Toto

This is not true. Please retract.

Yellum Notnef

I personally don't care one way or the other if Jesus existed or not and I have no interest in attacking Christianity with charges that Jesus didn't even exist. In a rational world any arguments against the truth of Christianity shouldn't even need to get that far. But we don't seem to live in a very rational world so I don't partake of such debates.

I'm sure there are people who have heard (perhaps on the internet) that there was never a Jesus and have used the sound bite in battle without any idea what they're talking about, but those are certainly NOT the people here on this forum.

Yellum Notnef

Maybe we should just ask a myther........

AA, did you come to your conclusion by studying the evidence or are you just hell bent on bringing down the beast?

aa5874

But, somehow you seem actually to care whether or not Jesus existed. You seem to think Christians are being attacked but it must be noted that it was the authors of the NT who put forward the idea that an entity born of the Holy Ghost and a Virgin did actually live on earth during the 1st century before being resurrected and ascended through the clouds.

There need not be any accusations of attacks against Christians if it can be reasonably shown that such an entity did not ever exist at all, or that there is no evidence that such an entity could have existed.

Yellum Notnef

First of all, anything negative about Christianity is always seen as an attack to those who believe. I imagine that a non-tangible Jesus is as bad as it gets even if that is what the gospel authors meant.

But I was commenting on how Abe and others have suggested that this (Jesus myth) is all brought on by militant atheists on the attack and how I disagree with him.

Chaucer

All right. I'm retracting that. Honestly, though, I have encountered some individuals who seriously ignore, it appears to me, the existence of same. That may not be some kind of institutional policy reflecting on any board, but it is a trend and a very frustrating one.

I also want to add that Abe, I believe, is oversimplifying here as well. My personal experience -- and it's strictly anecdotal -- is that plenty of atheists -- a number of them easily falling into the category of what some call "strong atheists" -- view Jesus as quite historical. In fact, a majority of the atheists I've known all my life have viewed Jesus as historical.

In addition, though, I've -- frankly -- personally encountered instead another divide among atheists on line that -- very frequently, in my personal experience -- translates into a split between different attitudes on social justice. (Abe brought up the topic of atheists as monolithically inclined to be mythicists, so I'm simply trying to be honest in telling him what my own impressions have been.) Often, I've found that when encountering an atheist on line who is comfortable with the status quo in society today (it needn't necessarily be the political status quo, just a status quo generally), who is (over here in the U.S., anyway) generally satisfied with things as they are, they seem more inclined to view Jesus as a myth. But when dealing with some atheist who is more of an activist in other areas (it can be health care reform or the ecology or priming the spending pump for the economic stimulus, whatever), that atheist is more inclined to view Jesus as historical.

I was struck by Fenton Mulley's remark about Jesus as a mere "mortal kook" model being of no interest for today. Because this is precisely what I've not encountered among atheists who are heavily engaged in things like writing to their congressman, being poll-watchers, attending rallies, signing petitions, etc. Those atheists who are keenly interested in social causes generally left of center, community organizing, etc., often -- in my experience -- view Jesus's social-gospel angle as being of some practical use as a cultural lever in moving reform along at a faster pace. This isn't to say that such atheists -- in my experience -- maintain that explicit Jesus quotes(!) are at all necessary to making a good impact at this or that rally. Nothing like that. But what such atheists do often reference is the number of more general premises concerning social justice that are particularly easy and effective to invoke. These premises frequently resonate with the Jesus sayings, together with the more modern norms established by landmarks like the United Nations Charter, the Civil Rights Act, and so on. So they would disagree with Fenton Mulley. I've even been surprised -- when they've been pressed -- at their saying that Jesus' social-gospel example is important to the causes of today.

Candidly, Abe, it has appeared to me that the social role reversal implicit in some Jesus sayings has actually attracted such activist atheists, while -- on the other hand -- a frequent refrain of those online atheists I've encountered who are, say, relatively happy with laissez-faire capitalist models and aren't such activists and more right of center, when not apolitical entirely, will not only assume that everything to do with Jesus is most likely a myth but will view the mere "mortal kook" model of Jesus as of no importance for us today at all.

This is why I was so struck by Fenton Mulley's remark at the mere "mortal kook" model having no real importance to today. It may even be that Fenton Mulley generally views Western society, particularly capitalist models like the U.S., as closer than not to a workable ideal, particularly with reference to the so-called social safety net, which he may even look on askance, up to a point, as being too cumbersome (I stress this is only a guess, but it reflects my personal experience of other atheists who have similarly discounted the importance of the "mortal kook" model to today).

Finally, this doesn't necessarily work out to a left/right divide. What it seems to match more is an institutional versus activist divide. This is why it makes sense to imagine that a totalitarian organization like the Soviet Union might be more mythicist than not, because there is a status quo element involved in the equation there, in which things as they are will be preferred to things as they aren't. This despite the clear fact that the Soviet Union was obviously left-leaning. In this instance, the institutional aspect trumps the political/ideological.

I'm wondering if Abe would be ready to revisit his assumption that all atheists are necessarily more sympathetic than not to the mythicist stance.

Sincerely,

Chaucer

ApostateAbe

Chaucer, Toto recently trashed my thread intended to be evidence for the claim. We can talk about it in ~Elsewhere~.

gurugeorge

That's an interesting take. I'd be inclined to put it down more to "Jesus was the first socialist" types of ideas. A historical Jesus (human being preacher type) is nice for Left-leaners, because it's another example of an early adopter of socialist-like ideas.

It's true that Marx was a mythicist (following Bruno Bauer), and Communism followed suit; but I think that's pretty unusual for Left-leaners, and it's more a function of the development of Marx's philosophy from Hegelianism.

Interestingly, I'm a libertarian (or, one might say, classical liberal, Lockean liberal, or Scottish Enlightenment liberal), and I'm inclined to the mythicist position. Not sure what that says about me (unless one thinks "activist" only applies to Left-wingers lol). I believe Robert Price, whose position is pretty close to mythicism, is of a somewhat similar political bent (?)

Anyway, all this seems to me to be symptomatic of how "Jesus" is a complete Rorschach blot. People see in him what they want to see - and maybe that's because he was designed that way. (I mean, the MYTH, the myth we now all know and love, was designed that way - or perhaps more accurately, accreted that way - whether you think it was to some extent based on a real person or not.) The "socialist-like" element in the Jesus story seems to be basically the Cynic element, or Cynic-sounding element.

But it's such a hotch-potch - there are also Stoic elements, mystical elements, magickal elements, Mysteries-like elements, apocalyptic elements, Gnostic elements and of course Jewish elements, to the myth as it came down to us in its final form. If there ever was a man, he's buried under the midden heap of myth from the get-go. (Actually, going back to the "designed/accreted" thing, I think it was mostly accretion, but there was one crucial bit of actual design - the notion of the Apostolic Succession, which I think is, as I have called it, the tail that wags the dog of the strongly historicized Jesus myth.)

No, I'm afraid the "historical Jesus" (in the rationalist sense) is ... a hypothesis. A rational hypothesis (one among several) to explain the existence of the Christian texts, the Christian religion and the myth of Jesus as it has come down to us. And there can be no real proof for him until the cult texts are better understood (their provenance - who wrote them, when, why, etc. - in which case some genuinely historically useful internal evidence might possibly be teased out of them), or until some external evidence (evidence external to the cult texts) is found for his existence.

Yellum Notnef

There's too much cognitive dissonance in America for the bible to be of any use to the left/progressives in this country. The vast majority who vote and care what Jesus had to say are deep in the pocket of the right. They don't care about healthcare for everyone or social justice, they just do whatever dumb shit their church says so they can go to heaven. This usually involves trying to stop abortions, trying to get rid of the gays, keeping vegetables alive against their will, and making sure the overall god saturation level doesn't drop below 80%.

aa5874

One can truly become a mythicist when they examine the extant evidence.

And there is no beast, only some beast believers.