badger3k

Right, within a false, constructed universe. But in the future there could be those who want to claim that the author was writing history, because that is the way it is portrayed.

Why someone who speaks of themselves in the third person can't see the difference, or the irrelevance of what the author intended, you got me.

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Whether the writer thought he was writing history is irrelevant to whether they were actually writing history. That's my point.

Have to come back tomorrow and read the rest of these. Some of my points were answered by others, so I deleted my last post - I'm not going to repeat the same material.

Amaleq13

Within the context of the story in which the depiction exists.

Likewise for Jesus. Whether it is a false depiction is another question entirely.

Neither seem relevant to the point that Jesus is depicted as an historical personage in the stories. Whether the author thought he really was or whether he didn't, he depicts Jesus interacting with Pilate and that is a depiction of a character as an historical personage.

When Snoopy is depicted as fighting the Red Baron, the dog is being depicted as an "historical personage". Understand?

Toto

The first review is out:

(The author is a graduate student [in Engineering Systems] at MIT.)

Solo

That sounds re-assuring, Toto, but the question is to whom. Many of us here would cast your very intelligent reviewer as a rather naive zealot, to wit:


Jiri

Barefoot Bree

* groan *

Do my eyes deceive me, or did Richard Carrier commit a false dichotomy? From that review:

Aren't we always after creationists thinking that if they can disprove evolution, that automatically proves creationism?

Tell me how this is different? I'm not seeing it.

Toto

I think you have inverted something.

Presumably if you disproved a particular theory of evolution, that would not automatically prove creationism. But it would make sense to tell a creationist that he had to develop a theory that did a better job of explaining the evidence than evolution.

In this case, Carrier has only said that Doherty's theory is the best explanation of the evidence so far. Under the rules of the game of finding the best explanation of the evidence, a historicist would have to develop a theory that did a better job.

It makes more sense to reverse your analogy. If you dispoved one particular version of the historical Jesus (say, you could prove that Jesus was not a wandering Cynic sage) that would not prove that there was no historical Jesus. Or if you disproved Doherty's version of mythicism, that would not show that there was a historical Jesus.

Theories of the historical Jesus and evolution are vastly different. Evolution is a robust theory with many data points and ongoing research. The Historical Jesus dispute is an attempt to make sense of inconclusive historical data, in a situation where any reasonable person would say that there will never be proof one way or the other.

Solo

No, I think Barefoot Bree is right and there is demonstrably an excluded middle in the statement by Richard Carrier. Doherty can be theoretically refuted by another mythicist.

My take on it : so what ?

Jiri

Toto

Some off topic posts have been split off. Please keep the conversation here on topic. Thanks.

Toto

I think you might be technically correct, but you are parsing the words without taking the context into account. Carrier was clearly dividing opinion into two camps, the mythicist and the historicist. I don't know of a competing mythicist theorist who is actively trying to disprove Doherty (although there might well be, and probably will be if Doherty gets more recognition.)

Barefoot Bree

My point is, is coming up with a better theory the only way to disprove another one? Could Doherty's theory be refuted in the details, without any mention at all of another theory to replace it?