Kapyong

Gday,

FFS !

No mythicist has ever said anything remotely like that.

Why don't you just accuse us of eating babies and be done with it ?


K.

Toto

Where did this bizarre fantasy come from? Are you perhaps projecting? Does this sound at all like Wells or any other mythicist?

Chaucer

No, it doesn't sound like Wells. But it does sound like well-nigh 90% of all the mythicists I've encountered personally in forum after forum. Maybe such encounters have not always been with the equals of the Price's, the Doherty's, the Carrier's and/or the Wells's, each of whom bring some degree of credentials with them. But this juggernaut is being flogged all the same by many a character who, like it or not, helps bring discredit to skeptics of every stripe by such distracting and frequently dogmatic and absolutist antics.

Look, you're free to pooh-pooh all you like the relevance of serious skeptics I have met in some of academe's more conspicuous strongholds, places like Columbia University, or Franklin & Marshall College, or Yale, or Princeton. I can hardly claim to have taken any systematic survey in such places at all. But I can tell you, on a strictly personal basis, I have met some deeply worried skeptics who are on the faculty at places like these and who are seriously concerned at the possible negative impact on the skeptical cause generally that "fringe notions like these" (in the words of one) may have. Some view this stuff as a (virtual) Trojan horse brought in, whether out of sheer stupidity or deliberate malice, with a potential to wreck the basic credibility of skepticism everywhere. It seems to them to smack more of credulity than skepticism, it's so outlandish.

Now anyone here is free to scoff at such fears. Fine. The fact is, though, I have encountered such fears myself and encountered them among some extremely knowledgeable skeptics who fear the impact of galloping religious fundamentalism around the globe ever since 9/11 and Bush's invasion of Iraq. These were both crusades on behalf of Moslem and Christian fundamentalism. And if skeptics now start looking like dogmatic floggers of half-baked ideas based on the deliberate ignoring of pieces of evidence rather than the synthesis of such evidence -- an apt description for many an off-line skeptic of what mythicism really is -- the religious fundamentalists may win.

All such thoughts from skeptics represent the types of reflections I have personally encountered from others. This is a report of what seems to be going on in the off-line world. Maybe others here have really had a different experience with the most rigorously trained and educated off-line skeptics. If so, that would surprise me. I'm bringing you my own blunt snapshot of what I see and encounter every single day. Misguided or not, this is what the best educated skeptics are now saying in the off-line world today. You can ignore it or not. But you should know these misgivings are really out there, and they are expressed, more often than not, by most of the off-line skeptics who have any professional connection at all with the more prestigious academic institutions out there.

Maybe overly blunt warnings like mine are counterproductive as a sufficiently persuasive wake-up call. But that doesn't mean I don't have the right to repeat some kind of wake-up call all the same. I'm telling you the gist here of many an encounter I've had with many an off-line skeptic engaged by academe, some of whom have actually characterized those buying into the mythicist idea as "suckers". They may be wrong in what they say; they may be right. But bottom line: that is what they're saying.

Now I'm no diplomat. I know that. But neither is many another skeptic throughout history who has tried to punch through half-baked fads of every stripe. And this is what the skeptics I've encountered throughout academe have strenuously tried to do in this case. It's not for nothing that I've echoed their urgent inquiry as to which is more important to us, our skepticism or our mythicism.

Sincerely,

Chaucer

Toto

Not in this forum. Where are you hanging out?

Many a character? Then you have some names?

Well, these seriously worried skeptics can take care of everything by producing a well documented argument for the existence of a historical Jesus. That would settle the question - something along the lines of what talkorigins does for evolution.

Hyperbole, anyone?

In fact, I got exactly this reaction from a distinguished professor from UCLA that I met in a social situation. But as we talked, it became clear that he didn't know what the mythicist case rested on, had never read Ken Olson's analysis of the TF, and was consumed by an emotional attachment to the reconstructed socialist-pacifist Jesus of his youth. If this person is typical, I think misguided is the kindest thing one can say.

You are not persuasive. You show no indication that you know`anything about mythicism or mythicists. If you want to counter mythicism, you could start by trying to understand it.

bacht

Well said. Chaucer and other defenders of the historical Jesus ignore the fact that the whole Western establishment has been on their side for centuries. Radicals like Wells are marginalized by the academy even today. The mythicists are still Davids facing Goliath (which doesn't prove they're right, just that they have no support from the mainstream)

Doug Shaver

Although I concede that a reasonable person can still, at this point in our intellectual history, affirm Jesus' historicity, I would be compromising my skepticism if I pretended to think that a good case be made for it.

Compared with most skeptics, I just happen to think the the bar should be set pretty low for what reasonable people can believe. I mean, in general. For those who are of better than average education and who claim to have acquired some critical thinking skills, for them the bar gets raised. To whom much is given, from them much is required.

Chaucer

It's the ideas themselves that should count on a board like this. Not the personal baggage of who supports which ideas.

Chaucer

No Robots

It is completely disengenuous to say that the establishment has supported the historical Jesus. The establishment has instead fought tooth and nail against any work that negates the divinity of Christ. Mythicists actually bring the establishment position to its ultimate point, denying the historicity of the man Christ altogether, leaving only the divinity, a pure nothing.

Chaucer

Well, you're only the second mythicist here who's conceded that. It's regrettable you're so alone.

A good case entails proof. I've already conceded we do not have 21st-century-type proof. What we have instead is circumstantial evidence of a type associated with the documentation for Solon, Gautama (Buddha) and Socrates. Taken together, this circumstantial evidence makes the historicity of such individuals somewhat more likely than not; thus, we have a plausible case, which is a step down from "good case". That's all. But this means, then, that to be dogmatic that such individuals never existed at all, no way, no how, is to be absurd. And I repeat, that is a level of dogmatism that I have indeed encountered on a number of on-line fora of the past five years or so, going back to when I was still an agnostic on Jesus mythicism myself.

If the bar gets raised higher for those with special education and training, then the bar should be especially high for those arguing against the general preponderance of the historic record. The historic record does not downright prove these four individuals -- Solon, Gautama, Socrates, Jesus -- historically existed. But since the circumstantial evidence makes it somewhat more likely than not that all four did exist -- and that's all -- then anyone arguing the contrary to the general historic indices is not only held to a higher bar than most "reasonable people" (to use your term), but is also held to a higher bar than those merely arguing in line with the general preponderance of historic evidence pointing to historic individuals.

Sincerely,

Chaucer

bacht

Of course, but we all have baggage, no-one is perfectly objective. This is one of the hard-learned lessons of the quest for knowledge.

Obviously there are high stakes involved in the Jesus debate, it's not just a minor technical disagreement between ivory-tower specialists. We expect professional scholars and scientists to be detached from issues outside their field of expertise, but real life doesn't work that way. Every witness, every researcher, every "expert" has a bias, this is inescapable.