u/protestandprose

I'll keep it short and sweet with a syllogism. Shout out to hitchens razor for the inspo, I guess. Which of the below do y'all contest, if any?

P1:If an extraordinary existential/ontological claim lacks any sound deductive argument or sufficient empirical/inductive evidence after thorough, millennia-long epistemic scrutiny, then it is epistemically reasonable to conclude that P is false.

P2: The claim that God exists (theism) is an extraordinary existential/ontological claim that lacks any sound deductive argument or sufficient empirical/inductive evidence despite thorough epistemic scrutiny.

C: Therefore, it is epistemically reasonable to conclude that theism is false.

Edit 1 8:17a est - after ~90 comments not a single commenter has attempted a sound deductive argument or presented any empirical evidence. Honestly, I think that says it all, doesn't it.

If you had the argument, why wouldn't that be the first thing you present, why would 3 people ask the definition of sound, a half dozen people cry that it's unprovable and dozens of other random meta commentary that is unrelated to the above syllogism.

The Ship of Theseus is a well known philosophical thought experiment on identity asking if you strip away most of the planks on a wooden boat, and replace them with new wood at what point does it stop being the same vessel?

I made a post last week about the historicity of jesus and it got me thinking, a lot of what was discussed boils down to an identity crisis in trying to connect the Jesus of faith(the biblical Jesus) with the Jesus of history. I was told most historians agree in a historical Jesus (we will leave aside that I was never really provided clean contemporary evidence of this) and grant that he existed, preached some feel good stuff and was executed.

But if "Biblical Jesus" is defined by a much more massive set of specific miracles, claims, and theological roles, while "Historical Jesus" only carries - let's say a very generous granting of 20% of those traits, I'm at a loss of what meaningful criteria we are claiming he existed comes in.

If we strip away 80% what remains is super generic, something that was done by many others. Moreover, the hypothetical model built with this information is a historical reconstruction not an actual human being.

You may contend with my 20% granting, but realistically the problem is the same without strong evidence of a resurrection, which we do not have.

So, if the modern historical consensus strips away 80% of the deeds, miracles, and claims attributed to Jesus, at what point does "the Historical Jesus" cease to be the same person as the Jesus of the bible—and does that make the concept of a "Historical Jesus" philosophically meaningless? Any references to philosophy of language, semiotics or leibniz will gain you props in my eyes, because I think that's what a lot of this boils down to.

It's my argument that the actual contemporary evidence for a first-century Jesus is shockingly non-existent. There are no primary eyewitness accounts, no Roman bureaucratic records of his life or execution, and zero first-hand archaeological artifacts. (It would appear things like the shroud of Turin are forgeries, and an empty tomb is an evidence of an empty tomb - if we could even locate it).

Instead, the evidence points to the "Christ" figure being a second-century theological synthesis—a myth constructed decades after the fact, rather than a historical man.

What I hear commonly is that josephus and Tacitus are evidence for Jesus and his resurrection. It appear scholarly consensus is that much of the content in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews is an interpolation and that Tacitus is also only repeating what 2nd century Christians believed. Tacitus and Josephus were both born after the alleged crucifixion anyways, neither met him making it essentially "Trust me bro," source. We can trace the naming of the gospels to the second century with Irenaeus.

Does this meet the criteria of common historical methods? I sometimes additionally see people comparing this to the evidence we have for Caesar and Socrates, but honestly none of that really matters because socrates never alleges supernatural events or claims the fate of our immortal souls. Not really a big deal if I'm agnostic on whether he was actually real. So the burden should be much higher for jesus, honestly.

Another interesting question for me is the population in early first century Galilee appears to be in the low hundreds of thousands (lets say 200,000), and literacy rates range between 3-10% (per Liberty university). This comes out to approximately 6,000 literate individuals able to write about a doomsday rabbi going around doing miracles, yet we have no firsthand eyewitness accounts.

Many christians will also point to the christian creed documented by Paul, but again, this isn't really evidence (and the lack of evidence for paul's reliability is coming in another post.)

TLDR - Doesn't appear to be any contemporary evidence for jesus, even though there should have been people around writing about him.

So, Why is the historical footing for a 1st-century Jesus so much weaker than popular culture assumes? Considering that, why should anyone who cares about the truth believe in him?

Connecting christianity to morality has never really been my jam, as It seems pretty clear to me that we can't agree on what christian morality is nor does it really have the *oomph* factor to make people care enough to follow it (it's not reason-giving). So below is a syllogism concluding that there really isn't reason to say objective moral facts exist.

• P1 If our understanding of morality is filtered through, constructed by, and dependent upon individual human psychology and historical context, then we have no logical justification for claiming that mind-independent, objective moral facts exist.
• P2: Our understanding of morality is filtered through individual human psychology and historical context—even when evaluating supposedly divine frameworks like the Ten Commandments.
• C: Therefore, we have no logical justification for claiming that objective moral facts exist.

Excited to read these well formed responses (;

ETA ~ 6 or so hours since my post went up and have had some interesting responses, like 3 thoughtful responses and a bunch of responses that were out in left field. That's cool, everyone has to start somewhere I guess. Interesting conversations have delved a bit into error theory/moral anti-realism. Pretty disappointed how the majority of the people who engaged in the syllogism were other atheists. Oh, but it's 9:13p est, time to put on the baby making music and engage in some premarital sodomy with my girlfriend (after we do our nightly chaos dance). Enjoy the evenings besties and I'll respond tomorrow.