Why is it Christians will readily dismiss Santa as a joke, but hesitant to do the same to God/Jesus?

Sounds like you've been listening to the Pop Historians.

The "contemporary account" argument is ridiculous on two levels.

(1) Is the fact that it's a completely arbitrary standard of evidence that isn't asked of any other historical figure than Jesus. There are tons of historical figures that also lack contemporary verification that historians have no doubt existed. Alexander the Great comes to mind as such a figure. 95% of what we know about the greatest conqueror in history comes from historians writing centuries after his death, but it is still universally recognized as historical fact. Only a few fragments of records attributable to contemporaries of Alexander exist, despite the fact he ruled over most of the known (to the Greeks) world! If Alexander the Great can only muster a few contemporary scribbles, it's not surprising that a carpenter-turned-preacher in a provincial backwater escapes the record until roughly 60 years after his death. Which brings me to point two...

(2) Simple logic dictates that it is waaaay more likely Jesus existed than not. Consider the following:

(a) The biggest source for a historical Jesus comes from a Jew named Josephus who wrote of the preacher around the year 90AD.

(b) Jesus was likely crucified and killed around the year 30AD

(c) It is therefore likely that in Josephus's youth (roughly 70AD) he met elderly Jews who had encountered or at least been contemporaries of Jesus prior to his death 40 years prior.

If Jesus had not been a real person, it would've been very suspicious to a person like Josephus who had to have had plenty of encounters with living contemporaries of Jesus that no one remembered Jesus's actual existence. And yet, with these experiences in mind, Josephus seems to have no doubt of the Man's existence. Furthermore, as the persecution of Christians had already begun by this point, it should've been easy to ask around Jerusalem around that time and prove that no one had heard of Jesus before. And yet, that never occurred, and all debates concerning Christianity around that time seemed to take the man's (no comment on divinity) existence for granted. Logically speaking, the most simple and therefore likely explanation is that Jesus did indeed walk the earth as a man.

/r/atheism Thread Parent