The historical Jesus Christ was a doomsday cult leader

I will be using mainly two criteria of reasoning to make my case, and they are "explanatory power" and "plausibility. ""Explanatory power" is the principle that the evidence should be strongly expected by the explanation. CB McCullagh expresses it like so:The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other. [1]Plausibility is the principle that the explanation should be somewhat expected from what we generally know to be true. McCullagh expresses it:The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other. [1]These two criteria are closely related, and another way to express both of them is with the principle of "prima facie"--the explanation most probable on the face of the evidence is more likely to be true. I will use these two criteria to express my affirmation of Con's four listed requirements, and in the process I will present the arguments for the position that the historical Jesus was a single human doomsday cult leader. "1) The gospels are NOT works of fiction. "It is sometimes claimed that the gospels are works of literary fiction, that they were written with the intention to entertain, not to evangelize for a religion. This explantion for the gospels seems to have a prima facie disadvantage. They contain much in the way of religious sermonizing and religious adulation, but little in the way of drama. There is no explicit romantic drama, which we would very much expect for a biographical narrative and not a work of fiction. There are long geneologies listed in both Matthew and Luke, seemingly intended to prove that Jesus was descended from David (a requirement of the Messiah), but it is not entertaining. It is sometimes asserted that the gospels are Greco-Roman tragedies like Oedipus Rex, but there are no failings of the hero, which, again, we expect for a religious biography but not a work of fiction. If the hero has no tragic flaw, then it is not a tragedy. So, what type of fiction is it? The entirety gospels make sense if we conclude that they were intended to evangelize a religion founded by a living human figure. In fact, the gospels of Luke and John are explicit in the intention that they wanted the reader to accept the accounts as true, which is exactly what we NOT expect for fiction [2]. The point that the gospels are not fiction is prima facie, and the burden of evidence is therefore on Con if he wishes to assert it as a serious possibility. "2) Jesus was ONE person, not an amalgamation of different stories. "It is also sometimes presented as a possibility that Jesus of the gospels was inspired by not just one person or mythical character but by many (see debate comments). The first problem is explanatory power. Which aspects of the evidence are better explained by Jesus being an amalgamation than by Jesus being a set of myths centralized on a single human being? Powerful evidence would be documents or reports of ancient myths preceding Jesus that contain strong similarities to Jesus. This historical claim has often been presented, and the evidence seems entirely lacking upon investigation, but I encourage Con to pursue such an investigation. The second problem is plausility. Lacking the power of direct evidence, this proposition would still hold some weight if there were other mythical characters in antiquity who likewise were an amalgamation of many other different characters. This would provide for the possibility that a similar thing could have happened for Jesus. The evidence is again lacking, however, as ancient mythical characters tend to be borrowed from only one other character, if they are borrowed at all. This may be because ancient mythical claims of characters who are seemingly intended to be accepted as truth are not as persuasive if the ancient listeners have heard essentially the same claims about one or more other reputed characters, so there is no plausible reason we would expect Jesus to be an amalgamation and no reason to dismiss the prima facie point that the historical Jesus Christ was just one man. "3) The doomsday passages in the New Testament came from Jesus, as opposed to being falsely attributed to him. "The scholars of the Jesus Seminar and others have claimed that Jesus was not a doomsday prophet, but they assert that the doomsday beliefs of Jesus were put in his mouth by his successors. The first problem with this position is explanatory power as it relates to multiple attestation, in that we do NOT expect all three of the earliest Christian sources to advocate doomsdayism if the founder of the cult (Jesus) was not responsible, but we do strongly expect such evidence given a historical doomsday Jesus. Those three sources are:(1) The authentic epistles of Paul -- 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-52. (2) The gospel of Q, via Matthew and Luke -- Luke 3:7, Luke 13:22, and Luke 13:40. (3) The gospel of Mark -- Mark 8-9:1 and Mark 13. The second problem is plausbility. There have been many doomsday cults in antiquity and the present time, they all attribute doomsday predictions to their founder and figurehead, and in fact the founder was seemingly responsible for those doomsday beliefs, because that is largely how he or she gains a following to begin with. Why is it a serious possibility that Christianity is a special exception? If Jesus was not a doomsday cult leader, then Christianity would be seemingly the only doomsday cult that ever existed whose reputed human doomsday founder did NOT actually predict the doomsday. I claim that Christianity was normal, not exceptional, in the context of observed cult dynamics. There is again no reason to dismiss the prima facie point and strong reason to accept it. "4) The early Christians were a doomsday cult (as opposed to being just another Gnostic branch of one of the early 'Mystery Religions'). "For strong evidence that Christianity was a doomsday cult, see the passages listed above. Additionally, see the passages of John 21:20-23 and 2 Peter 3:3-8. These are passages from writings composed after the doomsday deadline of 80-90 CE (when all hearers of Jesus had certainly died), and they are excuses for the failed deadline. John 21:20-23 excuses it as just a myth based on a misunderstanding, and 2 Peter 3:3-8 excuses it with a liberal interpretation of the spoken deadline. Both "Gnostic" and "Mystery Religion" are titles of historically-ambiguous beliefs, and it is possible that the cult of Jesus was a "Gnostic mystery religion," depending largely on how one chooses to the define those terms. But, that would not remove probability from the point that early Christianity was additionally a doomsday cult. One way or the other, the evidence for Christianity beginning as a doomsday cult is conclusive. I close my part in this round, and I await Con's opening arguments. References:[1] CB McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions via . http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] Luke 1:1-4 and John 21:24.