Freethought & Rationalism Archive

jakejonesiv · 09-04-2009, 11:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Quote:

Originally Posted by show_no_mercy

Yes. Romulus and Remus must have been historical, and the offspring of the god Mars and the virgin Silvia.

For if we were acquainted with significantly unique and inspired deeds under the names, for instance, of Sargon, Romulus, Perseus, Theseus, Heracles, Siegfried and Tell, then I would have to believe, if I were not to betray my fundamental notion of resultant phenomena having a cause (for every cause must produce its specific result, and every result must have its specific cause). This would follow even if I had never so little to show of the causes involved, of the originators of such works; for, in cases like this, the minus in terms of the kind of experiential certainty which is supplied by sense-data and other external information is outweighed by the plus of inner conviction. Thus I would have to believe that these deeds had creative personalities behind them, and so I would call them Tell, Siegfried, Heracles, Theseus, Perseus, Romulus and Sargon, just as I call Shakespeare the author of the unmistakably distinctive literary marvels, pointing to a single originator, that go under his name, in spite of the fact that we have as little certain knowledge of the life of the man Shakespeare as of the life of the man Christ—nay, we have less.--Constantin Brunner

Hi No Robots,

Why should I care what a guy thought who rejected the theory of evolution?

Best,
Jake

No Robots · 09-04-2009, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

About the same way as Muslims got to be well-placed early on. Some groups by the luck of the draw will succeed.

It is completely unscientific to invoke luck in a discussion of historical cause and effect.

Quote:

Why did Aurelian try to foist his Sol Invictus on the army? Why was Julian attempting to foist his pagan religion on his empire? Why did Constantius II attempt to foist Arianism on his empire?

Indeed. Why?

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there was an alliance between [religious] authority and temporal power. This is certainly true. This alliance, however, is an effect of which Allah is the cause.

And Muhammad is the genius who articulates and embodies the spirit of Allah.

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there was an alliance between [religious] authority and temporal power. This is certainly true. This alliance, however, is an effect of which Yahweh is the cause.

And Moses is the genius who articulates and embodies the spirit of Yahweh.

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there was an alliance between [religious] authority and temporal power. This is certainly true. This alliance, however, is an effect of which Ormazd is the cause.

And Zoroaster is the genius who articulates and embodies the spirit of Ormazd.

No Robots · 09-04-2009, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakejonesiv

Hi No Robots,

Why should I care what a guy thought who rejected the theory of evolution?

Best,
Jake

Hi, Jake:

I'm glad you're back around, btw.

Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread. If you want to discuss Brunner and/or evolution, maybe we should return to one of our old threads, or start a new one. I'll just say here that Brunner's rejection of evolution was and is very hard for me to swallow. Weaning myself from evolutionism is an on-going process. But I a must say that I am most pleased with the results so far.

Barrett

spin · 09-04-2009, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

About the same way as Muslims got to be well-placed early on. Some groups by the luck of the draw will succeed.

It is completely unscientific to invoke luck in a discussion of historical cause and effect.

Try to understand what I said, rather than show you didn't. If I put ten (from 1 to 10) numbers into a hat and offer a prize to the one participant in ten to draw the number 3, someone must draw the number 3. This is the luck of the draw. The notion is that someone must draw the 3, but that doesn't mean you can know beforehand who. There are a lot of post-race pundits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Why did Aurelian try to foist his Sol Invictus on the army? Why was Julian attempting to foist his pagan religion on his empire? Why did Constantius II attempt to foist Arianism on his empire?

Indeed. Why?

They saw some benefit in doing so. Aurelian was a believer, just as Julian was a believer and Constantius II was and Constantine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

And Muhammad is the genius who articulates and embodies the spirit of Allah.

That's what they say.

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

And Moses is the genius who articulates and embodies the spirit of Yahweh.

I guess someone will say that as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

And Zoroaster is the genius who articulates and embodies the spirit of Ormazd.

And even that.

It all means as little as your original version.

spin

aa5874 · 09-04-2009, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sea

....... A historical Jesus plus legendary development is the most simple naturalistic explanation for Christian belief.

And how do you intend to prove that? You must have a burden to support your theory.

funinspace · 09-04-2009, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chaucer

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

By Jesus mythicist, do you mean someone who thinks that Jesus never existed in the first place? If so, I'm not one. I think the story is based on someone, but just totally blown out of proportion to what that someone actually did.

Consequently, you're the first skeptic I've met here who is like any of the many skeptics I know in the real world.

Not sure what your count is up to right now, but you need to add another one :wave:

There are probably several polls a year on this general subject, and it seems to show between 25-50% think there was some sort of HJ, depending on how the questions are asked.
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....ight=poll+myth
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....ight=poll+myth
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....ight=poll+myth

Huon · 09-04-2009, 12:44 PM

We all know that :
Jesus was born of a virgin, was anointed by the Spirit, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of the world, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
Even an atheist knows that ...

Tom Sawyer · 09-04-2009, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

We all know that :
Jesus was born of a virgin, was anointed by the Spirit, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of the world, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
Even an atheist knows that ...

Well ya, no one's denying any of that, of course. That would be stupid.

Deus Ex · 09-04-2009, 01:06 PM

Count me as agnostic on the HJ/MJ question. In the past I have leaned towards an historical person who developed a cult following that seriously exaggerated his deeds in life, but I am beginning to read up on some of the Myth theories and could change my views after more study.

spin · 09-04-2009, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Shouldn't that tell you to that you are wasting your time arguing the matter? With insufficient evidence you could simply be pissing into the wind. Do you have to decide any issue like this with insufficient data?

Do you have an answer to this question?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

You have removed nine tenths of the tradition you are attempting to analyze. All you are doing is shaping the data, by removing that which you don't like. Arbitrary procedures have arbitrary results.

Yes, they do have these arbitrary results and the data is insufficient. However, it's not a great concern of mine whether or not Jesus was entirely fictional or somewhat based on a true story anymore than it's a concern of mine whether or not there was once a guy named Herakles who's deeds got blown out of proportion in the retelling of them. Similarly, some guy named Jason may have travelled around the Aegean Sea and the stories about him got embellished.

So your position isn't based on evidence, but rationalization that you have no hope of verifying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

Roman and Greek societies had a habit of deifying people. Some, like Julius Caesar and Alexander, deserved it and have reams of documentation backing up their well-established claims to divinity (I mean, seriously, have you read about those guys' lives? That's what gods among men look like). Others who were relative nobodies outside of their immediate circle wouldn't have much in the way of documentation until after the fact.

Given that people tend to embellish the stories of people they admired or who's lives they want to exploit for political purposes and that the society this was taking place in had a history of deifying its important figures, it makes more sense to me that something of that sort happened and they built the extraordinary parts off of the ordinary things some guy was doing as opposed to someone just pulling the whole thing out of his ass.

Naturally, it's all just baseless supposition since there's no confirmatory or disconfirmatory data available. However, an embellished story about a real guy seems a simpler explanation to me than a wholely fictional story does, so I'm going to stick with that.

Fiction doesn't usually enter into ancient traditions, so can I assume by "fictional" you mean something like "not having had a real existence in this world"? (We have people here who propose fictional analyses and they mean purposefully invented stories meant to represent a reality that the writers didn't believe in.)

You start your analysis after you remove all the stuff you don't like. The writers didn't start with just that material, so what you are doing doesn't relate to the writers, but merely your own rationalizing.

If I am correct in my analysis of Paul's writings, ie that his gospel about Jesus was revealed to him not by humans but by -- in his mind -- a divine experience, Paul didn't need get his information about a real Jesus, nor did he need a real human to be the core of his writings about Jesus. It would be sufficient for Paul to think his savior had participated in the world in order to bring salvation to readers, wouldn't you agree?

Anyone who claims to have had divine revelations must cause us to suspect the person's credibility, though not necessarily for deception, but perhaps for psychosis, or drug vision, or bad dream, or a number of other possibilities that don't come to mind.

spin

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09-04-2009, 12:44 PM	#57
Huon Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Bordeaux France Posts: 2,796	We all know that : Jesus was born of a virgin, was anointed by the Spirit, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of the world, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Even an atheist knows that ...

09-04-2009, 01:06 PM	#59
Deus Ex Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Alabama Posts: 2,348	Count me as agnostic on the HJ/MJ question. In the past I have leaned towards an historical person who developed a cult following that seriously exaggerated his deeds in life, but I am beginning to read up on some of the Myth theories and could change my views after more study.

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