Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar

... . Pete as an actual practicing skeptic, searches the ancient evidence and presents it to us to examine and question and comment on.
Providing this service, he is certainly within rights to present his own speculations and views.

Originally Posted by Toto

It is a rules violation to discuss moderation in thread.

Originally Posted by Toto

....the moderators invent special rules to keep him from taking over the forum.

Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar

There is the difference. Pete as an actual practicing skeptic, searches the ancient evidence and presents it to us to examine and question and comment on.
Providing this service, he is certainly within rights to present his own speculations and views.

It is my observation, that consistently, week after week, year in and year out, that it has been the Skeptic mountainman (Pete) who has provided the majority of citations to ancient and often forgotten and obscure writings that appear in this Forum.
Writings that I know that I likely would not have otherwise encountered in the limited time left for me. And without Pete's efforts, most of the rest of us would forever remain blissfully unaware of.

Pete has put these writings before us, and cross examined their claims, pointing out the contradictions, and errors of historical fact, all the while enduring a virtual barrage of insult and ridicule from 'skeptical' 'cynics' who having bought into the 'churches' / 'mainstream' version of 'history', would rather take the easy way out by simply heckling, deriding, and marginalising mountainman rather than engaging in objective examination of the evidence being presented.

You claim you are 'skeptical'?
Yet you don't infer that (Christian version of 'history') is all a pack of lies?

Being so 'skeptical', you have never noticed that Christianity tends to write its 'history' the way it wants it? and use government to enforce its versions and views?

As a "skeptic" you never noticed that Christianity has never had any qualms, in whatever places or periods it has infiltrated and taken over whole governments, to employ that power, and has repeatedly used it as a means to eliminate all of its critics and all of their writings, branding all opposition, or alternate historical explanations, as being 'heretical' while imposing a whitewashed and revised history with the point of the sword?

No, I suppose that being so "skeptical", you never did notice anything at all like that.

After all our 'recieved' Christian history simply could not be all a pack of lies.
And you have every reason to believe and accept that history presented by church, government, and 'history'.

Yes, there is 'skepticism' and there is 'cynicism', and the two are not mutually exclusive.


Sheshbazzar

Originally Posted by stephan huller

It is because you buy into the theory that Christianity is a false form of religion a priori to your encounter with the divine teachings of mountainman that you can't see how hostility drives the original opinion. You think its a 'fact' that Christianity could be capable of this massive conspiracy because they are an inherently false religion. People who think that 'Asians are bad drivers' for instance see nothing wrong with saying that 'Chinese people can't drive' in a public setting because they honestly believe that they are merely 'reporting the facts.' The same goes with anyone who hates a group of people. The Jews were ugly according to the Nazis and according to Hitler's aesthetic their ugliness 'caused' their evils to be manifest. I don't believe that those who buy into Pete's theories would want to harm Christians. My point was merely illustrative of the clear hostility to Christianity which is present.

The reason most of us who study the origins of Christianity don't buy into Pete's theories - aside from the fact that these ideas can't be supported without a massive rejection of the manuscript evidence from Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, paganism and Manichaeanism, indeed the whole of ancient literature - is the fact that we don't have an inherited and utterly irrational hatred of all things Christian. It should be noted that there would be dangerous consequences for suggesting a similar theory about Jewish origins - viz. it would be deemed anti-Semitic for instance if we were to argue that the rabbinic literature was invented by a Jewish conspiracy.

As a Jew (and with the traditional hostility of my culture towards Christianity not withstanding) I have to admit that I see very little difference between positing a group of swarthy big nosed people gathered in a room (the classic anti-Semitic portrait) plotting to take over the world (or banks or some other such nonsense) and this idea that Christianity was invented by an Imperial conspiracy, that Arius wasn't sincere in his position as head of the Martyrium of St. Mark, that Athanasius wasn't sincere in his position on the throne of St. Mark, that Eusebius really didn't visit Pantanaeus in prison and share his sufferings nor did he actually posess a sincere belief in Origen and worked to preserve the memory of a man who he believed was a divinely appointed teacher of the truth SHOULD make Christians similarly offended.

If you were to admit that your willingness to accept an irrational position was motivated by an irrational hatred of a dying religious form (Christianity) I would leave it at that. But your insistance that Pete's theories (and your acceptance of those beliefs) somehow spring from 'an objective view of history' I find entirely disingenous. No one would embrace the idea that the only way that Christianity can be explained is by destroying its earliest literature unless they were possessed by an irrational hatred of the tradition they claim to 'study.'

Originally Posted by Toto

If this were all, no one would have a problem. But he imposes strange interpretations on the text - labeling things that he does not understand as parody or satire. And he persistently misinterprets a few key phases. And then he repeats. And repeats. And adds weak attempts at humor and ridicule - until posters put him on ignore, and the moderators invent special rules to keep him from taking over the forum.

Originally Posted by avi

Quite simply, BRILLIANT, well done! And, thanks for accurately painting a much more balanced picture of Pete's excellent travail on this forum...

Well, Doug, and maybe Pete also doesn't think everything is a pack of lies, either, but, the question is: How does one ascertain WHICH part of "their own history" has been misrepresented?

To me, Pete's MAIN contribution to this forum, has been to challenge us, all of us, to explain to ourselves, if to no one else, why we should accept ANY component of the early history of the church, given that we encounter yet another falsehood, under every rock turned over.

When you write, "Christians got some of their own history wrong,..." are you not sitting in a judge's chambers somewhere, draped in black robes, thinking magisterial thoughts, as if in a Rodin statue. Point is: Doug, neither you, nor Pete, nor anyone else really knows anything at all about the real history of the Christian church, for all the appropriate documents have been destroyed.....

Accordingly, then, how do you know WHICH part of the history is erroneous, and which credible? How can you write "some", when you know not which component is accurate, and which utter fabrication?

avi