At my Facebook page, someone posted a link to Premier Christianity’s 40% of People Doubt Jesus was a Real Person: Here’s How to Change Their Mind along with this quote:
“It’s relatively simple to make the case for the historicity of Jesus. Firstly, it’s what the vast majority of scholars of the ancient world believe (i.e. the ones who actually research these things, rather than the opinion of an Oxford biologist). We not only have the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, but his death by crucifixion is one of the most widely attested events in the ancient world, written about by contemporary historians such as Josephus and Tacitus.”
I have dealt with such topics in my section of articles about Jesus especially with Historical Jesus – Two Centuries Worth of Citations which is based on my very own research.
Well, it got a few comments from two personages that ranged from virtually incoherent to downright FAILED attempts at trolling.
The first person, to whom I will refer as Personage one wrote:
Anthropomorphic beings.
An example of something anthropomorphic are the pictures of God that depict Him with human male characteristics without indication or evidence that his appearance is that of an evolutionarily current human.
This is actually biblically accurate except that it utterly misses the point of the article which is about the historically verifiable Jesus who came in human form.
Personage two replied with:
hehe, they like to tell the truth and lie at the same time, depending on the audience. Who is created in who’s image? In the Zohar, man banished God from the garden.
This is generic enough to be meaningless as what is the “truth” and what is the “lie” is left unstated. They them make a historically HUGE jump from Genesis to the much, much, much latter Rabbinic Jewish folklore mysticism Zohar. To this, Personage one simply replied with “Spot on” and that was the end of them and Personage three chimed in with “What you say is true” and was never heard from again.
Now, the focus will be Personage two who followed up with (and note that, as per above also, they do not begin their sentences with capital letters; I am only mentioning this so it does not seem as if I am quoting them half sentence):
even only a short glimpse into the ancient mysteries will prove to any quasi-intelligent person that the historical jesus is only a political manipulation of the truth of the metaphysical Christ within all.
Now, of course, biblically there is no such thing as a “metaphysical Christ” within the context of “ancient mysteries” and certainly not a real, actual, historical, biblical Jesus “within all” but only within those who accept Him as Messiah.
I replied thusly:
Friend, you will find that if you ignore popular level claims and demand primary source material which is supposed to back your claims there either are none or they actually borrowed from Jesus as they date to after His time. Here is a short debate on the topic:
The reply to me was:
lol your argument is circular
This is a great example of that which Augustine of Hippo wrote in, “City of God,” Book 5, Chap. 26, “…it is very easy for a man to seem to himself to have answered arguments, when he has only been unwilling to be silent” which is a quote that is applicable to 99% of instances in which I deal with 99% of Atheists.
Thy wrote a follow up comment right away which reads:
seems you don’t want your mind changed mr true freethinker
Well, you can tell right away that this person is not interested in engaging in reasoned discourse and yet, I made an attempt by replying with:
“your argument is circular” is a conclusion: where is the rest of your argument? Seems you don’t want your mind changed.
That seems clear enough as they had merely made an assertion without, as it were, showing their work. They replies thusly:
thanks for further proving my point. Yes, you are right that it was a conclusion but the second part of your comment is childish and also wrong. I don’t care if my mind got changed in the process of searching for truth. In fact, it had, many times. That is not an issue. “Seems you don’t want your mind changed” was also a conclusion, because you were not at all curious when presented an alternative to your beliefs, thus proving that you are not interested in challenging them. That’s just boring. Both my comments were conclusions, as I am not interested in trying to change your mind. My initial comment was meant to spark some curiosity but still I see none, hence the conclusion. Bear in mind, though, that the opposite of curiosity is ignorance.
I bid you farewell, for I will not be replying to this any longer.
This is a troll hit and run tactic: they make baseless statements that lack reason, logic and evidence and when challenged they thump their chest and go away.
Here was my reply, the final one, as no one has replied to anything anymore:
Friend, how did I prove your point as your point is one that requires historical evidence and you have provided nothing but assertions? You are also mistaken as to why, in your estimation, I was not curious. In fact, I have been so curious on such issues that I have read about them and written about them. Thus, I knew to ask you for primary source information which you have failed to provide. If you are only interested in in spark some curiosity please place the cards on the table and do not merely imply that you have cards and put them well, somewhere but cannot find them.
And with that, you seem to scurry off in order to do this to another person and another and another and yet, at least you know that you were asked for evidence and simply failed. What a shame.
And this is why people had to wait until circa two millennia after His life, death and resurrection to even imagine making such a radical claim as that Jesus never existed as a historical person. They needed society to become nice and dumbed down to the point that people react emotionally to intellectual issue which leads to a deconstruction of history based on feelings.