ApostateAbe

The online comic Jesus and Mo did a series of strips featuring the characters Jesus and Mohammad, some of the recent ones playing on the presumed point that the historical existence of Jesus is uncertain.


(http://www.jesusandmo.net/2012/08/24/where/)

Apparently, it came to the author's attention that there are also people who doubt the existence of Muhammad.


(http://www.jesusandmo.net/2012/09/05/bruce/)

A quick and dirty test of a hypothesis is the sanity check: apply the same set of principles to other data and see if it is plausible. The downside, if you are committed to the hypothesis, is that you run the risk of accepting the insanity.

Like Jesus, Muhammad is the reputed founder of a religion. Like Jesus, Muhammad never left evidence of his existence except through the religious tradition that he reputedly founded. Yet, even most Jesus-mythicists take it for granted that Muhammad existed.

That is not an irrational presumption. It is grounded in a consistent pattern of personality cults: in all personality cults about a reputed human being, the personality actually existed. If Muhammad never existed, it would break that otherwise-universal pattern. If Jesus never existed, it would break that otherwise-universal pattern.

I believe that is the underlying reason why Jesus-mythicism comes off as preposterous to almost everyone including non-religious people, because everyone knows the pattern of personality cults. That reason is seldom fully conscious. Immanuel Velikovsky's proposition (that the Solar System's activity was responsible for all Biblical catastrophes) seems absurd on the face to most people, even to those people not trained in physics, though many of the arguments against it are rooted in physics. We all know the basic gist of Newtonian physics from everyday living.

ApostateAbe

In the process of writing that post, it crossed my mind that people with only minor training of a complex field are even less reliable than people with absolutely no training. Someone with minor training may give himself or herself a confidence in appealing ideas that may otherwise seem absurd.

Toto

Nope. There have been threads on the historical Mohammed, and there are people who do doubt his existence.

Do you claim that Christianity was a personality cult? What happened to that personality? Why didn't he leave offspring? Are you aware of any of these personality cults/religions where the founder did not have sex with numerous female followers?

Do you have actual social science data that all religions that claim a human or sort of human founder were actually founded by that person?

Toto

"Minor training in a complex field" seems to be a description of your relation to history.

ApostateAbe

I do claim that Christianity was a personality cult. I don't know what you mean with the question, "What happened to that personality?", sorry, but you may like to review my Gospel of Abe. You know where to find it. Jesus follows many of the patterns of personality cults. I will repost my checklist that I wrote up elsewhere.
N/A
I think the historical Jesus (reconstructed by critical scholars from the New Testament) fulfills enough of the items on the list to draw the conclusion that the historical Jesus led a dangerous cult. But, that isn't to say that there is sufficient evidence for Jesus fulfilling ALL such patterns, and the pattern of the cult leader having sex with the followers would be among the exceptions. But, that would mean that Jesus follows a pattern of founders of religion as we know them from ancient history, such as Buddha, Zoroaster and Parshva. We would know about the sex life of those characters only if such knowledge was passed on to us through the religious traditions. Such religious traditions are often silent or contrary to that point, though not always (such as with Muhammad).
No, but I don't think the availability of the kind of data you have in mind is plausible. It would be analogous to data that shows that all known cult founders had two nostrils. Such data does not exist because nobody disputes it and there is no evidence to the contrary. Maybe someone can do a comprehensive survey as soon as someone worth a dime makes a claim that there may be some reputedly-human cult founders who never really existed. Send an email to Bob Price. Maybe he would be willing to publish that claim. But, I actually think the best way to resolve such an issue is to wait for someone to produce evidence that a reputedly-human cult founder never existed. If no such evidence is produced, then the pattern stands. Heck, the pattern stands regardless.
You are absolutely right. I know that you were on the edge of believing me because of my reputed authority on the matter, but don't!

Steven Carr

Yes, he is. He is claiming that Jews decided to symbolically eat the flesh and drink the blood of a real person, just a few years after the guy died.

This is what Abe calls a 'sanity check' and he regards it as basically preposterous to even question if Jews would ever symbolically eat the flesh and drink the blood of a real person.

ApostateAbe

Yeah, on the scale of insane historical claims, I would say that scores pretty low.

Steven Carr

Paul and the others disputed table-fellowship.

I guess if you are eating dead people symbolically, you would mention that in disputes about what is acceptable to be eaten.

But Abe thinks there is nothing strange about seeing Jews eating symbolically the flesh of dead people and drinking their blood. I guess it depends upon which deli's you like to visit.

ApostateAbe

Interesting point. Is there a thread about that somewhere?

Toto

This is just a muddle. We have no real evidence of the personality of Jesus. Critical scholars have their various speculative reconstructions, as do you, but there is no agreement. But many of these critical scholars do not think that Jesus was the cult leader and do not think that he founded Christianity.


You say that evidence would not change your idea of this hypothetical pattern, but here goes.

You can find a list of "new religions" (the politically correct term for cults) at various places. Take wikipedi's - List_of_new_religious_movements.

What do you notice? Most cults are not named after the founder, and the founder frequently claims his authority from Jesus. Rev Moon's Unification Church deified him, but the cult was not named after him, and he claimed to be channeling Jesus. For these cults, Jesus might as well be a phantom or a mythic figure with no historical existence.

There is a cult around John Frum. I think that it is generally held that Frum either never existed, or was based on a generic US serviceman. There is no agreement on whether he was black or white.

There is an International Society for Krishna Consciousness. I hope you don't think that Krishna ever existed.

In short, there is just no support for your idea that there is some sort of rule of cults that requires that Jesus existed if there was a cult named after him.