The God Delusion Ch. 2 (Cont.)

On page 58 of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins my reading was brought to a screeching halt.

"During the Roman occupation of Palestine, Christianity was founded by Paul of Tarsus..."

This statement is made in the context of lumping all the "Abrahamic" religions together (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).

The absurdity of both statements is evident if one is compelled to be consistent in their treatment of evidence, however let us first consider the post-modern position. Before we can even ask the question "did Jesus exist" we must first realize that modern methods of identification did not exist in the days Jesus supposedly existed. This lends itself to the reality that to "prove" someone existed one would have to consult outside sources of a reliable nature to establish any possibility of existence, let alone an assurance. This is the post-modern position at it's finest. Who can be certain anyone existed before traceable and documentable means of identification? By this reasoning post-moderns assert that not even Socrates certainly existed, so we simply can't be sure Jesus did.

From this I am left with the question, as usual, how? How can we know for certain that Paul existed and Jesus did not? The same sort of evidence exists for them both, so if Dawkins' position were consistent, he would also have to discount Paul. However, since he doesn't do so, we clearly see here his bias towards evidence standing in the face of what he has already decided is true and/or adequate evidence.

It goes without saying that Dawkins discounts the most reliable (based on its track record through history, archaeology, general science, etc.) source of evidence: the Bible. Although given Dawkins' brief (and sorry) synopsis of the history of the three Abrahamic religions, I am not at all surprised to find his treatment of history to be lacking as well.

The assertion "Jesus never really existed" is the only way I can make sense of such an absurd claim as the one I have quoted above. You may have noticed I did not cite any sources in this short response. I have done that so that you can search for yourself. Because not everyone has access to the sort of resources it takes to do this sort of research, I suggest my reader to go to google, type in "Did Jesus ever exist" and start reading. This is where it gets tricky. Read...and think about what is being said. Don't take a few facts someone has written about history as the entire story. Use your intellect and think what that means, how did the author come to his/her conclusions, what are their sources. Sources come in three different sorts:Primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary, in the context of Jesus' existence, would be something along the lines of Pontius Pilates' own journal (if he kept one) detailing his meetings with Jesus as recounted in the gospels; or perhaps King Harod's journals describing his meeting with Jesus. Since such resources are scarce and in other languages when available, a secondary source would be someone's translation and commentary of these items. Tertiary sources would rightly be everything else.

By these standards one may come to the first realization that the Bible is one of the few primary sources for evidence of such things. However, because of the popular (and entirely implausible and inconsistent) belief that the Bible is not to be believed, this source is discounted outright, without ever considering its stature in the community of ancient texts.

The same technique (i.e. thinking about and applying history, not simply reading it) applied to how the Bible was written, preserved, and transmitted yields the reality of why the Bible is the single most reliable document on the face of this earth. Not just because God wrote it (and He certainly did), but because of the manner by which he did so and the natural mechanisms (which He created to begin with) He used in so doing.

I hope you can see that it is the theist who calls you to use your intellect, and the atheist who asks you to just blindly believe.