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Talk:Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ

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This Christianity related article has been awarded SILVER status for quality. We like it, and you should too! See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

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This article is such a mess[edit]

We really should consider nuking the whole thing and rewriting it from scratch. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 01:27, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that much of the bloat come from the nonsense we get here in the talk page so it will become a mess again over time because the matter of the Evidence vs the interpretation of that evidence keeps coming up. I have moved a lot of the Jesus myth material to that article and trimmed a lot from this article. I agree the article needs some house cleaning but doesn't need to be nuked from orbit to fix it.--BruceGrubb (talk) 00:11, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, it really needs to be cleaned up. It can be more organized with less rambling and more to the point as to what they're actually trying to prove. --BaileyTheDog (talk) 17:56 27 May 2017 (MTC)
I agree it does ramble on a bit but part of that is because the "evidence" presented has so many problems. Perhaps finding a way to daughter much of this out would help.--BruceGrubb (talk) 21:20, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
While Bruce is strident, single-issue and obsessive, it does remain it's a seriously fucked up area for important reasons. It's been improved considerably with the split out to subarticles, for example - David Gerard (talk) 23:30, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

AcademicBiblical takes a stab[edit]

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/62qj0z/could_jesus_have_developed_like_john_frum/ 32℉uzzy; 0℃atPotato (talk/stalk) 17:45, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

"RationalWiki wrote a page in which they attempt to argue against the historicity of Jesus."
Funny thing the very first paragraph in this article's body expressly states:
"It has become obvious that the actual scope of this article needs to be spelled out. This article is NOT about the Christ myth theory but about the quality of the evidence presented regarding his existence (both for and against). The debate will come up for context but this article is NOT on the debate. In fact, as the Christ Myth article shows its very definition varies so wildly that some versions would be considered historical Jesus positions."
It is hard to take a comment seriously when the very first sentence of it demonstrates they either didn't read the article or didn't understand the above.--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:52, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Consensus Being Insufficient Evidence[edit]

Under Consensus regarding the existence of Jesus: "Consensus in of itself is not evidence for something. There are examples where long held consensus (such as the Sun revolving around the Earth[154]) where shown to have been flawed."

Why is it ok for us to use "Most climate scientists agree that anthropogenic global warming is real" as an argument then? I'm just curious. I fully acknowledge that anthropogenic global warming is real. --Amrator (talk) 22:32, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

According to the first sentence, it talks about "consensus in of itself", meaning simply pure consensus is not enough to believe something is correct. In global warming's case, there's consensus because there's very strong, scientific evidence that it is occurring right now. It's similar to accepted consensus about the theory of gravity or continental drift. БaбyЛuigiOнФire(T|C) 22:34, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Right, and the second sentence clearly stats "Conversely, to challenge a consensus one has to provide a reasonable counter-theory to explain what ever is being presented as evidence." (sic) I would like to point out that at one time the consensus was that plate tectonics, the existence of Troy, the Norse colonization of the Americas, and the Big Bang Theory were all not "real" theories and were the domain of crackpots and lunatics! Heck plate tectonics was labeled crackpot as late as 1954 in a peer reviewed journal.--BruceGrubb (talk) 18:12, 12 January 2018 (UTC)