Do you think Moses existed as a historical figure?

[Vishvavajra]

Some of you are using what is called, “Adverse Reasoning.” The Bible does not say Jesus was not married, thus maybe he was. The bible does not say Jesus was never in California, thus maybe he was. The Bible does not say the center of the earth is not made of cheese, thus maybe it is.

Your reductiones ad absurdum are themselves absurd because the question of whether he was married is not a ridiculous question. The questions of whether he was in California or the earth's core is made of cheese (as if the Biblical authors could know anything about any of that) are patently absurd from the outset.

Let me put it another way: the Gospels never say that Jesus ate cheese, so is it reasonable to conclude that he never did? In fact there's a lot about his diet that is never mentioned. Did he eat meat? We have no basis for determining that stuff one way or another. The scholarly response is to refrain from a statement either way.

The Gospels do not explicitly mention a wife, but at the same time there are women who do not appear to be related to Jesus in his company, arranging his burial, etc. There is a good chance that an ancient reader would infer that he was married from those details alone, without having to be told. It's not proof, but it is an open possibility. As for the reasoning involved, the operative principle is that the absence of evidence is not itself evidence of absence--i.e. the lack of mention of Jesus's marriage is not evidence that he never married. There is no decisive evidence either way.

It is easy to sit back and say, “Prove this, and prove that,” but you never prove your adverse theories. Some claim, “Men of science have proven this, and proven that,” If that is so, how come many of the things they have proven, often to turn out not true?
When some of you claim, “Science says this is true,” How come you never speak about the other 50% of scientist who say it is not?

People often mistakenly claim that scientific theory has "proven" this or that, but scientists themselves don't talk that way. No proposition can be comprehensively proven in any case; the best you can do is find that it holds up to the evidence in a consistent manner, and that you can't disprove it by finding a clear exception.

But I don't think you're really interested in that. You only bring up science in order to disparage it, which is a very bizarre thing for a person typing electronic messages on an Internet forum to be doing. This technology is not the product of magic, after all. Nor is anybody else positing any kind of antagonism between science and religion. I would even say that people who think their religion and science are at odds need to reexamine their attitudes towards one or both.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Likewise, Jesus may have had 12 fingers, as the Bible never specifically mentioned how many fingers he had. Oh, the possibilities are endless!

 

[outhouse]

It is easy to sit back and say, “Prove this, and prove that,” but you never prove your adverse theories.

That's just it.

We are not blind here, and not running on bias.

WE have evidence, that shows the Canaanite origins of Israelites.

WE have evidence that exodus is a theological piece that reflects a much later date then written about. It was not a history book.


We have evidence it is the charter myth of early Israelites. Per wiki

 

[Domenic]

Vishvavajar, you said:

" I would even say that people who think their religion and science are at odds need to reexamine their attitudes towards one or both."

No I am not against science...God is the best scientist there is. I am against those who make claim they have figured things out. As to the computer...it does not match Gods computer...The human brain.

 

[JoStories]

We don't know that he did marry, but we also don't have any evidence that he didn't. It's one of the many things about his life that people have to be content to leave up in the air. All we can say for sure is that his later biographers didn't have any knowledge of his being married, or didn't think it was significant. But they also didn't know when he was born or a number of other biographical details, so it's not inconceivable that his being married simply wasn't a core part of his story, so it fell out of the tradition. It's also possible that he simply didn't live long enough to marry, as in the ancient Mediterranean it would not be unusual for a man to marry in his early 30s (often to a girl half that age). Or perhaps he was simply too busy wandering around and preaching to settle down as a householder. And his relationship with his own family seems to have been strained in certain ways, possibly because his paternity was in question (the fact that he's called "Jesus, son of Mary" makes him sound like a *******, or one whose father refused to recognize him).

But the blanket statement that Jesus was definitely never married is just something that people believe because they want to have a particular view of him. Compare the Catholic doctrine that he was an only child, which is also unsupported by the evidence. Worse, his brothers are explicitly mentioned not only in the Gospels but also by Paul, who claims to have met James personally. People try to weasel out of that one by claiming that "brother" isn't used literally, but that's special pleading and doesn't fit the context at all. It seems that Jesus's family life is something that a lot of people find very threatening to their particular view of him, for whatever reason.

Similarly, the statement that Jesus definitely was married is overstating the case and is more concerned with opposing the traditional view than it is with the evidence (of which there is none).

Your last sentence here makes a very valid point. However, that being said, for me it does make a difference if he was married or not. IMO, it improves his status and makes the story more believable. I acknowledge that that is merely my opinion and has no bearing whatsoever on the story or its import in the grand scheme of things. I further agree that Jesus having been celibate is more to the liking of most fundamentalists. I am not quite sure I understand the 'why' of that as for me, it is a moot point. So what if he was married? How does that diminish the weight of his message? Yet, somehow, people think that it does. It seems they feel, and this is just my view, that having been married and all that that entails: sex, children, etc; makes him lesser. I don't agree with them. I know there is no proof or evidence either way but again, for me, it seems illogica for him not to have been.

 

[Vishvavajra]

No I am not against science...God is the best scientist there is. I am against those who make claim they have figured things out. As to the computer...it does not match Gods computer...The human brain.

God is not a scientist. A scientist is a human being who tries to mitigate our limited human perspective by observing the natural world in a systematic what, culminating in the creation of theories that can be used to explain and predict phenomena with accuracy. Outside of the human sphere the word "scientist" is rendered meaningless.

Also meaningless is the assertion that people should never claim to have figured things out. Nobody claims that human knowledge is infallible, least of all scientists. But when a theory accounts for all of the available evidence, it is not out of bounds to treat that theory as true, at least until someone is able to refute it with even stronger evidence. That's how human knowledge works.

If you want to disparage human knowledge in a blanket sense, that's actually self-defeating, since your knowledge of God also relies on human understanding, which we all agree is fallible. There's only so far you can disparage human knowledge before you have to admit that you don't know anything either. And that necessarily includes knowledge of God. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

[JoStories]

Vishvavajar, you said:

" I would even say that people who think their religion and science are at odds need to reexamine their attitudes towards one or both."

No I am not against science...God is the best scientist there is. I am against those who make claim they have figured things out. As to the computer...it does not match Gods computer...The human brain.

And yet the human brain is fallible as well. How else do you explain the disparity seen in human brains. We have ancephaly, IQ's the level of Hawkins, or those who suffer MR. If God gave us this 'computer', why the wide levels of difference? One would think that God would have gotten it right.