Radorth

Uh-huh. Let's look at Doherty's theory. One single verse referring to the physical Jesus wipes out the whole thing. We have produced at least ten, only a few of which he stoops to explain, and the rest by doing a tap dance around them as when he "explains" the phrase "James the Lord's brother." His theory cannot survive Occam's Razor just for that reason. Then it takes up 10 pages to Durant's one or two pages. Then you have to take so many of Doherty's assertions by faith, (even though they are questioned by 10 other scholars he fails to mention) or by reading 10 pages of somebody else, that you now have 100 pages to read in which you find at least 20 or 30 more assumptions (again, questioned by many other scholars).

If you complain you soon get more enormous websites or books to read, and soon you have 400 more pages to read and if you don't, you get "oh you just aren't open minded" catchall line.

No, I just have a clue about how real skeptics think, and he isn't one.

No it isn't, but God did some of it, nature did some of it and we did some of it, reconciles all the facts. To escape the Razor's edge, your theory must be complex enough to explain all without being overly complex. Nobody gets there, but some get closer than others. Durant's theory, which I don't agree with, nevertheless escapes the Razor as well as any. JMer's don't even get warm IMO, and they can't even offer something resembling consistent praxis.

Rad

Yellum Notnef

I know what you said,but I still don`t understand WHY you keep repeating it.
How does this benefit you?

Millions of readers have been taught that Jesus supposably existed. They don`t actually know it as fact although some like to think they do.

Once again I`m wondering WHY you keep telling us about it. If it`s so damaging why keep bringing it up? You make it sound like you`re trying to help us in our secret crusade of destruction.

I`m not interested in damaging anything. It doesn`t mean a poop in the woods to me if Jesus was a real guy or not and I`m not interested in damaging anything. I just find it all very interesting and it seems very reasonable to me that Jesus could have been a real man who`s story was heavily embelished with the religious motif`s of his time. OR he could have been totally made up like so many other gods in the area.
It doesn`t matter to me,but personally I feel he`s a fictional character. The evidence just makes more sense to me this way,but it could change if other evidence was presented.

I think the beauty of this theory for you is that you still get to hold onto your Jesus.
I`m not interested in getting converts,but I notice your bitterness peeking through again about JMer`s.

I`m not saying it`s either 100% made up or 100% factual. I think it probably does contain some correct facts,but none of them happen to be about gods and supernatural events.

I don`t understand what you`re getting out of pointing out all this "intellectual hypocrisy".
If your faith is so bullet proof,why are you letting these people get to you so much? Why not just forget about it and get on with something more constructive like your life?

Radorth

No I just find it entertaining to see how many skeptics can set aside their cynicism long enough to see the fallacy of their thinking. But I suppose it will do "the cause" harm if anybody figures it out, that is if truth can do harm. That I don't worry about.

Then why do YOU keep talking about it, unless it's either bugging you, or you don't get it. You spoke above as if you did not get it. I'm also pointing out how it relates to Occam's Razor, a subject you choose not to comment on in lieu of holding another inquisition.

But if you care about truth, you take it as it comes. You work hard to make needful distinctions, and you find that in the end, it is the shortest route. You don't go around making up myths to prove something else is a myth because you are really too lazy or afraid to accept a whole reality, warts and all.

You can question my motives all you want Fenton as is your main goal here apparently. I just get a few grins out of watching self-deluded geniuses look in the mirror and in rare cases, make them think. You're too holy to indulge yourself so I take it.

Oh my Fenton. Getting personal again already. I thought you were too busy to engage in such fruitless rhetoric.

Rad

Yellum Notnef

Radorth,
Why are you being such a jerk about this?

I did not insult you and asked honest questions about your motives in constantly bringing up a particular topic. So often your opening act (regardless of the topic) is an assault on Jesus mythers and I was wondering why.
You going on the defensive when asked about your motives only makes me question them more.

I didn`t even bother to break up your post into qoutes and reply to individual points since it was all just too damn hostile.

Btw,
I don`t think anyone here would consider what I asked you to be "fruitless rhetoric".

never been there

<sigh> Once more from the top; it's very simple:

We're all different. Our children, if any, are more like us than they are to other people. If some difference causes one to have more children that have children of their own, then that characteristic will become more and more common over generations until it becomes "average" for the species.

It only takes a few hundred generations to make a big difference (you can do the math, it's just calculator arithmetic plus the patience to keep hitting the "equals" key). When you extrapolate that to geologic time scales, you get new species, families and more.

That's it. You don't need a PhD to understand that, just a mind.

Any "god" is just going to be a spectator, therefore an unnecessarily added 'one' to the quantity. Occam says, "begone!"

Asha'man

Then your theory has failed, and a more complex theory is clearly required.

Occam’s razor favors the simplest theory that explains all the facts, not the simplest theory available.

I look at the genealogies and apply Occam’s razor and get the following: they are both fabrications.

Given that they are fabrications, I would expect that many other stories about Jesus’ life are also fabrications. That is the simplest explanation that accomodates all the evidence.

Stephen T-B

“No it isn't, but God did some of it, nature did some of it and we did some of it, reconciles all the facts..." Radorth.

Which bits did God do - the ones we can’t ascribe to nature or ourselves?
Is this why god has been squeezed and squeezed until only the Fundamentalists are left giving him the space he once occupied?
My Fundamentalist Under The Stairs asserts that the railway system which sprawls all over the UK, and the engines and rolling stock which use it are all the creation of God. He did it all in seven hours. It’s a simple explanation - the simplest possible explanation.
My Rational Christian In The Attic asserts that the railway system is the creation of god, but that Natural processes produced the engines and rolling stock.
My Historian In The Living Room says that his lifetime’s research shows that the whole complex structure began with an Act of Parliament in 1758 permitting the construction of a railway at Middleton, near Leeds in West Yorkshire, which, in 1812, ran the world’s first commercially successful steam locomotive which had been made possible by developments of Newcomen's steam engine of 1712. The earliest rolling stock had ordinary wheels, kept on course by a flanged track, but the evolutionary process in engineering design eventually transferred the flange from the track to the wheel, which is what we know today. Our modern railway network, rolling stock and locomotives, says my Historian, is a combined process of evolution and a system which has become increasingly complex at an exponential rate.

He hasn’t heard of Occam’s Razor.

Back to Radorth: “... I just find it entertaining to see how many skeptics can set aside their cynicism long enough to see the fallacy of their thinking.”

To be sceptical is not necessarily to be cynical: I know of sceptics (that’s how we spell the word in Yorkshire) who are not in the least bit cynical; and I have met Christians who were the most cynical people I’ve come across.
Interestingly, Radorth is both sceptical and cynical.
He expresses scepticism about some parts of the Bible being the unadulterated Word of God, and at the same time his cynicism regarding JMers (whatever they are, but I suppose I’m one) and their agenda informs almost every post of his we see here.

Melkor

Occam's Razor != The Scientific Method


That is a common mistake for people to make that assumption. In a way, Occam's Razor is simply a "shortcut" that generally speaking has a good probability of being correct. It's basically looking at two theories/explanations for a phenomenon, deciding which one is the simpler of the two, and saying "odds are that it is THAT one".... nothing more in the way of "critical thinking" is really involved, aside from the judgement necessary to deem one scenario more complex than the other.

"God did some of it" still does not an explanation make... according to Genesis, God did ALL of it.... my question is HOW?

I am curious to see how "simple" that explanation is. Because if no explanation for HOW God did any of it can be given, then it quite simply fails the test... therefore according to Occam's Razor it is most likely (like the geneology, above) a fabrication and is not valid.

pz

Wait a minute...no, I don't see that. I know it's often stated that way, but Occam's Razor says absolutely nothing about the probability of being correct. It is a methodological dictum, and certainly is a component of the scientific method. It says that we should always begin our investigations with a minimal number of assumptions, unknowns, and variables, and test the simpler hypotheses before building elaborate castles of speculation.

Radorth

Because you are, once again, questioning my motives, goals in life, usefulness, instead of arguing on thread. Nice try though. YOU are the problem Fenton. We know that because as soon as you back off, I back off. You might want to take me up on my offer to ignore each other, but of course given YOUR goals, you have nothing to gain. Right?

Rad