Halloween Hunnies

In honor of my favorite holiday.

JESUS CHRIST - NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

IN ONE OF THE MOST CAREFULLY DOCUMENTED PERIODS OF ROMAN AND ANCIENT HISTORY

The time that Jesus Christ supposedly existed is one the most heavily documented periods in ancient history.  Yet there is virtually zero historical evidence of his supposed existence in any contemporary historical record.  It is also important to understand that an absolute reign of terror was instituted when Christianity seized power in the Roman Empire as documented in our Christian Totalitarianism Report.   The Church appointed an official historian of dubious ethics, Eusebius, to write an official history.  Meanwhile, Christian launched the largest book burning campaign in history, destroying a vast part of the wisdom and history of the ancient world forever.

 

The Account of Josephus is a Fraud

When discussing the alleged existence of Jesus Christ, one piece of "evidence" that frequently gets mentioned is the account of Flavius Josephus, the famed Jewish general and historian who lived from 37 to 100 C.E. In Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews there is a notorious passage regarding Christ called the "Testimonium Flavium."

"Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works,--a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day." (Whitson, 379).

This brief piece of evidence which supposedly contributed the best "proof" of Jesus's existence has actually been proven to be a fraud. It has been demonstrated continuously over the centuries that "Testamonium Flavium" was a forgery manufactured by the Catholic Church, and was inserted into Josephus's works. The Testamonium Flavium account is so thoroughly refuted, that biblical scholars since the 19th century have refused to refer to it, unless to mention its false nature.

Dr. Gordon Stein gives a further explanation for this forgery. The History of Jesus: A Reply to Josh McDowell.

Another source is The Jesus Forgery: Josephus Untangled.

First Written Accounts of Jesus's Life Occur Decades After His Purported Existence

Most written accounts of the life of Jesus did not exist until a couple decades after his purported existence. These accounts were presented by a number of different authors and had somewhat conflicting stories about his existence. These written accounts are known as the Gospels. Also, it is worth knowing that not all of the gospels that were written even made their way into the bible. Only four gospels became the canonical writings for the church. The rest were burned, destroyed or lost. Historians estimate that the first written gospel, the gospel of Mark, was written sometime after 70 C.E, which means that at the earliest, it would have been written 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus.

PLINY, TACITUS AND SUETONIUS: NO PROOF OF JESUS

Nero's Persecution of Christians and Mention of Jesus is Highly Doubtful

There is widespread belief that Nero blamed the burning of Rome on the Christians; however, there are many holes in this theory. 

This belief comes from the account of the Roman historian Tacitus (56-120 CE) about how Emperor Nero (37 - 68 CE) blamed the burning of Rome on "those people who were abhorred for their crimes and commonly called Christians." The passage then states that the fire agitators were followers of "Christus" who "was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate." The passage then also states that Christians constituted a "vast multitude at Rome" and goes on to discuss the ghastly ways in which they were persecuted. 

However, there are many troubling details about the historical accuracy of this passage. Some critics call into question whether Tacitus wrote this account at all, or if it was yet another forgery. Around the date of Nero's Fire, 64 AD, there were no "multitude of Christians" in Rome. At this time, there was not even a multitude of Christians in Judea. Therefore, it is highly doubtful that Nero would refer to Christians in this way. 

This is also the only mention of Christians in the work of Tacitus, despite the fact that he wrote several volumes.

Also, the supposed persecution of the Christians by Nero is not recorded by any other historian of Nero's time. If the persecution of Christians were really that widespread, wouldn't other historians be writing about it? (Truth Be Known)

Pliny's Letter About "Christiani"

In addition to the Testomonium Flavianum, there exists another tenuous piece of evidence that some have tried to use as proof for the existence of Jesus. The Roman Historian, Pliny The Younger (62-113CE), wrote a letter to the Emperor Trajan in 110 CE requesting his assistance in the proper punishment of a group of "Christiani" who were causing trouble and would not bow to the image of the emperor. According to Pliny, these Christiani would meet before daylight and sing hymns with responses to "Christ as God." 

However, this letter does not provide concrete evidence for the existence of Jesus as a person since it makes no direct mention of "Jesus of Nazareth," nor does it refer to his life. Also, there are many critics who have argued that this letter is a forgery. (Truth Be Known) 

Suetonius's Reference to "Chresto"

The last piece of questionable historical evidence we'll discuss here is the passage in Suetonius's Life of Claudius, dating around 110 CE. There is a reference in this work to a figure named "Chresto" who caused the Jews to riot in Rome. First of all, if Jesus Christ did exist, it is not possible that he would have been in Rome at this time. Claudius reigned from 41-54 CE, this is at the time of Christ's alleged crucifixion.

LINKS

Jesus Never Existed

"Jesus Never Existed," by Kenneth Humphreys (Amazon Book)

Did Jesus Exist? (Huffington Post)

Jesus Never Existed At All (Atheism Resource)

The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for Historical Jesus Christ

The Jesus Forgery: Josephus UntangledHistory's Troubling Silence About Jesus

Source:
JESUS CHRIST - NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

Hillary Clinton: A Career Criminal

Friday Funnies

Dumb American Youth - Walter E. Williams

Do you wonder why Sen. Bernie Sanders and his ideas are so popular among American college
students? The answer is that they, like so many other young people who think they know it all, are really uninformed and ignorant. You say, "Williams, how dare you say that?! We've mortgaged our home to send our children to college." Let's start with the 2006 geographic literacy survey of youngsters between 18 and 24 years of age by National Geographic and Roper Public Affairs.

Less than half could identify New York and Ohio on a U.S. map. Sixty percent could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, and three-quarters could not find Iran or Israel. In fact, 44 percent could not locate even one of those four countries. Youngsters who had taken a geography class didn't fare much better. By the way, when I attended elementary school, during the 1940s, we were given blank U.S. maps, and our assignment was to write in the states. Today such an assignment might be deemed oppressive, if not racist.

According to a Philadelphia magazine article, the percentage of college grads who can read and interpret a food label has fallen from 40 to 30. They are six times likelier to know who won "American Idol" than they are to know the name of the speaker of the House. A high-school teacher in California handed out an assignment that required students to use a ruler. Not a single student knew how.

Read the rest here:
Dumb American Youth - Walter E. Williams

Hump Day Hunnies

11 Vaccine Myths That Just Refuse To Die

Vaccines. Tiny vials of scientific medical technology that have successfully eradicated smallpox, and
measles, increased our lifespan and decreased the need for having as many children as possible in the hopes one or two of them will survive passed infancy.

Vaccines are a product of their own success. Ever since the invention of the smallpox vaccine in 1796, vaccines have done their job preventing disease and building a protective wall around the community to decrease the chance we ever experience our lungs filling with fluid due to an invasion by one of the 23+ strains of Streptococcus pneumonia bacteria.

Vaccines, however, aren’t without opposition.

A small but vocal minority of people have come together to attempt to ban vaccines bringing with them a trial of pseudoscience, misinformation and conspiracy theories to help them in their quest. They feel that vaccines are the cause of every major illness and behavioural disorder known and unknown, that the world’s governments are engaged in a secret plot to use vaccines to make pharmaceutical companies rich and that vaccines are nothing more than poison developed by scientists for profit. Disregarding the fact that scientists have children who have been vaccinated.

Talk to five members of the anti-vaccine movement, and you’ll come away with five different answers as to why they are against vaccination technology. Today I want to look at the science of vaccine technology and how they function to prevent disease, the results of their use and take a crack at some of the myths the anti-vaccine community hold near and dear.

Read it all here:
11 Vaccine Myths That Just Refuse To Die: Debunked

25 Myths and Bad Arguments About Climate Change | The Logic of Science

Global warming is arguably one of the most controversially topics among the general public. The overwhelming agreement that we are causing the climate to change, and that agreement is based on an extraordinary mountain of evidence. Nevertheless, given the amount of junk science on the internet, this disconnect between what people think and what scientists have found is hardly surprising. Therefore, I want to clear up some of the confusion surrounding this topic, and in this post, I will debunk 25 myths, misunderstandings, and faulty arguments about climate change.
internet is full of websites that are devoted to arguing against climate change, and politicians routinely claim that it’s a myth. Nevertheless, among the scientific community, there is no serious debate. Yes, there are a few contrarianism (as there are for virtually every topic), but there is an

At the outset, I want to explain the basics of anthropogenic climate change because there seems to be a lot of confusion over the fundamental concepts. In a nutshell, energy from the sun enters the earth as a spectrum of wavelengths, including both visible light and some higher energy wavelengths (such as ultraviolet [UV] radiation), but some energy is lost and absorbed as the light passes through our atmosphere. The remaining energy is partially absorbed by the earth itself, but much of it is radiated back off of the earth’s surface as lower energy infrared radiation (IR), which is basically just heat energy. Not all of that energy leaves our planet, however, because we have numerous greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere (such as carbon dioxide [CO₂]) that do not absorb the higher energy wavelengths (like UV), but do absorb the lower energy IR. Thus, they trap some of that heat energy and prevent it from exiting the planet. This is usually a good thing, because earth would be inhospitably cold if all of that IR escaped. However, if those gases are too dense, then too much heat gets trapped, and the earth warms. Indeed, fluctuations in greenhouse gases concentrations were largely responsible for past climate changes (see #8). This is a problem because our modern society produces a large quantity of greenhouse gasses, and we have greatly increased their concentration in the atmosphere (see #10). Now, let’s think about this rationally for a second. If CO₂ traps heat, and more CO₂ traps more heat, and we have nearly doubled the CO₂, what do we logically expect to happen? The answer is obvious: the climate should warm on average. Indeed, that is exactly what the theory of anthropogenic climate change predicts, and, as I will demonstrate, we have repeatedly verified that prediction.

Read the rest here:
25 myths and bad arguments about climate change | The Logic of Science

Disputed Presidential Elections Are Nearly As Old As The US Presidency - The Lid

by Jeff Dunetz | Oct 21, 2016 | Politics

Whatever you think of Donald Trump not promising to immediately accept the election result, don’t believe anyone who says challenging the result would be unprecedented. Donald Trump is not the first candidate to say a presidential election was “rigged.”

People were up in even more of a lather in previous elections. Four times in the history of the United States, it wasn’t the voters, or even presidential electors, that chose the president. Rather, it was a separate branch of government. I write about these in my book, “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.”

In the nation’s history, four candidates who lost the popular vote became president, but there was by no means anything illegal about it. The Electoral College decides the presidency, not the popular vote. Until the Constitution is amended, it will remain that way. There is an effort among some states to undermine the Electoral College by agreeing to have their electors vote for whoever won the national popular vote. While this might not honor the wishes of the voters in their own state, state legislatures have the right to apportion electors however they wish. Other states have debated proportional awarding of electoral votes—as Maine and Nebraska already have. But again, it’s up to the states.

Read the full article here:
Disputed Presidential Elections Are Nearly As Old As The US Presidency - The Lid

Friday Funnies

Young Hillary Voters Can't Name An Accomplishment Of Hers

Hump Day Hunnies

Americans Don’t Read… and that’s Affecting our Elections

Annie Holmquist | March 9, 2016

In 2013, the Nation’s Report Card showed that only 38% of high school seniors were proficient in reading. With scores like that, the U.S. isn’t likely to earn the “most literate country” award any time soon.

So what is America’s international literacy ranking? According to The Washington Post, the U.S. places seventh behind Nordic countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Such a score is obtained by looking at newspaper circulation and readership, library availability, education access, reading scores, and computer usage in each nation. 

The Washington Post bemoans the fact that the leading nation of the free world ranks so low in such an important area. And well they should, particularly as the following U.S. literacy statistics are even more alarming:   

• 14% of adults can’t read.
• Only 13% of adults can read at a proficient level.
• 28% of adults didn’t read a book in the last year.
• 50% of adults can’t read a book written at an 8th grade level.

But so what, right? In our enlightened digital age, what harm does it really bring if American literacy is tanking?

A lot of harm, according to John Adams, particularly when it comes to elections. In 1761, he noted:

“The very Ground of our Liberties, is the freedom of Elections. Every Man has in Politicks as well as Religion, a Right to think and speak and Act for himself. No man either King or Subject, Clergyman or Layman has any Right to dictate to me the Person I shall choose for my Legislator and Ruler. I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any Man judge, unless his Mind has been opened and enlarged by Reading. A Man who can read, will find in his Bible, in the common sermon Books that common People have by them and even in the Almanack and News Papers, Rules and observations, that will enlarge his Range of Thought, and enable him the better to judge who has and who has not that Integrity of Heart, and that Compass of Knowledge and Understanding, which form the Statesman.”

Considering the state of the 2016 election, would you say it’s high time for Americans to step up their literacy game?

Source:
intellectualtakeout.org
Image Credit: samuel bletenholz (cropped) bit.ly/1jNlqZo

This Is No Way To Elect A President - Derek Hunter

We truly have only ourselves to blame. How the greatest nation in the history of the planet ended up
with these two candidates for president will be something for historians to figure out as they sift through the rubble of our civilization. But it is where we find ourselves.

The societal autopsy of this time likely will reveal a series of self-inflicted wounds. It will show the United States didn’t just die; it committed suicide by multiple means.

Neither candidate has a plan, or even a desire, to address the national debt or the coming crush of unfunded liabilities in entitlement programs. The Democrat wants “open borders” and thinks everyone “has the right to immigrate to this country.” When the Republican isn’t going off on tangents, advancing conspiracy theories, defending himself from his latest problem or attacking other politicians he’s not running against, he has some ideas that sound good until he contradicts them.

This election has been about personality from day one on the Republican side. Donald Trump is a type-A personality. Put that with money, an understanding of how the media works no other candidate has demonstrated and a celebrity-obsessed culture, and you have a nominee.

Trump isn’t stupid. He personally may be a pig, but he’s a smart man. He’s just shown himself to be stubborn when it comes to taking advice, undisciplined when it comes to messaging and unprepared (and either oblivious or delusional) for the level of scrutiny he’d face when it comes to running against a Democrat.

It was easy to see coming – a media that portrayed the thoroughly decent Mitt Romney as Hitler’s right-hand man surely could turn a playboy billionaire into anything it wanted. It doesn’t help that Trump manufactures ammunition for them. But that’s the price of running an undisciplined amateur – the excitement is tempered with unforced errors.

I don’t know if the allegations of groping against Trump are true, but I do know stories as flimsy as these would require some verification of the details before they’d even enter the draft stage if the subject were a Democrat.

This woman alleges Trump maybe, might, could have grabbed her butt, or it might’ve been a camera bag. That’s the extent of the charge and the evidence. Any self-respecting editor would’ve laughed it out of the newsroom. But there are no self-respecting editors at newspapers anymore.
The other stories don’t have much more evidence to back them up either. That doesn’t mean they can’t be true; it just means journalism is dead and activists now have media credentials.
In the ultimate display of multitasking, the media managed to play offense against Trump and defense for Clinton.

Read the rest here:
This Is No Way To Elect A President - Derek Hunter

Five Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com. 

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, based on the evidence available they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a “historical Jesus” became mythologized.

For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians grounded in this perspective have analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles include Zealot by Reza Aslan and How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman.

By contrast, other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually “historicized mythology.” In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received.

The notion that Jesus never existed is a minority position. Of course it is! says David Fitzgerald, the author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All. Fitzgerald points out that for centuries all serious scholars of Christianity were Christians themselves, and modern secular scholars lean heavily on the groundwork that they laid in collecting, preserving, and analyzing ancient texts. Even today most secular scholars come out of a religious background, and many operate by default under historical presumptions of their former faith.

Fitzgerald, who as his book title indicates takes the “mythical Jesus” position, is an atheist speaker and writer, popular with secular students and community groups. The internet phenom, Zeitgeist the Movie introduced millions to some of the mythic roots of Christianity. But Zeitgeist and similar works contain known errors and oversimplifications that undermine their credibility. Fitzgerald seeks to correct that by giving young people accessible information that is grounded in accountable scholarship.

More academic arguments in support of the Jesus Myth theory can be found in the writings of Richard Carrier and Robert Price. Carrier, who has a Ph.D. in ancient history uses the tools of his trade to show, among other things, how Christianity might have gotten off the ground without a miracle. Price, by contrast, writes from the perspective of a theologian whose biblical scholarship ultimately formed the basis for his skepticism. It is interesting to note that some of the harshest critics of popular Jesus myth theories like those from Zeitgeist or Joseph Atwill (who argued that the Romans invented Jesus) are academic Mythicists like these.

The arguments on both sides of this question—mythologized history or historicized mythology—fill volumes, and if anything the debate seems to be heating up rather than resolving. Since many people, both Christian and not, find it surprising that this debate even exists—that serious scholars might think Jesus never existed—here are some of the key points that keep the doubts alive:

Read the rest here:
Five Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed

Today is White Cane Safety Day

by Marc Maurer

In February of 1978 a young blind lady said, "I encounter people all of the time who bless me, extol my independence, call me brave and courageous, and thoroughly miss the boat as to what the real significance of the white cane is."

The National Federation of the Blind in convention assembled on the 6th day of July, 1963, called upon the governors of the fifty states to proclaim October 15 of each year as White Cane Safety Day in each of our fifty states. On October 6, 1964, a joint resolution of the Congress, HR 753, was signed into law authorizing the President of the United States to proclaim October 15 of each year as "White Cane Safety Day." This resolution said: "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives", that the President is hereby authorized to issue annually a proclamation designating October 15 as White Cane Safety Day and calling upon the people of the United States to observe such a day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.'

Within hours of the passage of the congressional joint resolution authorizing the President to proclaim October 15 as White Cane Safety Day, then President Lyndon B. Johnson recognized the importance of the white cane as a staff of independence for blind people. In the first Presidential White Cane Proclamation President Johnson commended the blind for the growing spirit of independence and the increased determination to be self-reliant that the organized blind had shown. The Presidential proclamation said:

The white cane in our society has become one of the symbols of a blind person's ability to come and go on his own. Its use has promoted courtesy and special consideration to the blind on our streets and highways. To make our people more fully aware of the meaning of the white cane and of the need for motorists to exercise special care for the blind persons who carry it Congress, by a joint resolution approved as of October 6, 1964, has authorized the President to proclaim October 15 of each year as White Cane Safety Day.

Now, therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America do hereby proclaim October 15, 1964 as White Cane Safety Day.

Read more:
White Cane Safety Day | National Federation of the Blind

Friday Funnies

Presidents Being Colorful 2

Humpe Day Hunnies