I seriously doubt you could get through the debate with calling Doherty names Meta.

Properly moderated, I'd like to see it. I don't want to see an "arguement". But I'm still not exactly sure what Brian's position is from the last exchange. Are you? Earl's is clear to me.

As best I can tell, Brian position is identical to a TV movie's "Based on a true story" promo. So, what's fiction and what's fact? Everything is ultimately based on a true story.

Maybe I'll go back into Earl and Brian's exchanges and edit out the "non-info" and see what it looks like.

Meta, you're killing me here. Can't find the site? What a scholar!! ED only posted links to it several times during the debate. It's also linked in the SecWeb library. Oh, and they have a new thing out; it's called a "search engine."

BTW, if you're really interested, get the book. More material and better organized.

Toto

Get the book from the Secular Web bookstore and support your favorite site:

http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/booklist.asp

I can't imagine Doherty reading any post by MC and agreeing to a debate. Besides the chore of wading through the spelling and langauge problems, the ratio of name-calling and insult to actual argument is much too high.

I could get through the debate with calling him names. that would be easy.

O I see, you don't have time for serious debate so you post here. Well that figures

You guys are the biggest hypocrites in the world. totally self deluded. Over and over again the posts look like this:

Sec weber: MEtashit you are a crop of shit.

Meta: you are stupid.

Sec Weber: See you are just always calling people names.


Just go looking for that and you will see. But you wont because you are afraid of the truth and you don't care about the facts.

Toto

On the contrary, I see many posts where people actually try to give you reasoned arguments, and you respond with abuse. Even if people did call you names, why don't you do the Christian thing and turn the other cheek, and respond with a reasoned argument? Remember, a soft answer turneth away wrath. That's what I try to do with Nomad when he insults me, and at least it lets me feel morally superior.

I really advise you to edit what you write. Try removing all of the personal insults and emotional reactions, just give us the facts and analysis. We all know you think we're heading to hell in a handbasket.

I don't get this "Texas intellectual" thing. Is it like a "compassionate conservative?"

Richard Carrier

I'll weigh in here. As one put it above, I am not a strong historicist. It doesn't really matter to me, of course, whether Jesus existed, but I do not envy anyone who wanted to try and prove he did or didn't exist: the data just isn't enough.

Though I am perhaps the best equipped to debate Doherty, since I have made historical method one of my specializations and my focus is ancient history, I am not so greatly against the possibility that Jesus never existed as you would like. But then, this didn't use to be so. I have always been a staunch opponent of mythicism and the very notion of ahistoricism. But as I have continued to examine the evidence over the past several years, and studied methodology, I have seen the ahistoricist position become stronger rather than weaker. Try as I might to build a case against it, it is not a very strong case.

Nevertheless, I am eager to prevent abuses of historical method, especially in such a case. There is so far to my mind not enough evidence to say "Jesus didn't exist," but there is enough to say "Jesus might not have existed." But to get to either conclusion requires a proper methodology, not a clever conspiracy theory or a laundry list of peculiarities. Whether Doherty meets this standard or not I will soon see. I am a quarter through his book (I am reading it very, very carefully) and I must say he has not slipped yet (I have only a few questions I plan to double-check before agreeing with his particular facts), though his case is not yet solid either.

In the end, I am not sure even a debate between Doherty and a strong-historicist atheist would be very fruitful, since I see the strong historicists making absurd and faulty arguments, too. The real truth here is one that historians soon learn to live with but which annoys the layman: it may turn out that we simply don't have enough data to be sure either way. Not a very exciting conclusion, but all too often it is the case. I know this from experience: the historicity of Jesus is not the only such debate in history. There are arguments for and against the historicity of many historical figures, from Apollonius to his biographer Damis, from Harnouphis to Joseph of Arimathea, from the addressee of one of the works of Josephus to the addressee of Luke-Acts. Rarely can they be resolved with confidence.

So I'm not sure how interesting a debate would be between someone who says "no" and someone who says "maybe, you don't know." But we'll see. If I end up taking issue with any of Doherty's facts or arguments, that will come out when I publish my review, and maybe a debate will ensue on some specialized aspect of the argument rather than the whole question, which may be unresolvable.

Metacrock,

A "serious" debate for me is one that takes a lot of research, as opposed to just firing off quick responses, which is what I'm doing now. There's no inconsistency.