Last month Trump vowed to defend Christianity and urged Christians to vote for him
“This is really a battle between good and evil,” evangelical TV preacher Hank Kunneman says of the slew of criminal charges facing Donald Trump. “There’s something on President Trump that the enemy fears: It’s called the anointing.”
The Nebraska pastor, who was speaking on cable news show “FlashPoint” last summer, is among several voices in Christian media pressing a message of Biblical proportions: The 2024 presidential race is a fight for America’s soul, and a persecuted Trump has God’s protection.
“They’re just trying to bankrupt him. They’re trying to take everything he’s got. They’re trying to put him in prison,” author, media personality and self-proclaimed prophet Lance Wallnau said in October on “The Jim Bakker Show”, an hour-long daily broadcast that focuses on news and revelations about the end times that it says we are living in.
God reading comprehension is low. If that is your only criteria, you are going to find very few existing people. The amount of sources that corroborate each other, especially in the first century after his death, is more than any poor person from that time and place would ever be expected to have. The text I posted gives you examples of other figures generally taken to have existed that have no other mentions by contemporary sources.
The burden of proof here lies on you to find a reason why the body of sources that do exist, compounded by the scholarly work thats been published and peer reviewed on this topic, are for some reason to not be trusted. If there is a scientific consensus on something, then that is what should be taken for truth unless presented evidence to the contrary.
Personal attacks, present your evidence
Ok? First off I didn’t say that was my only criteria secondly I am fine with a high standard of evidence. It is ok to not know something. Are there unicorns? I don’t know but I highly doubt it.
Proof of popularity of an idea isn’t proof that the idea is true. It is proof of popularity. Every source we do have was copying from earlier sources until we get to one guy who admits he was getting his information from dreams. Really no different than any other fictional character. Batman has been going for 85 years on so many formats and they pretty much all agree with each other.
Except he wasn’t a random poor person. Even a minimum historical Jesus was extraordinary and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As I pointed out to you he was a Messiah figure and we should have seen him have a dynasty. Which we don’t see. We should see relics from the 1st century or at least records of relics and we don’t. We should have seen a single one of his followers who saw him get a scribe and write down what they saw but we don’t. Christianity should have preserved the Roman records of his trial but it didn’t. There should be a tomb you can point to where he was entombed and yet none of the early writers even mention the tomb until Mark borrows it from Roman literature as useful. Basic freaken details are messed up like how Paul is referring to a group of 12 which includes Judas as active in the church.
We also can’t explain how he was able to launch a movement so quickly, so powerfully with no resources or education. And how that movement gave birth to three new movements in mere months.
The only way the evidence makes sense is if James was a cult leader making up stories about a non-existent brother and over decades the stories were altered and appropriated.
A. If historical methodology is incorrect pointing to more incorrect conclusions doesn’t make it work. If I challenged a technique used in forensic science you can’t point to guilty convictions as evidence.
B. Again extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Arguing that we can’t prove the existence of a Socrates doesn’t matter. It is reasonable to conclude that a philosopher existed in the golden age of philosophy in the center of philosophical thought. Claiming Socrates existed is on the level of claiming that a computer programmer existed in SV California in 1999.
C. The situation is still not the same because for all the people usually cited we still find more evidence. Alexander the Great, we have a contemporary inscription mentioning the refugees he caused because of his wars. The one good book we have on him cites his sources. None of this is true of the Bible.
Paul cites dreams and explicitly says he is getting it from on high not from people. Mark cites no one. Matthew cites no one. Luke admits he is gathering various sources but doesn’t name them or explain where he got them. Same for John and John admits he culled a lot of them out.
Nope. Any claim of existence of a thing requires evidence of the thing. I don’t have to prove that there isn’t an orbiting teapot.
Argument from authority again. Make your own case.
It is history not science and it wouldn’t matter if it were science. Proof is not dependent in science on authority or majority. It is dependent on evidence.
Repeatedly have pointed out the evidence to the contrary. Basic biographical details are in disagreement and the total lack of things that should be there but aren’t.
Edit: formatting
Historical science is still science. People study for years about not what happened, but how to know what happened happened. meanwhile you sit there and discredit it all. What im doing is hardly an appeal to authority, i am providing you a source of why i believe what i believe. You could just as easily dismiss any referal to studies done as an appeal to authority. What you are engaging in is not critical thinking, but conspiracy.
Jesus was one of a slew of people claiming to be the Jewish messiah at that time. He was also poor, and he has more references to his existence than one would reasonably expect him to have. It is to be expected that a figure that existed 2000 years ago would have the details of their life be in dispute, but every early account agrees on his baptism and crucifixion.
Yeah yeah I suck, get in line and take a number.
Instead of telling me how amazing the people who think for you are why not just prove that your Messiah is real?
Not a single contemporary one. Man is walking around a major urban center known for attracting religious piligrams throughout the empire in a civilization that did document stuff and no one saw anything.
By the way just because evidence is hard to get doesn’t mean I have to accept your opinion. Quite the opposite really. It is very hard to find evidence for God that doesn’t mean I have to believe in it.
How about a magic trick? I am going to say a sentence and you are never going to respond to it. Paul never once says that Jesus was Baptized. And he is not only the earliest accounts but the letters of attributed to him make up over half of the NT. In fact of the 27 books of the NT only 3 mention it and those 3 were some of the last accounts written. Additionally the Gnostic ones are silent as well. So instead of saying “all” you really should have said “none”. Literally none of the early accounts, or even the possible early accounts, mention it. Everyone go check out my magic trick as this basic fact about the Bible gets ignored as inconvenient.
Oh look my magic trick worked. Not going to even own up to your mistake?
Youve ignored the crux of everything ive said, and even missed the my being secular bit. No. It was no mistake. Youre not arguing in good faith. Youre sitting there saying that holding an entirely different criteria for what happened and what didnt than the whole of academia is superior to what the bulk of our knowledge of historical events/people/places up to this point is based on. You’re not arguing in good faith, youre like a climate change denier arguing that their one oil funded study is well and truly superior to what everyone else knows to be true bc sometimes the little guy is right and everyone else is wrong and christianity sucks, and jesus sucks, and god doesnt exist, so jesus must not exist either.
Abracadabra.