(123)   Wed 21 Jan 98  6:46
By: Curtis Johnson
To: Brian Huxley
Re: Evidence debunked.
St:
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 -=> Quoting Brian Huxley to All <=-

 BH> The Calender Debate - arguments against.
 BH> --------------------

 BH> a.  The birth of Christ is believed to be 4 BC; calender not accurate
 BH> (Richard Smith)

 BH> b.  There is more than just the Christian calender in existence
 BH> (Richard Smith, God Dan)

 BH> Both are known facts. Niether dispute my claim that the person of
 BH> Jesus Christ had an influence (in whatever form) on the way we read the
 BH> date. It goes no further than that folks.

    Jesus Christ wanted us to have an incorrect idea of when he
 was born??? ROTFL!  (BTW, I've read several attempts to derive the
 "correct" date; they all end up having to throw out either some
 gospel evidence or tossing out secular history bearing on the
 question.  7 BC is also popular alternative to the 4 BC.  Irenaeus,
 c. 170 AD, said that it was heretical to believe that Jesus was
 crucified before the age of 50; since Pilate last governed in 36
 AD, that would push his birth back to at least 14 BC.
    The truth is that early Christians didn't have a much better
 idea of the year of his birth than they did of the day.)

    The person who had the influence on the way we read that
 date is Dionysius Exiguus, who proposed the AD system in the late
 6th century.  What is more, he did not propose January 1, but
 what he thought was the Anunciation day, March 25.  Because the
 system of dating from the founding of Rome had become obsolete
 in the West, and there were many different kings being used for
 dates, it _gradually_ became popular over the centuries.
    That popularity remained restricted to the West.  The AD
 system never caught on in the Byzantine empire, and other
 Christian churches used other starting points (generally one of
 the various dates the world was thought to have been created,
 though the Armenians used a church council).

    You clearly cannot distinguish between something and the
 belief in that something.  See Jewish, Muslim, and Roman calendars.
 (Also the Greek Olympiad system, since the first Olympic game had
 a mythic origin--in one version, with the hero Heracles winning a
 foot race.)

    I see that you did not even try to answer what more than
 one person pointed out to you, that our months and days still
 retain the names of pagan gods--and so by your "logic" would be
 an argument for their existence.
    I don't think you dare address that--it would force you
 to concede that your calendar "evidence" here is no evidence
 at all for anything but human belief.


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