Burden of Proof So there's an old saying “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” It is not incumbent upon me to disprove extraordinary claims of supernatural beings doing miraculous and magical activities. It is incumbent upon the person making those claims to prove their contentions. What I'm bringing forth in my objections is actually a common sense perspective, a scientific evaluation, based on what we do have, not what we might have or what may be. I'm not claiming that for example the Greek son of god Hercules, whose life resembles that of Jesus Christ in many ways, is actually a real historical figure. So my burden of proof should not be greater than that of the people who are making their extraordinary claims for supernatural and miraculous beings. Though Christian theologians, scholars and historians tend to rely on less evidence for proofs of their faith than for the comparative religion and mythology that I'm describing. In other words, they will dun me with requests for evidence, for every single detail, as much as I can provide, mountains and mountains of it, in a variety of languages, as far back as you can get to the most modern period and this is all- this is what I do actually. I've collected as much as I can find from around the world and in as many cultures as possible, dating back as far into antiquity as we possess, all the way up to the most modern research, to show these motifs, to show these origins of various ideas that we find in the New Testament. That is the burden of proof that has been requested of my particular perspective of reality, my thesis. On the other hand however in order to convince themselves that two thousand years ago the god of the cosmos came to Earth through the womb of a young virgin girl of a particular ethnicity, performed miracles like healing the blind, walking on water and raising the dead, transfiguring on a mount, calming a storm, being crucified himself obviously and then resurrecting himself from the dead and ascending into heaven, they require ... well pretty much no proof, no evidence, other than the New Testament. A few books, a few hundred pages; that's all they require. So that standard is really quite low. There are no physical artifacts from the first century. We don't have any autographs or originals of the Gospels or the Epistles. We have no evidence in the literary record of the existence of the canonical gospels as we have them before the end of the 2nd century. In other words they're not quoted verbatim anywhere before that. They don't appear in the historical record, nobody mentions them. We have no evidence showing that they really were written by the people in whose names they are presented. We don't even really have any evidence that those particular individuals - Matthew Mark Luke and John - actually lived as they’re depicted in the New Testament. In fact we barely have evidence that Paul - Saint Paul - lived. The stories that are told about him where he's brought before Caesar, he's ... rampaging with hundreds of troops, he's in a shipwreck, he escapes from a prison in Rome. All of these fairly significant events do not make it into the historical record in any way, shape or form. And so there's no physical artifacts as I say from the time that this happened, there's no information in any writings of the day (contemporary writings) and so there really is absolutely no evidence for this entire story other than the New Testament. The same is true of the early Christian Martyrs. In my book ‘Who Was Jesus?' I outline the problems in the Gospels themselves that show the nonhistorical nature of these- this tale. For example: We have the description of Jesus's ascension into heaven in one or two of the Gospels but it’s lacking in the others. And it’s kind of like in a footnote in Mark where they say, well this has obviously been added. And so you have to wonder why would the evangelicals - the evangelists - leave out these various important parts from one gospel to the next? You have one story in one gospel, and it’s completely omitted in another. You have anachronisms, contradictions, illogical ... so on and so forth ...so a lot in these things are listed in here. You can see why someone would question the historicity of this text because it falls apart in many places. And also, if we’re talking about the non-biblical evidence supposedly of Jesus Christ’s existence which ... to look at the historical record of the day. If we look at the historical record of when this supposedly happens, you find nothing. That might be very shocking to people who have been told that Jesus Christ was the most famous person who ever lived. The New Testament itself has some two dozen scriptures in which Jesus is touted as being famed wide and far, he's ... doing miracles that are shocking people: 500- you know, first Corinthians- 500 people saw him resurrected. At his death there were earthquakes, the sun darkens, the saints rise up out of the ground and they wander through the streets of Jerusalem ... "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." [Blood-curdling scream] None of this finds its way into the contemporary record! And you have to wonder why. You can't just say “Oh, provide me all kinds of evidence for this and that, but I'm satisfied with none for this.” You know, this is not scientific. You must sit and say to yourself: "Why isn't this in the historical record of the day?" There were people writing at the time. It's called one of the best documented periods in history. They were very eloquent writers and they certainly would have noticed. Even if they took no notice of some rabble-rousing guy who was rampaging through the streets and going into the temples and leading great crowds and feeding 5,000 with fishes and loaves and all that-... you would think someone would mention him! But even if they didn't mention him, you would think someone would notice the other issues that were going on at the time. The temple veil is rent in its midst! when Jesus is crucified. That means that there was damage to the temple. Now that should have been recorded somewhere. The Jews were very possessive and very protective of their temple if somebody had come in there. Even earlier the story, he threatens to throw the temple down. You’d think they’d be writing about this guy: What a knucklehead, he’s threatening us, yada yada, he's calling us sons of Satan ... criticizing ... You would think somebody would notice that and be grousing about it. Even you know the persecution, the supposed persecution of the Christians by Paul, who was Saul at the time. That doesn't make it into the historical record! And it's not like-... it’s only a ninety mile stretch of territory. It's not like this was off on Mars or something. It's a small area and by that time, as I say, there was plenty of construction going on there. It's a crossroads going down from the European continent into Egypt. There was a lot of traffic going through there for many centuries. This is not some isolated area. There would be plenty of people passing through who would have heard these stories, who would have been amazed, who would have gone into another part of the country or into Egypt or-... We have Philo Judea of Alexandria (Judaeus) right living at that time, at that exact time. Here is a Jewish man living in Alexandria, part of the wealthiest family probably on the planet. His books, his writings were significant; they make up a very large book today. They were distributed in his lifetime because of his wealthy family. In that book - those books - he talks about the Incarnate Word: the Logos. This logos idea had been developed significantly by the Greeks: the Living Word of God. Philo describes what the word ends up as in the New Testament, to a T! “The Logos of the living God is the bond of everything, holding all things together...” – Philo “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” - Colossians 1:17 It's like they lifted it (!) and put it into the New Testament. And yet, while he was writing this in his homeland his word supposedly took incarnation right there at that time, and he had no idea. No mention of it, no concept, no interest. Didn't even say “Hey, I hear that my word has taken birth in my homeland!” Doesn't even say that. Doesn't say a thing! You have to wonder: Why? Is it because it didn't happen? Is it because they used Philo’s writings to create this fictional character? If you read Philo’s writings, which were published in the mid-twenties, before Jesus was doing his ministry, never been heard of, he’s still doing as carpentry work (according to Christian tradition). Philo’s writings have so many Christian ideas in them that you really have to wonder: If you had that kind of pipeline and your works are that well known, and then sometime later these same ideas end up – and I mean almost verbatim, some of them – end up in the Gospel story, it seems to be pretty obvious when you factor in all of the factors that you need to understand the context and milieu of the day. The only way you can sustain this story really is to have it in a vacuum, is to remove all practicality around it, all the other cultures ... Seriously you would have to be absolutely ignorant of all history, mythology, culture, language of the time in order to maintain that story. Unfortunately that's what we find. [Laughs] There’s quite a lot of ignorance, and willful ignorance. I’ve actually had debates with people who have said “Oh I don’t want to know anything about those pre-Christian cultures because they were all evil.” I can’t give you any evidence then at that point. You’ve completely closed off, there’s no way I can prove a thing if you have no interest in looking at pre-Christian culture! So ... we’re in a Catch-22 with this one, and yeah, it becomes a matter of faith. They have no problem- there is that special pleading again: “We can believe this without a stitch of evidence because it's faith. But, we can’t believe anything that you've said without a mountain of evidence that we will still reject!" [laughs] at the end of the day.
