McD

So you are going to admit, in a public forum, that you hold strong opinions about conversations you haven't been following.

:notworthy:

Toto

OK, time out everyone.

I think McD needs to get some rest, I know I do.

Come back tomorrow and read this and see if you can see it from another's point of view.

blastula

A question for any MJer reading this. Are you afraid that if you admitted Jesus existed, you might then be forced to admit him into your heart?

McD

Wow! You really haven't followed this coversation, have you?

If the MJers participating in this thread respond with 'no', they aren't afraid, you think it proves me wrong?

Hello! McFly

That isn't my argument! Please pay attention to what I say before you decide that you disagree with me.

If I said:

"Literally 100% of the people I know who owns a boat keeps it at the Seattle Yacht Club."

And then you said "A question for anyone here who owns a boat: do you keep it at the Seattle yacht club?"

If none of them say yes, you think that you have thus proven me wrong that EVERY person who owns a boat keeps it at the Seattle yacht club? Is that my claim?

Furthermore, what if I only know two people who own a boat?

PLEASE! Pay Attention!

DAMN!

The first five, maybe six atheists -- that is, atheists who were, like me, open with their atheism -- I met were MJers and they fit the description I outlined above. It wasn't one group, it was over a ten year period or so, and no mind reading was involved. My conclusions were based on frank conversations and blunt questions.

Some advice: Do not hold strong opnions about things you do not understand. Life will be so much easier for you.

blastula

I know you mean who you talked to. If they were reading this, I would ask them. I don't believe they told you what you say they did.

If someone, anyone, does say they have that fear, I would stand corrected.

Is that too complicated for you?

Toto

McDuffie - we know what you said, but the clear implication was that these mythicists that you knew were representative of mythicism in general.

If you didn't mean to imply that all mythicists are motivated by fear, you could have made that clearer.

Was there something about this group that made them unlike other mythicists? Do you now know mythicists who are not motivated by fear of having to accept Jesus into their hearts?

McD

Well, ask blastula, I am not a mind-reader.

He can believe me or not. That's his problem, not mine. What this boils down to, is that my introduction to atheism, lo those many years ago, was basically, a bunch of angry angry atheists about half of whom appeared to me to be pissed off theists. Several of them, it would not suprise me in the least if they were in church somewhere as we speak giving testimony about how they used to hate the love of Jesus, but praise God, he never gave up on them.

I am not qualifed to speak intelligently about the man on the streets MJer. I simply haven't met enough of them. I have been, in the past, duly unimpressed with the man on the streets MJer, even less impressed with the quality of MJers I used to encounter in Yahoo chat. I haven't met enough of them to really hold an opinion yet, but so far, it ain't lookin' too good.

I have read nearly everything Wells ever wrote, and I always respected him tremendously. As far as anyone can tell, Wells harbours no secret fear of Jesus. If Wells former work as an MJer (prior to his unenthusiastic conversion to HJism) is representative of MJism, then I would say that MJism is extremely impressive, but you see, I thought this before, and I have always thought this, ever since I became an atheist and first encountered MJ scholarship.

I really don't think that there was any implication in anything I wrote at any time in this thread or in this forum (nevermind my anti-seizure meds) that implies that I think that all MJers are nuts or that they harbor secret fears of Jesus. Clearly the first half dozen or so atheists I met did. Probably half of them didn't even really qualify as atheists. They were just angry with god. I didn't realize that then, of course, but reflecting back on it, years later, I realized that had to have been the case.

And again, it wasn't a group. You know how it goes. You realize you are an atheist, then you meet an atheist. Then another. Then maybe, you move or get a different job and you meet another. And so on. Of these first half dozen or so atheists I knew, only two of them knew each other and they only talked occasionally, and usually just about business.

I'll bet that one of the reasons blastula didn't believe me was because he thought I was talking about some kind of club in which several dozen atheists in unison vocalized their fear of Jesus.


Well, this doesn't exactly answer your question, but in the real world, the last two mythicists I met were absofuckinglutely nuts. One I debated, the other I just listened to.

The one I debated, didn't listen to a motherfucking word I said and out of the clear blue pretended that I cited Tacticus as proof of the existence of Jesus. I have never done this in my life. I know better. He then concluded that since I cited Tactitus, I must be retarded and blah blah blah. Obviosuly, he was more polite than all of this, but the implication was clear, and I aborted the conversation because I have never had a religious discussion descend into a fistfight and I didn't want to start then.

The other person, that I just listened to, simply stated that every reference to Jesus outside the new testament is an interpolation and that the earliest gospel was written in the late second century etc. Just a jumbled bunch of bullshit. Toto, you've read Wells, I take it. Wells, in my opinion, dates Mark late, and he dates it to the first half of the reign of Domitian. I mean, come on. This crazy bitch was saying that it was written just before Celsus wrote On the True Doctrine.

Shit, whatever. I need to go to bed. I don't want to, because of that side effect of this drug I mentioned above. I hate that shit. When I lay down, it feels like my heart is trying jump out of my chest for about 10 solid minutes.

post tenebras lux

In my own very subjective experience, it is the HJers who often come across as angry (and fearful?) when questioned.

Is it because they are fighting their own doubts? Is it because they've been asked the same 'silly' questions time and time again? Is it just me reading things into their replies? Or is it something else/some combination?

I dunno, but I don't think I've ever met an MJer who was an MJer because they feared that admitting that Jesus even existed was the first step on the slippery slope to AiG. But then it's a long time since I've been in Seattle or Colorado - perhaps the MJers are different there. :huh:

My turning point: I think I acknowledged the plausibility of MJ (or even FJ) when I realised that a lot of the HJ positions appear to ultimately rest upon appeals to consensus, tradition and claims of plausibility/implausibility.

The Bishop

And that's bad because......?

And my subjective experience is the opposite, except where it comes to my own posts. I know why I'm angry. MJ'ers are invariably atheists, and are so because of a mindset of skepticism and rationality and the necessity for evidence to accept anything. So am I. So it makes me angry to discover skeptics and rational thinkers looking at skepticism in exactly the wrong way and basically following what I consider irrational pathways and making use of fallacious arguments. Not infrequently the biggest weapon in their arsenal is the supposed lack of firm evidence about one or other aspect of the HJ. Then you go over to E/C and you'll see the same people demolishing Creationists "God of the Gaps" theories. I find the same mis-reading of texts and mis-use of logic that normally is only associated with hard core religionists. Only this week, someone mounted a sterling attack on the virgin birth expectations of Jewish Messianics on the basis that parthenos didn't mean virgin.

The tactics of the irrational, the unscientific and the just plain credulous, being used in the service of rational thought is what makes me angry.

I may well reach my own turning point, having read Carrier on Doherty, and I may spend some time this weekend thoroughly researching the jesuspuzzle website and the thrust of the Earl Doherty argument. But certain it is, I've seen very little else to convince me. And I also find it hard to understand how Carrier appears to have accepted Doherty as a Best Possible Explanation - in fact has found even better arguments within Doherty's findings than Doherty himself advocated! It still seems to me, however, that Doherty's scenario is no less subject to the "peculiar silences" argument than the prima facie story. But I may have changed my mind by Monday.

post tenebras lux

Not nearly as angry as I get when I see Brits spelling sceptic with a flipping K.

Oddly, I see more similarities between the HJers and the Cretinists. I had thought to mention it in my earlier post, but felt like it could be interpreted as an attempt to poison the debate. Seriously.