[madnak]

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It is pretty well established that the Historical Person Jesus existed, and that the texts which we get our current Bible from are Historically accurate - that is, they were written when they were supposed to have been written, and the events they relate happened in the Author's lifetime, or at least when the texts were written.

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This is all false. Most of the books of the New Testament were written by authors who hadn't even been born yet when Jesus died. All of them were written years after the events in question. The historicity of Jesus is disputed.

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the skeptic approaches with Scientific analysis, and says that these things couldn't possible have occurred, they are Scientifically impossible!

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This is not the position of any skeptic. A skeptic evaluates the evidence and determines whether it is sufficient. There is more evidence that Uri Geller performs miracles than that Jesus Christ did. This is not compelling for a rational thinker.

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the eyewitnesses who wrote about the miraculous things they saw because they were so spectacular?

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Almost none of the people who wrote about the events even claimed to be eyewitnesses. The events that may have been witnessed were all similar to stage magic, and were not corroborated.

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obviously the answer to this question lies with Faith. where do you put your faith? this isn't a black-and-white question either. it's not God vs. Science or anything like that (false dichotomies get us into a lot of trouble, it seems...). Do you believe in God? does that mean you can't believe in Science? (hopefully not)

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I put my faith in reason. If a God (and only one of many that people worship) requires me to believe something unreasonable, I'm not interested. Especially if there's no evidence this God even exists. (Sadly, there never is.)

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i don't like discussion threads like these, they tend to go nowhere, and very rarely do people actually engage each other's intellect. usually just a lot of smug arguing at each other. i just felt i had to say my piece.

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I agree. I even told myself I was going to stop posting in religious threads, but it looks like I can't resist.