[couchand]

Curious, have you engaged in a similar depth of study of all the world religions? Just wondering if maybe the others also have adherents who believe that the only thing keeping many others such as yourself from finding them is their own lack of emotional fortitude?

[blitz_skull]

I have not engaged in a similar depth of study of other world religions.

If you prove a correct mathematical formula, you need not spend time figuring out every other incorrect way to solve the problem.

Likewise, once you find the truth it doesn’t require falsifying every other claim to truth for it to remain true. Jesus was the only person whose words and deeds claim deity and with which there is zero evidence to contradict his claims, unlike the likes of Mohammad, Buddha, and countless other claims of godhood—Jesus of Nazareth’s are the only ones that hold up under scrutiny.

Other religions can believe they’ve got a claim to truth if they wish, but truth doesn’t waver due to one’s personal preferences or convictions.

[vouwfietsman]

It's been a while since I've done this, and I realise this is fruitless.

> Likewise, once you find the truth it doesn’t require falsifying every other claim to truth for it to remain true.

The world is not like maths.

A scientific approach to the world doesn't really work like this. It deals not with truth but with hypotheses and (un)certainties. Claiming truth is fundamentally flawed, and really only reserved for fanatics, religious or not. A "truth" is only ever temporary, waiting to be rejected by evidence and replaced by the new "truth". This is why we never speak of truths but only of hypotheses, theories, etc. Falsification is at the core of science, and at the margins of religion, in both cases by design. This is why science has evolved over the centuries: theories held as truth once have been rejected and replaced by better theories. Meanwhile religion has not evolved in the slightest, except in a moral sense where original scripture is rightfully rejected as being archaic. However, it should be clear that this is not religious progress but moral progress, and is still challenged for religious reasons, by religious people.

Its easy to see when somebody is uninterested in reasoning in general, they use words like truth. It's a word you can use and build on without challenge, because its perfectly in the middle between reality and personal experience: the truth, my truth. It's flexible, can be used to your advantage to mean what you please, to imply what you desire it to imply (the truth), and most importantly to evade what you must evade to make a coherent point when challenged (my truth).

It is overwhelmingly unlikely that a human conceived description of a deity is correct.

> Jesus was the only person whose words and deeds claim deity and with which there is zero evidence to contradict his claims

One does not need evidence to contradict claims, one needs evidence to prove claims. This is how things work. If you disagree, I posit you the following claim without proof and challenge you to accept it and thereby follow your own logic: I claim that Jesus was lying about being the son of god but wants you to feel that he wasn't to manipulate you into following his personal views on ethics.

[blitz_skull]

Apologies for the delayed response! I urge you to take a look at a few of the books I listed in a sibling comment. While I have neither the time nor desire to expound at length the copious amount of evidence for the deity of Jesus of Nazareth, there are several men who have done so for me! In addition, these guys were not your devout raised-from-birth Christians who believe simply because they were told. Rather, they believed because they could not disprove the evidence for Jesus. In fact, I believe all 4 men were atheists who set out to disprove Jesus, but came to the conclusion that the evidence supporting his claims to deity are monumental!

- Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell

- More than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell

- The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel

- Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

Finally, this is addressed in probably each of these books, but as for your last comment. It's not unthinkable to imagine Jesus was so insane he was willing to die for his "personal views on ethics" (Although there's precious little evidence to support this, see the "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" argument). Nor is it outside the realm of possibility to think that perhaps his closest 12 followers were willing to die for a charade (Although again, there's no logical reason to support this idea)—I imagine stranger situations have occurred.

But consider the vast history of Christianity, littered with martyrs whose only mandate to escape death was simply, "Deny Christ" and were yet unwilling to do so. It begins to become disingenuous to suggest that across 2,000 years people have been willing to die for one man's "personal views on ethics" when all that would be required to avoid said death is to simply say, "Jesus is not God", unless of course you were utterly convinced it was true.

[vouwfietsman]

> there are several men who have done so for me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

> I believe all 4 men were atheists who set out to disprove Jesus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_anecdote

> It begins to become disingenuous to suggest that...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

Indeed fruitless.

[Timon3]

Do you have a link that would be a good starting point for "evidence for the resurrection of Jesus"? I am an atheist, but only because I haven't seen any reliable evidence (and I did look for it previously). I'm not looking to argue, just want to give what you have a fair shot.

[blitz_skull]

Oops—sorry for the delayed response here!

Yeah I think "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell is a great one. He was agnostic and set out to disprove Christianity and found its evidence was impossible to refute.

Others I'd highly recommend would be: - More than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell - The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel - Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

I find all of these books fascinating because they're all written by men who were atheists and set out to disprove the "foolishness" of Jesus. In the end, they all came to the same conclusion which is that the evidence that points to Jesus being the Son of God is very heavy. I'm not sure there's any reasonable evidence to the contrary. In fact, most atheists I've known and talked to were atheists not due to reason, but due to emotion. Christianity has a lot of emotional baggage that comes with it. We're all flawed people and unfortunately most people associate Christianity with abuse, rules, and condemnation. That's why I prefer talking about the person of Jesus. I've never met someone who could level a reasonable accusation at the person of Jesus, and after all—He's the entire reason any of us talk about any of this.

If you read all 4 of those books and come away unconvinced I'd love to have a conversation! I was not able to retain my disbelief :)