ApostateAbe

This thread is for discussing the commonalities and differences between creationism (the belief system of a young universe) and mythicism (the belief system of Jesus never existing as a human being). I find it to be a useful comparison for illustrating the irrationalities common to both perspectives. The main disadvantage is that it evokes anger, so the matter is best discussed with full explanations on the table. Here is my explanation.

The adherents of creationism and the adherents of Jesus-minimalism both seem to:

• promulgate thousands of improbable claims presented as facts in an uncentralized social "echo chamber"
• have a single predominant ideological bent
• are a very slim minority of the mainstream secular intellectuals
• believe that the mainstream secular intellectuals have it wrong because of an ideological bias
• believe that the methodologies of the mainstream secular intellectuals are merely self-serving
• believe that the whole academic system of the mainstream secular intellectuals is fundamentally corrupt and in need of a revolution
• find their funding and their greatest base of support in the ideological laity
• target most of their literature at the ideological laity, not the intellectual publications
• have founded their own exclusive scholarly journal of self-reviewed (not peer-reviewed) articles
• employ primarily deconstructionist argumentative style, or a focus on promoting uncertainty rather than probable conclusions
• treat uncertainty and ambiguity as a winning counterargument
• focus on tearing down their opposition, not on building up their own theories
• are wildly diverse and widely divided in their own set of competing theories (each specific theory has adherents that are a minority of the total)
• the theory most popular among the laity is most unreasonable
• promote their claims through docuganda films

One counterpoint to such a comparison tends to be, "Almost all creationists believe in a historical Jesus." And that's right. Likewise, creationists are more likely than proponents of the theory of evolution to be skeptical of 9/11 conspiracism. But, the comparison is not centrally a matter of shared unreasonable conclusions. The central point is the shared pattern of thought. It is all closely related to one principle--the need to justify a conclusion motivated by ideological prejudice when fair judgments of the probabilities may otherwise seem to stand against it.

Sheshbazzar

Let's see. You 'don't much have time in your day' to actually work on your imagined Wiki page, so you want someone else to do all the work....
But somehow, you will find the time in your busy day to post ten times as much wordy horse-shit in this Forum.

ApostateAbe

The list is actually an update of a list I wrote up previously. I have been organizing the most useful things I write to this forum so it doesn't get lost in the archives, and eventually such material will be published to a broader audience.

Sheshbazzar

Geezuz. As though there aren't enough dumb-ass Fundamentalist Christian sites for you to be posting your garbage on.
They'd slurp it up like flies on horse-shit.

tanya

I disagree.

Creationism does not address the age of the universe, which is unknowable, by ordinary humans, because the universe was created by divine intervention, at an unknown time. Ordinary humans cannot, by definition, know how, or what, supernatural powers think or act.

Mythicism, the belief that all religions represent mere human creations, is axiomatic, given the underlying opinion that there exist no supernatural entities.

If you sincerely seek to illustrate "irrational" thought, I would suggest you begin by learning the distinction between rational thought on the one hand, and childish notions, on the other hand, of gremlins, goblins, ghosts, demons, afterlife, walking on water, resurrection after death, flying camels, and constructing buildings to face towards Jerusalem, all of which are manifestations of superstitious thinking.

Toto

Not true.

Absolutely not true. We've gone over this before. Tom Harpur is a mythicist and still considers himself a Christian. Robert Price is a nonbeliever but very pro-religion; Richard Carrier is a secular humanist; Rene Salm is a Buddhist.

There are no mainstream secular intellectuals who are creationists, so this is not a similarity.

This is a gross oversimplification.

This makes no sense. Mythicists believe that the mainstream is wrong, that some of the methodologies are invalid. Creationists believe that secular scientists have been mislead by Satan.

Do you have any evidence that this is true of either mythicists or creationists?

Laity??

Richard Carrier will prove you wrong.

So when Carrier publishes in a peer reviewed journal, will you drop this?

You've thrown those words around before, with no evidence that you know what they mean.

I don't see how this applies to mythicists.

Again, this does not apply to Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier, Robert Price. . .

I don't see how this applies to creationists, but it does sound like a description of historical Jesus theories in general.

The most popular theory seems to be that there was a historical Jesus who was a hippy pacifist teaching peace and love. That does seem to be quite unreasonable.

Like Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ? Did you make that word up and what the hell does it mean? Most mythicists write books and are not filmmakers.

Abe - you've tried to make your case, and most people here don't agree with you, based on logic and facts. YOU HAVE FAILED. But you can't accept it, so you are inventing all sorts of mental disturbances and ideological biases to explain your own lack of success.

Spanky

Apples and Oranges. Whatever makes you feel good about yourself (Abe) I guess....

sotto voce

Christians believe that only one thing is necessary to be believed: that Jesus died on the cross for one's sins, to give his imputed righteousness to those who believe (justification by faith). Any who say or imply that it is necessary to believe that physical creation took place in any particular way (or anything else) are, they say, either antichrist or ignorant.

Early Genesis is nonsense if it is taken as a textbook of physical creation, because its two separate 'accounts' of creation must then contradict each other in various ways (though some translations, notably the NIV, have tried to disguise these contradictions). The stories are undoubtedly allegories carrying much spiritual meaning, which can be discovered fully by reference to the Hebrew texts. That they are allegorical is obvious even to children reading in their native tongues.

Those who propose a young earth, Young-Earth Creationists, YECs, have four motives. They firstly wish to shift the basis of Christian belief onto an intellectual plane rather than one of a change of will. This results in phantom conversions, with people thinking they are Christians when they are not (and there are plenty of those already in the USA). Second, YECs aim to direct attention away from the spiritual themes present in Genesis chapters 1-11, which, even today, many real Christians are unaware of, to at least some extent.

Third, YECs aim to give as much importance as they can to Sundays, which is the day on which they encourage brief association of as little as an hour per week as a token commitment to Christ. The concept of a creation period of six literal days assists this practice. There is no dispute here that the Israelites did not keep a seven-day week; but that week was itself a prefigurement for Christianity, which itself is a 'sabbath' or rest from attempts to work for salvation. Works salvation is the principle of many sorts of false Christianity, so even those who are not themselves literalists may favour the spread of the young-earth view. It is also note-worthy that those who oppose Christianity as such often take care to describe YEC as Christian, despite awareness that it is antichrist, which is unwitting confession of reluctant belief in Christianity.

Fourth, by insisting on a creation account that is so much in contradiction with biology, geology, archaeology and even history, YECs attempt to ridicule Christianity and bring it into contempt.

steve_bnk

Believing in a myth like creationism and believing an historical character like JC is a myth are two entirely different things.The secular specuation on an HJ vs MJ is a general one of history no different than any other questions of distant history for which there is no clear evidence one way or another.

Creationists and secular historians who study HJ vs MJ use the same human faculties and logic. A sylogism is a sylogism either way. A valid sylogism alone does not infer a truth in physical reality. It provides a means for logical anaysis depending on what you choose for a premise in an argument. So in a boad sense the MJ supporters and creationists are on the ssame intelectual ground.

The details of the RCC theolgy are logically consistent, there are no ambiguities given the premises,...a divine JC, an inspired bible, and god.

There is no documentary proof for an HJ, hence you can make a logical argument for both an HJ and MJ depending on your premise.

Given a is true, then y ad z follow. A sylogism..

sotto voce

Myth rules.