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Achwienichtig · 06-28-2011, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

Quote:

Originally Posted by hjalti

Well, there are a lot of Catholics in the world, but it's probably very, very, very rare to be a mythicist and a Catholic.

You might be surprised. It is really not that uncommon for a Catholic to take an allegorical view of scripture. Some people actually do buy into the whole "higher truths" bit.

Maybe it's an European thing.

I was such a Catholic for a long time.

hjalti · 06-28-2011, 07:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

You might be surprised. It is really not that uncommon for a Catholic to take an allegorical view of scripture. Some people actually do buy into the whole "higher truths" bit.

Maybe it's an European thing.

I'm in Europe!

Ok, but do they actually think that Jesus didn't exist, even if they take some allegorical view of all that stuff?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abe

OK, in that case, I was referring to the type of myth that is passed on from person to person in branching evolving succession among religious people. Everything in the gospels are myths. That isn't to say it is all merely myth, but they most certainly sourced from oral and written legends. It is the same type of myths where Christians find their fundamental doctrines and the reinforcement of their faith. It is the sort of myth that mythicists very much hate to grant any sort of historical legitimacy toward.

So you were basically saying that mythicists don't want to believe that Jesus was a failed doomsday prophet, because in that case some of the stuff that is attributed to him in the gospels (e.g. the "The end of the world is near!"-stuff) was actually said by him, and mythicists just don't like that?

To think of Jesus as a historical person of the same rough profile as in the gospels would be granting legitimacy to many of the myths of the gospels in the minds of many mythicists, and mythicists would rather not have that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abe

Yes, and I read and communicate with one of the most popular authors day-to-day in this forum. There are two more mythicist authors beside him who write in this forum, but unfortunately I find their writings to be bizarre, rambling, barely related to the topics and very difficult to follow.

Hmmm.....Doherty is the first. Acharya is one of the two rambling one. And Carrier?

But anyway, the only stuff you base your case on here is your own experience. I don't know why anybody should take that seriously.

Quote:

Absolutely right, but I have also noticed that it is also somewhat rare to be a mythicist and neutral on the subject of religion. A lot of atheists and agnostics are neutral about religion, and meet them personally and on the web, but not mythicists, though there are a few, of course.

Well, Robert M. Price is one, he might even be in the pro-religion camp.

dog-on · 06-28-2011, 07:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Achwienichtig

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

You might be surprised. It is really not that uncommon for a Catholic to take an allegorical view of scripture. Some people actually do buy into the whole "higher truths" bit.

Maybe it's an European thing.

I was such a Catholic for a long time.

As was I.

hjalti · 06-28-2011, 07:36 AM

So you guys were Catholics, and didn't think that Jesus was an actual human being?

dog-on · 06-28-2011, 07:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hjalti

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

You might be surprised. It is really not that uncommon for a Catholic to take an allegorical view of scripture. Some people actually do buy into the whole "higher truths" bit.

Maybe it's an European thing.

I'm in Europe!

Ok, but do they actually think that Jesus didn't exist, even if they take some allegorical view of all that stuff?

Ah, we booted Iceland when you stiffed our banks...

They mostly think that such a question is irrelevant to the higher truths, in fact, I suppose that the question is probably considered heretical.

dog-on · 06-28-2011, 07:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hjalti

So you guys were Catholics, and didn't think that Jesus was an actual human being?

Jesus is actually God, lest we forget.

hjalti · 06-28-2011, 07:46 AM

Quote:

Ah, we booted Iceland when you stiffed our banks...

Well, technically speaking, I'm on the N-American plate.

Quote:

Jesus is actually God, lest we forget.

Right, but he's a god that came down to earth as a human.

dog-on · 06-28-2011, 07:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hjalti

Quote:

Ah, we booted Iceland when you stiffed our banks...

Well, technically speaking, I'm on the N-American plate.

Quote:

Jesus is actually God, lest we forget.

Right, but he's a god that came down to earth as a human.

So did Zeus, I suppose.

Allegorically speaking, of course.

aa5874 · 06-28-2011, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

If someone believes that Jesus never existed, then odds are that it has something to do with one's animosity toward Christianity. All you need to do is to search on Google and YouTube, find the mythicist websites and blogs, and you can see how often the promotion of Jesus-myth theory and anti-religiosity overlaps and coincides with each other. For example, you do a search for Jesus never existed on Google, and this is the first thing that comes up:

www.jesus never existed.com

"For all who would struggle against the tragedy of religion"

For anyone who is curious, I have a large thread on the connection between Jesus-mythicism and anti-Christianity/anti-fundamentalist here:

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=283440

I have used that thread to collect some of the times I have seen mythicism and anti-religiosity promoted in exactly the same contexts, and I have collected very many of them. They are not hard to find. They kinda jump out at you almost everywhere the topic is discussed.

But, you yourself argue against Christians trying to convince them that THEIR JESUS of FAITH did NOT EXIST.

You REJECT the Christians' claim that Jesus EXISTED as the Son of God, born of the Holy Ghost and a Virgin, the Creator that walked on water, transfigured, resurrected and ascended in a cloud.

You have an ANTI-RELIGIOSITY and it KINDA JUMPS out at everybody.

Toto · 06-28-2011, 08:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sweetpea7

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa587

You seem not to understand that not all Scholars assume that there was an historical Jesus.

Please provide some MJ Scholars who have published peer review articles. I would love to read what they have to say. I have listened to and read Non-Christian scholars who apply the historical-critical method (the same methods which are applied to other figures from antiquity) and strongly defend a HJ. Not the Jesus of Christianity, but a HJ.

Richard Carrier is in the process of publishing a book that will be peer reviewed.

You will not find any peer reviewed articles from the last half century that actually discuss the historicity of Jesus, pro or con. There are peer reviewed articles that assume that Jesus existed, and try to figure out more about him from the available evidence, but nothing that examines the basic premise that he existed. To read more about this, look for discussions here on the "Jesus Project" led for a brief time by R Joseph Hoffman.

The "historical critical method" is not used with other figures from antiquity. The HJ guild has invented "the critierion of embarrassment" and "the criterion of dissimilarity," etc. You will tend to find that if there is ambiguous evidence regarding the existence of any other historical figure, historians are content to note that the person might or might not have existed.

Sorry for the can of worms that you opened. This discussion has been going on here for about a decade.

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06-28-2011, 07:36 AM	#64
hjalti Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Iceland Posts: 761	So you guys were Catholics, and didn't think that Jesus was an actual human being?

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