Do atheists believe that Jesus existed?
 

This is just something that I've been wondering lately. Are there atheists out there who believed Jesus existed, not as the Son of God, but as a person?

I know it's not a very extensive question, but I'm just wondering what you think and if there is historical evidence of his existence.

Yes, I do believe he existed but I know his divinity was invented
However if the rest of the **** is true, he was a pretty progressive guy. I'm down with Jesus, in that case.

I think most do. Josephus provided a non-biblical testimony to his existence. A lot of archaeologists and historians are atheist and Jesus is usually treated as a definite as far as existing goes.

Not to just repeat what others have already said, but most Atheists DO believe that he was an actual person, but they disagree with his divinity.

Theistic views of him differ. Christians consider him the Messiah, and part of the Holy Trinity. Jews view him as one of numerous prophets sent by God, as do Muslims.

I think most people would also consider parts of the bible to somewhat work as a historical narrative. A few of the letters are as closely related to the fact, that they seem to work as some kind of proof. Plus, some of the stories in Mark, Matthew and Luke seems deeply embarassing for the church that followed afterwards, so it's hard to see who would have an interest in inventing them. John, however, is probably pure make-believe.

Of course, you can believe in whatever you like. But if you want to claim that you believe in reason or anything, then it would make most sense to assume that someone named Yeshua, who was crucified by the romans in Jerusalem around year 30 probably existed. There really isn't any reason to doubt it. But of course, nothing is truly known about the past.

i don't think Atheists refute his existence much

the most hardline people I've encountered against his divinity were Muslims and Jews

Most atheists are aware that Josephus is an unreliable source. At best his brief mention of Jesus is secondhand information written many years after the fact by someone who wasn't there. At worst it's a Christian forgery created hundreds of years later. And since Josephus is the only non-biblical reference to Jesus this puts his existence on shaky ground.

My own personal viewpoint goes a little like this:

Do I think there really was a Jesus who performed miracles and was the son of God? No. I have no more reason to think this character was real than any other mythological figure such as Hercules, Rama, etc.

Do I think there was a real historical guy from Nazareth born in the year 1 named Jesus who maybe wasn't magical but was some sort of revolutionary figure? It's possible but there isn't much evidence one way or the other. To me this seems about as likely as any other mythological character having a historical counterpart.

Do I think the character of Jesus may have been loosely based on a real person or people whose stories have been interwoven with traditional folklore from the region but not necessarily from the specific location or time period suggested by Christians? Seems fairly likely, but again, when you're talking about ancient oral traditions, who's to say where they come from.

Man fuck if I know, I have no research to back up my thoughts but I pretty much believe there was a really smart and revolutionary type of guy named Jesus in a time where science was very minimal and people believed in crazier shit and this guy became immortalized and over time mythical.

It's like when you catch a small fish, and over a decade eventually your story turns into you catching hammerhead shark with your bare hands. So yeah I think a guy named Jesus existed who was real smart and whatever, I don't believe anything about him and his magical powers, it goes against my belief of logic.

He may have existed, albeit his alleged abilities are vastly overrated.

Whether the man Jesus existed or not is possible. However, I believe that the myth of Jesus was constructed off of many other figures, and collaged together from many people to make a political point.

for purposes of argument, i'll say no.

I don't believe that Jesus existed. I accept the strong possibility that there was such a person, but I'm too sceptical to put any real faith in it. The amount of confirmation bias there is in Jesus studies makes most "results" into that kind of research highly questionable and I haven't heard of any definite proof that shows he ever existed .. not that I've looked.

you just have to "believe" he did

I believe that Jesus existed but I don't really believe that he was the son of god. It's impossible to know who Jesus really was as the records of him in the bible have been altered and covered-up by the church throughout the centuries. In my mind he could have been either some crazy street-preacher that led the fickle people into believing he was the son of god or a really intelligent philosopher who had a genuinely good vision of how mankind should live their life.
The early Christians could have taken his philosophy as a way of life and portrayed Jesus as the son of god and the messiah just to win more converts.

I think he could've existed, I don't know though. If he did I think he existed as just a normal person.

really? Muslims that I have talked to put his divinity on equal grounds as Muhammad

They consider Jesus as much as a prophet as Muhammad.

I think Janszoon pretty much said it. I'd just like to add that I think most atheists don't really care if he existed or not. Whether he did or not does not change the fact that we don't think he was the son of a (to us) non-existent god.

What you've said is only true from a particular standpoint. Muslims believe that Jesus was equally as divine as Muhammed, because they don't believe that Muhammed was inherently divine. As revered as he is, Muhammed to Muslims is a prophet, not the incarnation of Allah. On the other hand, Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the physical incarnation of god, or god's only begotten son, to quote the book of John. Muslims believe that it is impossible for god (Allah) to be incarnated in human form.

I believe he existed, but I have met other atheists that don't.

Oh okay, I see where I got a little mixed up.

"It is a habit of mankind ... to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy." - Thucydides

I think this is true about Jesus Christ too, those who deny or denounce Him claim they use "sovereign reason" to do so. "Fancy" in this instance means "to believe without being absolutely sure or certain." I truly feel both people who believe and don't believe both do so without being absolutely sure or certain. Some atheist argue against the Historicity of Jesus Christ because there isn't sufficient evidence to their liking (and also use a type confirmation bias to get their point across), and similarly most Christians understand there isn't that definitive physical evidence that would satisfy the most ardent skeptic to prove His existence once and for all.

Since archaeologist use things dug up from the dirt like weapons, jewelry, clothing, bones and other other artifacts to confirm a person existence from the past so I guess the Jesus deniers uses that lack of evidence (that Jesus Christ had no archaeological artifact attribute to Him) as basis for their argument against the historicity of Jesus. While the person who believes Jesus lived uses Confirmation bias ["Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true."] The Jesus denier does the opposite they use the lack of information to confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether their particular stance is true or not. I guess you can say they use "negative confirmation bias."

nope Muslims consider him a "human" prophet who died on the cross

the God who came back after death was an impostor and his ascension were all lies, according to my Muslim friends

-No external reliable sources mention him.
-Josephus (born after Jesus was supposedly killed) mentions him after telling about the atrocities of Pilate, but the text style is so out of context, that it suggests that it was for some reason forged at later time by a Christian. Had Josephus actually thought Jesus was divine, like the passage suggest, surely he would have written a lot more about him, than one paragraph. Instead Josephus mentions over 20 other Jesuses, (it was a common name) and writes in length about them and other people.
-Talmud mentions executing several Jesuses, but they are executed by stoning or hanging
-Books in the Bible mention him, but they tell conflicting stories.
-It is possible that none of the books in the Bible were written by an eyewitness
-Paul only saw him in a vision, yet he wrote large part of earliest books in the bible
-Very large parts of the Gospels are clearly fictional, added there just to make the story convincing, and to make it match the prophecies in OT
-The whole idea of suffering savior was 500 years old prophecy from Isaiah 53
-The Gospels were written after or during the Roman Jewish war 66-70 AD, and destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. During the Titus's siege of Jerusalam in 70 CE, Roman soldiers crucified up some 3,600 Jews over the course of several months... up to 500 in a single day. So many Jews were crucified outside of the walls that "there was not enough room for the crosses and not enough crosses for the bodies".
-As so many sacrificed their lives on crosses to save Jerusalem, the Gospels might actually be telling an allegorical story.
-The Bible was collected slowly over following centuries. None of the original texts have survived, only copies of copies of copies, several decades or centuries after the originals
-We don't know how much the texts were modified or censored.
-We do know that thousands of people called Jesus (Yeshua) existed, some of them were executed, thousands of people were crucified, and several Christ claimants existed.

So it is entirely possible that Biblical Jesus was one of them, but the story may have been wildly different. Such common ingredients in the story make it also possible that the first author might have used the common themes to create a story. So were the books of NT based on the old myths and prophecies, decorated with themes from that time period, or were they based on a historical person, and decorated with old myths? So much of the stories are mythical, filling prophecies, allegorical, and based on visions+personal opinions, and stories heard from others, that I find it difficult to be convinced either way.

Negative confirmation bias would simply be a confirmation bias. It would be the equivalent of a preconcieved notion that a hypothesis is false rather than the hypothesis being true.

I think what you are thinking of is better called something like "truth criteria". People who think like me want things about our universe that they believe to be "true" to fulfill certain criteria, for example that it is proven through hypothesis testing. I like the principle of parsimony which is often called occam's razor although most people who use that word don't fully understand or appreciate what it is. It is a criteria by which you can evaluate hypotheses. If you have two hypotheses explaining a phenomenon, the one which requires you to make fewer new assumptions about our universe is the preferred one.

If you don't know how to put this philosophy to daily use, here's an example I've used before. Imagine you are in a dark house at night - a door closes behind you, but there is noone there. You have two hypotheses to explain the door closing - either it was a draft or it was closed with intent by a ghost. Accepting that it was a draft only requires the assumption that a draft could get into the building - we already know moving wind can close doors, something that can be explained by physics and observed through daily experience .. Accepting that the door was closed by a ghost, however, may require you to accept assumptions like there is a "life" after death, dead people are able to interact with our environment by closing doors, will and intent can exist without a hard physical body etc. etc.

Every time you make a new assumption, there is a chance that the assumption is, in fact, wrong. So, when piecing how the world functions together by testing hypothesis after hypothesis, parsimony as a criteria helps us find the truth by reducing the risk that we will accept a lie as being true. People who want their beliefs to match how the universe actually is should try to follow it I think. Broadly speaking, that's what sceptics do.

There's a lack of Jesus evidence so if you believe he really existed, there is a fair chance you're believing in a lie. Sceptics don't like to take that risk.

It is not the lack of evidence that makes me not believe in the existence of Jesus Christ, or his divinity, or the existence of a god at all. It is just one more nail in the coffin for me.

1) If Jesus of Nazareth had been invented, he would probably never have been called Jesus of Nazareth. The Messiah was supposed to be from Bethlehem. Luke tried to write a retcon, to show that he was actually born in Bethlehem do to a very convenient counting of people, but that never happened.

2) If Jesus of Nazareth had been invented, the accounts of his life probably wouldn't differ as much as they do. Invented stories tend to have their details straightened out earlier than those messy, contradictory eyewitness accounts.

3) "There's a lack of Jesus evidence so if you believe he really existed, there is a fair chance you're believing in a lie. Sceptics don't like to take that risk."

This is kinda wrong. For a simple executed Jew from 2000 years ago, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence. Relatively speaking. Those times really aren't that well documented, especially backwater areas like Judea, especially non-important people like a carpenter with somewhat radical ideas.

It sounds like you're assuming that, if Jesus was invented, he was created whole cloth by a single author. I don't think anyone is suggesting that. He would have had countless authors and evolved out of an oral tradition just like any other mythological figure.

This is completely untrue. It's part of the nature of folklore to evolve over time and vary from teller to teller. The urban legend of the vanishing hitchhiker is an excellent example of this.

This argument makes no sense. So he's relatively described more than the average carpenter of his day and age. How does that improve the quality of the supposed evidence?

Pfft... that's bull****. Everyone knows the vanishing hitchhiker is Rutger Hauer.

lol

That oral tradition really has to develop remarkably fast. Mark is from 60 or so, as far as I recall, John, the last and completely unreliable one, is from 100. And supposedly he died around year 30. The tradition developing that fast, seems very, very unlikely to me. People seemingly actually believed that stuff to a very large extent, he was a dominant figure much more than a silly 'urban legend'. It does seem much less reasonable to me, than that someone existed.

@ tore: It in no way improves the evidence. But how much evidence do you want? You really can't expect to much evidence concerning a figure like Yeshua. So I don't think it makes sense to be too skeptical about it.

I was under the impression that christianity was an oppressed religion for a long time after Jesus's crucifixion. I don't know if you could call him a dominant figure. And also, earlier you cited the inconsistencies of witness accounts as evidence that they were true. I don't have a problem with that reasoning other than that much of the accounts are not eye witness but are written based on the eye witness accounts of others... and these accounts based on the same eye witnesses are often contradictory... which makes no sense.

I meant dominant in the mind of the people believing in him. Sorry, English is not my first language. He is much more important than an urban legend, to the people concerned with him. They would be more careful.

And of course. It is an oral tradition after Yeshua. No doubt about it. But it must stem from something, and with the speed it developed, that must be something substantial. A life or a lie. And if it was a lie, it wouldn't be so inconsistent at it's core. Sure, the details would remain the same. But talking about forgiveness on the mountain, then getting into a fit and throwing people out of the synagogue. His personality would have been less messy. But yeah, I can see that I haven't really been able to explain what I mean on that one.

The thing is, as important as Yeshua became to people, if someone had invented him it would have had to be a conspiracy at it's core. And then it wouldn't have been so contradictory. I think this is what I'm trying to get at.

No worries about the language thing. I get the idea of what you're saying - I'm in the circle of people who think the stories of Jesus probably were based on a real person. But I'm in no way certain about it.

Oh, no, neither am I. It's like that with things that happened 2000 years ago in circles not really well documented. It's very, very rare that anything can be decided with complete certainty. But I just can't really see any reason to doubt it. I mean, any other explanation seems even less likely. It's interesting to examine though, I heard a podcast recently where a scholar explained how much of the gospels the real Yeshua had actually said. It turns out, very, very little. And while the story of Jesus seems hard to explain without some Yeshua participating, the story of his resurrection seems very easy to explain away, apparantly.

I love this post.
I am actually sexually attracted to it.

Make sure you wrap it up:nono:

Oops!

Now I'm infected with awesomeness.

I think that there's enough sociological evidence that suggests Jesus was an actual human being, although I believe that in real life he was closer to a political revolutionary than a messianic figure. The entire foundation of the catholic church was based around the holy Roman empire's inability to deal with the subversiveness of the early pre-church Christians, kind of an if-you-can't-beat-em'-join-em' approach.

You're assuming all the Christian dates are right but there is absolutely no reason to do so. The fact is that the Jesus story has antecedents from hundred and hundreds of years before the events supposedly occurred, plenty of time to evolve into the Christian version.

Also, this argument you're making that "people really believed it so it must be true" basically implies that anything and everything people ever strongly believed was true is actually a fact. So do you think Hercules was a real person too?