dog-on

Perhaps, or perhaps Q is quote mined Matthew based on parts written by his coauthor. How would you know?

Diogenes the Cynic

Coauthor?

GakuseiDon

"Slanderous attack on Earl Doherty"? Against Earl's actual person, rather than his arguments? That's not good. What was his slanderous attack?

And does Ehrman paint Dr Price as "a blatant thought-criminal"?

ApostateAbe

I think the roughest that Ehrman gets against Earl Doherty's person is to call him an "amateur."

GakuseiDon

Shocking!

What about for Dr Price? Does Ehrman paint him as "a blatant thought-criminal"?

ApostateAbe

Ehrman doesn't use those words, but he criticizes and ridicules Price's arguments, which is basically the same insult.

ApostateAbe

Every person thinks that his or her own positions are reasonable and probable and that everyone who disagrees is deluded. Yes, I know, I am no exception, and the matter of who is right and who is wrong is decided by the evidence. Motivations are a related matter. If mythicists are wrong, then I don't have to peer underneath the surface and find something hidden in the psychology in order to explain why mythicists may grant considerable probability to something considerably improbable. I need only to examine what they themselves write and say all of the time. The Jesus-mythicist claims and the anti-religious claims are often either adjacent or one in the same, which is completely plausible--a merely-mythical Jesus makes Christianity ridiculous. I don't have to take a guess and speculate that mythicists could be anti-religious atheists. They are generally anti-religious atheists on the surface, and they are proud of it. Again, that doesn't prove they are wrong. Sometimes, the truth suits the agendas of ideologues. I am saying so for the reason I gave in the OP--as a wake-up call to the atheist community. Jesus-mythicists are doing to atheists what Obama-birthers are doing to the Republican Party, except it isn't a good thing.

smeat75

Hello from a new user of this forum.
We live in a world where one of the main candidates for President of the USA said in public that you cannot be a liberal Christian, you have to believe every thing in the Bible, you cannot choose what parts that are "clearly written" you want to pay attention to.

(I tried to link to that article about Santorum but the system won't let me as this is my first post.)

Now I do not know much about the authors and scholars being discussed in this thread but I see this quote from a "historicist" admitting that the Gospels are "unprovenanced, contradictory and filled with miracle stories" but there was such a person as Jesus.
This is to counter claims by "mythicists" that that Gospels are "unprovenanced, contradictory and filled with miracle stories" and there never was such a person as Jesus.
I spent a couple of hours looking at the blog of Richard Carrier, who seems to say the Gospels are "unprovenanced, contradictory and filled with miracle stories" and maybe there was such a person as Jesus, and maybe not.
This argument over trivialities when you all agree about the important stuff is such a waste of time.
Ordinary people get the idea that Biblical scholars are divided into those who accept that everything in the NT is true and those who think there was never such a person as Jesus and there is nothing in between.
The fact is that you all agree that the NT cannot be taken on face value, it is contradictory, full of impossibilities, a lot of nonsense and quite a few downright lies.
You need to stop squabbling over this ridiculous question over whether there was a Jesus or not and concentrate on getting the message across that nobody can possibly believe everything in the Bible or the New Testament. I totally agree with the last line of the first post on this thread, pushing this theory that there never was a Jesus at all is the equivalent of the
birthers and makes it very easy for atheists agnostics and sceptics to be dismissed as crackpots.

Toto

And if mythicists are right? Why are you unwilling to consider that others can look at the evidence and come to a different conclusion than you have?

Then at least be honest about it. Robert Price is a pro-religious atheist. Tom Harpur is a Christian. Freke and Gandy are New Age religionists. Acharya S is off on her own trip, but more of a New Age type. Richard Carrier has a PhD in ancient history. None of these people are on the same page politically.

Stop repeating the same crap that I have debunked every other time you brought it up.

This is not self evident. It's not at all clear that claiming Jesus never existed is more of an insult to Christianity than claiming that Jesus was a deluded end times failed prophet.

ApostateAbe

Welcome to the forum. Who was that presidential candidate--Rick Santorum? If I were to explain why I spend so much effort arguing over small stuff like this, I may have in the past given a BS answer, like "truth matters" or "mythicism damages the cause against religion." But, honestly, it is just a big time waster and a distraction for a helpless nerd of religion.