Robert Tulip

That is flatly ridiculous. There is no evidence for a historical Jesus. Church dogma is all Tinkerbell Theology: 'If you wish hard enough it can really come true'. All the evidence supports the view that Jesus Christ was invented. Mythicism has the moral high ground as the scientific model.

Comparing mythicism to creationism is the moral equivalent of saying that unbelievers will go to hell. Nothing but moral blackmail. Shame on you ApostateAbe for stooping to such a low comment in conflict with science.

Mythicism will gain in popularity when its advocates simpliify its message in ways that build popular mass interest. Academic arguments are secondary to efforts to present the Christ myth in simple and clear ways that reconcile faith and reason. It is evil to claim to believe things you know to be untrue.

Toto

This is silly. Carrier has a PhD and Doherty does not, but both have academic degrees in relevant academic disciplines, which you do not.

This is rank nonsense. Young earth creationism is not merely improbable - it is impossible. It accepts the Bible as authority and disregards scientific evidence.

Mythicism is not impossible, and not even improbable.

Who in particular?

What Carrier brings to the table is a relevant degree, knowledge of historical methods, and intense study.

What do you bring to the table other than the usual insults?

ApostateAbe

I figure that the statement, "There is no evidence for a historical Jesus," makes sense only presuming that there is a bunch of ancient evidence that simply doesn't count. One way or the other, it is very difficult to make plausible sense of the earliest relevant evidence (Paul, Mark, Q, M, L, Josephus, John, 2nd century writings) without a historical human character roughly matching the profile of Jesus of Nazareth of the gospels. Of course that isn't to say you can't make implausible sense of the evidence. Plausibility does nothing to impede Acharya S's assertions.

Toto

Perhaps it doesn't count because it is so obviously unreliable.


Only if you lack the ability to make sense of data.

Seriously, Abe, very few secular historicists imagine their historical Jesus to match the profile of Jesus of Nazareth.

It appears that you can't post anything without dragging Acharya S into the thread.

MrMacSon

This is a type of fallacious appeal to authority ... 'authority' of formal education.

The real central issue is the cogency or soundness of arguments put forward.

That is merely poisoning-the-well fallacy.

= false analogy fallacy.

some of those 'attempts' have been quite cogent and sound, though. Perhaps you could present them and critique them??


More fallacy* around attributing those texts are 'evidence'.

* eg confirming the consequent.

= argument from ignorance. Make the argument or stop posting simplistic nonsense like this.

This is a straw-man red-herring -
Bare assertions and wishful thinking don't work anymore, Abe

ApostateAbe

Toto, you mean very few secular historicists imagine their historical Jesus to be a Jewish man from Nazareth of Galilee, to be the son of Mary and Joseph, to be the brother of James, to be baptized by John the Baptist, to have twelve disciples, to preach in parables, to be betrayed by Judas, and to be crucified by Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem? Or did you mean something else?

ApostateAbe

I take it you mean, "affirming the consequent." Can you please explain how my claim matches that fallacy? I don't get it.

Zwaarddijk

Earl Doherty, Acharya's mistakes are about more than just pygmies. She misrepresents nostraticism, she misrepresents and misunderstands historical linguistics, she repeats claims that have long been known to be false - like the idea that Welsh and Hebrew are *closely related* or even almost the same language (when scholars know for sure that if they are related, the relation is far off; it is more likely that Welsh and Finnish are related than Welsh and Hebrew, and if Welsh and Hebrew are related, they split off about 12 000 years ago, one branch forming the Afro-Asiatic languages and the other the Indo-European (and probably some other groups) languages). She thinks Hebrew (and therefore Welsh?) is "corrupted Chaldean" (displaying a pre-neogrammarian idea about language change, showing that her understanding of language change is outdated by an entire century and then some!), that the fact that Greek does not derive from Sanskrit was only realized a few decades ago (when it was realized in the 19th century already...) This by a person who calls herself a linguist in some of her public declarations!

For a scholar like yourself to support a misleading and misled pseudo-scholar like her is sad.

Toto

I mean that very secular scholars imagine that the gospels are a good historical source. They do tend to think Jesus was Jewish and from Galilee and was crucified. But they can't agree on whether he was merely a wisdom teacher, or a reformer, or an apocalyptic preacher, or something else.

I suspect that your "profile" of Jesus of Nazareth from the gospels only includes a few fairly unobjectionable details.

ApostateAbe

Good to be clear, thanks.