2. How do you explain the paranormal, such as people witnessing positive or negative sightings, like ghosts or angels? I saw a ghost with a friend of mine - I am not a liar, an attention seeker. Neither was I overtired when this happened.

I don’t even understand this one. I mean, say I accept that you are neither a liar, nor an attention seeker, nor crazy, and I agree that ghosts exist. How does that say anything about God? Because one supernatural thing exists, anything that pops into anyone’s head must also be true?

“You’ve seen the proof. Ghosts! Phantasms! Perceptible non-physical manifestations!”
“Yes.”
“We have to find the slayer.”
“The who?”
“Buffy. Somewhere, she needs our help. Fighting the vampires.”
“The whatnow?”

There’s a relevant way in which anything that pops into anyone’s head is true, of course. Perhaps a touch more subtly than is appreciated by, say, people who send e-mails like this one.

50. Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.

…er, you’re making it a little too easy here.

This reminds of a delightful book I read maybe ten years ago by Nicholas Humphrey, called Leaps of Faith. It was more generally about skepticism than Jesus; but there was a really interesting chapter where– well, he didn’t say Jesus was a con-man, since there’s no way for anybody to know much about what was going on at the time. But he pointed out that all of Jesus’s “miracles” were of the sort that street entertainers of the day could have been capable of. Much like when the Amazing Randi is able to appear to replicate the effects of a person claiming to be a psychic, it doesn’t DISPROVE the psychic’s powers, but it certainly should make anybody think twice about it.

I don’t remember many details anymore, but this is from one of the Amazon reviews of the book:

Jesus, instead of a “redeemer”, is portrayed as a skillful conjurer from a young age. Using modern child prodigies as models, Humphrey suggests that Jesus, too, exhibited extraordinary talents in childhood. These need not have been “supernatural”, but they certainly garnered attention.

I also seem to recall something from the book about how, since some contemporary mystics deemed that Jesus was possibly the Chosen One based on the timing of his born, in some ways he might have been under pressure to be able to figure out some miraculous tricks to do.

Following the example of a father-son mutually reinforcing alliance to perform “spoon-bending” feats, he suggests Jesus was the victim of a “virtuous circle” of family and friends encouraging him. While those in his home town remained skeptical, Jesus’ talents in sleight-of-hand were applauded elsewhere. The acclaim grew widespread enough that even non-Christian paranormal practitioners rely on the model Jesus established. It’s a compelling idea, both in accepting an historical Jesus while explaining how supposedly irrational events can gain wide-spread acceptance.

For some reason, though, whenever I suggest to people that Jesus might just have been a glorified street magician, they hardly ever take it well.