I know a wikipedia link is not a definitive answer but...
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus[/url]

[QUOTE=davar55;352035]I forgot to add:

When religion and science agree, the science must be wrong too.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=chalsall;352042]No.

Why would you assume that?[/QUOTE]

That is just my non-pedantic semi-humorous way of saying
religion, which is based on faith, is always wrong.
And when science tries to imitate religion, such as in
some people's claim that there was "a beginning",
"science" is also wrong.

[QUOTE=firejuggler;352045].....
(And yes, this is trolling)[/QUOTE]

Me too. :smile:

From that surrealistic WaPo article ("the 25 highbrow jokes"): :smile:
[QUOTE]5. An electron is driving down a motorway, and a policeman pulls him over.
The policeman says: “Sir, do you realise you were travelling at 130km per hour?”
The electron goes: “Oh great, now I’m lost.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=davar55;352050]That is just my non-pedantic semi-humorous way of saying
religion, which is based on faith, is always wrong.
And when science tries to imitate religion, such as in
some people's claim that there was "a beginning",
"science" is also wrong.[/QUOTE]

Sigh... Some people's children...

Listen and please think. And I'm happy to be corrected if I get this wrong!

1. In most domains (even in mathematics), no one can say that something is absolutely true and be intellectually honest.

@ Batalov: I thought that was one of the funnier jokes amongst quite a few funny ones.

[QUOTE=firejuggler;352045]Statistically, there was at least one man named Jesus at the time.
(And yes, this is trolling)[/QUOTE]This is an awfully sexist statement.

[QUOTE=Batalov;352048]This is illogical.

Suppose you have two clocks: one still, and the other one working.
They will agree, quite regularly. And (under a simplifying condition that the working clock shows adequately right time*), at these time points when they agree, both clocks will be right. What you are saying is that at these time points, both clocks will be wrong.

______________
*under a simplifying condition that we are not splitting hairs here with syllogisms like "the right time simply doesn't exist -- no matter how accurately you will set the clock, it will be off [I]all[/I] the time, in absolute terms". Adequately right = within a reasonable [TEX]\eps[/TEX], with both the value and its error limits known.[/QUOTE]

I guesss I think of religion as a clock stuck on 00:00:00.0.

When science's clock hits 12:00:00.0 it can be alternatively
reinterpreted and keep on keeping on. Unless scientists become
enamored of the religious pov and try to make the impossible fit.

True, could have been a Jeosopha.

[QUOTE=chalsall;352055]Sigh... Some people's children...

Listen and please think. And I'm happy to be corrected if I get this wrong!

1. In most domains (even in mathematics), no one can say that something is absolutely true and be intellectually honest.[/QUOTE]

Needn't take up the same fight. You said you were agnostic,
and i can see you take your pov seriously.

But no, in math and in philosophy one discovers absolute
provable truths. Logic is the link, and is valid, What I think
you are saying - and I would challenge it strongly - is that
truths are built out of axioms, and axioms cannot be
proven true. But one should only accept as axioms those
truths that are self-evident, or that can be validated by
reduction to even more self-evident things. As in cosmology.

I see you value intellectual honesty. As do I and most of
the contributors on this forum. But it is not honest to
disvalue another's pov on the basis of the agnostic pov,
i.e.that nothing can be known with certainty.

[QUOTE=firejuggler;352049]I know a wikipedia link is not a definitive answer but...
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus[/url][/QUOTE]

[URL="http://mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=321056&postcount=708"]I've already weighed in on this topic[/URL] in these forums, but since you bring it up this is something I'm very interested in.

Most modern scholars of Christianity do agree that there was a Jesus. Of course Most modern scholars of Christianity are....wait for it...Christians! (And yes I've read Reza Aslan's book--remember that Muslims also think Jesus was a prophet.) Notice in the literature that the farther you get from Biblical literalism the more "Jesus probably didn't do this, or probably didn't say that" there is from these same scholars.