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You have some very strong points here. If you were to back them up and further develop them with some sources and strong evidence you would have quite the arguement.
I'm gonna try and give some of my thoughts though on a couple of the points.
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Jesus Christ is most likely a fictional character.
Consider:
1. There is NO physical evidence of the life of Jesus Christ.
2. The Roman Empire kept records of executions, but these records do not mention Jesus Christ.
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I don't doubt that they kept rather meticulous records in Rome, but Jerusalem was vary far away from Rome (in the standerds of those days) and I doubt records were very well kept here. The hebrews were always a problem so I bet the Roman government there was always in disarray trying to keep things in order.
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3. The 41 most prominent Roman Historians during Christ's supposed lifetime and within several decades thereafter were Apollonius, Appian, Arrian, Aulus Gellius, Columella, Damis, Dio Chrysostum, Dion Pruseus, Epictetus, Favorinus, Florus Lucius, Hermogenes, Josephus, Justus of Tiberius, Juvenal, Lucanus, Lucian, Lysias, Martial, Peterculus, Pausanius, Persius, Petronius, Phaedrus, Philo-Judeas, Phelgon, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Pompon Mela, Ptolemy, Quintillian, Quintius Curtis, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Statius, Suetonius, Tacitus, Theon of Smyran, Valerius Flaccis, and Valerius Maximus. In the combined works of these historians, Jesus Christ is mentioned a grand total of 4 times. Two of these passages have been proven forgeries, and the other two are highly suspect as well.
4. The only "historical" records of the life of Jesus Christ are the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament. However, these can't really be considered historical records at all. Original copies of the gospels no longer exist, so we are forced to assume they were copied perfectly. According to Biblical historians, none of the gospels were written until 70 AD - a bit late to have been written by the followers of Christ. Whoever wrote Luke says that he is compiling the stories from other material and was not a witness to the events himself (Luke 1:1-4). The gospels are written in Greek, not Aramaic - the language that Christ and his followers used. Finally, the gospels are written in the third person - not the point of view one would expect from someone supposedly recording their historical experiences with Christ.
5. Matthew and Luke present contradictory accounts of the birth of Christ. Matthew says he was born when Herod was King of Judea. Luke says he was born when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria. Problem is, 10 years seperated the rule of those two men.
6. In the late eighteenth century, a Jesuit scholar by the name of Antonmaria Lupi wrote a work which showed that the nativity of Christ had been assigned to every month of the year at one time or another.
7. Luke stated that Joseph left his home in Nazareth and crossed two provinces to go Bethlehem for the enrollment, and that he had to be accompanied by his wife, Mary, who was pregnant. It's highly doubtful she could have even made the trip, but what's worse is that Roman custom dictated that, when an enrollment was made, the head of each household alone was to report. Not to bring their pregnant wives with them.
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Only possibly rebuttal to this I can think of is that Mary was pregnant before she married Joseph, thus people would have considered Mary a whore and would have scorned her if she remained. Joseph only accepted her because he believed that he had an angel come to him and tell him his wife was carrying the child of God. Thats the story according to the New Testament I'm pretty sure.
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8. The story of Christ's crucifixion doesn't even make sense. The Roman Civilization was marked by the greatest legal system the world had ever seen. Their courts were models of order and fairness. And yet, flying in the face of everything we know about the Roman legal system, we're supposed to believe that Pilate commanded Christ's execution even after finding him innocent, simply to please a mob which demanded his crucifixion? It reeks of laziness, as if the author(s) of these stories couldn't even be bothered to research the topics about which they wrote! Besides, why would the mob demand his death? If he had truly performed the miracles described in the New Testatment, he would be a hero, not a martyr. That a civilized people bore such murderous hatred towards a kind and loving man who went around doing good, preaching forgiveness, and even miraculously curing leprosy and raising the dead is not even close to a believable story.
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The Roman system was incredibly corrupt. And especially way out in Jerusalem, they had many other things to worry about then keeping strict adherence to the code. The Jews wanted Jesus dead because he was a heratic. He broke the laws of the Jews. He did work on the sabbath, he befriended sinners, he called all the jewish elite blasphemeres in the temple. The jews thought their messiah was going to be a warlord who kicked out the romans and brought the hebrew society to power. Not some pacifist who turns the other cheek. There is much in the New Testament about how and why the Jews hated Jesus and on the reasons behind his crucifixion.
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9. The idea of a human messiah was already found in several other geographically nearby religions just prior to the birth of Christ. Har-Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian, Kunsu in that of the Amen-Ra, Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra, and most glaringly, Horus in the Osirian Mythos. Each of these religious figures allegedly had Gods for fathers, virgins for mothers, had their births announced by the stars, were born on the solstice around December 25, had tyrants who endeavored to kill them in their infancy, met violent deaths, and supposedly rose from the dead.
10. In fact, the religious account of Horus is so closely analagous to that of Jesus Christ, one can scarcely believe they are different.
The Osirian Mythos described "Horus and the Father as one", "Horus as the father seen in the son", "Horus was baptized with water by Anup", and "Horus as the good shepherd." Additionally, Horus was identified with the cross, and was said to have had 12 followers. Anyone familiar with the precepts of Anthropology should immediately recognize this as an example of cultural migration - not the birth of some farcical "son of god."
Conclusion: While it is impossible to be 100% certain that Jesus Christ did not exist, it would be very imprudent to believe he did.
Cheers,
Arbiter |
anyway like i said you present some strong points which you could turn into a very solid arguement if you had evidence to back it all up. I really didn't support any of what I said with evidence so we are both sorta running around in circles  .
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Cheers
Sounds silly indeed, but I can't see it being any harder to prove than him having divine powers.
