Firstly, you presuppose that academics are unbiased.

Firstly... no I don't presuppose academics are unbiased. Everyone has bias.

Atheism can be just as much a totalitarian ideology. Think of the USSR, or Pol Pot, or Mao.

Wrong. Atheism is a lack of belief in gods. There's no ideology. I think you're confusing it with communism or religion.

You mention 1901 authorities on Christianity, who were imbedded with the scientific notion that one could be unbiased, hence historical criticism. Really historical criticism has been great for Bible research, but again, those early scholars are really out of date given our post modern understanding now of philosophy. No one is unbiased. Everyone has an agenda. You have an agenda. I have an agenda. We all do.

Yes, I agree. The scholars I listed though are contemporary.

So my question to you is this...why specifically are you questioning the Bible? Why not the Lotus Sutra? Why not the Koran? Why not the Vedas? Why specifically do you feel a need to discuss the Bible? Is Christianity the only belief system out there? What is your agenda?

I question all religions. Just so happens this discussion goes way back and the people involved were Christians. I think religion is a disease. My agenda... hmmm, I've not thought about that too much. Maybe it's to help people see through their brainwashing. I really don't know though and would feel like I was cheating by giving you a quick answer. I'd need to think more on that.

Secondly, Mark isn't the original source, a book that scholars refer to as the "Q" document is. This document was essentially used as the foundation of all the other gospels. With this in mind, the apparent transparencies within the gospels indicate multiple authors. No single author would purposefully make supposed errors. It'd be plain dumb...and if you think that perhaps a dumb writer wrote the gospels, really anyone who would take the time to write such a large amount in the first or second century CE...well, simply put you can't call them uneducated at least, given how little people wrote.

Not uneducated. Not at all. These were highly educated scholars of their time. They were greatly influenced by other mythologies preceding Christianity.

The Q document... some scholars argue that one as well. They think Mark was the originator. Some reckon Q didn't exist either, but I don't know enough about Q to comment at this stage. What do you know about it? It'd be interesting to explore that, if you want?

Thirdly, in Matthew there is no indication to the specific place Jesus was born, "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem..." The writer of Matthew didn't care about this detail. He wasn't a historian. The book of Matthew is centered around the Sermon on the Mount, on the message of Christ. Many, from the likes of Ghandi to Marin Luther King Jr., attest to the Sermon on the Mount as being one of the greatest religious statements known to humanity.

Matthew refers to 'Jesus of Nazareth'. There's lots to the story. He copied a lot of his gospel from Mark and went further, trying to make it appear as though OT prophesies were happening. His was thought to be a propagandist answer to Vespasian's propaganda at the time.

Nazareth is actually described as a "shithole". That whole little bit in the Bible about nothing good coming out of Nazareth. It actually gives validity to the Biblical text. Also, for years, people said Nazareth didn't exist, but now its been found, like they said King David never existed, until the Tel Dan inscription discovery some years back.

Archaeologists have found no evidence of a town or city being in Nazareth until at least 2 C.E. That's just the fact. There are plenty of biblical characters with dodgy genealogy and barely (if any) evidence they actually existed. Moses for example.

All of this is really pointless however. There's a great saying, "If you win someone over by argument, someone else will win them back."

That's a good saying. I agree. I'm not trying to win anyone over (although if people see the holes in their religion, I'm happy to have helped). I enjoy reading about religions and discussing it with people who know about it. It's how I enjoy myself.

Faith is faith. You have just as much faith in atheism, as someone else does in the teachings of Shinran, or the life of Jesus, or the prophecies of Muhammed. Believing in nothing is still believing in something.

We disagree here. I don't have 'faith' in atheism. I lack faith there's a god. Big difference. I don't believe in things. I have opinions based on the knowledge I acquire. This can and does change from time to time.

Thanks for the thoughts
Anj :)