Can you comment on the video “Real proof that Jesus is not real”?

Answer:

It is so easy to forget that just because a claim is made, it doesn't make it true. The creator of the video attempts to create an argument through guilt by association. I'm not going to bother covering everything because it would be a waste of time, but let me give you a start.

One of his first arguments is to say that Jesus being the Son of God is borrowed from pagan religions that had sun gods. Now notice that the core of his argument is based on the homonyms "son" and "sun." The problem is that this is in English, a language that developed long after the events in the Bible. In Hebrew the word for "sun" is shemesh and the word for "son" is ben. In Greek the word for "sun" is helios and the word for "son" is huis. The whole argument falls apart.

He then picks out several general items from the Gospels and then claims that older pagan religions had the same features. The problem is that he is selective in the features he chooses and uses general descriptions so that they are more likely to match up. But what I found humorous is that some of the things he claimed were about the birth of Christ are not in the Bible! Such careless handling of the Bible tells me that he was probably also careless about the pagan religions.

For example, he says Jesus was born on December 25th. That is false. The Bible doesn't give a date for Jesus' birth and the description places his birth in the warm months, not the winter months. He also says that three wise men visited Jesus at his birth. That is also false. The Bible says that wise men came when he was about a year old, but the number of wise men is not given. See Holiday Observances for more details.

What is being ignored is that early Catholicism borrowed pagan holidays to promote Christianity. They purposely placed a man-made holy day at the same time the pagans were celebrating things like the winter solstice. Elements of the pagan beliefs were merged in to make the transition easier, so of course, in the traditions of Christmas you are going to find overlap with the pagan beliefs, but this does not mean that what the Bible teaches is the same as the pagans or these man-made traditions.

Yes, pagans had resurrection stories. That is how they explained away the seasons or even the day/night cycle. But notice that generally their gods are locked into a repetition of death and resurrection. That isn't what the Bible teaches about Christ. The foundation of Christianity is that Jesus died and was resurrected -- never to die again. The pagans had death/resurrection stories to explain the physical world. Only Christianity states that Jesus' death and resurrection was a solution to sin -- a spiritual problem.

Even if we could find an element of pagan belief that matched the Gospel in some fashion, there is still a critical element missing: proof that the pagan belief caused the Christian belief. Let's say I have a silver mini-van and another person also has the same silver mini-van. Does that mean I have a mini-van because of the other person? Or is it just a coincidence brought about by relatively limited options?

All I saw was a bunch of unsupported innuendos about the vague similarities of several religions. Yet the title of the video claim he was going to prove that Jesus wasn't real. The fact is that he didn't prove his point.