rlogan

Haw! Exactly as I have said it. The ENTIRE POINT of Christianity is the crucifixtion. How to THEM it PROVES THE POWER OF GOD.

Show me which Christains are ambarassed. This quote just proves how proud they were.

It is strikingly idiotic to propose Christians are embarassed by the key marketing gimmick of their religion.

The cross is at the front of the assembly. All attention fixated on the crucifixion. The most essential element of Christianity: appeasement of God on our behalf by Christ. The supreme sacrifice.

I am just not that stupid to have the religious salesman telling me how proud he is of this key feature of his religion and have others say to me he is embarassed by that very thing.

He's proud of it. All efforts are to tell everyone about it. That is not embarassment. It is PRIDE.

Proud of their Martyrs. Suffering is a badge of honor. Not limited to Christianity, either.


*sigh*

Obviously you do not understand the idea of competition between religions for adherents, and how christianity was an INNOVATION on a necessary component of religion in general.

Sacrifice is a mandatory component of religions in these cultures, but Christianity used it in a remarkable way to market their religion differently to others. Christ Crucified.

I realize you don't get this.

We had "Christ Crucified" before any gospels of Jesus.

The data on Christianity is the complete opposite of your examples.


I understand the faith that there must be a historical Jesus underneath the fraud.

I had it at one time too. But these days I prefer accepting the evidence.

bacht

He was a nobody outside of Christian circles. Did any of these witnesses ever come forward to confirm the gospel miracles?

bacht

Yes, but I don't see how a supernatural messiah would be an embarassment to Jews, they already had hints of it in the intertestamental lit. The fact that Jesus died before his messianic work started would be awkward I would think. The usual scenario would have the messiah fighting for Israel to prepare for the Day of the Lord; he might be killed off at that time, but not before completing the job he was sent to do ie. defeating Israel's enemies.

aa5874

I have already told you that I have been a juror and have not heard a judge give instructions to the jury to look for embarrassing details to determine the veracity of a witness.

You seem not to understand how the legal system works.

No matter how embarrassing you are, there must be corroborative evidence to support your testimony.

People who claimed they have been sexually abused in the worst ways have lost their cases due to lack of corroborative evidence.

rlogan

Straw man. I didn't say that, and you waste bandwidth with silly accusations like this.

But the only people using this stupid argument are biblical apologists.



It isn't used anywhere else that I am aware of.


The foolish person is the one who spends his time as if it were a legitimate historical technique instead of a double-layered intellectually dishonest gimmick by apologists.


The crucifixion is not an embarassment. It is the key feature of Christian pride.

The criterion of embarassment is bullshit. Pushed by Christian apologists, not historians.

patcleaver

The argument from embarrassment does not have any special standing or recognized place in courts of law. Fallacious arguments are regulatory offered as evidence in courts. It is the responsibility of opposing counsel to object to any arguments that are not supported by evidence and to expose fallacious arguments.
:
On direct examination, it is not considered relevant to present evidence to show that the direct testimony is true, such as, that the testimony is embarrassing to the witness. You can only present such testimony if the other side presents other evidence that the witness is not reliable.

Oh yeah, that really proved that you know what your talking about.

This is false. There is no presumption that testimony is true. In the courts its open season on testimony. Even hearsay is allowed to impeach the reliability of a witness. The presumption in the law is that the claims of the plaintiff/prosecutor who brings the case to court are false. If you bring a claim to the court then you have to prove that your claim is true or the court finds that it is not true.

People tell lies that make themselves look bad all the time. People value many things and their reputation is only one of the things that someone may value. Some people do not value their reputation. Most people value some other things more than their reputation and they will be willing to lie and embarrass themselves for the benefit of one of their other values.

It is common for criminals to brag about doing violent destructive or illegal things to each other that would ruin the reputations of pastors. Embarrassment is very subjective. Something that would be incredibly embarrassing to one person might not embarrass another person at all - it might even be something that they are proud of.

skepticdude

False, I already cited Garraghan. yes, you thought his methodology was seriously flawed, but that doesn't change the fact that he was a historian and used the CoE, though he didn't explicitely call it that.

Do you think Garraghan just grabbed that principle out of thin air, or do you think he learned it from other historians? What's the likelihood that he suddenly invented "people don't lie when they know they have nothing to gain thereby" for his book? Not likely at all. Therefore that principle he supported more likely came to him from other historians, and so the CoE, while not specifically labeled as such, is used by historians.

skepticdude

Did you now qualify your earlier statement to include "outside of Christian circles" because you agree with me that you initially overstated your case?

skepticdude

And I've already answered that: I've sat on a jury too, and the judge told us before deliberation, that we were ordered by the court to use the "reasonable person" standard to assess the evidence and testimony. So unless you have a separate argument to show that the reasoning of CoE is faulty, it is perfectly reasonable to hold to a generalization that people don't lie to make themselves look bad but to look good, therefore, all things being equal, embarrassing admissions which appear to have no benefit to the witnesses, are more likely truth-statements than false statements.

You forgot that juries are always instructed to use the "reasonable person" test.

Not true, juries convict based purely on circumstantial evidence all the time.

In a court of law, losing your case either means

a)the jury disagreed with you or
b)the judge disagreed with you, or
c)the prosecutor dropped the charges sometime after trial started.

It is up to the trier of fact whether the lack of corroborative evidence is sufficiently large so as to justify letting the defendent continue enjoying their presumption of innocence.

For all you know, a jury could easily agree that the witness for the prosecution was more objective because she admitted legitimate oversights and faults which, while tinting her integrity somewhat, did not overthrow the testimony, but proved to reveal her objectivity. That's perfectly reasonable thinking for a jury and a person, and it's essentially what the CoE is about.

skepticdude

I already quoted Garraghan.