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Message:: [QUOTE="Cherd, post: 8099831, member: 24754"]If we want to get philosophical about it, then we are stuck at, "I think, therefore I am", but that's not what I'm doing here. I'm drawing a distinction between "think" and "know" in the way that we use the words in everyday conversation, not in what is fundamentally knowable. You said: Which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to say. However, if a person were to say: "The overwhelming majority of historians, regardless of their political affiliations if any, think that John F Kennedy actually existed." Well, that would just seem like a silly thing to say. And therein lies the difference. It would seem silly to use "think" with respect to JFK because evidence of his existence is overwhelming to the point that it would be stupid to question it. Even though I concede the possibility that the world conspired together to make me believe JFK really existed when he actually did not, I still say that I "know" that he existed. The reason that it doesn't seem silly to say "think" with respect to Jesus is because the evidence is sparse, people throughout history would have had ulterior motives for making the case, and even the mundane things that we could possibly know about him are mixed in with mythology and obvious untruths that make it difficult to know where to draw the lines.[/QUOTE]