Elijah

I don’t think it’s dangerous or a threat at all. The threat to the church is within, not from fringe theories of antitheists looking for something to deconvert the world. If the church was right and wasn’t seen as a problem in our society then these individuals wouldn’t bother with this kind of thinking because it wouldn’t matter if he was historical. The only danger I see is you wasting your life away debating this theory with people who have obvious biases and are already committed to the theory publicly.

I guess if yourself, Gdon, Andrew, Amaleq, Apostateape and others didn’t argue against this idea then maybe it would be more popular and a threat but right now it’s just too fringe and too disorganized, with no supporting evidence to even bother with in my strong opinion. It takes us away from the actual conversation of trying to understand the NT to instead argue with people who have nothing at all to contribute to the conversation. As ApostateApe said it’s a “facepalm to someone who studies the subject”, not a threat to Christianity and certainly not a permanent stopping point for an actual seeker, so that shouldn’t be a concern.

Oh and hey man :wave:

ApostateAbe

The ironic reality is that the mythicists seem to be somewhat successful at "deconverting" Christians. Every so often I see some posts from an ex-Christian or I have a conversation in a chat room with an ex-Christian about how he or she lost his or her faith because she read a book that claimed with plenty of convincing footnotes that Jesus was just an amalgamation of previous mythical god-men. The good news is that it seems to be easy for me to dispel this idea in them, because the evidence was only pretended, and they quickly come to a more reasonable understanding of early Christianity. That seeming pattern makes the decision a little more difficult for me--Christianity is the greatest threat to truth, so should mythicists be a big concern? They may actually be a help. But it is hard for me to stomach the idea of corroborating with a lie to fight another lie. American Atheists, the biggest (or at least most established) organization for atheists has whole-heartedly embraced mythicism, as if it is nothing but reasonable and HJ is on the side of Christianity. I hate to see those who should be the most reasonable group of people get taken in by another delusion.

ApostateAbe

And of course what compounds my worries are people like Dave31 and aa5874. I have often wondered about whether Christianity causes closed-mindedness more than closed-mindedness causes Christianity, and I have tentatively concluded that Christianity can be blamed for cementing the existing closed-minded tendencies. I wonder the same about conspiracy theories and fringe theories of anti-Christianity. I figure the closed-mindedness comes first as an inherent tendency for a lot of people, which I guess is a little cynical. If I could blame the ideologies, then at least I could do something about it.

bacht

I think closed-mindedness is a kind of default for the human brain. The phenomenon of "confirmation bias" has been mentioned here before, the tendency to embrace ideas that reinforce what we already believe.

Until the Enlightenment religious belief and practice were pretty much universal. In the last two centuries the scientific method has been applied to the Judeo-Christian tradition, a development which is unique afaik. The subsequent growth of things like populist fundamentalism are reactions to the ever-widening skepticism in the West towards every aspect of biblical religion.

Cosmology and natural science can no longer be explained by scripture. If one rejects any sort of supernaturalism then religion is left with simple ethical teachings and some primitive ethnic markers. The Bible may end up as simply a subject of study for antiquarians and Western art & lit majors.

No Robots

I agree. But I have found virtually no one who is willing to discuss the NT in what I consider a serious way, so why not work here?

Elijah

I’m not sure how ironic that is if that is the obvious intent of the myth theory and those who push it. That’s the idea to find believers who have doubts which most do and try to destroy their faith one Christian at a time till there is no Christianity at all, then it’s peace and harmony in the world I guess.

Also if you’re reading a book about Jesus not existing then you are probably already seriously doubting your faith and are just looking for something to help confirm it. And when we are talking about people who believed what those in the church told them or whatever the bible says without question they are probably going to display similar behavior patterns when brought into a group of skeptics/atheists and just believe what the group says without question.

I’m not sure about why you consider Christianity itself a threat to the truth since it’s open to your interpretation and you can understand it as reasonably as you want. Like you said you don’t fight a lie with a lie but you fight ignorance with truth and reason and I do consider you to be a fairly good example/attempt at that with your going into the churches and trying to bring a little reason to them. (applause for your effort) I’m curious though to see if the experiment continues long enough for them to inject you with some faith since you already have the reason and knowledge on the subject. I think that reasonable compassionate Christians are what is necessary for the Church to move out of the dark ages but I’m not sure if the best method is to try and get the faithful to be more reasonable or if it would easier to try and make reasonable people more faithful.

I think everyone on the board, believer and nonbeliever alike, sees major problems with what is going on with the church in our society, it’s just a question of how to fix that problem. Either you can try to reform it or you can try to eradicate it all together. The myth theory is meant to eradicate it and it probably is the best idea that could hurt Christianity if it had any evidence to support the theory. I personally don’t see much possibility of eradicating it and I still think we would be facing the same problems of oppression of the people with or without religion. On the other side of that I do think if one of the major religions did decide to try and get it right that I could help with our liberation since it was an intent in the formation of a lot of the religions.
I agree with bacht that closed mindedness is kind of the default position for most of us. I think that the confidence in an atheist theory is a byproduct more of the confidence/closed-mindedness found in Christianity because if you approach a confident Christian with a theory you think may be right you’re probably not going to convince many people, you have to be just as confident as the person you are debating.

In regards to Christian closed mindedness in particular I think you are right but I think it really steams from two things. One, Christianity is a faith based movement where faith is the defining characteristic so it shouldn’t be unexpected to see unwavering faith in Christ become unwavering faith in a particular understanding of Christianity.

Two, when someone in the church has a set of irrational beliefs that they won’t reconsider in the slightest then you should probably look to their parent’s beliefs. What I have discovered is that people have a serious problem admitting they are wrong but when it comes to admitting your parents and family are wrong it’s a whole new ball game. This used to be extremely puzzling to me in how could people I knew who were intelligent rational people could believe in such nonsense but once I saw that they were just trying to show respect to their parents at the cost of their own intellectual appearance to others, then the trait became admirable to me. If you are willing to believe in stupidness in order to stay connected with your community then bravo. On the other side of that, believing in theories that aren’t thought out or supported in order to attack someone else’s belief without realizing why they believe that or the consequences of them losing their faith isn’t as justifiable in my mind. And of course there are second or more generation atheist who are defending their parent’s beliefs in the same way so they get the same slack as the believers in that case.

Thanks for not correcting me on your name ApostateAbe… Doh!

Elijah

I’ll discuss it with you. We were supposed to come up with some ideas for conversations to discuss but never got back to that.

The reason I think you should reconsider debating it is that you and the other Christians bring credibility to the myth argument when you engage them. If you’re a believer, you are biased to them so you are never going to persuade them and the only reason you don’t agree with them in their mind is because you are too biased towards your own beliefs. I think it’s much better to let rational skeptics like ApostateAbe and Amaleq handle the situation since they can bring a more non biased opinion to the debate.

You can’t force reason down the throat of someone who has a preset specific agenda in mind anymore than you can drag someone down the path of enlightenment who doesn’t want to go. They are slowing you down from the progress you yourself still need to make. The goal of every believer on the planet, not just on this board is to get it right and set that example for others, it’s not to find people who are obviously mistaken and try to correct them. Setting the example of a rational compassionate Christian is the goal, not picking on uneducated skeptics. If the example you set is someone who is trying to correct people then that’s what you are going to get back is someone trying to correct you. If the example is a pursuit of the truth regardless if the person you are talking to thinks the Jesus story came from a mythical or historical origin then hopefully (in theory) that’s what you should get back, which is really what we need.

Not trying to be hypercritical, just want the limited amount of energy available being directed effectively.

No Robots

I would like nothing more than to discuss these matters with you and others of a similar nature, Elijah. But, for now, we are too few and too disorganized. I mean, I would never have had a chance to meet you except here, right? My object is not to correct people, but to try to find those who are in basic agreement with my own outlook.

No Robots

Yep. This one hits me square. I'm going to have to think long and hard on it. I know I've done my share of bullying around here.

dog-on

You are missing the proverbial forrest.

Whether or not there is some historical character buried somewhere in the bowels of Christianity, the Jesus Christ of the gospels, the one that Christians have known and loved, is a Myth. Realization of this fact is devastating, regardless of whether or not some historical individual existed or not.

Remember, Christians do not follow a simple preacher, or teacher. They follow the Son of God.
Big difference.