Where were you when HJers were shouting over their DEAD HJ argument?
Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that show Jesus never existed
- Thread starter Kapyong
- Start date
-
- Tags
- david fitzgerald
- Status
Where were you when HJers were shouting over their DEAD HJ argument?
You tell me! I have no idea why the MJ people make such a fuss, as they did over Ehrman's recent book. I've never read the like.
Belz...
Fiend God
You're the same Dejudge who admitted there is an abundance of evidence.
Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2006
- Messages
- 22,107
Curiosity about how we came to be where we are.
Stories in both the OT and NT writings sound as mythological as myth gods. Yet oddly, look at all the people who cling to the Christian faith and other same type of God ans great prophet religions. Billions...compared to how many that believe in so-called myth Gods.
.
Its quite fascinating actually. There is something about that BIBLE. It lies in hotel rooms. Look at all the churches, synagogues and mosques.
.
I think besides the Bible, it is sort of given a free pass unlike other myths because it is a perpetuating phenomonen fueled by such things as dead sea scrolls, manuscripts, canons, creeds, rituals, singing praises-choirs/songs of beauty-the awesome sound of the pipe organ, churches, monestaries -monks/nuns, paintings, mosaics, and heirarchy orders within churches like bishop-archbishop-cardinal and the ever talked about Pope. Oh, and then there is Mary too. Shes worshipped quite heavily too. And...last but not least...knowing that millions or billions share the same belief. Oh...and of course the main thing; not being satisfied with any other explanation where we, the Earth and all the wonders that seem just made for us, all came from...even if you believe in evolution a little bit, or even a lot of bit. And even religious debate itself helps fuel it...because no matter how smart an atheist is, they never seem to convince an audience of believers that God didnt start everything. They just cant seem to conclusively prove there is no God.
.
Scientists crow the Earth is billions of years old, man or his ancestors are hundreds of thousands or millions of years old, that dinosaurs roaming the Earth for about 200 million years without man makes no sense regarding a God designing Earth for man, and that there was no Flood..etc., ...and religious people pay no mind because my list above contains so many things, that it is like paper and wood in a fire...that the religious fire cannot be quenched. Quite a remarkable thing in itself. Its like a living and breathing entity that cant be stopped no matter what is thrown at it. And then THAT fuels religious people to take note of THAT, which seems to further add to their faith.
.
All these things mentioned above, come to mind...actually, are already in the back of ones mind... when you/they see and open a Bible.
.
Its really quite the fascinating thing.
.
If i were to have asked my religious aunt and uncle(both dead now) who always read the Bible, what was more real...God/Jesus, or say Zeus..they`d say i was being silly.
.
Yet, there are quite the silly sounding stories and miracles in the Bible, and they would not be questioned by such people as my aunt and uncle. Likely fueled by my list of things above.
.
Its quite fascinating actually. There is something about that BIBLE. It lies in hotel rooms. Look at all the churches, synagogues and mosques.
.
I think besides the Bible, it is sort of given a free pass unlike other myths because it is a perpetuating phenomonen fueled by such things as dead sea scrolls, manuscripts, canons, creeds, rituals, singing praises-choirs/songs of beauty-the awesome sound of the pipe organ, churches, monestaries -monks/nuns, paintings, mosaics, and heirarchy orders within churches like bishop-archbishop-cardinal and the ever talked about Pope. Oh, and then there is Mary too. Shes worshipped quite heavily too. And...last but not least...knowing that millions or billions share the same belief. Oh...and of course the main thing; not being satisfied with any other explanation where we, the Earth and all the wonders that seem just made for us, all came from...even if you believe in evolution a little bit, or even a lot of bit. And even religious debate itself helps fuel it...because no matter how smart an atheist is, they never seem to convince an audience of believers that God didnt start everything. They just cant seem to conclusively prove there is no God.
.
Scientists crow the Earth is billions of years old, man or his ancestors are hundreds of thousands or millions of years old, that dinosaurs roaming the Earth for about 200 million years without man makes no sense regarding a God designing Earth for man, and that there was no Flood..etc., ...and religious people pay no mind because my list above contains so many things, that it is like paper and wood in a fire...that the religious fire cannot be quenched. Quite a remarkable thing in itself. Its like a living and breathing entity that cant be stopped no matter what is thrown at it. And then THAT fuels religious people to take note of THAT, which seems to further add to their faith.
.
All these things mentioned above, come to mind...actually, are already in the back of ones mind... when you/they see and open a Bible.
.
Its really quite the fascinating thing.
.
If i were to have asked my religious aunt and uncle(both dead now) who always read the Bible, what was more real...God/Jesus, or say Zeus..they`d say i was being silly.
.
Yet, there are quite the silly sounding stories and miracles in the Bible, and they would not be questioned by such people as my aunt and uncle. Likely fueled by my list of things above.
Should that not be "show" instead of "crow"? Here in the UK most - I would say the vast majority - of religious people do accept this sort of crowing from scientists, and can allow it to coexist with their religious beliefs and observances.
If events/people such as Thermopylae were known only from the same sort of "evidence" that we have for Jesus (i.e. actually zero credible evidence for, but plenty against), then no sane academic could possibly claim that we should all believe the event/person was more likely than not.
In genuine academic research (in any subject), if you wish to claim something is probably true (anything), then you must be able to show genuine reliable and credible evidence to support that conclusion. Otherwise, if you cannot clearly show that evidence, then at the very best all you can say is that it might be true (and anything at all "might" be true ... even God might be true, though all known evidence is against the existence of a biblical type God ... but maybe people would like to propose a "Historical God" instead … a god stripped of all the biblical supernatural impossibilities, but who was still somehow the creator of the universe with Man as his intention, etc. etc.
).David Mo
Philosopher
No, no and no!
I suggested the battle of Thermopylae as an example of how the strict criteria of evidence of a court of law do not apply to Ancient History. And nothing more!
No, by Zeus, Yahveh and Mitra! I am not considering here the existence of Jesus! You are applying a stereotype. You argue with the false supposition that everything one says must end in validating the Gospels. It would be desirable to not draw personal extrapolations otherwise your arguments have nothing to do with my approach.
No and no! I’m saying historians believe the battle of Thermopyle did occur for different reasons as usually argued in a court.
Well, you are sadly mistaken because the vast majority of Greece historians aren't skeptical of the battle of Thermopylae, but believe it really happened. Of course, they haven't absolute certainty. Of course, they can not submit the evidence that would solve the case in a court of law. Just they believe it is more likely it took place than it was an invention of Herodotus.
And this happens with a high percentage of historical facts. I mean Ancient History. For example, we have more than one witness only in a few cases of battles in ancient times. A testimony which comes from the two fields scarcely occurs, as the Battle of Kadesh. More unusual is that we have the remains of the battle, as in the case of the battle of Teutoburg Forests. It is also relatively rare the case in the history when we can present the coin effigy or other archaeological remains attesting the existence of some individual. If you claim otherwise is because you don't know the ground you are walking on.
This does not justify the adventures of Jesus told by the evangelists. I do not intend to go that route. Only discredits the claims for criteria applied to the History that don't fit. And led us to consider what might be the criteria that make historians favouring an alternative more than another, not to present absolute evidence or, even, similar evidence to those used in the natural sciences or the justice courts.
Why historians admit the existence of the Battle of Thermopylae in spite of having no standards of evidence as you demand again and again to exhaust ourselves? Entering this issue could perhaps shed some light on whether or not to submit any evidence of the existence of Jesus. If we crush with the singsong of 'no evidence, no evidence’, we block the debate and we give an image of stubbornness that does not favour a consistent rationalism.
No matter how much it may seem to people like Dejudge or you that you are adopting a choice of firmness and skeptical purity. You are wrong. A lot.
Last edited:
It's an interesting example, (Thermopylae), as Herodotus could have invented the whole thing. However, by placing it in a context - where it is known that Persians and Greeks did fight a number of battles, e.g. Marathon - historians are able to reason that it is more likely than not that Herodotus is talking about something that did happen, even though he may embroider round the edges.
But I think IanS is wrong that in cases like this, that one has to produce physical evidence - I suppose in this case, it would be a field full of skeletons with weapons and so on, or an inscription recording the battle - to conclude that an ancient account is more likely than not.
Presumably, ancient historians are reasoning in this way all the time, since the hard stuff like coins, is scarce.
But I think IanS is wrong that in cases like this, that one has to produce physical evidence - I suppose in this case, it would be a field full of skeletons with weapons and so on, or an inscription recording the battle - to conclude that an ancient account is more likely than not.
Presumably, ancient historians are reasoning in this way all the time, since the hard stuff like coins, is scarce.
It is likewise known that the period 6 - 66 AD was characterised by many disturbances and executions, peripatetic apocalypticists, miracle workers, rebels of various kinds, and messianic preachers, exorcists and so on. A Jesus figure fits into this context quite well.
Yes, I think the rediscovery of Jesus the Jew has changed the ways in which Jesus is approach historically. Christianity had actually obscured the ways in which he conformed to the norm of a charismatic and apocalyptic Jewish preacher, as you say.
This is not 'evidence' in the way in which IanS seems to be defining it; but it is a contextualization which changes the way in which we might look at various documents. Christian thinking had acted as a kind of veneer which actually obscured many details and ideas, which can be seen as central to the Judaism of that time.
If events/people such as Thermopylae were known only from the same sort of "evidence" that we have for Jesus (i.e. actually zero credible evidence for, but plenty against), then no sane academic could possibly claim that we should all believe the event/person was more likely than not.
In genuine academic research (in any subject), if you wish to claim something is probably true (anything), then you must be able to show genuine reliable and credible evidence to support that conclusion. Otherwise, if you cannot clearly show that evidence, then at the very best all you can say is that it might be true (and anything at all "might" be true ... even God might be true, though all known evidence is against the existence of a biblical type God ... but maybe people would like to propose a "Historical God" instead … a god stripped of all the biblical supernatural impossibilities, but who was still somehow the creator of the universe with Man as his intention, etc. etc.
In your fist paragraph, regarding Jesus, you laid claim that there is zero evidence for, and plenty against.
.
Then in your second paragraph you said if you wish to make a claim that something is probably true, you must be able to show general reliable and credible evidence.
.
Um, I will be anxiously waiting for you to apply your very rules to your first paragraph! I`m serious, because i do like to learn the truth on things and not just go by someone`s heresay.
dafydd
Banned
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2008
- Messages
- 35,398
Please stop with the shouting. We can all read lower case letters.
jhunter1163
beer-swilling semiliterate
Yes, this. I asked you nicely once before, dejudge, to stop with the capitalizing and bolding and such. I'm going to ask you to stop, nicely, again, just this once more. If I have to make it a mod directive, I will. Please don't make me do that.
Thanks in advance.
I Ratant
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2008
- Messages
- 19,258
.
This is a Skeptics forum.
We all know that!
And we know there was no Divine J either.
What are doing here, telling us, that?
dafydd
Banned
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2008
- Messages
- 35,398
I suggest that you read the MA that you signed when you joined up here. Shouting at us is rude. Please stop. We can understand your arguments, there is no need to get hysterical.
OK, well let me start just the way you decided to - No, No, No!
No David. It is you who is wrong if you say, as I think you are saying, that historians claim to believe that Thermopylae is true on the basis of evidence no better than that for Jesus.
I do not believe that any genuine sane historians would say anything so idiotic and uneducated as that. And if they ever did say that, then that is a wholly untenable position which is by it’s own definition not based on evidence, but based instead on unsubstantiated belief or “faith”.
If historians do actually say that Thermopylae is most likely to be true, i.e. probably true, then I suspect they are citing significantly better evidence than is the case for the existence of Jesus.
However, you were specifically complaining about the legal analogy of what is, or is not, admissible evidence before a jury.
But what I said about that, is that we should be using that same legal standard as our criteria here. Not that bible scholars or so-called bible-“historians” do use that same legal standard in the case of Jesus.
We know that bible studies scholars appear to be accepting a standard vastly below that of what would be allowed even to be heard by a jury as a claim of “evidence”. But that is precisely why sceptics are arguing that the standard of what is being called “evidence” by bible scholars, is nowhere near any acceptable standard of reliability or credibility at all.
Now, you say (as I understand you) that a legal standard such as ruling out anonymous hearsay would render much of ancient history non-existent, so that vast swathes of ancient history had to be ruled out.
Well that is not true. It would not mean that vast areas of ancient history suddenly had to be thrown out.
It simply means that if all the evidence that you have is, like the biblical writing, just anonymous hearsay with no other external evidence to support it at all, then that is not a reliable basis on which to say that any such believed historical event is more likely to be true than not. You cannot reach that sort of positive conclusion of belief, purely and entirely on nothing except anonymous hearsay alone.
And if you say that genuine historians do believe in Thermopylae on just that sort of anonymous hearsay alone (with no other supporting evidence of any kind), then I simply do not believe you are right about that, because it would mean that history was based on unsupported un-evidenced faith alone.
I suspect that if Thermopylae is believed by historians, then that belief can only credibly be based on significantly better evidence than mere anonymous hearsay alone.
Last edited:
You mean that you want me to explain yet again for the 100th time here, why the claimed "evidence" of Jesus, is not actually evidence of anyone knowing any human Jesus?
And also, you want me to explain again for the 60th time why there is plenty of evidence against the biblical belief in a human Jesus?
You really missed all that so many times before. And you would like to go over it all again? Just as we keep going over all the same un-evidenced Jesus claims literally hundreds of times here, again and again and again, and never with anyone ever producing the slightest piece of any evidence of a living Jesus at all? You want to keep going over all of that indefinitely?
Please don't go over it again.
It wasn't convincing to anyone the last ten thousand times, that isn't going to change.
Time to hit the History texts IanS.
- Status