, but His divinity is much more mammoth. Understandable, however the data cannot be interpreted from the conclusion, but the conclusion from the data. The conclusion of the Christian, namely claims to God's existence, a son of God dying for the salvation of sinners, the doctrine of sin, heaven, and hell and so on, all seem undesirable to you. Does that make it false? You say there is no evidence for it, but the fact that you do not like it adds evidence for it! The Bible makes it clear that it is not the lack of evidence, but the suppression of it (Romans 1:18-25); it is not the unavailability of truth, but the hypocrisy of our search (John 18:33-37); and it has all resulted from man's desire to deny the Creator and worship the creation. We ought not be afraid to find that God exists if that is truly so; as Francis Bacon said, If it is truth you seek, it is almost as much fun to be proven wrong as it is to be proven right. In us and around us His evidence abides and is completely testable by the tests of truth (namely 3 distinct tests and I encourage you to apply them to the Christian worldview as well as the atheistic one and see what is exposed). The gap between atheism's evidence and atheism emphatically surpasses the gap between Christianity's evidence for Christianity. If I am wrong, I openly welcome you to show me your evidence.

Rebuttal: I am not a biologist, so I sadly cannot inform you of every aspect related to mutations. Instead of assuming you know better, why don't you try asking an actual scientist or biology professor?

"(By presenting me with the etymology of His name, you are presupposing His existence as well)". I didn't think you'd stoop as low as this. There's nothing wrong with supposing something is true for the sake of an argument. Could I say you presuppose evolution is true by attempting to show inconsistencies in it? Please, don't try to be intellectual and squeeze in a win, because this kind of 'you argue against God, therefore you assume he exists' crap is pathetic.

"Now if proof is needed, why do you not ask it of your own worldview?" Atheism is not a worldview, it is a negation; one proposition in response to theism. It does not make any claims except saying, 'I don't believe you' to the theist. Does every negation really have to pass through verification and evidence to you - should we all be writing dissertations on why leprechauns don't exist? Also, I used the word 'proof' because it's called a burden of proof, not a burden of evidence. We've been over this before, so cut out the semantic games.

"You say there is no evidence for it, but the fact that you do not like it adds evidence for it!" It's funny to me how much you remind me of myself a few years back. I was an apologist too, and I have read the bible probably more than most Christians. I'm fully aware of how it speaks of non-believers, but think about how mundane what you're saying is. Obviously every religion sees the importance of vilifying those who do not believe, that way they can give their flock reason to dispute and argue, instead of listening to what the other side says. You can go ahead and quote scripture and evangelize, but all it demonstrates to me is how blind you have become to anything but your own belief/bias.

"The gap between atheism's evidence and atheism emphatically surpasses the gap between Christianity's evidence for Christianity. If I am wrong, I openly welcome you to show me your evidence." How can you have evidence for a negation? What evidence do we have to disbelieve in UFOs? What about disbelieving in ghosts? The 'evidences' for negations like those are refutations of the evidence presented by the believers. That's really all one can do to support a negation. We would not naturally assume that there's a god unless someone tells us there is. We'd ask why, and they'd give their reasons. We dispute their reasons and those are our reasons not to believe. Don't make this harder than it needs to be. I don't believe all Christians are idiots, I think you're fully capable of understanding simple logic if you just put your mind to it. As for my reasons not to believe, did you even read my article?

Christian: Well, there is too much to tackle at once... I still want to understand how you judge historical evidence. I will start simply, do you believe Socrates, Plato or Aristotle existed?

Rebuttal: Yes, I believe they existed. But as I said, if I'm wrong, it's of no consequence or concern to me. I value the thoughts and teachings attributed to those men, and those are still there even if those individuals never existed.

I judge historical evidence based on several issues. First, it is important to evaluate the life of the character in question, to determine how much of an impact they could've had on history. If Jesus had simply remained in a small town throughout his life, maybe the absence of evidence could be explained by the remoteness of where he lived and the lack of scribes in the area. But Jesus didn't live in a small town, and he preached in many cities and centers of commerce, according to the bible. It claims he continually came into contact with religious leaders of the day and faced off against several mobs too, leading up to his crucifixion by Pontius Pilate, an official of the Roman empire. It states that graves opened and zombies strolled through Jerusalem during his crucifixion, and also claims that he appeared to over 500 people after his death. Yet there is NO historical record from any of the 500 witnesses, no testimony about the graves opening, or even details surrounding the supposedly growing threat of a religious leader named Jesus in that time. Since the bible asserts that Jesus of Nazareth made such a splash in history, we should expect to find plenty of evidence, shouldn't we?

As William Lane Craig explained in his video, absence of evidence can count as evidence against something when that something is of such a nature that we should expect to find lots of evidence for it. So where do you think all this evidence is - or if you concede that there's not much of it, why do you think that is?

Christian: You are moving beyond mere existence. There are many (exceedingly many) people who disbelieve in the opening of the graves and waking of the dead, the resurrection and how he appeared to His disciple and others - we can even, for the sake of argument, throw out any of His preaching or the crucifiction - yet still believe in the human existence of a man named Jesus. It is His mere existence that is on trial here, not the surrounding claims. You are not deducing from data, you are filtering your data through a preconceived conclusion.

If you believe in the historical existence of a human being known as Socrates, or Aristotle, or Plate [sic] (whose evidence is severely underwhelming in comparison), you cannot deny Jesus. I invite your dispute the claims made about Him and His claims of Himself, but I cannot agree that there needs to be more evidence to believe He existed; few knowledgeable and honest scholars (even skeptics) would be that ignorant.

Rebuttal: "If you believe in the historical existence of a human being known as Socrates, or Aristotle, or Plate (whose evidence is severely underwhelming in comparison), you cannot deny Jesus." For Socrates, that might be true, but for Aristotle and Plato it's not quite that evident. We have writings specifically attributed to those individuals, whereas Jesus wrote nothing himself. Also, nothing in Aristotle or Plato's work casts doubt upon their historical existence - it all lines up with the version of Greek history we have discovered with archaeology, geology, etc.

As for the 'evidence' of Jesus' historicity, the Josephus passage is an obvious interpolation to those who know the character of Josephus. He was a Jewish scribe who meticulously wrote about Roman history, but the passage that refers to Jesus includes language that is entirely uncharacteristic for Josephus, especially as a Jew. The other references made to Jesus (Suetonius, Pliny, Tacitus...) only identify him as Christus, Chrestus, or just specify his followers, not the individual in question. This is ambiguous because "Christ" is not a surname, it's a title, as I'm sure you know, which basically means anointed one or messiah. Do you know how many people were claiming to be the messiah before, during, and after the time period Jesus allegedly lived? He was far from the only one.

Why do you think that we should conclude that Jesus was a historical figure? I've shown why the extra-biblical references are not reliable, but you haven't even bothered to address those points. Should we assume he existed just because there is some vague imprint of him left in a book and a few suspicious references? The Iliad was based around a historical setting, so should that give us justification to believe that Achilles was a real historical figure?

Christian: The copies, however, of the writings of Plato and Aristotle are 1000 plus years after they lived, and much fewer in number than the thousands that corroberate the Biblical scriptures whose dates are withing a century. I have never heard an honest atheistic scholar or other non-christian doubt the writings of Paul especially. You, on the other hand, will not consider it, and only look to what supports you. You interpret specific writings how you want to to justify yourself, looking for the points that may be questionable and use that to falsify someone's whole existence. This is hardly an objective search for truth. Truth will win in the end. If you don't want to seek it, I cannot make you and I honestly don't care to win a battle over it either. It ought to be sought for its own sake; it's the most valuable thing in the world, and the One who claimed to be the Truth changed it forever; the whole course of history was altered by his life, from Rome, to Athens, to Corinth, to America, and nothing contradicts it. Your problems seems to me not to be in your intellect, but in your intent; you simply don't want God, your way must be better. Think through atheism, and I dare to say honestly, and you will find it to be unlivable.

Rebuttal: Have I not already told you that the historical existence of a man named Jesus would not matter in the slightest to me? I make these claims because people like you are so quick to assert that he absolutely did exist, when the evidence is nowhere near that conclusive. All I am illustrating with my articles is that there is enough reason to doubt the historicity of Jesus Christ - I'm not claiming that he definitely never existed. As I already said, the existence of Plato and Aristotle are inconsequential. I think people can still be Christian and derive a lot of meaning from Christ's teachings even if he never existed, but fundamentalists such as yourself cannot accept such a possibility.

I don't really care about your appeals to majority either ("I have never heard an honest atheistic scholar or other non-christian doubt the writings of Paul especially"). I doubt that the writings of Paul are written by the man who is mentioned in Acts or who speaks of himself in the epistles, because he seems to be uninformed of Jewish belief and culture, yet professed to have studied under a renowned Jewish rabbi. The Paul in the epistles was an elusive snake that pandered to any sentiment that would gain him favor. Therefore, we shouldn't be so hasty to trust that he, or his friend Luke, paints an accurate portrait.

I see that you held out for as long as you could, then jumped right in with the ad hominem attacks and assumptions about my character and honesty in seeking the truth. Remember, you have not introduced any evidence for Jesus' existence to me throughout this entire discussion, just argued that I should not be so skeptical in how I look at the bible and other references. I have explained why I find those sources unreliable, and you've yet to counter any of my points with real evidence. An objective search for truth is careful before it makes assumptions, it exhausts all imaginable avenues before it concludes something did or did not exist. I am open to other pieces of evidence, and I am open to refutations of the reasons I've given for doubting the sources that exist. But as neither of these things have been presented to me so far (by you or by anyone else), I think it's fair to say that we can't really be sure that Jesus existed or did not exist.