seebs

[Mod note: Posts 1-10 are split from this PA&SA thread:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=161439]

Sapient, I guess the question is, why should I consider you and Brian Flemming to be superior authorities to a number of people who have, you know, degrees in the subject. And stuff like that.

What are your qualifications? Why should I trust you as an authority on this issue?

This is crucial to the question of how your activism will work. What's the basis for your credibility?

Sapient

The irony of course is that you don't need any sort of degree to know good evidence for Christs existence, just isn't there. Simply need to do 30 minutes of research.

You shouldn't. You should question everything.

oudis

You don't need a degree but you need to read articles and books by those with degrees; otherwise, you have crackpots with "just enough of learning to misquote" distributing DVDs full of bullshit.

Sapient

Could you point me to the man with degrees who claims someone, anyone wrote about Jesus either during his life or within 10 years of his death?

seebs

Hmm.

I don't think I am convinced of this.

Okay.

I'm questioning your claim above. How can you reasonably claim confidence, after thirty minutes of looking, that "good evidence" doesn't exist? How do you distinguish between this state, and good evidence existing but not being sufficiently obvious that 30 minutes of internet searching would find it?

I have a friend who is a lawyer. He does law research. In many cases, the controlling case is not available on the internet, and thirty minutes may not get you any information about it. In such cases, concluding after 30 minutes that the case you need "doesn't exist" would be very foolish, and could lose you a case.

Do you have a clearer definition of what "good evidence" is?

In what ways is your claim above distinct from the claims I have seen that you do not need a degree in biology, only thirty minutes of searching on the internet, to find out that "good evidence" for evolution does not exist?

seebs

I am not sure why I necessarily care.

Maybe you could enlighten me. Can you give me an overview of other "historical" figures who are actually mythical, showing how the time at which people wrote about them correlates to their historicity? Maybe you could help me understand the criteria by which we distinguish between historical people who were not written about very much until later, and mythical people. Or were all historical people written about?

oudis

There is nothing (extant, anyway) from that time period concerning Jesus. However, that and a dime would not get you a phone call.

Sapient

That question is so utterly ridiculous that even this answer is more than it deserves.

Can you name 3 important historical figures that are commonly held to exist that nobody wrote about while they were alive?

Sapient

I don't need a dime to make a phone call, I use skype.

seebs

You said to question everything.

I can't name much of anything about historical figures. I have no idea who wrote what when; it's never mattered to me.

You are advancing the claims that:
1. No one wrote about Jesus until at least 10 years after his (alleged, I suppose) death.
2. This shows that there was no such person.

However, this carries hidden premises:
1a. "Important" historical figures "that are commonly held to exist" are always written about while they are alive.
1b. Mythical figures are not written about until they have been "dead" for a while.

Without those premises, 2. is a pure non-sequitur. However, I have no basis for accepting these premises; I don't know that much about historical figures. In particular, I have seen very few people make claims that historical figures whose existence has been commonly accepted for hundreds of years are actually myths, so I would like to know more about the process by which we establish that such a figure is a myth.

(It seems to me, BTW, that your post and this response would make a WONDERFUL split to BC&H. Please, Stops, if you'd do the honors?)