Jesus Probably existed

Not only does this not follow, but it's an ad populum fallacy. Copernicus went against the views of hundreds of astronomers, both secular and theist. Martin Luther declared that Copernicus wished to reverse the whole science of astronomy. Today I have presented evidence that others, both secular and theist, disagree with. Chances are, you probably disagree with me too. My opponent is pretty much saying I am flying in the face of the whole science of historiography. Well, Copernicus was right. In this debate, you have to judge the evidence we have presented, not your own beliefs, nor those of the other scholars my opponent has quoted. Here's why I think I've won this debate. My caseI argued that there is good reason to believe Jesus did not exist. I had two reasons - similarity with other Gods being the first. This proves that Jesus fitted to that particular narrative archtype and is therefore evidence that Jesus was a fable. This was not addressed in any depth by my opponent at all throughout the debate, and his shallow rebuttals I have already dealt with at length. My other point was about the contradictions. These have all stood, except that my opponent's Bible apparently doesn't have them. I only used a single website for a single one of my five contradictions, and other than that have been referring only to the text of the Bible. When I first gave you the contradictions it was only with the Bible verses - the website is more like a visual aide because my opponent accused me of not being able to count. To meet my burden of proof, I believe I have shown at least one of these two arguments to be evidence Jesus was not real, especially given how little engagement there has been on them. His caseMy opponent finishes his case by writing what he believes to be my "strongest argument", and then declaring it "rubbish" and not worthy of rebuttal. If it's so strong, then it does require some answering. We cannot just presume an argument to be false, particularly given my opponent's double standard in giving rebuttals to all my (apparently) weaker arguments. There's been a lot of talk in this debate about candidates for scholars who may have written something that also incidentally provides evidence that Jesus was real. The New Testament is indeed the foremost of these, and I have launched a large number of specific attacks against it. Only one has been really contested in my opponent's rebuttal, and that's my use of factors other than historical proximity (the birth date doesn't need to be exact for my argument to hold). Just because temporal proximity is one measure doesn't mean it is the only one, however. A restaurant with great food but poor service is probably just as good as one with poor food and good service, but ultimately niether restaurant can be said to be good all around. So too have my opponent's sources failed for various different reasons, including but not limited to the time delay (which, as I mentioned last round, is still really bad for the New Testament). My opponent also used a number of non-Christian sources, though he has long conceeded all but three - Josephus, Tacitus and the Talmud. On Josephus, I argued the recieved text is a fraud. The original was indeed authored in the first century, but we have no surviving copies of the originals from the first century as my opponent once claimed. What happened for the next ten centuries is a mystery. Incidentally it's the Histories that do not mention Jesus, and the Antiquities that do mention Jesus, so I can understand the confusion. If my opponent asserts that the Antiquities are non-historical then he has conceeeded the Josephus argument. The point being that we know the copy must be a fraud for all the reasons I gave in round two, and my evidence proves that the text was not sufficiently well preserved to allow it to happen. What about Tacitus? Recall that my case was that Tacitus did not press the matter of Jesus because he could not falsify it. My opponent has asserted that Tacitus wouldn't have done that, without giving historical evidence for that assertion. This isn't even necessarily dishonest. And all this is made even more likely by the fact that, as I pointed out last round, there literally was no way to falsify the information, meaning Tacitus cannot possibly have confirmed it. Finally, the Talmud. I had two main objections. The first is that it isn't a good source, the criteria for which my opponent conceeds but does not claim. 50 years is a long time for a source to be published, and the Talmud was published hundreds of years later. This is not to mention the apparent parodying of established history, as presented by the dominant Christian church. And all this would be true even if the Jesus talked about was, in fact, Jesus. My opponent claims that they wouldn't have written about him if he wasn't important. In that case, perhaps he could tell us about the other six "important" people with the same name who come up in the Talmud (see my angelfire link for the answers). Few Jews themselves believe it is the same Jesus, and certainly the text does not imply that it is the same. So where does this leave us? At the end of the debate, my opponent has given us no good reason to think Jesus was real, that I have not fully refuted. Conversely, I have shown two strong reasons why Jesus probably did exist. The motion falls.