Topics taken out of the Mental Health Club for space/other reasons

[MirkerLurker she/her]

On 6/12/2025 at 6:06 AM, ParaTulip said:

This example isn't actually so bad if you are just doing ring counting in a base of 3. Basically, rather than counting in a line that extends indefinitely, you count in a circle that goes 0, 1, 2, 3, and then loops back to that first 0. Most computers tend to behave a bit like this when doing integer operations, but with a much bigger circle that includes negative numbers and is way larger.

 

Pascal's Wager has a problem when you consider any other religion though. Like, why not become a worshiper of Juipiter in the tradition of the pre-christian Romans or embrace Tzecatlipoca as the god of the black sun that is the night sky? Or if the religion needs to be actively followed by a large number of people, why not Buddhism or some form of Hinduism? Pascal's Wager seems to only work in a world where there is only 1 religion.

I am going to have to demand a source on that claim for at least Julius Caesar. I have read some of his account of the Gaulic war in the Latin. I don't think anyone claims to have any extant texts written by Jesus' own hand that correspond to major historic events like that.

Alright, a short amount of digging results in the following:

The argument that we have more historical evidence for Jesus than for Caesar comes from the age of the earliest manuscripts for their respective sources. 
Caesar: Has three contemporary sources (purportedly written when person was alive): the writings of Cicero, of Sallust, and of course Caesar himself; and two strong later sources, Suetonius and Plutarch. This provides a strong confirmation of the authenticity of the events, given that there are separate people from the same time writing about them. The weakness of them comes from the age of the manuscripts we have. Caesar's writings are translated from 12 main manuscripts, dating to between the ninth and twelfth centuries. So the earliest of those is still from some 900 years after the death of Caesar. Sallust is translated from about 20 manuscripts from the 10th and 11th centuries. Cicero is an older source, with 15 manuscripts ranging from the fifth to ninth centuries. In short, there is a very large time gap in between when the writings were first written down, and when we have documents we can date with those writings.

Jesus: Has no truly contemporary sources. Has multiple sources from the first century (so within 100 years of his life) - almost the entire New Testament, some of which was written as early as 20 years after his death, along with the non-christian writer Flavius Josephus - and looking into the early second century also gives us Tacitus and Lucian among others. Lucian in particular is of note as the writings of his that mention Jesus are not only non-christian, but are outright mockery of christianity - and his writings confirm the life and crucifixion of Jesus. This is a driving point in the argument of the real existence of Jesus - even his enemies, both during his time and after, do not attempt to claim he didn't exist. It was a fully accepted fact in the immediate time period, to the point where why would you bother arguing it. The Jewish leaders of the time argued vehemently against his claims, but not against his existence. The Talmud itself contains record of his crucifixion. 
Manuscript-wise: The earliest surviving manuscript piece of the New Testament we have is P52, which contains a fragment of the Gospel of John, which dates to the early second century. So around 100 years after Jesus' death. There are 11 manuscripts dated to the 2nd or 3rd century. P46 contains a respectable chunk of text - multiple letters (as in sending mail, not as in a-b-c letters) - as opposed to P52, which is a tiny little fragment whose importance is strictly that it dates so early and thus gives evidence of the gospel actually being written down that early. Overall, we have much older manuscripts for Jesus - and also many more of them. There's a much more easily traced line of manuscripts, leading back much closer to when Jesus lived, than there is for Caesar. 

I digress a bit. The point is, saying "more evidence for Christ than Caesar" isn't really a clear-cut "definitely more for this one than the other". So I'll drop that as a "statement of fact", when it's really more an interesting comparison to think about. Caesar has contemporary writings and external confirmation, Jesus has a much smaller time gap between time of writings and extant manuscripts.

But I think it still supports my original point, which is that there is a lot of historical evidence for Jesus. 

Alexander the Great: 5 main sources, all of which are written 150-350 years after Alexander's death. I haven't looked into the manuscript dates for those yet, so I don't know how close to that our earliest extant manuscripts are. But it's late in my time zone, so I'll come back to that...probably not tomorrow, but hopefully Saturday. 

Plato: I ran out of time searching through things about Caesar. Haven't found Plato in the notes yet. It's possible I misremembered and it's Socrates that the claim about "more evidence" is made for. I will, again, come back to that later.

This is the actual comparison between Jesus and Caesar (textually) that I found, though I read through several other tangentially related things too: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/sources-for-caesar-and-jesus-compared/
I used this for papyrus dates: https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2019/02/15/the-earliest-new-testament-manuscripts/

Edited June 13, 2025 by MirkerLurker

[MirkerLurker she/her]

Hey all, I know I'm resurrecting the post, but I'd be sad to see it die because it shifted too deeply into religion. So!

I just want to say that we don't need to turn this into a discussion of religion/Christianity. We went that direction because HoidSlayer asked, and I love that we can talk about that on here - but we don't need to stay there. We're definitely not gonna find the answers and come to a conclusion with a few comments on the internet. I enjoy digging through historical evidence for and against the Bible and Christianity, but that's not where we started, and y'all don't need to enjoy it the way I do. If you don't want to respond to my religion stuff, go ahead and change the subject. We can jump around on subjects - back to "is there objective truth" or "what is math" or intro a new question to debate. We're not gonna solve anything here, but it's enjoyable to discuss things.

 

On 6/2/2025 at 12:04 AM, Dragonheir said:

There's a specific word for that, I think... 

Agnostic is the word for that. "I neither believe nor disbelieve in God; I believe only that which can be proven through material phenomena, and therefore neither accept nor refute the idea of a God, as there is no (or insufficient) material evidence either way."

 

[Kansas Stormcursed he/him]

2 hours ago, MirkerLurker said:

Hey all, I know I'm resurrecting the post, but I'd be sad to see it die because it shifted too deeply into religion. So!

I just want to say that we don't need to turn this into a discussion of religion/Christianity. We went that direction because HoidSlayer asked, and I love that we can talk about that on here - but we don't need to stay there. We're definitely not gonna find the answers and come to a conclusion with a few comments on the internet. I enjoy digging through historical evidence for and against the Bible and Christianity, but that's not where we started, and y'all don't need to enjoy it the way I do. If you don't want to respond to my religion stuff, go ahead and change the subject. We can jump around on subjects - back to "is there objective truth" or "what is math" or intro a new question to debate. We're not gonna solve anything here, but it's enjoyable to discuss things.

 

Agnostic is the word for that. "I neither believe nor disbelieve in God; I believe only that which can be proven through material phenomena, and therefore neither accept nor refute the idea of a God, as there is no (or insufficient) material evidence either way."

 

I do want to respond to your reply to my last post (maybe on the previous page), but that'll probably be at the end of the summer when I have functioning brain again