Freethought & Rationalism Archive

lpetrich · 09-07-2009, 04:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

All "evidences" for HJ only work if one assumes an HJ to begin with.

Seems like circular reasoning to me. A more reasonable position is to view the question as a hypothesis to be tested.

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

If we are interested in culture and its development, then we certainly have to account for the impact of Christ. There is nothing wrong with questioning origins, but causes can only really be fully understood by their effects.

No Robots, that is an exercise in irrelevance.

Quote:

The cause of the Christian phenomenon must be equivalent to its effect. There must be at the source of Christianity a singularly powerful phenomenon. In the absence of any other possibility, most people conclude that this phenomenon must be a remarkable individual.

Mythmaking can fill the bill very well. Consider Lord Raglan's mythic-hero archetype, a sort of average hero biography that many legendary heroes fit to greater or lesser degree. There must be something psychologically attractive about it, because well-documented heroes are usually very poor fits.

Consider someone trying to kill the baby hero. That's a part of Lord Raglan's profile: Herod vs. Jesus Christ (yes, JC fits very well), Pharaoh vs. Moses, Amulius vs. Romulus, Hera vs. Hercules, Acrisius vs. Perseus, Kronos vs. Zeus, Kamsa vs. Krishna, ...

But that never happens to well-documented heroes. Fundies never tried to kill the baby Charles Darwin, slaveowners never tried to kill the baby Abraham Lincoln, Jews never tried to kill the baby Adolf Hitler, psychiatrists never tried to kill the baby LRH, etc.

Quote:

The real problem is that our approach to cultural studies is evolutionist, where effects are assumed to be greater than their causes.

No Robots, why do you say "assumed"?

It is not assumed as some necessary thing; it is something that there are oodles of examples of. No Robots, what would you consider convincing evidence of such emergent effects?

Quote:

We think that our culture of today is immeasurably greater than anything ever said or done by anyone as obscure and antiquated as Christ.

Who claims that? I don't know what you are talking about. Aside from that, it can't be denied that there are some things where we are way ahead of 2000 years ago. The closest one could get to a computer back then was the Antikythera Machine and abacuses and the like.

Quote:

Progessivism/evolutionism ultimately argues that the fundamental cause of Christianity is some kind of evolutionary mechanism.

What do you mean from that?

Quote:

It is impossible from this position to see Christ as anything other than a negligible blip in the course of history, an accident around which evolutionary forces happen to have crystallized. Only by rejecting this evolutionist/progressivist perspective can we see that our culture is wholly a reflection of Christ and the handful of other geniuses who have, in effect, made us.

Why do you call that "evolutionist"?

What you describe might be called the anti-Great-Man theory of history, because it tries to avoid any hint of Great-Man theorizing. However, the truth is in between. There are Great People and there are collective effects of the activities of large numbers of people.

No Robots, would it be fair to call you a believer in the Great Man theory of history? It seems to me that you believe that Jesus Christ had been such a Great Man.

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

I'll just say here that Brunner's rejection of evolution was and is very hard for me to swallow. Weaning myself from evolutionism is an on-going process. But I a must say that I am most pleased with the results so far.

I find it very disappointing that you feel that you have to reject biological and social evolution in order to be a good Constantin Brunner follower.

lpetrich · 09-07-2009, 04:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Quote:

Originally Posted by show_no_mercy

Yes. Romulus and Remus must have been historical, and the offspring of the god Mars and the virgin Silvia.

For if we were acquainted with significantly unique and inspired deeds under the names, for instance, of Sargon, Romulus, Perseus, Theseus, Heracles, Siegfried and Tell, then I would have to believe, if I were not to betray my fundamental notion of resultant phenomena having a cause (for every cause must produce its specific result, and every result must have its specific cause). This would follow even if I had never so little to show of the causes involved, of the originators of such works; for, in cases like this, the minus in terms of the kind of experiential certainty which is supplied by sense-data and other external information is outweighed by the plus of inner conviction. Thus I would have to believe that these deeds had creative personalities behind them, and so I would call them Tell, Siegfried, Heracles, Theseus, Perseus, Romulus and Sargon, just as I call Shakespeare the author of the unmistakably distinctive literary marvels, pointing to a single originator, that go under his name, in spite of the fact that we have as little certain knowledge of the life of the man Shakespeare as of the life of the man Christ—nay, we have less.--Constantin Brunner

No Robots, your Constantin Brunner quote is a confusing mess. What is he trying to say? That "Romulus" is a convenient shorthand for the mythmakers who imagined him?

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

As Christianity frees itself from the alliance of Church authority and temporal power, it starts to globalize its own true nature. It's opponent now is scientism/evolutionism, and in particular mythologism.

No Robots, please explain to us what you mean by
Scientism
Evolutionism
Mythologism

And please do so in simple, straightforward language, preferably without treating the writings of Constantin Brunner as sacred books.

DCHindley · 09-07-2009, 05:23 AM

I always thought a "sea" was used for bodies of salt water and a "lake" for bodies of fresh water, but that might just reflect our modern use of these terms. IIRC, in ancient times the term "sea" was used more loosly to mean a large body of water.

DCH

Quote:

Originally Posted by Petergdi

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

My comments about the Sea of Galilee were based on Dennis MacDonald's The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (or via: amazon.co.uk), who pointed out the disconnect of calling the Lake a Sea.

It looks like the LXX does so too. I can only assume that the LXX translators and the NT writers made the distinction at a smaller size than you would. I know neither Hebrew nor Aramaic, but I wonder if those languages make the distinction between large and small bodies of water at a smaller size threshold. If they do, then calling a lake a sea would have the opposite significance to what you suggest.

Peter.

lpetrich · 09-07-2009, 05:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

The issue is not so cut and dried as Chaucer makes it out to be. There is a general consensus that there was a Galilean preacher behind the Jesus described in the gospels, but there is no consensus about who exactly he was, what his message was, or how Christianity really got started. Carrier's book will reorient the field IMHO.

So there could be some historical Jesus Christ who is so encrusted with mythology that it is difficult to tell fact from fiction.

Such a HJ would be hard to distinguish from a purely mythical one, it must be said.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ktotwf

What I find weird about the Historical Jesus/Mythicist Jesus argument is that, for some reason, it is taken as the default neutral stance that a man, Jesus, existed whose life is only testified to in the religious writings of a group specifically promoting his worship (all of which can be easily analyzed as literary works, all of which are contradictory with each other, and all of which promote a separate agenda, and all of which seem to be derived from OT precedent) and who was said to have done dozens of miraculous things.

Great points.

What might we think about Joseph Smith if all we had to go on is the Mormon Church's biographies of him?

And likewise with L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology.

If you are to believe Writer & Professional in Dozens of Fields, he was a polymathic genius, excelling as:

WRITER: Fiction writer, Screenwriter, Poet, Lyricist, Essayist
HUMANITARIAN: Educator, Drug Rehabilitation, Criminal Reform
ADMINISTRATOR
PHILOSOPHER
ARTIST: Filmmaker, Photographer, Composer, Balladeer, Arranger, Choreographer
ADVENTURER/ EXPLORER: Explorer, Aviator, Archaeologist, Mineralogist
MASTER MARINER: Sea Captain, Yachtsman & Navigator
HORTICULTURIST

But we have numerous first-hand accounts of him from others, and also pictures and video from him, so we have some very good checks on the CoS's accounts of him. He was indeed much of what the CoS describes about him, even though he was not nearly as competent or magnanimous as the CoS claims.

But if we didn't have any outside accounts, how would we be able to tell fact from fiction about him? Would we endlessly speculate about the "historical LRH"? Would we perhaps speculate that he was some purely imaginary ideal Scientologist? What Scientologists hope to become as they rid themselves of engrams and body thetans.

Quote:

I'd like to see a real effort to find out who the historical Xenu is. I don't believe in the whole transporting billions of aliens to earth and blowing them up in Volcanoes bit, but it seems obvious to me that there has to be SOME kind of figure named Xenu to serve as the powerful origin of the myth, or else why would Tom Cruise continue to believe?

LOL.

And to use a Constantin Brunner argument, there has to be some powerful figure, some great genius behind that story.

mountainman · 09-07-2009, 05:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCHindley

I can attest that Lake Erie gets some kick ass waves (5+ feet) and that storms kick them up fast. Strangely, we have no surfer culture here.

The surf culture is actually alive and well on the G-Lakes.

See alt.surfing or Google

DCHindley · 09-07-2009, 07:35 AM

Yeah, we have die-hards. Not quite like there is in Hawaii, California or Australia, tho.

Looks like they do surf the Sea of Galilee as well.

DCH

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCHindley

I can attest that Lake Erie gets some kick ass waves (5+ feet) and that storms kick them up fast. Strangely, we have no surfer culture here.

The surf culture is actually alive and well on the G-Lakes.

See alt.surfing or Google

dog-on · 09-07-2009, 07:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lpetrich

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

The issue is not so cut and dried as Chaucer makes it out to be. There is a general consensus that there was a Galilean preacher behind the Jesus described in the gospels, but there is no consensus about who exactly he was, what his message was, or how Christianity really got started. Carrier's book will reorient the field IMHO.

So there could be some historical Jesus Christ who is so encrusted with mythology that it is difficult to tell fact from fiction.

Such a HJ would be hard to distinguish from a purely mythical one, it must be said.

Great points.

What might we think about Joseph Smith if all we had to go on is the Mormon Church's biographies of him?

Actually Joe Smith would be more like "Paul" or "Mark", whereas JC falls better into the Moroni category.

All things being equal...

dog-on · 09-07-2009, 08:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lpetrich

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

All "evidences" for HJ only work if one assumes an HJ to begin with.

Seems like circular reasoning to me. A more reasonable position is to view the question as a hypothesis to be tested.

Indeed, though when one does exactly that, the best one can do, giving the benefit of the doubt, is to embrace agnosticism.

Of course, this is a legitimate position if you assume that the intentions of the ancient writers was not to deceive, but to communicate a firmy believed position.

Looking at religious history, in general and especially from recent occurances where our data is much clearer, I don't use that particular assumption.

wordy · 09-07-2009, 08:24 AM

When the potential believers act as the words tell them to then Jesus becomes live as a presence in their lives. To some of them that support the view that he must have been a historical person. To others the presence of God in the story of Jesus is what counts in their lives and they allow themselves to be agnostic about his historical existence.

Is it not remarkable that an atheist like Rickard Dawkins behave as if he believe that maybe there was a historical Jesus? He just think that they made a myth about him. The real Jesus was an ordinary man to RD, maybe a bit like a deluded believer now?

But RD doesn't seem to support a purely mythical Jesus.

Mythicists are very few even among atheists. It is a minority view? Most atheists doesn't seem to care either way. They have no view on the issue. Whatever they say if asked. Who cares they say.

show_no_mercy · 09-07-2009, 03:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lpetrich

And please do so in simple, straightforward language, preferably without treating the writings of Constantin Brunner as sacred books.

lol don't hold your breath.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

09-07-2009, 08:24 AM	#119
wordy Contributor Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Sweden, Europe Posts: 12,091	When the potential believers act as the words tell them to then Jesus becomes live as a presence in their lives. To some of them that support the view that he must have been a historical person. To others the presence of God in the story of Jesus is what counts in their lives and they allow themselves to be agnostic about his historical existence. Is it not remarkable that an atheist like Rickard Dawkins behave as if he believe that maybe there was a historical Jesus? He just think that they made a myth about him. The real Jesus was an ordinary man to RD, maybe a bit like a deluded believer now? But RD doesn't seem to support a purely mythical Jesus. Mythicists are very few even among atheists. It is a minority view? Most atheists doesn't seem to care either way. They have no view on the issue. Whatever they say if asked. Who cares they say.

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.