rlogan

Nope.

Your "amendment" only changed the original assertion from one of "the real reason" to the initial "nudge".

In other words, you still cling to the stupid argument that some secret people you knew twenty years ago were morons and therefore you chose to believe in some version of the "historical Jesus", whatever that means.

It is still the same argument. Just "not as important".


But even more importantly you chose to show your truest colors with the same ridiculous secret evidence:


Now, I chose first to refrain from further comment last time and bid you the best.

But you could not return the same.

So I retract my good wishes and recommend you do something about those meds, bud.

Apparently, you use opinions about and opinions of secret personal acquaintances to form fundamental opinions about scholarly matters.

Interesting approach.

McD

If I encountered someone on an online forum who had once met "secret people" that were so stupid that it had the direct effect of causing him to suddenly start believing something other than what he previously believed, I would find him just so I could laugh directly in his face.

If you and I met in a bar and you told me that you knew of a guy who converted from MJer to HJer and you told me that this was the reason why, I would fall off the barstool laughing.

Your rendition of my conversion from MJ to HJ is the stupidest, most bizarre, idiotic, ridiculous, mangled up, dumb, twisted thing I have ever heard in my life.

Think about it. If you were accurately repeating it, why would I not agree with you? If you had the events right, I would say 'Yup! That's how it happened!'

You don't have the events right. They aren't even close to right. That isn't even close to how it happened.

I have never even come close to doing anything like this in my entire life on any subject, but you sure are having a great deal of fun pretending I do.

Talk about reading minds.

EDIT: And by the fucking way, what an unfair comment about doing something about those meds "bud". There is nothing I can do about those meds "bud" unless medical science comes up with some better drugs "bud" I am stuck with these for the rest of my life "bud". My consolation comes in the form of my doctor telling me that in about 6 to 8 weeks the spaceyness wears off "bud".

You retracted your good wishes "bud" but I actually do not ever wish that you are on this sort of medication "bud". It sucks. Furthermore, I can pretty much guarantee you that if you were face to face with me you wouldn't have said something so callouse not because I am an internet tough guy and I'd kick you in the nuts but because you aren't that much of an asshole in real life, are you, "bud"?

Vorkosigan

"Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman! I have evidence! Evidence! 428 employees of the State Department are Communists! Mr. Chairman!"

ChandraRama

Does Paul use these information as an argument to counter anything? or does that look "inserted later" to link Paul's letters with the historical Jesus?

Amaleq13

Let's make an effort to avoid the personal comments and stick to the thread topic. OK?

Thanks in advance,

Amaleq13, BC&H

McD

I was wondering when someone was going to step in. Thank you Amaleq13. I got "moderated" above for describing a lie as a lie, and yet three times now people (including one moderator) have gotten away with making disparaging comments about my medical condition.

Again, thank you.

The Bishop

I was in part responding to the implication that I simply followed Asimov's line whatever it was. What I had hoped to indicate by my defnce of him originally was that I had learned from Isaac how to think for myself and to reject argument from Authority. Of course, I completely understand that as far as biblical scholarship goes Asimov's Guide to the Bible is well out of date. It's the book that got me into this fascinating subject, but I know well enough to understand that it's not a comprehensive up-to-date analysis. I wrote the customer review by "Silas" on amazon.co.uk.

In any case thank you, Toto, for your fair-minded post clarifying your position.

Didymus

These points are scattered around in Corinthians and in other epistles generally accepted as authentic. (I'm taking into account the fact that the Pastorals and other deuteropaulines were written under the influence of the gospel notion of a historical Jesus. ) I don't know what difference it would make, but I don't recall any of them being argumentative in nature; Paul didn't typically engage in that sort of "He said such and so, but the truth is such and so" discourse. He leaned more toward ad hominems.

I don't know whether any of the verses in question have been identified as interpolations by a reputable text critic, but if you do, by all means give us the references, and we'll have a look.

In any event, I haven't found anything to persuade me that Paul thought of Jesus as a man who lived in recent history. But I am convinced that Paul thought of Jesus as a man who lived on earth, not in some unspecified spiritual realm. Just as Paul would have told us something about the ministry and sayings of the gospel Jesus if he believed such a person existed, so he would have somewhere specified the locus of a "heavenly domain" Jesus. Paul was not one to hide his beliefs from public view.

I think Paul thought of Jesus as an obscure savior in the misty past. I guess that makes me a Mistycist.

Didymus

openlyatheist

I really have never believed there was a Jesus. It has always been obvious to me that religions and the beings they revolve around are the creations of human imagination. The more I read apologists, the less I believe them. But that’s opinion. The point where it really started to make sense to me was due to a couple of bits:

Item 1
I took a graveyard tour of New Orleans awhile back and I saw first hand that even in the midst of the modern world people still enshrine the dead. We visited a popular sepulcher where a well known man still leaves offerings and tributes to his mother. We know who his mother was and have verifiable proof of her existence and identity. So, why belief in the spirits of the dead?

Because people develop lasting, sentimental attachments to those who are no longer here and build relics to remind themselves of the departed. Shrines and graves are mnemonic devices. People see that everyone does this and it creates a network of confirmation that allows people to believe that ghosts and spirits must actually exist.

Conclusion 1: This gave me a strong foundation for why people develop religions based on the dead.

Item 2
In Jonathan Kirch’s book God Against The Gods: The History Of The War Between Monotheism And Polytheism (or via: amazon.co.uk), I learned a lot about ancient Rome and the fact that in their polytheistic culture it was common for them to elect dead emperors into their pantheon of gods. They put their ex-leaders right up there with the other gods whom no one would seriously consider to be based on historical human beings (I’ve never heard anyone insist that there must have been an historical Zeus, for instance).

Caesar was deified after death. But there is more than enough evidence that he was a real person.

Conclusion 2: This gave me a strong foundation as to how a dead human being can be made into a god.

But this begs a serious question: Why aren’t those people in New Orleans or those ex-emperors being worshipped right now? Where are the religions that should have sprung up around these dead-but-who-obviously-existed people?

My ultimate conclusion, and the reason that I am “mythicist”, is that I think the more likely a person is to be real, the less likely a religion based upon their worship will be able to spring up. The reason is because if a person really existed, like the ex-emperors of Rome, there will end up being just too many people who know for a fact that the individual in question was not really a god. This is why people don’t worship Caesar, WE KNOW he wasn’t a god because WE KNOW he was real.

So my guess is that if Jesus was real, (and not the Son of God, obviously), we would know because someone would have pointed out the stupidity of it all just like any other religion based on a deified dead man.

I believe that the Buddha, Muhammed, Joseph Smith, and L. Ron Hubbard all existed, but none of the religions that sprang from them revolved around worshipping them, just believing what they had to say. I think that calling Jesus a “myth” is not quite accurate. I think the better term would be “urban legend”, a character that is fictional, but with just enough realistic elements to make it debatable. I think this ambiguity is probably Christianity’s greatest strength and accounts for much of the religion’s success.

post tenebras lux

McDuffie: :huh: Why did you make that comment? :huh:

Did you really have to? (given the excess heat but sub-standard lighting in this thread) :huh:

Or am I just being angry/frightened to raise this point?