stephan huller

I was just looking at Mr Tulip's site (I can actually play the guitar but would never photograph myself playing one). I saw this:

Master of Arts (Honours) Macquarie University 1992 - thesis on The Place of Ethics in Heidegger's Ontology

If you sort your way through Heidegger what are you wasting your time on this nonsense? Or maybe Heidegger's the problem. When you play with language that much you can make anything say anything you want it to. Maybe Heidegger was training for Acharya S.

But then again in all fairness sitting playing a guitar and learning to talk about stuff like Jesus as Krishna, I bet it gets you laid more than the shit we post about here. The stuff I write and think about couldn't bring a woman back to my room even if I had a bundle of hundred dollar bills in my hand. Maybe he has the right idea after all. But then again I think having to hear this drivel would be about as effective as saltpeter in keeping me on the straight and narrow.

Zwaarddijk

Robert,
I do not and have never considered about.com a reliable source. However, the problem here really is that she never gave a source whatsoever, so the validity of the claim was fairly difficult to check, especially with regard to the fact that she has nowhere stated what transliteration scheme she uses - it is as though she doesn't realize different languages contrast different phonemes. Something that is a pretty bad no-no for someone who labels herself a linguist.

Zwaarddijk

Robert Tulip,
if using florid language when someone presents what appears to be bullshit is wrong, why is it ok when Acharya calls ufo-believers "X-philes"? Why is it ok when Acharya's fans accuse me of faking my credentials (credentials I never claimed!)? Why is it ok when she dismisses reasonable theories - such as every IE theory that lacks the "out of India" bit (viz. all IE theories except the widely rejected out of India ones) - as racist? Is that not florid language? Is that not even worse, florid language without substantiation?

How about when she says Nostratic theory has traced all of Indo-European and Semitic as well to Chaldean, and places the origin of these languages in India? NO Nostraticist would sign any such statement, and it seriously misrepresents the Nostratic scholars out there - most of who place the urheimat of Chaldean between eastern Iran and the Levant, and none of which would consider Chaldean to be the ancestor of any large subset of the Nostratic languages (basically just a bunch of Semitic languages are of Chaldean ancestry). Yet Acharya has no problem misrepresenting these scholars that way?

HOW THE FUCK IS THIS OK?

Unlike the scholarship you've shown yourself capable of this far, I don't just look things up on about.com or wikipedia - I may take that as a starting point at times, but I genuinely look things up in genuine scholarly literature on the relevant topics, which is why my review of her works is slow as a glacier. You know, at times I am actually happily surprised by her getting a thing right. However, at that point I've probably done interlibrary loans and read in excess of 200 pages for that particular claim, so there's that side to it as well. If you have been reading my blog recently, you will see I do point out that parts of her argument are reasonable - the sources for the historical Jesus are indeed weaker than most RE teachers and such will admit even if they're atheists or agnostics.

spin

Oh shucks, Stephy, c'mon: not even one. Can't you get one of that upshooting brood of yours to snap a candid of you being talented?

Here I raise the wrist once more then step up onto the sturdy barroom table, knocking over a jug and a few glasses, and with a bellowing note put forth:

I---mmanuel Kant was a great pissant
He was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
He could drink you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

And amongst the good cheer and merriment the urge to go to the toilet arrives...

Memories, nothing more than memories...

(The Stephan Huller recollection of that song though was: )

Mammaries, nothing more than mammaries...

...hanging onto...


But then the view of the lavatory ceiling can do that as you lie there. Staggering to your feet you try to reboot the quality filters that failed you.

Those were the days my friend
I thought they'd never end...

Just a relapse. The blood is still returning to your head.

Robert Tulip

Yes, and that is a legitimate scientific method.

The assumption is the hypothesis of mythicism that all religion can in principle be explained as natural. This a priori exclusion of the supernatural (in line with science) presents the challenge of postulating a coherent and systematic explanation of Christian evolution, and of cultural evolution more broadly.

When the traditional historicist reading of the Gospels is rejected as incoherent (vis Earl Doherty), the challenge becomes to find a new explanation that matches and explains the evidence. This is where astrotheology, the idea that characters originated as mythological representations of naturally observed phenomena, enters as a highly explanatory theory.

Evidence only leads to a conclusion when it is collected and guided by a coordinating hypothesis. Facts in the absence of theory do not constitute knowledge.

Much scientific advance starts from theory - an idea that coordinates hitherto unexplained observations. In this case, we start from the hypothesis that the myth of Jesus Christ originated as allegory for the sun. This idea provides a heuristic that enables insightful analysis of religious texts. The movement of the sun by precession provides a structure of time that gives an elegant explanation of Christian eschatology.

If I may briefly respond to spin's derogatory insinuation that I am insane because of my analysis of the correspondence between Indian and Christian myth, spin's comments are just the sort of stupid repressive abuse that makes discussion of such topics difficult. Spin should be ashamed for spewing such baseless insults about material (eg Argo) about which he obviously knows nothing.

spin

Aww, Zwaaddijk, can't you raise a smile for the a-brahmic suggestion? Surely you find it entertaining.

I'm puzzled. Beside the fact that the source seems to me--regarding quality--on a par with Velikosvskii and von Daniken so I don't see any value in pursuing it, why are we dealing with Nostratic at all for the origins of christianity which surely only emerge in the last few centuries before the change of the era?

Hey! When one doesn't know what they are talking about, they have to go somewhere. Stop being such a spoilsport. Is it all any worse than Allegro's mushroom stuff? Thinking about it, Allegro was pretty damned entertaining.

U got nothin better 2 do.

spin

I missed the insane part. Perhaps you could let me in on that.

Did you go into such depths about Heidegger? I could imagine the thesis.

:hysterical:

ApostateAbe

Robert Tulip, you are already fitting very well into this forum, talking like all the rest of us. You'll soon find it necessary to discriminate among the rhetorical opponents you deal with, and exercise patience so you don't completely blow up.

spin

You need to first remove the encrustations of the failed status quo control over the source data before you start seriously positing replacement theories. I have this problem with Earl. You need to be able to reinsert the literature into its cultural background it grew out of to understand it. That requires reclaiming that background, not assuming one. We cannot but see that heterogeneous Judaism as a tradition source supplies many of the underpinnings of christianity. But not all. That needs to be evaluated. Was christianity born in Judea or the diaspora? There are pointers in the emerging tradition that suggests the latter: the first gospel shows signs of being written in a Latin speaking context (pointing to Rome); it shows difficulties with Levantine geography (again not Judean). So, slowly you construct a possible cultural milieu for the birth of christianity, one that must contain Jewish notions of the word of god, wisdom walking the ways, the suffering servant, the apocalyptic, the people of god, the baptist heritage, logos speculation, things that are so blatantly there in the early christian tradition derived from a Jewish context, but a mediated Jewish context. Logos speculation puts us in touch with a Greek philosophical context. The dying for believers leads us to mystery cults.

Before you get further afield from the eastern Mediterranean you have to individuate strong elements, elements that are substantial to the cultural tradition under investigation that forces you to look outside that already wide geographical net.

stephan huller

I just had a two hour conversation that will make me sink even two notches below what everyone thinks of me now. Hard to believe. Just thought I'd share that.