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I do not recognise that you read Ehrman. Time was also a bit short for that. So I leave you your point.

If that is your question, then we have no reliable sources. But the question of the thread is: The answer is yes, but we do not know very much about his life... Again, the 4 points I mentioned hold on historical scrutiny. I won't answer any questions anymore, unless you show you have understood the methods Ehrman applies, and can criticise them, or criticise how he applies them.

Historicity of Jesus Sources for the historicity of Jesus

Sorry, a youtubie is not a replacement for a book. If you have an e-reader, I can provide the book. @Ten oz: I wait until I get a fair criticism of Ehrman's methods, not of his statement that it is more probable that Jesus existed than not. No, the words in bold were not part of the question. The gospels refer to a miracle-curing prophet, who resurrected after his crucifixion. The question of Mistermack was very clear: Did Christianity start with a real human Jesus? The answer is, based on the sources we have: yes. But not the miracle-curing prophet, who resurrected after his crucifixion, as presented in the gospels. And were it not because of Paul, Christianity might never have become the huge religion is has become. Please provide us with the source texts, tell us how you interpreted them, coming to the conclusion that Jesus is a contraction of several people, added with some magical fantasies. You see, Ehrman does exactly that: he gives the sources, he tells on what grounds most stuff is unreliable, but that we can still distillate a tiny core that was probably really the case (the four points I mentioned in the second post in this thread). It is easy to contrive some fantasies about what happened. But is is different to base them on old source texts. Sorry Itoero, you just throw in a few baseless opinions.

'Not all' is consistent with my 'most'. I don't know if Ehrman is a better historian than others, but he is one of the authors that wrote books for the general public about the early history of Christianity. He claims that he presents the general consensus under early Christianity-historians, and he was not contradicted by such historians. But of course, there are voices that have another position. That is to be expected when there is no way to be 100% sure. I've read a German book for Theologians, which goes in much more detail, but as far as I understood it, it uses the same arguments as Ehrman does. So you need to know what the historical methods are, and point your arguemtns against these methods. But therefore you must first know these methods, otherwise your arguments just beat air. Beautiful argument. So we are pretty sure that Troy existed, but we do not know if the accounts of it are true. So why shouldn't it be possible to come to the same conclusion about the historical Jesus? We don't know much about him, because he has not written anything, there are no contemporary or even firsthand reports, and the literature we have is highly biased by (early) Christians. But that in itself does not mean he did not exist. Therefore you have to know the history of the texts, and analyse the contents, to see what probably is true. What is left is not much (my four points), but that is enough to conclude that, more probable than not, Jesus existed.

Right. I do not believe in God, and so it is already impossible to believe that Jesus was his son. Remembers me of something Wolfgang Pauli said about Paul Dirac, who was know as a quite militant atheist: "There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet."

Of course, because you do not have to know anything about physics. Combatibilism is the viewpoint that determinism and free will are compatible. So one can ask the question 'Suppose the world is determined, would free will be possible?' A physicist is not much better equipped than any other intellectual to tackle that question. The answer is event stronger: determinism is a necessary condition for free will. Randomness, as e.g. appears in physics, is at most disturbing our free will, it potentially breaks one-to-one relations between cause and effect: the effects are not precise anymore, but have only a certain probability. But for that you need the right understanding of what free will is: it is not a magical interference by the soul on the brain. It is the expression for the fact that our actions are caused by our wishes and beliefs. In my short slogan: free will means you can do what you want, but you cannot be what you want. Latter is what most people assume. Something like 'If I am not totally free, then I am not free at all'. But such a 'total freedom' is not empirically given. The relation between reasons and action however, grosso modo, is.

'nough said. To discredit ancient texts as unreliable for any historical purpose, because miracles or visions are described in them, is a methodological hammer. A text has a history, and to try to find the hints in and about it, combined with other texts, might lead to some valuable conclusions. Really, read Ehrman, and see how and why most historians come to the conclusion that Jesus existed. You do not have to believe in even one single miracle or the contents of whatever vision, to come to such a conclusion. But therefore you must understand the methodology historians use. I propose to discuss Ehrman's book, as soon as those that are interested want to continue the discussion on the question if Jesus really existed.

I also found the weak interaction the most not-understandable interaction. What helped me a little is to look at interactions with the help of Feynman diagrams. As Feynman diagram, the weak interaction 'looks' quite similar to the other interactions (i.e. strong and electromagnetic forces). Maybe that helps you too? A good help in this respect was Martinus Veltman, Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics. (If you buy it, be sure you buy the 'revised edition'. The book was extended because of the discovery of the Higgs Boson.)

But, if you want to believe Jesus did not exist, please do so. I do not want to repeat all arguments of Ehrman, which seem quite credible to me. Please read his book: in the end, I started my interest with reading Acharya S' The greatest story ever sold, after which I decided I had to look at more objective discussions about the subject. With Acharya S, and Richard Carrier, I feel the anger about people who believe Jesus existed. As if that is the root of all evil. The root of all evil (exaggeration alarm...) is of course what people made of it, as a tool of power and suppression. Anyway, if you have read Ehrman's book, we can discuss if his arguments (taken together...) are convincing. Otherwise I see no use to spend an awful lot of time on this discussion again.

Read better... But even if it were exactly true, it means we have one source. But it isn't, and the different ways Matthew and Luke bend the story to let Jesus be born in Bethlehem is just one example that shows that they are not totally based on the same source. Matthew and Luke refer to 'Q', Mark does not. The hallucination of Paul is of course not a proof of anything. But him mentioning Cephas ('Peter') and James fits well to Josephus. And the contents of Paul beliefs fit well to John the Baptist and specially the older gospels (in which one could still believe that the youngest day would happen in the lifetime of the contemporaries of Jesus. With the gospel of John, written at least 70 years after Jesus' death, this is not possible anymore, so you won't find it there.) You see, it is all in line with history as we know it, and the by far easiest hypothesis of the roots and the outworkings on Paul (read the problems in his churches he has to react on...) is that a person, Jesus, with an apocalyptic message, existed.

The history of the Jews by Josephus is a scrap of paper?? Did he have microdot technology? We have versions of the fragments, where Josephus sticks to the facts, without the obvious Christian additions. James and his brother Jesus are still mentioned... And again: in such historical investigations, one should look how one hypothesis fares against others. And in this light it is just more probable that Christianity arose because there was on one side a real person, named Jesus, who was an traveling Jewish prophet, preaching that the Kingdom of God (on Earth) would come very soon; and that Paul believed this, and preached the same to gentiles everywhere he could.

I don't think the 'bits' are relevant for understanding that 'information' supposes something that bears the information, and because nothing can be faster than light, so information cannot be as well. So don't be sad...

The four points I listed... Yes, and consistencies do not say much when they point back to the same source: Luke an Matthew knew the gospel of Marc (or all three used the same source); in Luke and Matthew some other common source is used, which can also be recognised that some of their formulations are nearly the same (this assumed source goes under the name of 'Q' (German word 'Quelle' for 'source')). But: Jesus is mentioned by a few none-Christian sources. Also, the epistles of Paul are independent sources. The Bible is not a single book. The new testament is a collection of documents that seemed reliable to the theologians of the 4th century (and in line with their theological ideas, of course...). But some of the inconsistencies are telling: e.g. according to Matthew, Jesus was simply born in Bethlehem. Joseph and Maria fled to Egypt, and when they returned they went to Nazareth. In the story of Luke (the Christmas story) Joseph an Maria went to Bethlehem for a census (that according to historians never took place; also the time is wrong), and then went back to Nazareth. So in both case Jesus became 'Jesus of Nazareth'. But why the fuzz? Because there was a prophecy, saying that the 'Messiah' would be born in Bethlehem. Both authors had to twist the real facts (Jesus was born in Nazareth), to get consistent with the prophecy. But if there was no reality that Jesus was born in Nazareth there would have been no need to bend the truth. 2 Points: - If Paul had meant 'brother' in the meaning of 'brothers in arms', wouldn't he have written 'Peter and James, brothers of Jesus'? - This is the fragment in Josephus: 'and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others' So we have an independent source saying that James and Jesus were brothers. Or he interpreted a hallucination... Paul reports about a voice coming from a light, he does not claim that he met a man, who said, "Hi, I am Jesus, and btw I am really the resurrected Christ, so please stop prosecuting my followers, instead help them to spread the truth". That is a strong interpretation of the psychology of Paul. Fact is that the epistles are letters to churches that Paul initiated. He was traveling through the Mediterranean countries, starting Christian communities everywhere where he could. When some problems arose in one of those, he wrote his letters, addressing these problems. So the Paulean epistles are totally different from the gospels: the gospels were written (from hearsay) to record the life of Jesus; Paul's epistles are literately letters with no intention to describe the life of Jesus. And who knows, maybe he had a (pre-)version of the gospel of Marc in his backpack? Marc was also written 30 years after Jesus' death, so it could be possible. I try not to be dragged in this discussion again. Mistermack, please read the thread I linked; Ten Oz, please do not repeat points that were already discussed ad nauseam there. As a general remark: we have a lot of 'relativity-deniers or -doubters' in the physics section of these fora. What they have in common is that they do not have the physical background to even understand relativity. Now of course the proposition that 'Jesus existed' is much more insecure on methodological (history is past...) and factual (we lack really reliable sources) than relativity. But to have a good discussion, it is necessary to know what the arguments are, and how good these are. Just referring to consistencies or inconsistencies, similarities with other (legendary) figures, or hypotheses about the psychology of Paul, miss the points about what academic historians are discussing about.

Yes, that would be an overstatement. When even our physicist-colleagues say 'there is no proof in science', how much more true is this for ancient history 'facts'.

My main source is Did Jesus Exist?, by Bart Ehrman.

Yeah, that would not work of course. Therefore I said 'Newtonian mechanics'. As soon as you take the valid Maxwell equations into the account, you get in all kinds of problems. To solve these, you get special relativity.

Well, compared with velocities in daily life, you can assume that the speed of light is infinite. That's the reason that Newtonian mechanics works so well. I do not see the 'because'. But measuring some material or energetic phenomenon, implies definitely that you got some information. On the other side, something must bear the information, be it a single photon, or a newspaper. So there might be a huge difference between matter and energy on one side, and information on the other, but they are strongly related. And relativity is clear about it: to 'conserve causality' no information, energy, or matter can travel faster than light. Again: this is not so in Newtonian mechanics, and it is no problem. One could say, Newtonian mechanics is relativistic mechanics where the speed of light is infinite. (I assume now Markus will come and say that this is not quite correct... But I think as a rule of thumb it works pretty well). Nobody knows. It must be measured. But some constants of nature are related: the constant that determines the power of the magnetic field, the constant that determines the power of the electrical field, and the speed of light are mathematically related. Therefore Maxwell was able to derive the velocity of electromagnetic waves and concluded light must be an electromagnetic wave too. He derived this mathematical relationship from his equations: (vph = speed of light) From here.

It is true that the historical evidence is not strong, but most academic historians agree that Jesus existed. With other words, to explain the way Jesus is mentioned in biblical sources and some other ancient historian's accounts on one side, and the way Christianity has grown in its early beginnings on the other, the best hypothesis is that he really existed. However the surest facts are meager: - he was born in Nazareth - he was an apocalyptic preacher in the Jewish tradition, and met John the Baptist - he had a brother, James - he was crucified under Pilatus That's it. All the rest of the sources is so mashed up with what people wanted to believe, that not more can be concluded historically. There was a pretty long thread in this forum on this starting in 2014. Before I must repeat all points, please have a look there.

I would say it is theoretical. But of course by theories that are empirically proven. Historically, the value of c was first measured by Rømer, using cyclical deviations of the orbital times of the moons of Jupiter. Then, when Maxwell was able to unite magnetism and electricity mathematically, he derived that electromagnetic waves should exist, and the velocity was exactly the measured velocity of light, and he concluded that light must be an electromagnetic wave. However, Maxwell's equations do not specify the velocity relative to what. It is just c. Sec. Period. Full stop. Many physicists around 1900 were aware that this was a problem, and many ad hoc hypothesis were proposed solving this problem (or also to explain why the Michelson-Morley experiment to measure the speed of light in different directions of the movement of the earth gave a null result: they could not measure such a difference). You can still recognise this by some names: length contractions are also known as Fitzgerald contraction, and the equations to convert time and space from one frame of reference to the other are called 'Lorentz transformations'. Poincaré also derived them (he called them 'Lorentz transformations'), but they were all still based on a preferred frame of reference, i.e. where everything is in absolute rest. It was Einstein who derived exactly the same equations based on the simple principle that all inertial frames are equally valid, i.e. there is no frame in absolute rest. So it is theoretical, but firmly based on very simple principles. I don't think this is correct. This might be a way to understand it: Normally, when discussing special relativity, people say that you get Newtonian mechanics at slow speeds. But one can also go the other way: it is just equivalent to suppose that light speed is infinite. If you do this with the Lorentz transformations, you just get the classical Galilean transformations, as we can use them in daily life. (Everybody's time is the same, you can just add velocities, etc etc). But still, causality is not a problem in Newtonian physics. Only when you presuppose special relativity, causality becomes a problem with faster-than-light velocities. So you get at Swansont's bon mot: Try it. Pick two, and see that it is inconsistent with the third. Which combination would be Newtonian mechanics? Why?

As a serious remark: I think this is a problem with all relativity-cranks. They have no idea how fundamental SR is to all of physics. They seem to think that relativity only predicts time dilation, length contraction and mass increase. This seems so absurd, that they think they can point to the 'obvious' error(s) ("Can somebody help me with the math?" is often the followup... JohnMnemonic bluffs that he has the math, but he never shows it to us). None-serious: I can answer for JohnMnemonic: MHD can explain spin much better than SR, and it does it without the inconsistencies in SR, which I have proven are there. I have the results of my calculations. First I thought the article really proposed that 'the observable Universe in the macro-scale is a neural network'. But on second glance you are totally misrepresenting what the article is about. It is evaluating the possibilities to create N-body models of the universe using neural networks. I cannot judge the quality of the article, but your remark that 'the observable Universe in the macro-scale is a neural network' has definitely nothing to do with the article.

Time to close the thread. JohnMnemonic has shown extensively that he will not deliver any of the 'calculations', only the 'results'. Beecee nicely put all the points together in his latest posting. JohnMnemonic's postings have become pure trolling.

Not really. The article was published in the International Journal of Physics. I took a glance at the publisher, and found e.g. this article: Peer reviewed... One can wonder who these peers are... That you just take everything serious that fits your ideas, without using a skeptical mind set, that is sad. The same peers of course that reviewed the above article... It was not 'verified'. It follows from SR that there is no inertial frame for light. Did you already solve Swansont's problem? Show us your calculations. It was you that made misuse of this word game, when stating that SR is still just a theory. Beecee and I have uncovered it, and now you don't care...

The meaning of the word 'theory' is ambiguous: it can mean 'hypothesis' or 'model'. Sometimes the word 'theory' sticks, even when it is empirically proven to the bone. It is a statement of ill faith to argue that, because of the word 'theory', relativity is still a hypothesis. It is e.g used by creationists, when they say 'evolution is just a theory'. Be assured, special relativity is proven, and explains such a variety of phenomena as the colour of gold, the relation between electrical and magnetic fields, the fact that atmospheric muons can be measured at the earth's surface, the fact that accelerators like the LHC work, time shifts in GPS, etc etc. Well, for slow speeds Newtonian physics is still so precise, that we nearly never must use relativity. The 'border case' of special relativity gives you Newtonian mechanics.We also know that the domain of general relativity excludes situations where we also need QM. But whatever theory will follow, general relativity will arise as border case where we can neglect quantum effects. In both cases the new theory explains why the old theories worked so fine. Because it does not work: you have to divide by 0. But in the limit of velocity approaching c, time stretches, until at the asymptotic velocity of c, time comes to a halt. However only massless particles can (and must!) travel at c. Obviously you do not understand special relativity at all. Time dilation is something observed by an observer who has a certain speed relative to the clock. If the speed is different for yet another frame of reference that observer will notice another time dilation factor. For an observer travelling with a clock, i.e. with the same speed in the same direction, nothing happens. The clock runs as clocks use to do in our normal, low speed world. The paradox you seem to have discovered simply does not exist, and arises from your misunderstanding.

Well, discountbrains, it seems to me you have enough reactions to know what the answer on your main question is: Does physics say my notion is incorrect? The answer is clearly "yes". Several physicists have explained it here to you. So time to accept the answer, and start living. Don't forget: any new, better theory must: - explain the same facts as our present theories, i.e. it must not be inconsistent with what we already know (e.g. that gravity and electromagnetism are totally different phenomena that have nothing to do with each other) - explain additional facts that could not be explained until now, or predict phenomena that can be measured, and cannot be explained with theories we already have Good luck!