About 1/5 of adult Aussies think Jesus is fictional or mythical

[Mr Walker]

On 12/28/2021 at 10:58 AM, eight bits said:

I don't know about this recent Australian survey. The 2015 English survey asked a follow-up question of all respondents who answered "Jesus was a real person who actually lived" or who answered "don't know:"

Which, if any, of the following statements best describes your beliefs about Jesus Christ?
Please select one only.
a) A normal human being
b) God in human form who lived among people in the 1st Century
c) A prophet or spiritual leader, not God
d) Other, please specify
e) Don’t know

I hope that at some point the Australian group will make its full questionnaire available.

Good points and a good  clarification. 

[Mr Walker]

On 12/28/2021 at 9:45 PM, jmccr8 said:

As far as how many believe in the Jesus thing one should consider the whole population of Christians in Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Australia

Demographics[edit]

See also: Demography of Australia

 

People who identify as Christian as a percentage of the total population in Australia divided geographically by statistical local area, as of the 2011 census

A question on religion has been asked in every census taken in Australia, with the voluntary nature of this question having been specifically stated since 1933. In 1971, the instruction "if no religion, write none" was introduced. This saw a sevenfold increase from the previous census year in the percentage of Australians stating they had no religion. Since 1971, this percentage has progressively increased to 30.1% in 2016.^[1]

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2006 Census Dictionary statement on religious affiliation states the purpose for gathering such information:

Data on religious affiliation are used for such purposes as planning educational facilities, aged persons' care and other social services provided by religion-based organisations; the location of church buildings; the assigning of chaplains to hospitals, prisons, armed services and universities; the allocation of time on public radio and other media; and sociological research.

The census question about religion is optional, and asks "What is the person's religion?", giving respondents a choice of nine religions, "Other" and "No religion".^[36] At the 2016 census 9.6% of people declined to answer, or they did not give a response adequate for interpretation.^[1] The religious views of those people are not known, so it is not proper to group them together with people who state that they have no religion – instead, all the census figures about religion should be treated with corresponding confidence levels.

The 2016 census identified that 52.1% of Australians classify themselves Christian: 22.6% identifying themselves as Catholic and 13.3% as Anglican. Another 8.2% of Australians identify themselves as followers of non-Christian religions. The second-largest classification was the 30.1% who categorised themselves as having "No religion";^[1] this is most evident amongst younger people, with 39% of people aged 18–34 choosing that option (it was 12% in 1976).^[1]

As in many Western countries, the level of active participation in church worship is much lower than this; weekly attendance at church services is well under 1 million, about 4% of the population.^{[citation needed]}

 

Hinduism is the fastest growing religion in absolute numbers in every state and territory of Australia.

According to the time series data released with the 2016 census, the fastest growing religious classifications over the ten years between 2006 and 2016 were:

• No religion – up from 18.7% to 30.1%
• Hinduism – up from 0.7% to 1.9%
• Islam – up from 1.7% to 2.6%
• Sikhism – up from 0.1% to 0.5%

Meanwhile, the greatest decreases were in the major Christian denominations; all Christian denominations combined decreased from 63.9% to 52.1%.^[1]

Census data[edit]

 

All good points and accurate 

However "no religion" does not equate to "no faith" 

Many Australians have no affiliation with a religion but do believe in "god" Ie while only about 60% claim affiliation with a specific  religion  only around  10% claim a belief that  gods do not exist,  with slightly more than that agnostic .

quote

The ‘religion question’ began making headlines last year when the Australian Bureau of Statistics decided to move ‘No Religion’ to the top of the list of options. And an advertising campaign funded by atheist groups encouraged people to tick the No Religion box on Census night.

It definitely affected results; nearly 30 percent of Australians (29.6%) chose the No Religion option—a big increase, up from 22 percent in 2011. But it doesn’t mean those 30 percent of Australians have no spiritual beliefs, according to a study by researchers at McCrindle.

The study included a question about religion but added a new option: ‘Spiritual, Not Religious’. “What we found is that 14% of Australians, 1 in 7, actually identified as ‘Spiritual, Not Religious’,” said Eliane Miles from McCrindle. “So what you will find is that many of those who might say ‘No Religion’ or nominally identify with a faith, might be in that category.

“So those in the No Religion category [in the Census], may still have a belief in a higher being, principle or power, or have some element of spirituality.”

https://hope1032.com.au/stories/faith/2017/australia-more-spiritual-atheists-hoped-census-results-religion/

 

[jmccr8]

1 hour ago, Mr Walker said:

All good points and accurate 

However "no religion" does not equate to "no faith" 

Many Australians have no affiliation with a religion but do believe in "god" Ie while only about 60% claim affiliation with a specific  religion  only around  10% claim a belief that  gods do not exist,  with slightly more than that agnostic .

quote

The ‘religion question’ began making headlines last year when the Australian Bureau of Statistics decided to move ‘No Religion’ to the top of the list of options. And an advertising campaign funded by atheist groups encouraged people to tick the No Religion box on Census night.

It definitely affected results; nearly 30 percent of Australians (29.6%) chose the No Religion option—a big increase, up from 22 percent in 2011. But it doesn’t mean those 30 percent of Australians have no spiritual beliefs, according to a study by researchers at McCrindle.

The study included a question about religion but added a new option: ‘Spiritual, Not Religious’. “What we found is that 14% of Australians, 1 in 7, actually identified as ‘Spiritual, Not Religious’,” said Eliane Miles from McCrindle. “So what you will find is that many of those who might say ‘No Religion’ or nominally identify with a faith, might be in that category.

“So those in the No Religion category [in the Census], may still have a belief in a higher being, principle or power, or have some element of spirituality.”

https://hope1032.com.au/stories/faith/2017/australia-more-spiritual-atheists-hoped-census-results-religion/

 

Hi Walker 

Thanks, and would like to mention that I wasn’t making a distinction of faith or no faith as people of non-Christian faiths may respond with Jesus was fictional or not real as they do not follow the Christian faith and have one of their own.

[eight bits]

1 hour ago, jmccr8 said:

Thanks, and would like to mention that I wasn’t making a distinction of faith or no faith as people of non-Christian faiths may respond with Jesus was fictional or not real as they do not follow the Christian faith and have one of their own.

Although it may also be interesting "the other way around." According to the 2016 figures you cited, Christians and Muslims (two world religions with a faith commitment to Jesus's historicity) are not quite 55% of the Australian respodent population. That's close to the 49% in the 2021 sample who chose "Jesus is a real person who actually lived."

The suspicion, then, is that maybe religious faith is the dominant predictor of whether a modern Australian adult would confidently assert Jesus's historicity.

This would stand in stark contrast to the guild position that it's merely a coincidence that their consensus coincides with their dominant faith commitment (and the faith commitment of their most reliable source of tuition-paying students, Chrsitian pastors in training).

On the question of people of other faiths, it would be nice to have direct survey results, since some non-Christians would plausibly have little knowledge or interest in the figure of Jesus (thus, mostly answering "don't know"), while others would have reached an opinion without a faith commitment one way or the other. That might be another interesting potential test for the guild's "amazing coincidence" theory of how their consensus conforms to their worship.

[jmccr8]

29 minutes ago, eight bits said:

Although it may also be interesting "the other way around." According to the 2016 figures you cited, Christians and Muslims (two world religions with a faith commitment to Jesus's historicity) are not quite 55% of the Australian respodent population. That's close to the 49% in the 2021 sample who chose "Jesus is a real person who actually lived."

The suspicion, then, is that maybe religious faith is the dominant predictor of whether a modern Australian adult would confidently assert Jesus's historicity.

This would stand in stark contrast to the guild position that it's merely a coincidence that their consensus coincides with their dominant faith commitment (and the faith commitment of their most reliable source of tuition-paying students, Chrsitian pastors in training).

On the question of people of other faiths, it would be nice to have direct survey results, since some non-Christians would plausibly have little knowledge or interest in the figure of Jesus (thus, mostly answering "don't know"), while others would have reached an opinion without a faith commitment one way or the other. That might be another interesting potential test for the guild's "amazing coincidence" theory of how their consensus conforms to their worship.

Hi Eight Bits

Great response that better describes my implication than I could have done.

[fred_mc]

I think that Jesus did exist, although I think that the stories about him that were written down long after his death are probably very inaccurate, and very much biased since they were written by persons believing that Jesus was divine. I have full respect for those who don't think that Jesus existed though since the evidence is not fully convincing, for example there are no undisputed sources outside of religious texts.

[+and-then]

On 12/26/2021 at 5:43 PM, The Silver Shroud said:

What would be the reaction if someone was proclaimed the Son of God say, next week? What if a rumour started growing that a charismatic preacher, who could do minor miracles, and even major ones like resurrecting someone, was the Second Coming and we were approaching the apocalypse? I wonder what the effect would be.

Millions will flock to his banner.  Anyone who believes in scripture understands in a basic way what happens, if not when or specifically how it will unfold.  That's why I commented as I did.  We know that massive numbers of people are already primed to believe in the idea that God is no more than an "alien" civilization from a past contact.  The pandemic has shown how many are unwilling to be herded like cattle if it means they'll avoid being inconvenienced.  

Yeah, I think that despite all of the shared wisdom of our "god is a joke" crowd, most of them will be ecstatic to see the magic tricks, up close and personal.  Until then, they'll become adept at finding ever more creative excuses to deny what is appearing in front of their eyes and right out of that book of fairy tales they love to mock.   

[XenoFish]

12 minutes ago, and then said:

Yeah, I think that despite all of the shared wisdom of our "god is a joke" crowd, most of them will be ecstatic to see the magic tricks, up close and personal.  

God is an idea. Either a personal or cultural construct. I for one wouldn't trust some magic tricks. No matter how grand.

Edited January 5, 2022 by XenoFish
Damn phone

[psyche101]

I'm surprised that it's not more like 85%

Have you seen the wildlife here? You don't get much crazier than a platypus. Jesus's stunts like water into wine would be down the list of miracles.

 

And...

Wine isn't as good as a beer on a hot summers day.

Edited January 6, 2022 by psyche101

[Golden Duck]

1 hour ago, psyche101 said:

I'm surprised that it's not more like 85%

Have you seen the wildlife here? You don't get much crazier than a platypus. Jesus's stunts like water into wine would be down the list of miracles.

 

And...

Wine isn't as good as a beer on a hot summers day.

The miracle is to turn beer into water at a Booze Bus

[acute]

Aussies couldn't give a Castlemaine XXXX about Jesus.

[eight bits]

There has been some follow-up discussion in Australia about the poll, as you might imagine. ABC, the Australian television network, ran a "guild" reply:

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/john-dickson-why-historians-dont-doubt-jesus-existed/13687464

What was more interesting, I think, was a response to that piece which ran last week:

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/miles-pattenden-historians-and-the-historicity-of-jesus/13720952

The author is a historian of religion, and he criticizes his colleague from a professional academic historian's perspective. He also gives a good summary of the first piece, so if you only have time to read one, you won't miss much reading only the more recent essay. And if you don't even have that much time, here's the core:

Quote

Ultimately, answers to the question of whether you consider this body of evidence sufficient to justify belief in Jesus’s historicity — on balance or not, or with certainty or not — will always be personal. There is no objective standard of proof to which historians will ever agree in a case like this; nor will there ever be agreement as to whether or not it has actually been reached.

If I may be indulged a politically incorrect, blatantly age-ist observation. This author is young, he writes from among the future of his field.

The lights are on down under - a situation likely to persist.

Edited January 22, 2022 by eight bits

[+Liquid Gardens]

1 hour ago, eight bits said:

If I may be indulged a politically incorrect, blatantly age-ist observation. This author is young, he writes from among the future of his field.

The lights are on down under - a situation likely to persist.

Great article.  I understand what you are saying above but just comparing the quality of the two articles I think gets you out of any ageist stuff; the latter article explains more and better the basis for the pro-historical-jesus pov than Dickson, who only gets as detailed as, "There is a reason for this consensus. When you apply the normal rules of history to Jesus of Nazareth, this figure is plainly a historical one not a mythical one. The early and diverse sources we have put his existence (and much more) beyond reasonable doubt.".  I'm not sure I've ever seen an article by an expert that so thoroughly indulges in arguments from authority, and pretty much only that.

[eight bits]

Well, it continues.

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/john-dickson-revisiting-the-historicity-of-jesus/13730526

Dickson, the author of the ABC network's first response to the poll, now replies to Pattenden, whose essay was the subject of my previous reply.

Just a small factual gaffe: there aren't two paragraphs about Jesus in Josephus. There's one paragraph (the "Flavian Testimony" which Dickson accepts has been altered), plus the briefest possible mention (that a certain James was the brother of Jesus, called Christ) in a long story about shenanigans among the Temple priesthood in 62 CE.

Otherwise, oddly, Dickson and his critic Pattenden actually seem to agree about the difference in quality and quantity of evidence about Jesus compared with more confidently believed historical figures, even ancient ones.

There is the predictable comparison between those who question Jesus experts with those who deny climate change. Well, I suppose that's a refreshing change from comparing us with Holocaust deniers. The notion that there might be some more data available about climate compared with about Jesus is not explored in the essay.

A final point for now, it is true that the terms "dependent" and its opposite, "independent," mean many different things in different contexts, and so maybe people do get confused. In the context of New Testament studies, when somebody says that "Mark is dependent on Paul's letters," they mean Mark read Paul and used what he read in telling his own story. And when somebody says "Matthew and Luke are dependent on Mark," they mean that Matthew and Luke copied great swaths of Mark's writing and incorporated it, sometimes word for word, other times with light "editing," into their own writing. And Q? That's a hypothetical document (= nobody has ever seen so much as a fragment of it)  from which both Matthew and Luke supposedly copied, the most likely alternative being that Luke simply copied from Matthew instead.

So Paul is our "independent" source for Jesus, then? Well, not exactly. The little he has to say about Jesus's life matches what he's read in the Jewish Bible. He thinks that's a feature, not a bug. He's very open about his gospel being "according to the scriptures."

IMO, the miracle is that only 20% of grown-ups think this "evidence" is rubbish not entirely convincing.

 

 

[moonman]

I have no doubt he existed.

The claims about what he could do and was supposed to be are the problem.

[onlookerofmayhem]

1 hour ago, moonman said:

I have no doubt he existed.

The claims about what he could do and was supposed to be are the problem.

Hey moonman.

I'm confused by this.

How is it possible to have no doubt that someone existed, but not know who they were or what they did?

Which parts of the story do you accept and which are debatable? 

Do you believe all the mundane claims and dismiss the miraculous ones? Why?

Are we strictly looking at the bible as a historical record of who and what Jesus was? If not, where else are we getting any information about him?

 

 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

On 12/27/2021 at 9:43 AM, The Silver Shroud said:

What would be the reaction if someone was proclaimed the Son of God say, next week? What if a rumour started growing that a charismatic preacher, who could do minor miracles, and even major ones like resurrecting someone, was the Second Coming and we were approaching the apocalypse? I wonder what the effect would be.

I’d say these days they’d need to kick off with the flashier miracles, even walking on water or loaves and fish will be called a stunt or CGI, so we’re talking exorcising and reviving the dead as act openers and not “do not tell anyone I did that”. 

[Phantom309]

Unfortunalty, this poor kid has a bad case of it:

 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

3 minutes ago, Phantom309 said:

Unfortunalty, this poor kid has a bad case of it:

 

My blood chills when “Christians” use terms like “warriors for Christ” or “Soldiers for the gospel”. We should take up alms for Christ, not arms. Only on The Last Day, when Jesus himself comes back should we be warriors. 

[moonman]

13 minutes ago, onlookerofmayhem said:

Hey moonman.

I'm confused by this.

How is it possible to have no doubt that someone existed, but not know who they were or what they did?

Which parts of the story do you accept and which are debatable? 

Do you believe all the mundane claims and dismiss the miraculous ones? Why?

Are we strictly looking at the bible as a historical record of who and what Jesus was? If not, where else are we getting any information about him?

 

 

What's not to understand? I have no trouble believing there was a guy named Jesus who got crucified and had a fan following that took notes.

Anything beyond that, as far as "water to wine" and "walked on water" and "son of god who could do miraculous cures"  and "rose from the dead" - not so sure.

Edited January 27, 2022 by moonman

[onlookerofmayhem]

25 minutes ago, moonman said:

What's not to understand? I believe there was a guy named Jesus who got crucified and had a fan following.

Yeah, but why are those acceptable facts that you have no doubt about?

While I agree that it's very plausible the stories have some degree of connection to real life events, I don't see why you have no doubts about the veracity of them. How is one supposed to differentiate between plausibility and fact?

The bible is the only source of biographical information about Jesus.

Why accept the mundane aspects?

25 minutes ago, moonman said:

Anything beyond that, as far as "water to wine" and "walked on water" and "son of god who could do miraculous cures"  and "rose from the dead" - not so sure.

I'm sure none of that is true.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're wrong in thinking Jesus was a real person who got crucified and left behind some followers. It's definitely plausible. 

I just was interested in your thought process that leaves no doubt about those facts.

In regards to the OP, that's the question. How fictional/mythological is the character of Jesus? And how do we sort out which parts into fact or fiction?

Do you believe his mom's name was Mary? Was he really in each town, at the time the bible places him, etc?

Do you understand my reservations in accepting the mundane claims about Jesus?

If most of the source material is not plausible what justifies accepting the few things that are?

Personally, I'm on the fence.

I'm not convinced Jesus is entirely mythological, but I also don't see how we can know, for sure, anything about the real life person that inspired the stories.

[Guest Br Cornelius]

For the longest time I took the lazy assumption that because of the sheer momentum of the Christian faith it must have been based upon real events. Only when UM prompted me to think about the details of my lazy assumption did I realize how self referential and corrupted were the "historic" "contemporary" accounts of Jesus that I came to realize that they were all post hock justifications for a mythos cult which was primarily promoted by Paul.

 

Never looked back since then and now absolutely believe that a historic Jesus is pure fiction.

 

Br Cornelius

[+Sherapy]

1 hour ago, Phantom309 said:

Unfortunalty, this poor kid has a bad case of it:

 

Well, once he gets out on his own let’s hope he starts questioning. Eeks.

[Silver]

3 minutes ago, Sherapy said:

Well, once he gets out on his own let’s hope he starts questioning. Eeks.

Do you think he has been indocrinated? Or just educated into his parents faith?

[+Sherapy]

5 minutes ago, The Silver Shroud said:

Do you think he has been indocrinated? Or just educated into his parents faith?

Parental indoctrination would be my guess. I feel bad for the kid, living with that kind of fire and brimstone seems to stress this kid out. 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Sherapy