Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Logical · 05-07-2012, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

Romans 13:1-7 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

Really? This passage presents a freaking problem? I don't think so.

It is entirely plausible that Paul simply believed that despite the special circumstances that led to Jesus' execution, government is still on Earth to serve a good purpose: protecting citizens, stopping thieves and murderers from hurting people, etc. And it's entirely plausible that he had a general recommendation for Christians to obey the law and remain good citizens.

It's not self-contradictory today at all to criticize the government, complain about taxation, spying on citizens, illegal wars and a whole list of other issues, WHILE still recommending that people obey the laws and that maintaining law an order is still a good thing and government still plays a good role in general in our lives.

aa5874 · 05-07-2012, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Logical

Jesus wasn't an emperor. He was a failed humiliated messiah. It's not reasonable to expect him to be recorded by historians....

Jesus son of Ananus was NOT an Emperor but was declared to be a Mad man yet Josephus wrote about the CRAZY man and remembered that he used to shout out "Woe unto Jerusalem".

You don't seem to have a good memory. By the time Josephus wrote Antiquities of the Jews c 93 CE there was supposed to be FOUR BOOKS wriiten about Jesus called Gospels and many many Epistles to the Churches by the Bishops of the Roman Empire including Paul and Peter.

You must have forgotten that Paul preached that Jesus was LORD and SAVIOR the Son of God and Messiah who was RAISED from the dead in Rome and other cities of the Roman Empire.

How is it that Josephus wrote about a Crazy man and wrote NOTHING about Jesus who supposedly PREDICTED in the Gospels that the Temple would Fall???

Jesus was supposed to have at least 12 disciples who went ALL OVER the world.

Josephus lived in Galilee--Josephus was in Jerusalem--Josephus was in Rome but he wrote about a Crazy man with the same name as Jesus of the NT but nothing about the Pauline Jesus.

If Jesus did live he would be CRAZIER than the Son of Ananus--he claimed he would resurrect on the third day after he was killed--Josephus should have heard stories about the first Crazy Jesus who called himself the Son of God in the presence of the Sanhedrin.

And Philo too, he wrote about another Crazy man called Carrabbas and wrote NOTHING about Jesus the Son of God.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Logical

...Listen, if you reject the Bible as proof of anything in terms of history, then your position should be this: The best that could be said about Jesus is that he MAY have existed, since his existence cannot be demonstrated....

And again, you are consumed by your logical fallacies. Based on your own statement people who argue for an historical Jesus are wasting time since His existence cannot be demonstrated.

However, people who argue that Jesus is Myth cannot be demonstrated to be wrong. There is ONLY one thing to prove MJers are wrong and that is when the existence of Jesus can be demonstrated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Logical

But to say that we know he did NOT exist may be as absurd as claiming that he did indeed exist. The Bible you disqualify as historical evidence and the historical record you concede does not exist, you should then remain neutral.

How absurd. It is the Bible that described Jesus. It is the Bible that claimed Jesus was the Son of a Ghost. Such a character did NOT exist. Jesus of the NT is a Myth.

Do you have some other Jesus that you wished to be analyzed for historicity??

Please IDENTIFY the source so that the investigation can begin.

I am NOT interested in your imagination just the SOURCE of antiquity that mentioned YOUR Jesus.

I can investigate whether Pilate the Governor or Jesus the Messiah and Son of God in the Gospels was a figure of history but I need a source for YOUR Jesus.

Vorkosigan · 05-07-2012, 08:54 PM

Logical, it is not difficult to understand what is going on, and you are making a dual error -- first, you've confused two different categories of knowledge and second, you've failed to acknowledge the parlous state of methodology in the field of HJ studies. I wrote in the opening of my review of DJE:

"Readers who are familiar with the history of science can probably name many examples of how social approval in a historical or human field for a given interpretation of the data hindering consideration and acceptance of new ideas. The struggle to overcome the Clovis First interpretive framework that came to dominate North American archaeology until about three decades ago is a good example (the battle is still ongoing, and will likely end when the last of the Clovis Firsters dies off). Another good example is the way paleoanthropology was changed by the influx of females in the 1960s; the interpretive frameworks had been dominated by males and their points of view. Every August in the US we see another example of the clash of competing interpretive frameworks over how the atomic bombings of Japan should be understood.

Thus, the reader should be aware that the clash between mythicists and historicists is not a clash between loons similar to those who think the moon landings were faked and NASA, or between Creationists and real scientists, as Ehrman would have it. That is mere rhetoric, lazy, cheap shots.* In evolutionary biology or climate science the methodologies are robust and testable and the evidence overwhelming and the Denialists on either part are essentially anti-science. Historical explanation is not like scientific explanation (though it may draw on it), and scholars who bluster that mythicists are like Creationists are (probably deliberately) making a serious category error."

Hope this is clear. Why don't you pick up copies of books on HJ methodology? You might learn that the state of the field is vastly different than necessary to make the claim that denying the HJ is like being a creationist. Rather, it appears that the historicist Jesus is what happens when creationism takes over a whole field...

Vorkosigan

Steve Weiss · 05-07-2012, 09:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Logical

One thing that strikes me as odd about atheists is that anyone, without knowing or understanding anything about the issues, can see that atheists mostly accept the expert consensus on things. They accept the biologists' conclusions about Evolution, climatologists' conclusions about global warming, psychologists' conclusions about homosexuality, etc.

That, I think, looks very good and reasonable to the casual observer because it makes them look fact-driven and objective, rather than ideologically self-serving, simply accepting what helps their presupposed worldview and rejecting what doesn't, which is something I know many religious people unashamedly do.

One strange exception to that is the historical Jesus issue. Here many atheists (including prominent ones like Dan Barker) oppose the academic consensus. It's easy for the casual observer to see the ideologically self-serving reasons for that position, more than any other position taken by them.

Here's why: Accepting a historical Jesus first would satisfy the "experts' consensus" expectation of atheists, AND it has the added benefit of satisfying what might be referred to as a "dissimilarity" factor, i.e. accepting a historical Jesus does not serve the atheists' purpose and worldview. (Another example of dissimilarity is accepting the Big Bang rather than a static universe). On the other hand, rejecting a historical Jesus first contradicts the academic consensus and second is an "Oh big shocker, I wonder why!" predictably biased position.

At the cost of committing the "argument from authority" fallacy, I have to say that I side with the "experts" on every issue I can think of, outside of subjective topics such as political ideology. I defer to consensus because I myself am not an expert and trust that those who spent the effort and have the talent to research a topic, most likely can provide the best conclusion, especially when they agree with one another, and it's a bonus when they deliver results (especially in the fields of medicine and technology).

Furthermore, when there is a legitimate controversy (unlike an alleged "controversy" such as the non-existing one over evolution), I tend to either reserve judgment or pick a tentative position while remaining very uncommitted until the experts work things out amongst themselves.

I just recognize I'm not the next Galileo or Darwin who is going to turn the intellectual world upside down and therefore doesn't care what the experts say about anything. There are way too many people walking around who think they know better than the experts (mostly because the Bible tells them so).

The default position is non-historical unless proven otherwise, especially if the HJ position assumes the divinity of an historical character called Jesus. The same applies to Abraham, Moses, Joshua and nearly everyone in the bible, which is a work of fiction.

If one is a non-theist one can hardly buy into the idea that Jesus was the son of the non-existent thing. If someone that historians call Jesus were just a person, like every other person, and if by some "miracle" the existence of such a person were established beyond reasonable doubt, so what? There are lots of people claiming to be enlightened preachers. Since there is no proof of the existence of such a person, or of the others mentioned in the bible, and we have been at this for over 2000 years, the probability of Jesus being a real person in any meaningful way is zilch.

Steve Weiss · 05-07-2012, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Logical

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

It is totally illogical and irrational to compare Vespasian with Jesus of the Canon. ALL we have of Jesus of the NT are Myth Fables but we have artifacts of Vespasian.

Jesus wasn't an emperor. He was a failed humiliated messiah. It's not reasonable to expect him to be recorded by historians.

Listen, if you reject the Bible as proof of anything in terms of history, then your position should be this: The best that could be said about Jesus is that he MAY have existed, since his existence cannot be demonstrated.

But to say that we know he did NOT exist may be as absurd as claiming that he did indeed exist. The Bible you disqualify as historical evidence and the historical record you concede does not exist, you should then remain neutral.

The neutral position is a non-position as in agnosticism. The only valid position is that a claim falls away unless there is at least minimal evidence to support it. No evidence, no valid claim. The "possible" does require evidence, not conclusive evidence necessarily, but some evidence at least hinting that a hypothesis is correct. There is none to support the claim of an historical Jesus, so the claim fails; it is not merely suspended. To equate the unproven or unprovable with the factual is to confuse the arbitrary and the logical.

GakuseiDon · 05-07-2012, 10:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Logical

One thing that strikes me as odd about atheists is that anyone, without knowing or understanding anything about the issues, can see that atheists mostly accept the expert consensus on things. They accept the biologists' conclusions about Evolution, climatologists' conclusions about global warming, psychologists' conclusions about homosexuality, etc.

That, I think, looks very good and reasonable to the casual observer because it makes them look fact-driven and objective, rather than ideologically self-serving, simply accepting what helps their presupposed worldview and rejecting what doesn't, which is something I know many religious people unashamedly do.

Actually. Dr Robert M Price has doubts about whether global warming is occurring, though stresses he is not explicitly a global warming denier himself. He believes that there is "an ideological, indeed cultic, motivation for people to favor the global warming doctrine" and that the facts simply aren't there. From a podcast from Jan 2010:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4020523

I am just suspicious of it [global warming], which is all I claim. I’m not a global warming denier. It just seems to me suspicious partly because we used to hear about global cooling and the dawning of a new ice age, and that was put to ideological use, as was the nuclear winter hoax.

Also the fact that there’s been this disclosure of these emails that show these experts were doctoring the evidence, suppressing other people’s views, with journal editors and positions up for grabs in institutions. This sounds to me like the phony science slight of hand characteristic of the creationists...

And certainly though one can point to capitalists and those who like free enterprise and say they might have a bias against it -- meaning global warming -- no one can deny there is an ideological, indeed cultic, motivation for people to favor the global warming doctrine.

I don't see how evolution falls into that. I do have a decent idea of the evidence for evolution, of course I realise that is simply science, period. I am in no way convinced that global warming deserves that status or that the debate is over, as people say to try to choke it off, a classic instance of saying something descriptive when you mean something prescriptive. So I am very doubtful about it, but again I will not deny it since I don’t have enough of the facts, but I doubt that anyone does. I cannot believe there’s been sufficient data for long enough to be able to predict these big changes.

This sounds similar to his position on Jesus studies: ideological motivation, phony science slight of hand characteristic of the creationists, suppressing views, jobs on the line. So he is consistent there, I suppose.

And what was the "nuclear winter hoax"? I've never heard of that before.

Vorkosigan · 05-07-2012, 10:37 PM

Quote:

And what was the "nuclear winter hoax"? I've never heard of that before.

Me neither. Nuclear winter was a well developed scientific conclusion accepted by scientists in both the west and Russia.

In any case Price's position on global warming is not relevant to this discussion.

Vorkosigan

Adam · 05-07-2012, 11:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Weiss

Quote:

Originally Posted by Logical

But to say that we know he did NOT exist may be as absurd as claiming that he did indeed exist. The Bible you disqualify as historical evidence and the historical record you concede does not exist, you should then remain neutral.

The neutral position is a non-position as in agnosticism. The only valid position is that a claim falls away unless there is at least minimal evidence to support it. No evidence, no valid claim. The "possible" does require evidence, not conclusive evidence necessarily, but some evidence at least hinting that a hypothesis is correct. There is none to support the claim of an historical Jesus, so the claim fails; it is not merely suspended. To equate the unproven or unprovable with the factual is to confuse the arbitrary and the logical.

You've been away five days (and 3 weeks from BC&H), so you missed my Post#51
here:

But in spite of all the "Steve" guys there are in FRDB, I remember you from before, maybe even on my thread Gospel Eyewitnesses
as with my
Post #230 that lists my earlier postings of my thesis of written eyewitness records about Jesus. Plus I'll quote here my excursis there into stratifying gMark:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

Here's a recap of the above six strata in gMark. Peter and Mark first collaborated in 44 A.D. and wrote in Aramaic at least what is found as Synoptic overlap in John 6 and 18 to 20.
A somewhat larger Ur-Marcus can be shown in Mark by the exactitudes between verses in Mark and Luke. It's heavy on miracle stories and the name "Peter".
Passages not so exact are from the Twelve-Source written by the Apostle Matthew.See Mark 1:40 to 2:17 ("Levi" there is "Matthew" in Matthew) and passages where "Twelve" occurs after the call of the Apostles at 3:13. Also Parable of the Sower Mark 4:1-20 and the rest of the chapter.

But if they have the same interests as the later Q2 writer in Greek, in John the Baptist and eschatology, they stem from a disciple of John the Baptist, and they present Jesus as a Qumran believer would. See the "Little Apocalypse" in Mark 13.
Then there's the Mark 6 to 8 portions that were absent in the version Luke saw [perhaps by the same author].

Needless to say, you and most others here on FRDB do not accept my evidence as conclusive, but what you demand above is "at least minimal evidence", so let's be "Logical" and reject your rejection of HJ.

Toto · 05-07-2012, 11:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

...
Actually. Dr Robert M Price has doubts about whether global warming is occurring, though stresses he is not explicitly a global warming denier himself....

This is over two years old. Price is a political conservative living in the South, and is immersed in a conservative culture that claims that global warming is a hoax. He continually emphasizes that he isn't denying global warming, and doesn't have the scientific expertise to evaluate it, but he keeps reading about credentialed people who do deny global warming, so he keeps an open mind.

This has nothing to do with his position on the historical Jesus, where he clearly has the expertise to evaluate the evidence and the politics behind the so called consensus, and he knows all about jobs on the line for those who dissent.

aa5874 · 05-08-2012, 12:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

This has nothing to do with his position on the historical Jesus, where he clearly has the expertise to evaluate the evidence and the politics behind the so called consensus, and he knows all about jobs on the line for those who dissent.

The question of whether Jesus did exist or not is NOT a matter for only experts. After all it is claimed people of antiquity could hardly read and write and they have to determine the veracity of the Jesus stories WITHOUT Scholarship.

The question of an historical Jesus is rather easy to resolve it is just that HJers REFUSE to accept the evidence and propagate an ABUNDANCE of logical fallacies and presumptions.

The latest documented evidence of the Massive amount of logical fallacies produced by HJers can be found in the Book 'Did Jesus Exist?' by Bart Ehrman.

If Jesus did actually exist and there was a lot of evidence Ehrman would have written a good book but alas the fact that Ehrman had NO evidence has been Exposed.

The HJ argument will need more rhetoric and logical fallcies and it will ultimately choke itself out of existence.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

05-07-2012, 08:54 PM	#93
Vorkosigan Contributor Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Barrayar Posts: 11,866	Logical, it is not difficult to understand what is going on, and you are making a dual error -- first, you've confused two different categories of knowledge and second, you've failed to acknowledge the parlous state of methodology in the field of HJ studies. I wrote in the opening of my review of DJE: "Readers who are familiar with the history of science can probably name many examples of how social approval in a historical or human field for a given interpretation of the data hindering consideration and acceptance of new ideas. The struggle to overcome the Clovis First interpretive framework that came to dominate North American archaeology until about three decades ago is a good example (the battle is still ongoing, and will likely end when the last of the Clovis Firsters dies off). Another good example is the way paleoanthropology was changed by the influx of females in the 1960s; the interpretive frameworks had been dominated by males and their points of view. Every August in the US we see another example of the clash of competing interpretive frameworks over how the atomic bombings of Japan should be understood. Thus, the reader should be aware that the clash between mythicists and historicists is not a clash between loons similar to those who think the moon landings were faked and NASA, or between Creationists and real scientists, as Ehrman would have it. That is mere rhetoric, lazy, cheap shots.* In evolutionary biology or climate science the methodologies are robust and testable and the evidence overwhelming and the Denialists on either part are essentially anti-science. Historical explanation is not like scientific explanation (though it may draw on it), and scholars who bluster that mythicists are like Creationists are (probably deliberately) making a serious category error." Hope this is clear. Why don't you pick up copies of books on HJ methodology? You might learn that the state of the field is vastly different than necessary to make the claim that denying the HJ is like being a creationist. Rather, it appears that the historicist Jesus is what happens when creationism takes over a whole field... Vorkosigan

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.