I made mini-mes, but they made me mad, so I drowned them all. Then, they made me angry again. So, I decided to impregnate a mini-me with myself so that I could kill myself to myself for my mini-mes.

According to Abrahamic religions, God wanted humans to have free will, but then he punished humanity for exercising its free will, first by creating mortality and second by drowning almost all humans in existence. Later, Christianity comes into the picture and portrays God as seeming to regret his original plan. So then, God impregnates a virgin leading to the birth of a son who is in actuality himself. As if to atone for the horrors he has inflicted on humanity, God has his meat body “crucified, died and … buried.”(1) After that, he raises from the dead, and his death lasted only three days. And here you have it, the Christian myth, without which Christianity could not exist in its present form. But imagine someone hearing this myth for the first time. Would this not sound insane, or as a total fabrication? How do we convince a skeptic that this story is true? Skeptics rely on incontrovertible evidence because without evidence a claim has no more authenticity than an opinion.

Christians donate billions of dollars to churches and Christian-influenced politicians every year. Christians go on mission trips to “help” people and to convince them that Christianity’s supernatural claims are valid. And Christianity requires people to change their lives, beliefs, and behavior for the sake of living a Christian life, but without original sin and Jesus’ rising from the dead, Christianity is simply a fabrication, it’s pure mythology. So how do we know that Jesus rose from the dead?

There is no incontestable evidence that the original Greek and Aramaic versions of the chapters contained in the Bible that testify to Jesus’ death were written by “Mathew,” John,” “Mark,” and “Luke.” We do know that whoever wrote these sections of the Bible were human and humans can make mistakes. Furthermore, these accounts were likely written after Jesus’ death by people who never met Jesus or witnessed his death. Therefore, there is no actual eyewitness testimony that Jesus rose from the dead. At best, these Biblical accounts are based on hearsay—and gossip is not convincing. Hearsay is the equivalent of hearing a rumor and passing it on.(3)

Additionally, in the ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian worlds Jesus was an absolute non-event, let alone in faraway places such as East Asia. For example, there are no contemporary Chinese, Japanese, or Korean accounts that mention Jesus.

There is no mention of Jesus by any author who lived while Jesus was supposedly alive. There are approximately two hundred well-known first-century writers who could have written about Jesus but did not. The historians and authors who should have known and written about Jesus include:

Apollonius Persius

Appian Petronius

Arrian Phaedrus

Aulus Gellius Philo-Judaeus

Columella Phlegon

Damis Pliny, the Elder

Dio Chrysostom Pliny the Younger

Dion Pruseus Plutarch

Epictetus Pompon Mela

Favorinus Ptolemy

Florus Lucius Quintilian

Hermogones Quintius Curtius

Josephus Seneca

Justus of Tiberius Silius Italicus

Juvenal Statius

Lucanus Suetonius

Lucian Tacitus

Lysias Theon of Smyran

Martial Valerius Flaccus

Paterculus Valerius Maximus

Pausanias

No book, including the Bible, contains enough credibility to serve as its own proof, and there is no contemporary evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus was supernatural. Whether or not the disputed letters written by Josephus are real, whether or not Tacitus or Pliny the Younger mentioned Jesus, this does and cannot serve as proof that Jesus did something magical.

The accounts in the Bible about Jesus were written later—approximately 100 years or more after his death. And then, when he is mentioned, the sources say something like, “There is a Christian cult in the Middle East lead by Jesus. His followers believe that Jesus is responsible for miracles.” Such rumor could have passed by followers during modern times about Charles Manson, David Koresh, or about India gurus who claim to be responsible for miracles. This too is not proper evidence that miracles occurred, nor does this ensure that Jesus was a god or a supernatural being.

There is no real evidence for any supernatural claim made by Christianity. Faith is simply a deeply held opinion about things that people have no way of proving true.

But, as Carl Sagan said, “You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe.”

The Apostle’s Creed. Retrieved from https://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=220