Penn & Teller barbecue the Bible

Penn and Teller for information on religion?

Didn't Penn say something like Christians are f***tards?
 
Dog Boots said:
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Such a post is rather common round these parts...except for atheists being the target of course.

Barbecuing a bible. Tee hee. They so clever! That'll show those Christians!
 
KingMerv00 said:
Plus, Michael Shermer makes an appearance.
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Unfortunately, in his appearance, he said that Apollonius of Tyana supposedly had been crucified, which is, AFAICT, dead wrong. It is certainly not in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius. Indeed, calling Apollonius a kind of messiah is grossly misleading. He was basically a philosopher-magician, not a revolutionary leader, or someone trying to reform his people in preparation for a coming judgment, or any other analogue of the various Jewish conceptions of a messiah.

P&T here are spreading b******t as well as debunking it.
 
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jjramsey said:
Unfortunately, in his appearance, he said that Apollonius of Tyana supposedly had been crucified, which is, AFAICT, dead wrong. It is certainly not in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius. Indeed, calling Apollonius a kind of messiah is grossly misleading. He was basically a philosopher-magician, not a revolutionary leader, or someone trying to reform his people in preparation for a coming judgment, or any other analogue of the various Jewish conceptions of a messiah.

P&T here are spreading b******t as well as debunking it.
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Don't worry. There're plenty of proto-religions that Christianity evolved from and later competed with to go around.
 
jjramsey,
I tend to agree (based on a somewhat informed view) that the similarities between Christianity and other preceding relgions and beliefs is exaggerated.

None the less, I felt the tone of your last few posts goes a little too far. For the most part people were making up Christianity in the first few centuries following the death of Jesus. Not all of the ideas were pulled out of the ether, it is reasonable to suspect that the people that were making up Christianity were inspired by other reliigious ideas beyond Judaism which seems to have been affected by hellenization, itself.

I agree with your idea that is very likely that Jesus existed. Beyond that I don't think we know much about the nature or teachings of Jesus. What we do know is that he left no writings that are available to us today, most of the words attributed to him almost certainly weren't spoken by him and most of the details concerning the description of his life are probably false. From that we know that people were making stuff up like mad about Jesus and some of that stuff has the potential to have been inspired by other relgious ideas.
 
Dog Boots said:
Originally Posted by Huntster
Penn and Teller are a pair of fools.
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No test needed.

My opinion is that Penn and Teller are a pair of liars and fools (as in buffoons).

Period.
 
Hunty, have you ever asked David Swidler why he's not a christian?

You might just get the awakening you so sorely need.
 
davefoc said:
None the less, I felt the tone of your last few posts goes a little too far. For the most part people were making up Christianity in the first few centuries following the death of Jesus.
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Certainly the religious dogmas developed over the first few centuries, but the basics of the life of Christ were established by the synoptic gospels 55-85 AD.

I agree with your idea that is very likely that Jesus existed. Beyond that I don't think we know much about the nature or teachings of Jesus. What we do know is that he left no writings that are available to us today, most of the words attributed to him almost certainly weren't spoken by him and most of the details concerning the description of his life are probably false. From that we know that people were making stuff up like mad about Jesus and some of that stuff has the potential to have been inspired by other relgious ideas.
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There's the letter to Agbar, but most people doubt the authenticity of it (Eusebius being a notable exception).

Your last paragraph was basically my mindset whilst in high school. I guess I was impressed that those who knew Christ were willing to die for the story. It's not just dying for faith, or beliefs, but dying for events in a person's life that either happened or didn't happen.

I am content to have faith in the canonical gospels. I'm open-minded enough to understand and appreciate the fact that I could be wrong, and if I'm wrong, oh well. I don't know about the "most of the words attributed to him almost certainly weren't spoken by him" bit, I think people had better memories when it come to that stuff back then, no tape recorders and notepads back then. As for most details "probably being false", I don't know how you'd calculate the probability of that.

-Elliot
 
davefoc said:
Not all of the ideas were pulled out of the ether, it is reasonable to suspect that the people that were making up Christianity were inspired by other reliigious ideas beyond Judaism which seems to have been affected by hellenization, itself.
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True, but the Hellenistic influences on theology seem mostly to have come from Greek philosophy, especially Platonism, rather than pagan myths per se.
 
jjramsey said:
Unfortunately, in his appearance, he said that Apollonius of Tyana supposedly had been crucified, which is, AFAICT, dead wrong. It is certainly not in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius. Indeed, calling Apollonius a kind of messiah is grossly misleading. He was basically a philosopher-magician, not a revolutionary leader, or someone trying to reform his people in preparation for a coming judgment, or any other analogue of the various Jewish conceptions of a messiah.
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Do you have any evidence that Jesus was crucified, or that he was a messiah?
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Do you have any evidence that Jesus was crucified, or that he was a messiah?
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First, I don't think you're appreciating the context of the point. The Life of Appollonius being analogous to the canonical gospels...and jjramsey was responding to the idea that the gospels copped the crucifixion when it can't be found in the analogue.

Second, the Christian would say that the canonical gospels would be the primary evidence. Whatever. If Christ was crucified, then the canonical gospels are the primary evidence. If Christ wasn't crucified, then the canonical gospels are curious mythic artifacts. Objective reality determines whether they are evidence or not, and not the other way around.

-Elliot
 
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