...That's an internet garbage written by Jerry Ballard
from "
Fisher's Of Men Group" without a link to the source.
Can you find the alleged study on the MIT's official site [
link to web.mit.edu] please?
Quoting: Anonymous Coward 1397879No of course he can't. It doesn't matter anyway because JESUS NEVER EXISTED. It's easy to make one fiction line up with another fiction's "prophecies".
The Mathematical Odds of Jesus Fulfilling Prophecy
The following probabilities are taken from Peter Stoner in Science Speaks (Moody Press, 1963) to show that coincidence is ruled out by the science of probability. Stoner says that by using the modern science of probability in reference to just eight prophecies, " we find that the chance that any man might have lived at that present time and fulfilled just eight of the 300 prophecies is 1 in 1017." That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that "we take 100,000,000,000,000,000 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas.
They will cover all of the state two feet deep. "Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing only these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man."
FREE Download for Peter Stoner's book Science Speaks in PDF format HERE [
link to www.faithofachild.info]
This information regarding Peter Stoner was taken from the book
Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell.
And as for the idiotic "Jesus never existed" claim, find me 1 accredited, reputable Historian that will agree with that. You can't, because none exist!
Find me one reputable historian that will agree that he did exist? And I mean, specifically talking about Jesus. Not some off-hand reference to "the christ". *cough* Josephus *cough*
[
link to www.jesusneverexisted.com]
That's it? Your gonna link to Humphrey who mostly uses this page to make a repeated "argument from silence" claiming that Nazareth did not exist in Jesus' day. As I mentioned earlier, his own sources disagree with him on this. Again, I offer this: "...archeology indicates that the village [Nazareth] has been occupied since the 7th century B.C., although it may have experienced a 'refounding' in the 2d century b.c. " (John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew--Rethinking the Historical Jesus, (vol 1), p.300-301), Doubleday, 1991. Meier is a Jewish non-Christian archeologist who Humphreys lists as a source on several of his pages. And this page: [
link to www.nazareth2000.gov.il] is more specific about the evidence, saying Nazareth was founded between 600-900 B.C. and has been consistently inhabited since about 200 B.C.
He claims on his site that, "'Jesus of Nazareth' supposedly lived in what is the most well-documented period of antiquity – the first century of the Christian era – yet not a single non-Christian source mentions the miracle worker from the sky."
Actually, there are several that mention Him. Notice that Humphreys doesn't give a time frame in which "not a single non-Christian source mentions" Him (and as an aside, where does he get the "from the sky" bit?). The further we get from the 1st century, the more non-Christian sources do mention Jesus. We have Josephus and Tacitus writing about Jesus in the early 2nd century, and many more as we move into the 3rd and 4th.
Another claim, "All references – including the notorious insertions in Josephus – stem from partisan Christian sources."
Of course, Humphreys ignored Josephus' mention of Jesus in Antiquities 20.9.1, which no one claims stemmed from Christian sources, and only argues against Antiquities 18.3.3, which is the one in doubt.
