What part does it exclude?
To me, that seems to exclude the Jesus part tho.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 5 days ago
it doesn’t mention Jesus
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
Maybe I’m losing the context, when are you using this term? If you wanted a simple term to get the idea across you could just say you’re a “Christian atheist”, no? Most people probably don’t care tbh, so it’s unclear when you need to be making these distinctions.
BonerMan@ani.social 5 days ago
The guy was a real scientifically proven to have existed person. Being interested in him and not religion is having a interest in history therefore being atheist.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
We have no direct evidence of Christ’s existence, there is no “scientific proof” of Christ’s existence as a person. Instead what we have is historical evidence, i.e. people wrote about him, so he probably existed. It’s the best evidence we have that Christ lived, and it’s generally good enough in the discipline of history - but it’s not the same standard of evidence as used in science.
Rolando@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You’re right, but just to rephrase:
- The natural sciences aren’t in the business of saying whether or not a given person existed.
- If you think of history as a social science, then there may be “scientific” methodologies that determine whether or not a given person existed, but that’s not what’s generally though of as “scientifically proven”
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
Right, I’m not trying to indirectly make a point about Christ not being likely to have existed or anything, just making a point about the language: Christ’s existence hasn’t been scientifically proven, it’s just that historians agree that it’s a reasonable guess based on the texts that were left behind and mentioned him.
Archaeologists might use scientific methodologies, e.g. carbon dating, to estimate how old a text is, for example, but I wouldn’t consider this scientific proof that someone existed.
BonerMan@ani.social 5 days ago
Bro, he was Jesus from Nazareth not “Christ” and yes we do have documents and texts from that time naming him, these documents predate the Bible. Its not clear where his body actually is, however there is scientifically enough evidence of his existence that it can be called a fact, even the resurrection can be scientifically explained with sedatives that did exist naturally around the time and where used together with Vinegar, wich is named in the Bible as a pretty significant element of the crucifixion.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
I don’t see the point in policing whether he is referred to as Christ or Jesus from Nazareth - is there some meaningful distinction here?
Also documents are not scientific evidence. The documents are enough evidence to consider it a historical fact, but that’s, again, not the same thing as a scientific fact, and it is not backed with any material or physical evidence. Not that we expect or demand such evidence, I’m only pointing this out because you claimed there is scientific proof where there is none.
Regardless, I would be curious to get your receipts on those documents referencing Christ that predate the gospels, I hadn’t heard of that before!
Speculation about the resurrection being faked with sedatives is irrelevant to this discussion, but since you brought it up, why not entertain more likely alternatives: towards the end of the book of John, Mary saw the resurrected Christ in the tomb and was the first to see him, yet she did not recognize him:
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
If he took sedatives, why did he look like a different person such that she thought he was the gardener? Why not think the resurrected person was just falsely claiming to be Christ, since he didn’t look like him anyway? Why resort to more elaborate explanations when we have more simple ones at hand?
There is also the issue about how Christ supposedly survived being eviscerated and tortured before being hung on the cross, even if he did have access to sedatives. It’s just not likely he survived that, and the sedatives don’t explain that away.
rtxn@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Adherence to a moral standard is secular, even if the source is a text of religious significance.
Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
I’m agnostic. I believe there may or may not be a god (regardless of religion) and that we may or may not find proof once we die but while I’m alive I’m just gonna live the best life I can with my own values. If Jesus was alive today I believe we would be homies, dude seemed chill.