Hi All,.

I was born into a Roman Catholic family. Around 20 years ago I stopped practicing religion. I said to myself what’s the point! I am busy with other stuff and religion is just an extra burden on me. So I quit it and got on with life. Recently I started to question the meaning of life so I started to search. I discovered the following information.

Did Jesus exist after all?

Independent Non Christian sources on the existence of Christ Jesus

1 -Cornelius Tacitus Non Christian  (56 – 117AD) historian and Roman Senator in a passage ‘Annales, book 15, verse 44’ refers to Christ, Pontius Pilate and a mass executions of Christians. General scholarly view considers Tacitus to be authentic


2 – Flavius Joseph a Romano-Jewish historian (37-100AD) Book 20 Chapter 9,1   "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" Modern scholarship has almost universally acknowledged the authenticity of the reference


-          How does one explain what happened in Portugal at Fatima in 1917, “The Miracle of the Sun”  which was witnessed by an estimated 30,000 – 70,000 people?



-          How to explain the Apparation of Mary in Egypt Cairo 1968 witnessed by 1000's of people called Our Lady of Zeitoun?

-          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Zeitoun


-          How to explain the miraculous healing of people in Lourdes France and in Bosnia-Hercegovina in a place called Medjugorje where 100,000’s of people go annually.


-          How to explain the wounds on the hands, feet and side of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (1887 – 1968) which he had for 50 years which apparently were those of Jesus & his ability to read people and heal people all in the name of Jesus.



-          How to explain how the body of St Bernadette of Lourdes 130 years after her death has not decomposed. Her body is not artificially preserved.



-          How to explain how Alexandria da Costa (1904-1955) survived on no food for 13 years only the Eucharist.  Verified by independent doctors



-     How to explain how Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774 – 1824) had wounds which apparently were those of Jesus on her body. 

Can someone please give me some answers based on facts?

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Thank you, I could only be bothered to deal with one.  I've nearly stopped responding to them when they bring up 10 things because as fast as you should one down they jump to the next and eventually they go the full loop and you just end up repeating yourself.  I guess we'll see if you have better luck, :D

as fast as you [shove] one down they jump to the next

I know how you feel. The hammer is scientific scepticism. The moles are the religious crackpots. You can bonk them all down but in the end it's a waste of time because you're a grown-up playing a kid's game.

Bravo, Gallup's. Excellently executed.

First thing I'd do is point out the dates of those you reference in 1 and 2.. Both were born after Jesus was to have died..So there was no way they could have known him personally.

Also, it's well known the Romans kept immaculate records. Now, in the Bible it says when the Jewish leaders came to Pilate complaining that Jesus had broken the law.. Where are the records of that? And where are the records of Pilate stating that he saw no law broken? Also remember he sent the case out to another Precept for review to be sure he hadn't missed anything.. Essentially there would be a back-up of records of this exchange. Finally, there would also be a record of Jesus's execution..... Yet no records of any of those have been found. 

How do you explain that..? 

Romans getting sloppy all of a sudden, just in time to make a miracle happen (since we know a miracle has to be poorly documented, else it's not a miracle).

Well, I have not researched it much..  But...  My default position is..  Church said it?  Church scammed it.  I don't buy it till they can sell it (with evidence).

Even these rationally explicable events were not explicable , and they were actual "miracles" , the hard (impossible) work of proving that a god exists , still lies before you.

I doubt anyone can explain the second to last one with Alexandria da Costa, but I saw something similar to it a few years ago concerning a holy man from India. He is in no way a devotee of the Christian faith and claims that his ability to live without food and water comes from Shiva.

Some info here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/International/man-eat-drink/story?id=1...

and here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3236118.stm

The man even claims to have done it for decades. Whether or not that's true, he is certainly a man who would be considered an apostate of the Christian faith. This is hardly a thing of God, but a thing of exceptional biology.

Lots of weird stuff?  Can you predict it and recreate it?  No?  Coincidence..  Or BS..

Perhaps present some questions "based on facts."

So we are back to the god of the gaps.  Science cannot currently explain one particular event or other...or more precisely, doesn't have enough reliable evidence for specific historical phenomena that were believed by some to be evidence for a god. The only evidence we have are witness testimonies that would not stand up in a court.  We have no supporting evidence of those witness's state of health at the time.

The first seems to have been an atmospheric phenomenon and it is interesting to see that the photograph of the event does not show the event itself, but the crowd witnessing the event.

The second event photograph appears to be doctored, but if it's not, it shows a blob protruding from a building (perhaps a gargoyle) during an electrical atmospheric phenomenon.

At one time the Norsemen used to believe that thunder was Thor's hammer Myollnir striking metal in his forge and the Greeks believed that lightening was hurled by Zeus.  Are powerful or unusual atmospheric phenomena to be used as evidence for a god, or evidence of atmospheric systems.

With regard to Pio, someone has already pointed out that there was a recent Hindu holy man who had survived on no food for years...or so it was believed.  Was that proof that Ganesh is real?  The evidence is either intentionally fabricated or missing.

Under certain atmospheric conditions, bodies are preserved.  There is a boy in the British Museum who was buried thousands of years ago under a sand storm, and mummies of unintentionally preserved bodies in many parts of the world.

You use lots of words like "apparently" in your post, and link to wiki where alternative explanations are provided.  What ties the implication that these were anything to do with a divinity, and further the christian alien divinity is belief in advance that this were conceivable.  Without a god, we would look for evidence that might help us to find a real explanation, and when an event goes too far into the past without good evidence being recorded, as with those events above, then we'd just write them of as unexplained, not imagine them as rather circumstantial evidence for the existence of some impossible space alien who raped a women who then bore it a son 2000 years ago.


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