Agreed. Bloody retarded =/= creationist, though there are a few bloody retarded creationists.
A similar example:
Caller: "There is no proof Jesus ever existed!"
Radio Host: "..........Well, you just have to take it on faith."
Regardless of whether you believe in his divinity or not, there is evidence that Jesus was a real person, i.e., some of the writings by Tacitus or Pliny the Younger. Also Josephus the Jew, but he might be considered biased.
All three you list were born after the claimed historical Jesus died. There is evidence to suggest even at the same century Jesus existed there were Jews and Pagans who doubted there ever was a Jesus Christ, who never saw him and only knew of him by reading the gospels and took it for granted that the gospels must be true, despite them being written by many people plagiarizing the previous's work with the earliest from Mark being written after Jesus's supposed death decades later and with inconsistencies in geography and custom that would suggest Mark had never been to Palestine in his life, let alone seen Jesus.
Furthermore with Josephus the extract used has Jospehus seemingly witness Jesus resurrecting himself from the dead, fulfilling prophecies and still denying that Jesus is the messiah. The story itself is deemed intrusive on Josephus's narrative by scholars and is widely accepted to have had a series of Christian interpolations added at least decades later as there are no mentions of Josephus's accounts of Jesus by any other historians or Christian apologetics of that time or close to that time until 240 years after Josephus wrote 'antiquities of the Jews' by Eusebius, a Christian historian.
Even more damming of that passage is that from as early as the 16th century surviving texts have been recorded as found, ones without the Christian passage, one found by the scholar Vossius, making it near certain the Christian owned texts were forgeries.
There is another paragraph from which Christians use Josephus's texts as proof of Jesus's existence, yet they often ignore the fact that Josephus is talking about James the Just [often called brother of the lord], who has much more historical evidence to suggest his existence than Jesus Christ himself. The replacement of James with Jesus came about with the Christian copies.
There is a disturbing lack of pagan and secular evidence for Jesus Christ. Even the things like the darkening of the day at a time when solar eclipses were incredibly unlikely to happen or the more memorable things like the dead rising from their graves - get no mention from anyone.
The Romans and Greeks loved recording important events. Why they would stay silent about the subversion of nature is befuddling, unless it only happened in the realm of the fanciful.
Tacitus wrote what he was told by Christians. He tells of Pontius Pilate being a procurator [without saying of what] despite the fact that Pontius Pilate was a prefect and the title procurator was only existent in the second half of the first century after Jesus's death.
Tacitus does not name Jesus but instead uses the title 'Christ' as if it were a name. Also considering how Tacitus hated Christianity, it would have served him to say what the Christian belief was as it would mean at that time it was a young cult - something which meant it could be openly destroyed, as the Romans were only tolerant of ancient cults.
No ancient Christian writers make use of Tactitus's writings either despite the powerful propaganda it could have served, highlighting just how far ahead of its founding Tacitus was writing about and no other Pagan writers express any knowledge whatsoever of any outrage expressed by the Christians and the Jews.
Josephus
Philo-Judæus
Seneca
Pliny Elder
Arrian
Petronius
Dion Pruseus
Paterculus
Suetonius
Juvenal
Martial
Persius
Plutarch
Pliny Younger
Tacitus
Justus of Tiberius
Apollonius
Quintilian
Lucanus
Epictetus
Hermogones
Silius Italicus
Statius
Ptolemy
Appian
Phlegon
Phædrus
Valerius Maximus
Lucian
Pausanias
Florus Lucius
Quintius Curtius
Aulus Gellius
Dio Chrysostom
Columella
Valerius Flaccus
Damis
Favorinus
Lysias
Pomponius Mela
Appian of Alexandria
Theon of Smyrna
In that list of Pagan and Jewish writers who lived during the century Jesus Christ was supposed to have existed, we only have two disputed passages in Roman writings and two forged Jewish passages in the works of a Jewish author.
So far all the evidence used to "prove" the existence of Jesus Christ is pretty debunked. Maybe someone will some day find evidence for his existence? It need not matter on his character's importance, but until then it would be silly to assume such a character must have existed without evidence.
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Topic: Amazingly Stupid Things You've Heard People Say (Read 1043308 times)