Was there a real Jesus of Nazareth ?

[mistermack]

When I stopped believing in Christianity, I just stopped accepting that Jesus was a god. I never questioned whether he ever actually existed. But since then, I’m looked at the evidence for a real human that the gospels are based on, and it’s actually somewhere between very weak, and zero.

Most people accept that there “must have been” a person that the gospel stories are based on, otherwise “why were they written?”  But that’s looking at it from a 21^st century point of view.

Back in the first century, gospel writing was the youtube of the day. There were loads of gospels written, all wildly different. It was a far more religious/superstitious time, when there was little or no science, and there were mysteries everywhere you looked. Gods from different religions got copied and merged across borders all of the time.

How could a religion about Jesus evolve, without a man called Jesus to start it? It’s actually quite a common thing. A sect starts off worshipping a heavenly, mythical figure, and the story gradually gets changed, and the god figure gets changed into a human. Often by a god breeding with a human woman, that’s actually a common religious story line. It's a recognised historical process called Euhemerism.

It’s likely that Jesus started out as a “son-of-god” figure up in heaven, and the story morphed into a flesh and blood son-of-god figure on Earth. There were similar stories, going back hundreds, or even thousands of years BC.

I’ve found that the best people to listen to on the subject are Richard Carrier, and David Fitzgerald, but there are many others.

But the one who convinced me was actually St. Paul !!    Even though he is responsible for Christianity as it is today, I think his writings are actually some of the best evidence for Jesus being a mythical figure. For someone who virtually created Christianity, he seems to have known virtually nothing about the man.

That’s what did it for me. Paul was writing supposedly just a few decades after the cruxifiction. If he couldn’t give any info on a real-life Jesus, then he must have been a mythical figure.

Of course, the gospels later gave loads of detail, but much of it was contradictory and obvious invention. They are religious stories, and can’t be taken as biographical material. And if you look elsewhere, for any non-gospel mention of a real Jesus, it’s either not there, or proven forgeries. ( which are actually very common )

Anyway, here are a few links :  David Fitzgerald : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI72JNz0IC8&t=22s

https://centerforinquiry.org/speakers/fitzgerald_david/ 

And Richard Carrier : https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+carrier 

[Peterkin]

When our concept of the world was smaller, so were our gods. Religion didn't begin with a huge, remote creator of the universe type god, but with ancestors, nature spirits, demons and the the guiding totem of individual tribes. Such small and familiar deities were very much more hands-on managers of human affairs; they and humans didn't just intermarry; they argued, gambled, made deals and played tricks on one another. 

  It's only after the great conquests of the Roman Empire that a meta-god was required to subsume the individual gods of the pagan subject peoples. Since the Jews already had a single deity, rather than a pantheon, and since that aggressively proselytizing Christian sect was already converting many Romans and their subjects, it was handy god to promote.  

15 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Paul was writing supposedly just a few decades after the cruxifiction. If he couldn’t give any info on a real-life Jesus, then he must have been a mythical figure.

I would say, rather, a composite figure. Israel was a prolific incubator of prophets, ech of whom would have collected followers and many would have started little cults. All the occupied Roman territories bred rebels, and so there was plenty of occasion for crucifixions, which was the standard form of deterrent. There were probably hundreds of stories floating around about guys named Jeshu, Jehoshua, Josiah who effected miracles on a small scale - hence, one barrel of wine, one leper cured, one dead man brought back to life, one stroll across the lake, one picnic lunch for a multitude --- no encores, no command performances.  

25 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Of course, the gospels later gave loads of detail, but much of it was contradictory and obvious invention. They are religious stories, and can’t be taken as biographical material.

That's typical of the whole Bible - an all legends. Each story may well have originated in some actual event, but it's been embellished and altered to suit later generations. Even the religious people who claim to take the Bible literally as the words of their god have to be very, very selective of the bits they refer to. 

[MigL]

There was a previous, rather lengthy, thread on this very topic several years ago.
I suggest a search, and a good read.

[Arthur Smith]

I'm a life-long atheist so there may be some bias (or ignorance) in my following remarks. The surviving texts that finally ended up being referred to as the New Testament are all written in demotic Greek. Not Aramaic, which gets a brief mention. Not Hebrew. The authors are anonymous, attribution murky, especially considering where the apostles, some who were simple Galilean fishermen, would have learned to write, let alone in competent Greek. By some accounts' the historical and geographical references are doubtful. Paul, according to his own writing, never met Jesus and his earliest writings post-date Jesus's death by at least twenty years. There's nothing to support the New Testament events in other contemporary text sources or in archaeology.

Whoever developed the stories in the New Testament may have based stories and ideas on a human figure or figures but there's almost nothing other than the Bible itself to suggest there was a real figure of the stature and influence described there. Also, who decided what went in to the NT and, perhaps more importantly, what was left out? Nicea, Constantine, all happening in the 300s.

On the other hand, I have heard it argued that there are many parallels in parts of the New Testament with Homer's poems: the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Just now, MigL said:

There was a previous, rather lengthy, thread on this very topic several years ago.
I suggest a search, and a good read.

Was there something from mythers?

[MigL]

Don't know mythers
But here it is

 

[Peterkin]

21 minutes ago, Arthur Smith said:

The surviving texts that finally ended up being referred to as the New Testament are all written in demotic Greek. Not Aramaic, which gets a brief mention. Not Hebrew. The authors are anonymous, attribution murky,

That's because they were commissioned by a committee. The only NT book of which we have a reasonably reliable source is the epistles of Paul, and he probably did collect local folk tales and hearsay in his travels as a tax collector, as well as later, as a purveyor of the Christian startup. You have to admit, though, the franchise became phenomenally successful. There must have been something charismatic about the central figure to appeal to a wide range of cultural background. It's just universal enough to correspond to many ancient myths and just unique enough to be greeted as a novelty. 

[Arthur Smith]

38 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

That's because they were commissioned by a committee. The only NT book of which we have a reasonably reliable source is the epistles of Paul, and he probably did collect local folk tales and hearsay in his travels as a tax collector, as well as later, as a purveyor of the Christian startup. You have to admit, though, the franchise became phenomenally successful. There must have been something charismatic about the central figure to appeal to a wide range of cultural background. It's just universal enough to correspond to many ancient myths and just unique enough to be greeted as a novelty. 

Well, maybe. But why was he writing in Greek, rather than Aramaic (the lingua franca of the time and region) or Latin, the official language?

58 minutes ago, MigL said:

Don't know mythers
But here it is

 

Thanks for finding that. I'll have a look through, though 2014 is a while ago. 

38 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

You have to admit, though, the franchise became phenomenally successful

Can't argue with that!

 

On glancing through the previous thread on reality of Jesus, there's a lot of chaff in the wheat. 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Arthur Smith

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, Arthur Smith said:

But why was he writing in Greek, rather than Aramaic

Because he was/they were Greek scholars hired by Roman bishops, and didn't know Aramaic. They had access to older parchments from the region, written or translated under the Greek occupation. Contemporary Latin would have been obviously fake, so they did the next best thing for authenticity. For the sake of historical verisimilitude, they kept the old Hebrew texts -- which was either a grave theological error or a shrewd religious underpinning for militarism.

[Arthur Smith]

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Because he was/they were Greek scholars hired by Roman bishops, and didn't know Aramaic. They had access to older parchments from the region, written or translated under the Greek occupation. Contemporary Latin would have been obviously fake, so they did the next best thing for authenticity. For the sake of historical verisimilitude, they kept the old Hebrew texts -- which was either a grave theological error or a shrewd religious underpinning for militarism.

What old Hebrew texts?

ETA correct typo

Edited January 15, 2022 by Arthur Smith

[beecee]

4 hours ago, Arthur Smith said:

I'm a life-long atheist so there may be some bias (or ignorance) in my following remarks. The surviving texts that finally ended up being referred to as the New Testament are all written in demotic Greek. Not Aramaic, which gets a brief mention. Not Hebrew. The authors are anonymous, attribution murky, especially considering where the apostles, some who were simple Galilean fishermen, would have learned to write, let alone in competent Greek. By some accounts' the historical and geographical references are doubtful. Paul, according to his own writing, never met Jesus and his earliest writings post-date Jesus's death by at least twenty years. There's nothing to support the New Testament events in other contemporary text sources or in archaeology.

I refer to the bible, as an obscure text, written in an obscure age, by obscure men/women. 

[Peterkin]

24 minutes ago, Arthur Smith said:

What old Hebrew textts?

Quote

The original core of the Hebrew Bible is the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible. They are the books of the Law given to Moses. The other major sections are the Prophets, and the Writings. These sections are differentiated in the accompanying tables. https://library.princeton.edu/departments/tsd/katmandu/bible/versions.html

Pretty much all of the OT. It wasn't made available to the rank and file of Catholics, but clerics would read and draw sermons from it, and Bible stories for children were drawn from it. There was later extensive - I mean, extensive - commentary on those books, to tell the reader what he should be understanding instead of what's written there. 

42 minutes ago, beecee said:

I refer to the bible, as an obscure text, written in an obscure age, by obscure men/women

No women. The men who wrote the various books may have been obscure, but the final product is neither: Saint Jerome is credited with the Vulgate (Latin) text of the  compilation of both testaments in 400AD.

[Genady]

If there were an actual evidence of a real J of N, wouldn't everyone know it by know? Would Church let it go?

[Arthur Smith]

35 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Pretty much all of the OT. It wasn't made available to the rank and file of Catholics, but clerics would read and draw sermons from it, and Bible stories for children were drawn from it. There was later extensive - I mean, extensive - commentary on those books, to tell the reader what he should be understanding instead of what's written there. 

I recently became aware of the claim that the Old Testament is a recent compilation written in Greek by a group of Jewish Scholars living in Alexandria around 300 BCE and drawing extensively on the resources of the library, without any first-hand knowledge of Biblical Israel. The Hebrew OT was a product of translation from that source.

ETA typo plus not my theory but interesting nonetheless

Edited January 15, 2022 by Arthur Smith

[Peterkin]

8 minutes ago, Genady said:

If there were an actual evidence of a real J of N,

I'm not aware of any. One of my earliest points of doubt was Nazareth itself, and it's distance from Bethlehem. Okay, Nazareth is where Jesus is supposed to come from. So why in the name of all that's unRomanlike and inefficient would the emperor collect a tax that wouldn't even be imposed for another 100 years or so, in a place distant from the taxpayer's residence? (Because he had to be seen as a descendant of David, to match the prophesy of Isaiah: 11: 1-9

Quote

There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,
And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
² The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might,
The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

which is the one Christians, starting with Luke, I believe, take as the sign that they have the right saviour.)  

26 minutes ago, Genady said:

wouldn't everyone know it by know

They do. The believers are certain that it's exactly as the Bible says; the disbelievers are equally sure that there is no evidence; any historians have compiled circumstantial evidence pro and cone; a lot of theologians and archeologists are still searching and arguing. 

 

29 minutes ago, Genady said:

Would Church let it go?

Lots of churches spend a lot of cleric-hours writing refutations and confirmations of whatever new paper is published on the subject.

13 minutes ago, Arthur Smith said:

I recently became aware of the claim that the Old Testament is a recent compilation written in Greek by a group of Jewish Scholars living in Alexandria around 300 BCE and drawing extensively on the resources of the library, without any first-hand knowledge of Biblical Israel. The Hebrew OT was a product of translation from that source.

Okay. The library of Alexandria contained a huge amount of older literature. The documents to which they gained access, and probably caches of other scrolls hidden in caves, etc. ,most of which predate the translators by centuries, all contributed to the books as we know them. One estimate I've heard : going back to 1800 BCE, of which I'm not convinced, unless it includes folklore and legend. The Hebrew religious scholars did keep both holy books ad historical records from the establishment of  the Temple in Jerusalem in 957 BCE. So, they're pretty old.

I'm letting the typos ride this time

[beecee]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

No women. The men who wrote the various books may have been obscure, but the final product is neither: Saint Jerome is credited with the Vulgate (Latin) text of the  compilation of both testaments in 400AD.

No women I have no problem with, but are you now saying that there is one, and only one possible interpretation of the bible? Compilation or no compilation, I find it hard to believe that it can only be interpreted one way...hence my use of obscure.

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, beecee said:

but are you now saying that there is one, and only one possible interpretation of the bible

Where have I said that? There many concurrent versions, some archaic versions, and 3000+ translations. 

 

1 hour ago, beecee said:

Compilation or no compilation

No, it's definitely a compilation - i.e. collected from various sources and included in a single volume. Which is attributed to a specific person who actually existed and was quite prominent (Saint Jerome) and not at all obscure, at a known, not obscure date. Of course, not all of the original documents were included in that volume - there is a compilation of apocryphal books also - the texts that were not included in the official bible. (I've read some and it's pretty obvious why an editor would reject them!)

 

1 hour ago, beecee said:

I find it hard to believe that it can only be interpreted one way.

Each version is also interpreted many different ways, according to the convictions and requirements of each congregation. That doesn't make the bible any more obscure than, say, the US Constitution. Any text from one era, written by people of one culture will need a lot of 'interpreting' to be useful in another era, by different people. 

A book of moral behaviour even more than most. Sometimes the interpretation is the exact opposite of what's actually written on the page.

Edited January 15, 2022 by Peterkin
short one 0

[mistermack]

I'm definitely not any kind of expert on writings from that era, but I wouldn't place too much importance on the documents being written in greek. 

Greek was the international language of the day, and it was not common for documents to be written in Aramaic. Most Aramaic speakers were illiterate, in fact, most people were illiterate at that time. So people who could read and write generally learned in greek, as that was what was widely written.

Saint Paul the Apostle was a Jew, he would have spoken Aramaic, but his letters are in greek. He probably dictated the letters to a scribe in Aramaic, and the scribe wrote them down in Greek. In some old documents, it's possible to see that happening, because some phrases only make good sense when they are translated back into Aramaic. 

Paul's epistles are very interesting. "Fourteen of the 27 books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul.^[15] Seven of the Pauline epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic, with varying degrees of argument about the remainder." (wiki)

So half of the new testament books are from Paul, and half of those are forgeries. Not a good start. 

But if you scan through the seven genuine ones, it's amazing how little reference there is the the "man" Jesus. If Jesus had been a real man, those letters would have been sooooooooooooo different. Stuff about his parents, his hometown, his ancestry, his marital status, his children if any, his appearance, his birthday, his sayings, hair colour, eye colour, his (supposed) carpentry, his trial, his death, it's all not there. I was quite gobsmacked when I started reading those letters. Even though Paul never met Jesus (in the flesh), if he was real, he would have gleaned all that biographical stuff from others. The man was obsessed enough to travel the world converting people, he would surely have wanted all the biographical info he could get, and so would the people he was writing to. 

If you read his epistles with the assumption that he knew, and his audience knew, that Jesus was a mythical figure, then they make perfect sense. If you read them with the assumption that he was talking about a real man, they make no sense at all. 

 

[MigL]

9 hours ago, Arthur Smith said:

Thanks for finding that. I'll have a look through, though 2014 is a while ago. 

That previous thread might be 8 years old, but, if no one found any evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person in the last 2000 odd years, I don't think they would have found any additional evidence in the last 8 🙂 .

[Peterkin]

13 minutes ago, mistermack said:

But if you scan through the seven genuine ones, it's amazing how little reference there is the the "man" Jesus.

I don't think that necessarily says anything about Jesus, while it says a great deal about Paul. He was running his own church, his own way. The reputation of Jesus (whichever of those minor prophets was the brother of James and leader of Peter's crew) was a vehicle.

https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/good-reasons-to-believe-peter-is-the-source-of-marks-gospel/

This makes sense, actually. Peter was a real person, an ex-fisherman who probably couldn't write, so he may have have dictated his recollections to a more erudite youngster, Mark. He does seem to have been loyal to the Jesu/Joshua/Jehoshua/whoever was executed on that hill - and a great preacher by all accounts.

 Paul had his own agenda and an ego the size of Greenland. 

Quote

Paul, an apostle that never met Jesus, went to meet Peter and James (Jesus’ brother) on a first visit to Jerusalem. One may presume that Peter and James did not trust this mysterious man, who suddenly, proclaims himself as an apostle. Jesus’ followers, who were Jews, lived by Moses’ Law. But Paul had the idea that Jesus’ message must reach the Gentiles, and that the Gentiles must not submit to circumcision and other tortuous Jewish rituals.https://merionwest.com/2019/06/07/st-peter-and-st-paul-a-bromance-that-never-was/

It was Peter who later gave in. He had that serendipitous vision about the animals that used to be unclean before he moved to Rome - where it's better to do as they do, 'cos they won't change their diet for just anybody.   

[mistermack]

The feeling I get about Paul, is that he was originally preaching about a mythical figure, right at the time that another faction was beginning to claim that Jesus had been a real person. He didn't believe their version, but didn't want to fall out with an important bunch early Christians. So he didn't talk about a real Jesus, but neither did he denounce the notion. He just wanted to be important to the movement. 

I don't believe the interpretation of his letter, where he said he met Peter, and James the brother of Jesus. It reads on the face of it that he is referring to a real-life brother of a real-life Jesus. But in his letters, Paul uses the word "brother" all the time to refer to all Christians. He addresses his letters to "Bretheren" and "Brothers and Sisters" so his reference to James just means he classes him as one of the bretheren. 

If James had really been a brother of Jesus, you would expect a flood of details about the man to follow, but there is literally nothing at all.

[Peterkin]

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

The feeling I get about Paul, is that he was originally preaching about a mythical figure, right at the time that another faction was beginning to claim that Jesus had been a real person. He didn't believe their version, but didn't want to fall out with an important bunch early Christians. So he didn't talk about a real Jesus, but neither did he denounce the notion. He just wanted to be important to the movement. 

Why would he have started preaching about a mythical figure? Where did he get the mythical figure? Why would have started preaching at all?

The Jesus cult was already going strong - though it wasn't very big, the believers were zealous - and a threat to the establishment. 

Quote

Paul spent much of the first half of his life persecuting the nascent Christian movement, an activity to which he refers several times.https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Paul-the-Apostle

  At one pivotal moment, he converted. Why? We can't know. My guess is, he suddenly realized that they were his ticket to the future -  not the future of the Jews, who were very small potatoes, but the Roman Empire, which was a very big, very warm potato. He knew that somebody who started all that fuss had existed until a very few years before, because he deliberately went to Jerusalem to talk to the guy's brother and best friend. 

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

I don't believe the interpretation of his letter, where he said he met Peter, and James the brother of Jesus.

Interesting. What purpose does it then serve to talk to Peter, who also attested to the reality of the man he followed?  Lots of people knew Peter. While Paul might have fudged the relationship of James to his fabled half-brother, he couldn't very well lie to the Christian churches about Peter while Peter was Bishop of Rome.  

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

If James had really been a brother of Jesus, you would expect a flood of details about the man to follow, but there is literally nothing at all.

Is there a flood - or even a tickle - of detail about anybody? It's  all I-me-myself  and you-ought-to's. 

Quote

For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.

Like I said, the Jesus - whatever the real name of the most recent cult-starting minor prophet was - was a vehicle for him to make the religion he wanted to lead. He wasn't interested in the dead guy; he was interested in the franchise. Most of the mythical stuff was brought in later, by other drivers of the same bandwagon. Roman scribes had access to the religious traditions of two dozen conquered nations, and most of them had some kind of spring rebirth myth with  godling at the center of it; all of them had some forms of blood sacrifice... It's not that big a stretch to cast the obscure, yet oddly popular little Jewish prophet in the role of resurrected sacrificial demigod.

Edited January 16, 2022 by Peterkin
add quote

[Arthur Smith]

5 hours ago, MigL said:

That previous thread might be 8 years old, but, if no one found any evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person in the last 2000 odd years, I don't think they would have found any additional evidence in the last 8 🙂 .

Perhaps the difference is there is less support  for the position "Jesus is real and the Bible proves it" than there was even just eight years ago.

[beecee]

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Where have I said that? There many concurrent versions, some archaic versions, and 3000+ translations. 

 

No, it's definitely a compilation - i.e. collected from various sources and included in a single volume. Which is attributed to a specific person who actually existed and was quite prominent (Saint Jerome) and not at all obscure, at a known, not obscure date. Of course, not all of the original documents were included in that volume - there is a compilation of apocryphal books also - the texts that were not included in the official bible. (I've read some and it's pretty obvious why an editor would reject them!)

 

Each version is also interpreted many different ways, according to the convictions and requirements of each congregation. That doesn't make the bible any more obscure than, say, the US Constitution. Any text from one era, written by people of one culture will need a lot of 'interpreting' to be useful in another era, by different people. 

A book of moral behaviour even more than most. Sometimes the interpretation is the exact opposite of what's actually written on the page.

I'm rather confused, and admittedly is been a long long time since I ever opened a bible...but the sheer fact that some do claim contradictions, and some don't, conjurs up obscurity to me. Off the top of my head, Moses was supposed to have taken two of each animal aboard his arc...how could that ever be possible? where did he find his Platypuses, and Echidnas, and Wombats and kangaroos, and Kookaburras? Let alone Lions and Tigers, and Elephants and Hippos and Rhinos.....It talks about the world being flooded...the world was pretty tiny in those days. And correct me if I am wrong, doesn't it say somewhere that the Erath is only 6000 years old? and infers it is flat? Sounds more like they had a few Donald Trumps among their midst. The creation of the Earth, and heavens story....not confusing? not obscure?

To finish off, yes I agree the bible does have a moral code evidenced particularly with the ten commandments, but it also has passages that paints the creator as a vengful murderer. Don't ask me where those particular passages are, I'm really not that interested, except to say, that I see the bible as a story book, with many obscure aspects and contradictions, sprinkled with some desirable features, but so was Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Edited January 16, 2022 by beecee

[mistermack]

7 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Why would he have started preaching about a mythical figure?

What Richard Carrier and others are arguing is that the religion started   by worshipping a mythical figure, that everyone understood as a son of god in heaven, and it morphed into a story of a god come to Earth. So when Paul joined, Jesus was god's number one son in heaven. Then this bunch in Jerusalem get going, claiming that Jesus was an actual man, and it got very popular. That's Euhemerism, and it happened all the time in the ancient world. A god starts out as a heavenly figure, and morphs into an earthly one. And Paul had to either fight it, or go along with it, and he chose the latter.

 

 

It sounds unlikely to our ears, that people should be inventing stories about gods, and changing them willy nilly, when we have grown up with the same story, that’s persisted for two thousand years. But that was the environment at the time. There were sects everywhere, with different sets of beliefs, and that was only the case because some people were wilfully inventing and changing the narrative.

The nearest thing we have today is stuff like Mormonism, or Branch Davidians and the like. Someone sits down and invents a whole new story, and people go for it. Back then it was the norm. Today, it’s more the exception.

8 hours ago, Peterkin said:

At one pivotal moment, he converted. Why? We can't know.

My guess is that he like the message, love they neighbour etc. Lots of people in the sixties and seventies went the same way, joing Hare Krishna etc. I don't believe for a minute the story about the visions on the road to Damascus. That was his way of becoming an apostle, his contact with Jesus. That's what made him a special one. Same with the story about him having previously been an active persecutor of Christians. It's very suspect. 

A lot of preachers today come out with stories about how they "saw the light" and how they used to be fervent atheists. Most of them are lying. It's just a tactic to make them appear more convincing. "I was like you, brother, a doubter, till I found the truth".  It's nearly always bullshit.

 

8 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Interesting. What purpose does it then serve to talk to Peter, who also attested to the reality of the man he followed?  Lots of people knew Peter.

There's your answer. Peter had become the top man in Jerusalem, and Paul wanted to be part of that. 

Richard Carrier is the one to listen to, to get the basis of the argument. He's a proper historian, not a conspiracy theorist, and he really really knows his stuff. 

 

[dimreepr]

22 hours ago, mistermack said:

When I stopped believing in Christianity, I just stopped accepting that Jesus was a god. I never questioned whether he ever actually existed.

Why does it matter? If we accept the argument that someone knew better, why does he have to exist?