Is this whole universe only a concept?

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: Oh good, as I have stated several times already, neither am I.

As for your implication that I am not following basic scholarship practices. Me and a myriad of other "hacks" right? Glad you made it to your sophomore year. More power to you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jesus_myth_theory

There will always be dissent on any academic subject, in history most of all. History is built by people who dissent, who ask questions, who revise (yes, that naughty word, "revise" is actually at the very core of historical scholarship.) But to dissent against something that is as commonly accepted in scholarship as the historical Jesus, one must produce extraordinary evidence. Neither of those sources (RationalWiki most of all) are academic, and both were put together by people with various agendas. In fact, most of the "Christ myth" writers have or had agendas. I have written it here before, but a historian does not begin with a conclusion and then selectively choose evidence that meets that conclusion. A historian usually formulates their thesis only after they have done extensive studies already.

A writer who argues that there was no historical Jesus must be prepared to dismiss a substantial amount of evidence and historical scholarship. To me, it is on the same level as arguing that Washington was assisted by aliens from Planet Zarf when leading armies against the British in the American Revolutionary War. Disregarding a great deal of evidence, one could probably, eventually, make that argument. But is it substantiated? Is it history? Not really. As Bart Ehrman (an atheist and someone deeply skeptical of Christianity and its claimed origins) writes, "These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology."

The nasty "glad you made it to your sophomore year" remark really has no place here, along with any other personal insult. I'm not even going to dignify it with a further response, other than to say that you should know better than that and *be* better than that.

Adi wrote:
The nasty "glad you made it to your sophomore year" remark really has no place here, along with any other personal insult. I'm not even going to dignify it with a further response, other than to say that you should know better than that and *be* better than that.

LOL just as much as your implication that I did NOT make it to my sophomore year... right Adi?

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: LOL just as much as your implication that I did NOT make it to my sophomore year... right Adi?

Err, no. I said that what you were saying and arguing was not history and was ignoring fundamental practices in historical scholarship, but if that's what it is, I'm not going to mince words. I have no idea what your academic or professional background is, and it's not really relevant, since I'm not interested in who you are as a person. You may have a doctorate in history and teach at Harvard. You may be a college drop-out. Either way, if you're arguing from a place of bad history, I'm going to call you out on it. No, it is not a personal attack against you (as your statement about me was.) Sorry if you read it that way.

Adi wrote:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: LOL just as much as your implication that I did NOT make it to my sophomore year... right Adi?

Err, no. I said that what you were saying and arguing was not history and was ignoring fundamental practices in historical scholarship, but if that's what it is, I'm not going to mince words. I have no idea what your academic or professional background is, and it's not really relevant, since I'm not interested in who you are as a person. You may have a doctorate in history and teach at Harvard. You may be a college drop-out. Either way, if you're arguing from a place of bad history, I'm going to call you out on it. No, it is not a personal attack against you (as your statement about me was.) Sorry if you read it that way.

Ah very good then. Neither was mine. In fact I am glad that you have had the opportunity to attend college and learn some of the process and procedure of scholarly research and study. As for the sites I referenced, I was not linking to those sites in and of themselves but to the content, namely the scholars that have written extensively about the evidence for the existence of Jesus. There is a long list and while you may cite that they are fringe studies etc that does not make them so. I'm just saying that there is evidence on both sides.

In the end I don't think either one of us will prove that Jesus either existed or he did not exist. We could spend the next 10 pages throwing people and books and quotes back and forth and still end up right where we are right now. Many scholars say that portions of the Bible itself were forged and there is good evidence for this as well. What does that do to a book that claims to be inerrant? I don't know and quite frankly I don't care. That may sound harsh but its not really, its just my path. I'm glad you have such passion in your path as well. I hope you find all that you are looking for and along the way we can still walk side by side for a time in this place while remaining on different journeys.

Adder wrote: Viewing things as two domains is the easiest way to handle this IMO, the inner subjective world and out objective world. You can then use the same language without it contradicting itself so much... are dreams real; why yes they are in my inner subjective world but of course not in the outer subjective world, for example.

Does it make sense to say the objective and subjective worlds can be separated? There is an objective reality, which is to say a reality which exists. There is also a subjective reality, which is to say the reality we perceive to exist. But you cannot have a subjective reality without an objective existence and you cannot have an objective reality without a subjective perception. Two sides of the same coin, but the same coin nonetheless. Such distinctions are convenient labeling.

Regarding Jesus: The likelihood of a religious following spawning without any figurehead seems far-fetched. There was a man we know as Jesus who lived and taught and died. There is also the Christ figure this man became after his death. There is both historical reality and historical mythology surrounding the same person.

Caracters in movies like harry potter are an inspirations, heroes a dream to our lifes, we dont have magic or powers or ligthsabers, so its cool to imagine if we had and have heroes figthing evil... We all need heroes or inspiration. Many of us dont have a life with adventures like the movies, we need that to intertainment xD

Akkarin wrote: Does it make sense to say the objective and subjective worlds can be separated? There is an objective reality, which is to say a reality which exists. There is also a subjective reality, which is to say the reality we perceive to exist. But you cannot have a subjective reality without an objective existence and you cannot have an objective reality without a subjective perception. Two sides of the same coin, but the same coin nonetheless. Such distinctions are convenient labeling.

I'd disagree with the wording that subjective reality is "the reality we perceive to exist", because it infers to me subjectivity is limited to our experience 'in' objective reality. And we'd agree it would be pointless for them to mean the same thing, so for me the subjective world includes things like dreams, as such it is the experience of that sentience - regardless of the relationship to objective reality.

So, IMO, yes we all have a subjective experience of objective reality through our perception, but subjective reality is not bound to objective reality in anyway. Therefore, from the subjective realities point of view, objective reality really only is just another source of subjective experience..... a pretty important one though!!!!