ApostateAbe

I am not so concerned about whatever propaganda advantage that atheism may have over religion if atheists were more reasonable about history. I am concerned mainly because I value reason and the truth. The largest atheist organizations are peddling bullshit, and it makes me sick to my stomach to be part of that. American Atheists is the biggest offender, but the Freedom From Religion Foundation sells Cookie Cutter Christs: Origins of the Jesus Myth nontracts, a theory that is even more stupid than what American Atheists sells. Reason is important as a propaganda advantage, no doubt, because it is the only propaganda advantage that we have, but it is also the single value that makes anti-religious activism worth it.

Toto

But you yourself know little about history or historical method and have been resistant to learning anything that would disturb your pre-existing beliefs.

You should probably take this up with FFRF. None of the regulars at BCH endorse the Cookie Cutter theory of Jesus.

ApostateAbe

I am distressed at such criticism. Can you please tell me specifically what you would like me to do?
Yes, I have taken it up with FFRF. I received no reply. It is an issue even for members and associates who do not support the theory, because tolerance for it is all that is needed to sustain it. If I am the only one who expresses objections, then it has little effect. Would you please do me and all of us a favor and email or call FFRF to express your objections? They may take your status more seriously than mine. If so, thanks. Here is the relevant page:

http://www.ffrf.org/shop/nontracts/C...utter-Christs/

Toto

I've been trying to tell you for some time, but it's like water off a duck's back.

It would help if you realized that historical Jesus theories have more in common with creationism than mythicism.

I suspect that only Richard Carrier could get FFRF to remove the Cookie Cutter Jesus nontract, and only by writing a new one for them.

ApostateAbe

I think we should resolve this issue as soon as possible. I acknowledge that adherents of historical Jesus theories share the same conclusion as creationists--that Jesus existed--and the mythicists do not share that conclusion. However, the shared conclusion is not nearly as relevant to me as the shared psychology, sociology and ill techniques of reasoning. In those respects the creationists seem to have more in common with the mythicists. You may already understand my specific objections. Do you object that I am not taking the shared conclusion between historical Jesus theories and creationists seriously enough? If there is something I truly do not realize, then I genuinely hope to understand it. Perhaps the true problem is that I have a different value system, not that there is something I don't realize.
That sounds like a wonderful project. I would happy to see the tract replaced by another that expresses merely good reasons for skepticism of Biblicist history, something that we can all stand behind.

Toto

The Historical Jesus industry has much more in common with creationism than the conclusion. It shares an assumption that the Bible must contain some truth (scientific or historical) and a willingness to misuse the tools of a secular field of inquiry (science or history) to bolster a conclusion that is faith based and cannot be supported on the basis of evidence.

You have been unable to support your claim that mythicists have any shared psychology or sociology, and I have not seen you show any great knowledge of reasoning in the field of history.

I have no idea how your value system would affect the evidence. What is it that you value that you think might be the problem?

ApostateAbe

...an assumption that the Bible must contain some truth (scientific or historical)...

Yes, you are right. I am with you on that point. The fact that you take it as a relevant point of commonality with creationism is an illustration of what I find wrong with the mentality underlying mythicism and superskepticism. It is not an unjustified assumption. It is an inference that directly follows from the facts. Many of the claims or implications of the canonical texts are corroborated historical realities, not merely points of faith. If the texts contain some claims that are corroborated, then why not also accept some of the seemingly probable implications that are not corroborated? The mythicists and the superskeptics tend to disbelieve those implications, seemingly because their first instinct is to distrust the Christian canon! There are plenty of other obvious assumptions that perfectly reasonable atheists share with creationists, but your assumption seems to be that nothing in the Bible should be believed if it does not contain direct external non-Christian corroboration, and I think that assumption would find plenty of support among the mythicists and the superskeptics. Do you really think that assumption is justified? Does it follow easily from the facts?

...and a willingness to misuse the tools of a secular field of inquiry (science or history) to bolster a conclusion that is faith based and cannot be supported on the basis of evidence.

I am not with you on that point, but it seems to be more of a vague opinion than a claim of fact. We can just leave it be unless you want to be more specific.

I have no idea how your value system would affect the evidence. What is it that you value that you think might be the problem?

I was offering a potential resolution to the division between us, but I may have been wrong. We can resolve the other points before focusing on this question, if needed.

Atheos

At the risk of being a buttinski I'm curious about the following statement:
There is certainly some historical basis for some of the content in the latter history books of the Old Testament canon, but much of even that content is questionable.

Honestly I don't find much in the traditional New Testament canon that makes me think "Hey, that probably actually happened!"

Try to look at it from the POV of a skeptic. I'm not a superskeptic, whatever that means. I'm just skeptical.

Were the writers of the four canonical gospels privy to the private conversations they recorded between (for example) Herod and his henchmen, Jesus and Nicodemus, Jesus and the Devil in the wilderness, Jesus and Mary at the wedding in Cana? Were the writers able to read the mind of incidental characters such as the woman who "had an issue" who touched Jesus's garment and was healed?

The "gospels" (and "Acts") are written like fiction. They often include details the writers would have had no knowledge of. Entire private conversations that allegedly happened decades previous are recorded with the sort of uncanny precision that one would expect from an omniscient writer, but could hardly be considered real history.

Using historical names and places doesn't make fiction into history, otherwise Homer's Illiad would qualify.

Additionally, the writings contain claims of which reasonable people would be skeptical. Virgin birth, angelic warnings, magic guiding star, miracles, demon possession, dead people coming to life, a dude vanishing and appearing magically in locked rooms and eventually floating off into the sky.

It truly perplexes me that people are considered unreasonable for being skeptical about these claims.

Meanwhile I'd be interested in knowing just which (if any) portions of the Jesus myth you think are "plausible" from a historical standpoint and should be accepted at face value if for no other reason than there's no good reason to discard them.

Toto

This is such a logically invalid argument, I don't know where to begin. It is the sort of argument that Christian apologists use, that seems like a parody of logic or scholarship.

If a text contains some statements that could have been derived from history books, other statements about the supernatural that are impossible, and a few statements that are not impossible - does give any basis for viewing the "not impossible" statements as probably true? Why should the true historical statements increase the probability, while the supernatural statements not decrease the probability that the rest is true?

If you look at literature, you can see that there is no evidence to support your strange assertion. Historical novels contain some valid history, but are not historically true. Political propaganda often contains a germ of truth (or truthiness).

You need much more than this to establish any sort of historicity. And this is not hyperskepticism - this is the ordinary amount of skepticism that you need to keep from being swindled by your local con artist.

ApostateAbe

I think those are good points, and they are the ideas that a normal thoughtful atheist who is somewhat new to the historical Jesus debates has when he or she first enters it. I invite you to the BC&H forum to learn more. It is not at all ridiculous to be skeptical of the claim that Jesus existed, especially for someone new to the debate, so I don't look insultingly on people with such doubts, as many in the academic establishment may. Even so, a familiarity with the topic and a somewhat reasonable and ideologically-neutral approach really leads to a firm conclusion on only one side of the debate, that Jesus really was historically human, at least in my opinion. Just so I am clear, a "superskeptic" is someone whose conclusions are driven primarily by opposition to religion or fundamentalism, not primarily by the evidence or probability.

All of us are skeptical of the canonical claims, and all of us believe that the gospels were sourced from myths. The division is between the so-called mythicists (or superskeptics), those who believe (or strongly suspect) that Jesus, the supposed founder of the Christian religion, never actually existed as a human being, and the so-called historicists, those who believe that Jesus was a human being. The professional secular scholarship is almost completely dominated by the historicists. To them, mythicism is a debate that was hot 100 years ago and was easily defeated. The secular scholarship tends to believe that Jesus was an "apocalyptic prophet," or a doomsday cult leader, who was a follower of John the Baptist and was crucified by Pontius Pilate, although there are some divisions about his specific personality. The general agreement about his existence is because of the evidence, not faith, and I am happy to explain the evidence.

The Iliad and the Odyssey often come up in the debates, because they are also storylines that contain plenty of historical locations, and possibly historical people, much like the gospels. So, it may be acceptable to believe that Jesus is just as mythical as Odysseus. The most relevant difference is the seeming intentions of each set of narratives. Unlike the Homerian epics, the gospels were intended to be accepted as historical truth, not entertainment. The beginning of the gospel of Luke makes that intention explicit, stating:

¹Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, ²just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. ³Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, ⁴so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

They apparently sourced from written and spoken myths in order to evangelize the Christian religion. They wanted their writings to be interpreted as trustworthy historical reality. The intention of the authors and the author's sources certainly does NOT mean that everything they said is historically accurate--it plainly doesn't--but it provides a framework for evaluating explanations. We can understand why Odysseus may have been invented--he was a character in an entertaining story, but we can not as easily use the same explanation for Jesus, though there are some mythicists (not many) who do insist that Jesus started as a fictional character in an entertaining story or play.

That is only the starting point. Let's look at more of the details. Though the gospels are not eyewitness accounts (as made explicit by Luke), there are some early Christian writings that are apparently eyewitness testimony. They are the letters of Paul. In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he writes of meeting, "James, the Lord's brother." He also writes of meeting the apostle Cephas, who he also (disputedly) calls Peter. He names three "reputed pillars": James, John and Cephas. He writes in anger and opposition with those three people, because he is engaged in a theological division over whether Gentiles should be circumcised or excluded from the church. This is a point of view that we would expect only of the genuine Apostle Paul, not the point of view of his canonical forgers (half of the canonical Pauline epistles were apparently forged), and that is the main reason why critical scholars unanimously accept the Epistle to the Galatians as an authentic letter of the authentic Paul. Some mythicists and superskeptics do not accept that as sufficient evidence, but it seems to be the most probable conclusion regardless.

Galatians 1:19 is the verse that contains the very hotly debated, "...apostle...James, the Lord's brother." It is believed by critical scholars that this is the same James who is listed as one of the four brothers of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, and also the same James whose martyrdom was briefly mentioned by Josephus in 90 CE. Mythicists and superskeptics, however, tend to believe that Paul (if he really was Paul and not a forger) was actually referring to a metaphorical brother, perhaps an elite group of Christians who had the title, "brothers of the Lord." This title was later supposedly distorted and misunderstood to mean the literal brothers of Jesus, which explains the matching accounts in the gospels and Josephus. If that comes off to you as an ad hoc explanation, then I think you would be right, but the mythicists and superskeptics tend to think of their explanation as at least equally likely. They take a similar view with Peter/Cephas and John, genuine human leaders of the cult who were later incorporated into the Jesus stories.

The most important evidence, for me, is the set of failed apocalyptic prophecies of Jesus. The earliest three gospels--Mark, Matthew and Luke--each contain a pair of deadlines for the coming apocalypse predicted by Jesus:

(1) Mark 9:1 "Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."
(2) Mark 13:30 "Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place."

This follows a pattern seen throughout history, that a doomsday cult leader predicts the end of the world, or revolutionary calamity, and the cult has special knowledge and responsibility to prepare, prevent, avoid and/or respond to it. The cult leader in this case is very easily explained as Jesus himself. The mythicists may think that someone wanted people to believe in this apocalyptic deadline, but they put words into Jesus' mythical mouth. Presumably it would be sometime very soon after Jesus' supposed death and resurrection, when the false followers of Jesus were still alive, but perhaps the Christians were not allowed to speak with the supposed disciples or family of Jesus, or there was a broad conspiracy to deceive them. It is at least possible, and anything is possible, as you may learn when you engage in historical debate. But, the issue is which explanation is most likely.

A very good method for determining the greatest seeming likelihood is a method called the "Argument to the Best Explanation." Here it is.

1. The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data.

2. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory scope than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.

3. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.

4. The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.

5. The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.

6. It must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, when conjoined with accepted truths it must imply fewer observation statements and other statements which are believed to be false.

7. It must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis, after further investigation, soon exceeding it in these respects.

In short, the hypothesis that there was a historical Jesus has greater explanatory scope, explanatory power, plausibility, consistency and the fewest ad hoc explanations when all of the evidence is considered. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that Jesus was a historical character.

Sorry about the information overload. You don't have to deal with all of this information right now. I am only trying to help. Cheers!