Ben C Smith

I am glad you clarified that! It was not at all clear to me which way you intended it the first time.

Ben.

Amaleq13

My sentiments exactly.

Amaleq13

You've done nothing but attempt to distract from your ridiculous assertion and this is just more of the same. Straw men? Did you forget your claim or are you hoping no one would take the time to go back in the thread to retrieve it?

Your credibility keeps dropping like a stone.

Keep up the good work! :thumbs:

You haven't been paying attention. I have been consistently calling into question the assertion you made above despite your desperate efforts to change the subject.

I don't know what can be done to help someone with such blatantly ridiculous beliefs.

Pass the bong, amigo. Maybe you'll start to make sense.

Solitary Man

Gamera makes sense in one position, just like aa5874 does in another. Let me combine:

Historicity is generally defined as what survives in the historical layer. Meier, in his Marginal Jew, makes the distinction between the historical Jesus, for example, and the real Jesus, just like the historical Nero or the historical Nixon and the real Nero or the real Nixon. Historicity is the relationship between the historical layer and what we perceive to be real from that.

I have no clue where he gets the negation of historicity from an historical novel, though. Perhaps he's a bit confused, just like aa5874.

In one respect, aa5874 doesn't have to "believe" that Jesus didn't exist. Whether it does or not, it's not fair to pigeonhole him into that category if he came to accept that Jesus is fictional based on the evidence. It's not a "belief", he doesn't need it to be a creed. From my experience with him, he's convinced that he's not historical (empirically) and no amount of evidence to the contrary will change his mind (hence the belief part), but it's not necessary to his statement that Jesus is mythical. For example, I don't think that Jiri believes that Jesus is mythical/fictional etc., but merely that he was led to that conclusion. But does it make up his belief system? Is it credal? I don't think so.

Just because someone is wrong doesn't mean we should ourselves engage in fallacious argumentation.

Also, feel free to define belief however you want, but I think it's clear how I define it. So it's merely an argument of denotation if you want to take that route.

Ben C Smith

There are soft beliefs (I believe positions that I have proven to myself empirically; I believe you when you prove the quadratic formula to me) and there are hard beliefs (I believe in God with little or no real evidence; I believe in a certain creed).

It is quite fair to say that aa5874 does not believe in a purely mythical Jesus in this hard, credal sense. But this whole thing started when he himself distinguished his own view from yours on the basis of belief: He is a nonbeliever, while you are a believer. This distinction works only if your belief is hard and credal.

For my money, he believes in a mythical Jesus and you in an historical Jesus at the same noncredal level of belief; you both believe what you do based on arguments you find persuasive. Which renders his original distinction moot and misleading.

Ben.

PS: I do not think Jiri is a mythicist, though I admit his psychological take on things makes him sound like one sometimes.

Solitary Man

Which is why I pointed out that I in fact am not credal about Jesus.

You'll have to define belief in a certain way. I'm not credal about Jesus at all.

aa5874

There is no need to speculate, I have made my position clear, perhaps hundreds of times already.

JESUS, HIS DISCIPLES AND PAUL ARE FICTION FABRICATED TO DISTORT THE HISTORY OF THE FOLLOWERS OF THE CHRIST AND TO CLAIM A GOD WAS ON EARTH IN THE 1ST CENTURY.

Ben C Smith

You can say that again!

Wait... on second thought, please do not say it again.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Exactly. :thumbs:

If Solitary Man's position is a belief then so is double-a's.

Solo

You identified the book, Gamera, which is good, but you are not telling us how Goldsmith's "mind reading" (which it plainly is) relates a) to her profession of a journalist, and b) to the historical worthiness of her account. You said previously you could tell from the text itself (not from the self-decription of the author) whether it was "history" or not, and hence whether it was trustworthy account.

Now obviously, I am not particularly insistent that Roxy Claflin (Emily Dunberry, in my tyranscript) was actually seeing a mud-spattered horse and went into ecstasy, or what she was wearing while in that state, I am more concerned with your ability to focus on relevant issues.
For example, was Lyman Beecher (Charles Boswell) charged with heresy by the Presbyterian Synod in 1835, or not ? Would that be in any way dependent on Goldsmith's description of him as a liberal ? The answer is evidently 'no'. One may very well be mistaken about the actual background an event (she wasn't) and still describe it correctly and historically accurately.

Goldsmith's book on the whole is hugely flawed historically in my reckoning, despite being advertized as "History" and despite a hefty bibliography she appends to her volume (over 400 titles). Spritualism did not play almost any role in either of the two women's suffrage groups. Except for Woodhull and some minor figures in the movement who were preoccupied with spirits there was no unseen driving force of "Spiritualism" animating the struggles. Goldsmith misreads events or manufactures meanings to them. The best example of her folly is her view of the letter Elizabeth Stanton to Woodhull asking her to deploy 'Demosthenes' and some prominent women (all dead at that time) in organizing the movement. This is vintage Stanton tongue-in-cheek, ridiculing an intelectual inferior ('Will you ask Demosthenes if there is any new argument not yet made on the 14th & 15th amendment that he will bring through some of us at the coming convention....?') . Goldsmith misread the sarcasm and thought (on this one letter alone) that Stanton was actually a Spiritualist herself. In reality, Stanton was a self-declared rationalist, who had no time for nonsense of the sort. She was hugely better equipped intellectually than Virginia Woodhull, who had no schooling and received only private tutoring hardly covering the rudiments. Stanton was amused by Virginia's naivete and used her for her purposes - e.g. in egging her to out Henry Ward Beecher as a seducer of Libby Tilton.

My point to you is that you could not read any of this from the first page of the book, nor the genre under which it advertizes itself.

Oh I see ...... well, I am sure that those who have followed this conversation will go back in the thread and see whether that is what you have represented.

BTW, TEXT 1 is from Emanie Sachs (Arling) first biography of Virginia Woodhull, "The Terrible Siren : Virginia Woodhull", a must read for everyone who wants to ubnderstand how the woman was perceived in her own age, and not through current theses on women's politics of 19th century USA.

Jiri