Ted Hoffman

GDon,
Look at how you duck points 1. and point 2. as if you are blindfolded and then you zip straight to point 3. and 4. and respond as if the first two points do not even exist. And this is exactly how you respond to Doherty: you only respond to arguments that you think you have a response to and ignore everything else. And mostly, your responses are just advanced arbitrarily sometimes purely for nuisance value.
You do not concede to counterarguments that rebutt your arguments. This is a shoddy and unprofessional style of argumentation. Note that Doherty does concede when you make good points.
I am not asking you to concede where you feel the counter-argument is not sufficient to falsify your argument: I am only asking that you be honest and forthright. Deal with the arguments. Blow by blow.
It is only by dealing honestly with the ideas exchanged that we can move forward. And that "it is not relevant" dismissal wont cut it either. You have to explain why and how it is not relevant.

I countered your "spot the mythicist" game. You went silent on my counter. Then you unpacked other issues without dealing with my response first.
In your understanding, what was my argument?
How does your Tertullian quote show I am wrong?

I am asking this because it is clear to me that you did not understand what my argument was, or its thrust. Or you may have lost track of your initial arguments. That is why I am reluctant to rip through your objections in their cradle.

GakuseiDon

OK. That's fair enough. If I don't cover something that you feel I should, by all means bring it up.

On your point 1, you said: "1. Unlike the early Christian apologists, there is evidence that the creationists are intentionally pushing ID. Take the Wedge for instance... As I showed in the other thread, your example of Justin is not apt."

I disagree. I think that Justin, saying that he gives faith-based answers to Christians, and "secular" answers to pagans, is evidence for this approach. You said that I was saying that "if one mango is in a basket, then all fruit in the basket is a mango". In fact, Doherty is saying that "there is no mangoes in the basket". I've shown that there is at least one.

On your point 2, you said: "2. The pro-ID scientists and non-scientists are working in concert - Dembski, Behe etc. But the early Christians were split and fighting each other. Marcionites, Orthodox Christians, Ebionites etc."

That's irrelevant AFAICS. Can you tell me how that would matter?
What do you mean, I "went silent on your counter"? I addressed the part relating to the OP, and then I went to your other "Response to GakuseiDon" thread, and spent a bit of time going through that. If there is any relevant details that you'd like me to cover, let me know over there.
Fair enough. You said:

"The conjecture “the logos would have been a useful concept� is challenged by ecclesiastical writers like Tertullian who attempted to distance Christianity from pagan religions by saying that it is the devil that set up the similarities between Christianity and pagan religions."

I understood this to mean that you believe that, as the concept of the Logos was similar to that used by pagan religions, it wouldn't have been a useful concept to use for writers like Tertullian who wanted to distance Christianity from those pagan religions.

My reply shows Tertullian using the concept of the Logos: "We have already asserted that God made the world, and all which it contains, by His Word, and Reason, and Power. It is abundantly plain that your philosophers, too, regard the Logos--that is, the Word and Reason--as the Creator of the universe."

Clivedurdle

Gdon

I am completely confused by this:

Were you quoting Ted and the formatting got missed? This reads to me as overwhelming evidence that Jesus is a myth!

In fact, I see the above as an argument that shows the growth of the historical jesus heresy:

It is the other way round completely - the son of God has no mother in any sense which involves impurity is the starting point, that is then developed into a human god by adding on historical stuff and moving where the play is set from heaven to earth. It is a development of the concept of logos by humanising it, it is a thought experiment!

Xianity does not need an HJ to be internally consistent!

GakuseiDon

Yep, and that is one of my points. If the historicists' writings are indistinguishable from Doherty's MJ writers, what does that imply about the MJ writers?
Since this is coming from a HJer, what do you conclude from it?

Clivedurdle

Sorry, you will have to expand!

Zeichman

No... "Yehoshua Mashiach" means annointed Savior. We, as far as I know, have no documents which call him that. "Ihsous Cristos" nor "Jesus Christ" mean annointed Savior, as far as I know. Is there any evidence it would be interpreted by such by Hellenistic communities, which seems to be almost all documentation that we have?

And in Greek, wouldn't the phrase make much more sense with the use of definite articles?

Ted Hoffman

I don't think I disagree with you. You have some questions, thats fine. I think we discussed this topic in the "dating pauline epistles from scratch" search around.

GakuseiDon

Perhaps my rebuttals of Doherty may help you?

http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus...ndC_Review.htm

http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus...view_Part2.htm

Amaleq13

The passages you considered to be indicative of a mythical Jesus came from writers who elsewhere make it clear they believe in a Jesus who existed in history.

GDon's point is that, if all we had was the former (eg M.Felix) you would conclude incorrectly (as you have apparently done) that this author did not believe in a Jesus who existed in history.

He is arguing that the statements Doherty focuses upon in the writings of 2nd century Christians are not reliable indicators of a lack of belief in a Jesus who existed in history.

Ted Hoffman

GDon is running all over the place. First he argued that the early Christians used concepts like Logos because they were useful for Christianity. Then he argued that we find the early Christians using pagan philosophical concepts because the early Christians were re-imaging Christianity. Then he argued that we find these pagan concepts because philosophizing Christianity "was part of an on-going process in the Second Century, when numbers of philosophically trained pagans were converting to Christianity."
GDon also argues that these early apologists only focused on expounding on philosophical concepts like logos rather than mention historical details about Jesus because these pagan philosophical concepts (which GDon sees as functionally divergent from historical details about Jesus) were the most effective for winning converts.

Note the following:

• GDon is incapable of demonstrating that mention of historical details about Jesus would have repulsed potential converts.
• GDon has no clear method for determining what was or was not important to early Christianity.
• GDon is unable to show texts that show us that these apologists previously were part of a Christianity that was different from the one they propounded.
• Don is equally unable to demonstrate that Christians wanted to re-image Christianity. The argument he claims he derives from Armstrong's work to support his reasoning is incorrect as I have shown. After I have ensured that his argument has no logical feet to support it, GDon remains clinging to it on the basis that Armstrong, who allegedly favours that argument is a respected atheist. Being a respected atheist is now a new way of being an authority in this particular field.
• GDon is unable to demonstrate that there was a revision process that started at a specific point in time that the "philosophically trained pagans" joined upon upon converting to Christianity.
• GDon, at the same time, would have us believe that Christianity, a cult he presents as so en vogue that "numbers of philosophically trained pagans" proudly joined, was, at the same time "viewed as a barbarous new religion". Contradictions like this continually emerge when one examines GDon's arguments closely.

GDon's style of argumentation, from the above (and below), appears to be arbitrary, fluid, and poorly thought out. It is reactive and based on the immediate difficulty at hand, fuelled by random thoughts that occur to him.

That is why he is contradicting himself (above and below), and that is why he is pulling different rabbits out of a hat without adducing any evidence to support his conjectures. That is why he is asking us to join him in a guessing game instead of providing a framework that supports and shows how he arrived at his conclusions. We have seen that his usage of Justin is a hasty generalization. We have seen that his attempt at drawing a parallel with the ID movement is a false analogy. And I am sure we will see more attempts and more ideas come from him.

When asked to provide evidence that demonstrates that the Christians apologists had made a conscious choice to slant their presentations to exclude a historical Jesus, GDon, like one that does not understand what "conscious choice to slant" means, responds:
If this was not IIDB, I would have felt it necessary to explain why GDon's response fails to respond to what I asked. But since everyone is familiar with logic here, no need to waste valuable space and bandwidth.

Luckily for me, you even used the exact word "adopt". Here:
You have therefore contradicted yourself. Do you need time to revise your initial article? It is no fun arguing with a confused person.
Or do you want to disown the entire article?
Ouch. Self-contradiction is a bitch. Must feel like hearing the sound of shattering cutlery that you've just knocked over in the dark.

So they were re-imaging Christianity from what? What was Christianity before the renovation started?
<Sound of shattering glass. A heavy body thuds through the dark>
You need to be clear about whether you are abandoning your earlier argument before we can adress this.

You misunderstand. I mean to argue the following:
1. You argued that Christians adopted the logos concept because it would have been a useful concept for Christianity [Yes, you have done a volte face and denied you did this. And I have challenged this entire argument, but lets not be distracted by those]
2. (1) is premised on the idea that Christians co-opted or adopted concepts in pagan religions to make Christianity similar to pagan religions in order to make Christianity more applealing to pagans.
3. But Tertullian, instead of embracing the similarities between Christianity and pagan religions, condemns them as the works of the devil.
4. Therefore not all early Christians were interested in presenting Christianity as similar to pagan religions: some sought to argue that Christianity is not similar to paganism.

This is what I was arguing.

Now, about MF and Tertullian, MF's work is only one. And in it, he rejects the idea that a man could die to confer salvation to fellow men.
Tertullian argues that a divine being is not mortal and thus existed even before incarnation.

Here are the differences:
1. Ad Nationes provides a metaphysical framework that the "incarnation" alluded to in Apology can fit in by spanning the lifetime of the divinity pre and post the incarnation. Octavius has no countervailing text to salvage the the rejected godman.
In other words, Apology is like a Text saying "You are a pig" and Ad Nationes is like a text saying "Sorry I was drunk when I said that". OTOH, with MF, all we have is Octavius and Octavius says "You are a pig". We have no reason to believe that such an expression was influenced by alcohol (to maintain my analogy).

2. The tone in Octavius is also devoid of any reverence to the crucified man. If MF was a Christian, he would have cut down on the tone of ridicule, which any Christian would have found offensive.

3. Tertullian appeared to have been addressing a misunderstanding or explaining a metaphysical framework while MF was rejecting a specific concept without any qualms.

These differences, IMO, set apart MF and Tertullian.

This is not what Doherty said. But I do think saying "everyone knew what Christians believed" makes a difference.

That would take a lifetime my friend and that would not be a method: that is an undertaking. Do you understand what a method is?
Are you telling us that you have read all the literature of the period?