Toto

What part of "post this in the proper forum" escapes you?

Chaucer

MJers can vote. Fundies can vote. Nothing wrong with that. But we need to challenge fundies today, every day, in our public schools. Education and our students' understanding of science is at stake.

Too many people of school age surf the Web for mytherism to be ignored. If Jesus is really a myth, then it's time for creditable historians, not casual wankers, to show how it's more LIKELY that he is. Carrier may or may not show how it's more likely, eventually. But you don't do that by just sweeping under the rug the prevailing consensus among professionals that both the Tacitus allusion and the Antiq. 20 allusion are authentic. You deal block by block with the detailed reasons why professionals view those two allusions as authentic, and then you deal block by block with each of those reasons, showing in turn which additional aspects you are bringing to the table that can challenge each of those reasons.

If the sloppiness of most on-line mythers today is not challenged by on-line HJers, school-age surfers get a completely distorted picture of ancient history as a whole. That is far more important than anything to do with Jesus. Surfers may not understand that the typical myther applies a double standard to ancient history when he dismisses evidence like Antiq. 20 and Tacitus. By that yardstick, half of SECULAR ancient history would also be dumped. And we're not talking about ancient history as understood by Mediaeval navel-gazers, but as it's been slowly and painfully developed in the last century by archaeologists, paleontologists, archivists of all sorts -- hundreds of professionals who have spent a lifetime never taking anything for granted but sifting through each datum for the most likely answers rather than the one that feels good.

Education and our students' understanding of history as a whole is at stake.

Chaucer

hjalti

Chaucer, I understand why you would be annoyed by some uninformed "village atheist" who just spews out stuff from the Zeitgeist movie. But there are also informed mythicists (like Toto) or Jesus-agnostic (I think spin fits here), and there is no reason to treat them like "Zeitgeist"-mythers.

And who is this "typical myther"? Toto? spin? From what I've seen they don't just dismiss these passages for no reasons.

Chaucer

Nothing, thank you. I have now submitted my deposition to the Administrator forum --

http://www.freeratio.org/forumdisplay.php?f=129

Chaucer

Edit: And I've also posted it in the Private Feedback forum, here:

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....94#post6736694

Chaucer

True. Some just ignore them instead, maybe not always, but sometimes, when it's rhetorically convenient (http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=298447).

Chaucer

Toto

The more sober questions regarding Tacitus and the authenticity of the passage have been split off here

Yellum Notnef

Why is Christ and the ancient Jews the be all and all of human history to some people? They are just a tiny blip in history in a tiny part of the world and their legacy is a bunch of religious nonsense. If this is not some how a ticket to heaven or other magical favors than what is the big attraction here?

Seems sort of like the people who are into Nostradamus who look for secrets within the nonsense.

hjalti

Yellum, you realise that you are in the "Biblical Criticism & History" section?

Toto

The digresssion into mudslinging and Godwin's law has been split and moved to the basement here.

Yellum Notnef

Yeah, I get that. I was specifically referring to guys like Constantin Brunner and No Robots who seem to think something especially earth shattering happened out there on the sand.
But the rest of that derail went Elsewhere.