Illustration: Hypatia of Alexandria and Giordano Bruno.

If I encounter a #Fundie or an Xtian who speaks gently, I try to speak gently in return. Now that #MAGA is in the picture, as MAGA is distilled hatred, the Everclear of Christianity, gentle isn't always possible. However, I'd like to lay out a few points in this thread with civility in mind.

Part 1. We can all agree that Wikipedia is just a starting point for research.

It isn't true that just anybody can sign up and add whatever they like. That used to be true. In 2008, the situation was over the top and there was an internal [but public] trial to settle one case. For old-timers, I'm referring to the Slender Virgin Naked Shorting scandal. Which, technically, may have contributed to the Crash of 2008. Yay, Wikipedia.

The trial worked primarily to sweep abuses under the rug. FWIW Jimmie Wales offered to discuss the matter with me. When I pointed out that he'd destroyed evidence, he seemed to lose interest in the discussion.

However, if just anybody adds just anything these days to a Wikipedia article, and it's an important subject, the additions are reverted. To survive, the website has become a least common denominator project.

Part 2. No, there is no strong evidence that #Jesus of Nazareth ever even physically existed. He may have physically existed, but claims which go beyond that don't rise even to the level of myth that is consistent among His contemporaries.

The New Testament, the primary source even as myth for the existence of this person, is a set of texts composed up to 90 years after the putative death of Christ. Some of the texts were composed much earlier, 30 years after His death, but those claim to be by a single person, Paul, when [scholars agree] a number of different people wrote them.

To be fair, there is a core set of Pauline texts, about half a dozen, that were probably written by one person. The others are fan fiction, not a pejorative point but accurate enough, that were added to canon later.

The author of the Pauline core set, Paul, is the only named New Testament author who probably existed and probably wrote at least part of the New Testament. And Paul didn't even claim to have met Jesus Christ.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John weren't named formally as New Testament writers until the Second Century A.D. Four people with those names probably existed. But there is no significant reason to believe that they wrote the texts that are attributed to them. Attribution didn't take place until Christ, if He existed, had been dead for at least 120 to 150 years.

Today, we can't agree about what happened 3 months ago even if it's on video. And this was, again, 120 to 150 years.

We haven't even started on contradictions that are common to all imagined stories that grow over time into myth. A good question to ask Xtians is, "How did Judas die?" The response that is usually offered is, "You're only repeating what the Devil says. I can't hear you. Maranatha. Maranatha."

Spoiler alert: Judas both hanged himself and fell from a height and burst open. #Xtian apologists say that it was both, but it's an awkward conflation.

Nor have we gotten to the fact that the most commonly cited non-Church reference to a historic Christ, the one in Josephus's writings, was faked by Christian copyists. There is a claim that a reference existed before the Christians edited the text, but I haven't seen the evidence to this effect.

I realize now that this thread requires a book. Which has actually been written a number of times.

I'm not able to see how this thread started. But the part about how Christians shouldn't cite Christianity, the fact that it exists, as a justification for anything strikes a chord.

My mother's father was a religious leader of the Ukrainian Diaspora 100 years ago. He was the gentlest man alive. This doesn't change the fact that the religion he supported has been the most horrific and brutal force, after Genghis Khan aka Temujin, of the past 2,000 years. So, it's a conundrum.

The Catholic Church began with the rape and murder of Hypatia circa 415 A.D. This was the moment when civilization could have headed down either of two paths: Enlightenment, progress, a move away from the fact of ape origins. Or a millenium of darkness, horror, and torture and murder of the innocent.

It was the second path. Yay, Church.

They allowed Galileo to live. They burned Giordano Bruno to death. They burned countless other men, women, and children to death as well.

"Oh, that was the past" ? A secular organization can come back from that. But not a "religion". If a "religion" behaves as the one and only original Church did, it isn't possible to brush it aside and still be the religion.

I welcome discussion with #Christians who are civil despite the fact of the brutality of Christianity. MAGA, a subset, not so much. I recommend civility to others as well. But the context isn't argument from authority by Christians.