I believe that every scholar who disbelieved in his existence is or was an asshole. I know Christ mytherism is false but I can't answer their arguments. So I need to ask this because of determination.

The testimonium flavianum is all interpolated because the scribe refers to Christians by christianos. Everyone in the first century referred to Christians by chrestianos, because Christ as messiah meant absolutely nothing to non-Jews in the first century. Messiah is a Jewish concept. However John the Baptist is mentioned by Josephus and that section is certainly not interpolated and that does corroborate his existence in the gospels.

No pagan author was an eyewitness to the events of the gospel, so Tacitus can't be taken as corroboration. J. P. Holding says that he knew of Jesus's existence from Roman records (which would make him valid corroboration) but how did J.P. Holding come to this conclusion?

Richard Carrier made an argument that pseudoluke cribbed off of Josephus (can't prove or disprove) and that greatly undermines the reliability of the gospels. He said that all of the gospels were written in the second century, and if the gospels aren't reliable then C.S. Lewis's trilemma is not valid!

The atheist consensus is that Paul believed in a spirit Jesus. Again, I can't prove or disprove this.

If reality is a virtual simulation then there's obviously a programmer. That seems to be more evidence in favor of theism than vanilla reality--which can always be explained as being causally closed. But it is impossible to argue that a virtual simulation is causally closed.

RomanJoe wrote:

Why do you think this? Is there something about the world that makes it seem "atheistic"? Is this an intellectual or emotional issue?

I think it's emotional my friend, but I could be mistaken. This may seem silly, but I had a moment where I was looking at Magikarp's ability to learn TMs, and I thought "gee, Feebas can learn TMs, and Feebas is an analogue of Magikarp, so Magikarp must be able to learn TMs." But I double-checked and Magikarp wasn't able to learn TMs. I had another moment where I was pumping my car with gas and I missed the click and I was sitting there waiting and waiting for the click, but too afraid to look at the gas meter, expecting that I would anticipate the "click"...and the meter stopped and already clicked. And I was wondering "what if I am waiting forever for the rationale for God's existence?"

Sometimes I wonder whether this is really faith or being lost in a surrealistic dream world called "Christianity." The private nature of faith also puts additional pressure because there's no way to generate private knowledge or experience. If you cannot get faith, all that can be done is that you have to rally up determination to search for whatever you can.

"Greg" wrote:

However, taking indistinguishability in its most straightforward sense, I am not sure it's what we want to say here. Electrons are not indistinguishable from each other. If they were, we should be in confusion as to whether there were more than one electron. Electrons rather seem to be, as Aristotle might put it, "one in being but different in number."

There was a debate in physics of whether there really was only one electron in the universe (and that positrons were electrons traveling backward in time). But currently most physicists feel that this idea is "stupid," so you might be correct.

Do you know what mercy is? It's when you're watching a medieval fantasy series where the brutal king is terrorizing his subjects and brings one of his condemned before him and says "hmm...I think I will show you mercy." When you see that... doesn't it make you feel a little bit unclean inside and squirm a little? Like maybe the king shouldn't be such a medieval warlord and actually design a modern, rational society where the condemned aren't victimized to begin with? But that would be justice, not mercy. I strongly suspect that nobody (not just me) sees joy or happiness when the king does that. Most people feel of kind of visceral dread whenever a king shows mercy. He didn't show mercy because he was kind. He showed mercy because he wanted to and to show off that he can do whatever he wants. Even though mercy isn't a virtue kindness definitely is. Kindness is the virtue of being a good gift-giver. Fairness is also a virtue and distinct from justice.