Crabsy,

Faith is simply a term applied to beliefs that we have no good reason for believing.

Faith may provide a premise, but reason can’t work from such a basis when there are elements of that premise that simply cannot change regardless of where reasoning may lead you. As soon as certain conclusions need to be circumvented or passed-off as a "mystery" because they contradict an immovable aspect of the premise, reason has been abandoned.

Faith and reason are in direct conflict with each other.

runner,

Any god that that would create a system that sets us up to fail, knowing in advance that we’re going to fail, is an immoral god.

In this article, there is a good lesson here for Christians on what happens when you deviate from the teachings of Jesus.

Go to Coogee on Christmas day and you'll see people with their Santa hats rolling around on the grass drunk and the toilets reeking with the stench of alcohol and vomit.

This, and more generally the excess and waste that is the secular/atheist Christmas, is compelling proof of just how corrupting atheist creed (no right, no wrong) can be.

@McReal

Yes - Christus means 'annointed' as it's the greek translation of Messiah.

If we take Tacitus, and even if we grant that he wrote "Chrestianos" it's pretty clear from the context that it was a spelling / phonetic mistake, for he does write 'Christus'. He Corroborates the execution of Jesus under Pontius Pilate.

So not only do you have the several canonical sources (by normal standards, sufficient attestation) - here it is corroborated by a non-canonical source.

There is also Josephus - two references, one of which is almost certainly altered by a later scribe - never-the-less, not least because of the second reference to Jesus and James, there is scholarly consensus that it is not a wholesale forgery, and Josephus almost certainly said something about Jesus.

Again, on top of the textual attestation, there is historical fact of the unlikely birth and rapid growth of the Christian church, and most scholars agree that it is virtually impossible to account for without an historical Jesus.

Yes, Josephus said something about Jesus, but the significance is vague.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

What Tacticus wrote is frequently qualified with "the information could have been derived from Christian material circulating in the early 2nd century." http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcno.htm

R. T. France concludes that the Tacitus passage is at best just Tacitus repeating what he has heard through Christians. Charles Guignebert argued "So long as there is that possibility [that Tacitus is merely echoing what Christians themselves were saying], the passage remains quite worthless".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Tacitus

As far as the unlikely (virgin?) birth - the word for 'young woman' is similar to virgin, and many think a copyist or transcription changed the meaning from 'young woman' to virgin.

Of course the church grew on the story of Jesus, yet to say any of it is historic fact is stretching things.

@McReal - Oh, so now you want to accept some biblical scholars (RT France)? Kind of gives the lie to your claim that they're irredeemably biased though. In any case, selectively quoting the Wiki (did you read the quotes of those who disagree with France?) doesn't really help. It's pure conjecture that Tacitus was just repeating what the Christians were saying. It remains, an important non-canonical corroborative source. Also, to suggest that Josephus' reference is vague simply chooses to ignore it's corroborative nature. Here you have two non-canonical sources corroborating the very existence of a figure well documented in the canonical sources. To say this is insufficient is simply goal-shifting.

>"Of course the church grew on the story of Jesus, yet to say any of it is historic fact is stretching things."
No, the stretch is to claim that such an unlikely and rapidly expanding movement could be borne without even a real figure at the centre of it - from a completely made-up story. Add the early, independent, multiple textual attestation, and you've got a lot of stuff to get rid of to sustain the non-existence theory.

@AJPhilips:
>"They are unreliable because they’re hearsay accounts written decades after the fact."
Actually, that's better than most historical sources. We just have to live with it. To suggest this makes them unreliable is, I think, somewhat ignorant of normal historical methodology, and how historians actually treat these texts.
Ad hominem is always fallacious. You can't just point and say 'Bible scholar = bias' you have to actually show examples of such bias.

>"we have no contemporary accounts of Jesus"
And? That's normal for ancient history.

>"not a single event from his life that can be accurately dated or evidenced;"
simply not true - you have to ignore the scholarship to say that. Indeed, I came across this via twitter only this morning: http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/bible/paul-maier-on-the-date-of-jesus%E2%80%99-birth

>"I just don’t think there is sufficient evidence to believe he existed."
If you're consistent with your standard, there's presumably many ancient figures you don't think there's sufficient evidence to believe existed. If you're so consistent,fine.

McReal

R.T. France – yes, I’ll accept him as an authority! He may question the validity of Tacitus, but overall he presents a comprehensive case for the historicity of Jesus:

http://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Jesus-R-T-France/dp/1573833703/ref=tmm_pap_title_popover?ie=UTF8&qid=1292923092&sr=1-5

On the virgin birth - Matthew is quoting Isaiah 7:14 as a text foretelling the birth of the Messiah (“behold a young girl will conceive”). The Hebrew almah can mean either virgin or young girl, and many modern translations use “young girl” in Isaiah. It is possible that Matthew was quoting the LXX (a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek) which translates almah as parthenos (virgin). However, as it seems likely Matthew knew Hebrew as well as Greek, he could have been aware of the ambiguity