Peter Kirby

I should point out that Robert Eisenman subscribes to this argument.

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Peter Kirby

spin

But Eisenman suffers from chronic logorrhea.




spin

Didymus

Hmmm. Actually, this one ain't so bad.

Didymus

Chris Weimer

P3 is false. Furthermore, while there is in fact attested humans who started religious groups, there have never been attested deities.

Toto

The Nazareth discussion has been split and merged here

J-D

Both my original argument and your parody argument have the same logical structure. In both cases, if the premises are true, the conclusions must be true. But that doesn't mean that either both arguments establish their conclusions successfully or neither does. It's possible that one of the two argument has (all) true premises and the other has (at least some false) premises. Not only is it possible, I assert that it is the case.

In your parody argument, premises 1 and 2 are true, but premises 3 and 4 are false. If all the premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true, but since not all the premises are true we do not have grounds to accept the conclusion.

If you can show that any of the premises of my original argument are false (for example, premise 3 or premise 4), then it would not be good grounds to accept its conclusion.

I can explain (on request) why I reject premises 3 and 4 of your parody argument, and also why I assert the premises (including premises 3 and 4) of my original argument.

Can you give reasons for rejecting any of the premises of my original argument?

PS Thanks to Chris Weimer, who essentially spotted the key point of this post already. I wanted to set it out in extenso, in case it wasn't clear from a summary comment.

spin

Why??

Are you trying to argue my case for me?


spin

J-D

Because there are no deities.No, Chris was trying to argue my case for me. But, as I feared might happen (see my post above), the summary presentation wasn't sufficiently clear. See my post above for elucidation.

spin

If it's true, it's still irrelevant. This requires no reality for the deity:

Being the followers of a deity is a possible historical origin for any first group of theists.

You have no reason to can claim this statement is false.

This is what Chris wrote:

Chris accepts the veracity of his claim "there have never been attested deities", though it is not necessary for the argument. Claiming that followers imply leaders is simply specious. You don't need a deity to have followers of the deity. In the same way, you don't need a real X to have followers of X. In your case the X is Jesus.

As most religions were developed outside history, you have nothing to contradict this:

No other possible historical origin is known for any first group of theists.

spin

J-D

I see that I failed to make myself clear. I don't think your criticisms touch the argument I really intended, but I accept that I failed to foresee the potential ambiguities in the way I stated it. I still think, however, that Chris Weimer understood what I meant (Chris, you can let us know if that's wrong). In any case, I now make the following effort to eliminate two ambiguities.

In my third premise, 'Being the followers of a religious leader is a possible historical origin for any first group of Christians', what I meant was: 'Being the followers of real human religious leader is a possible historical origin for any first group of Christians'. (However, being the followers of a real deity is not a possible historical origin for any group of theists, because there aren't and never have been any real deities.)

Secondly, for the purposes of this discussion I intend the word 'history' in the sense of 'events which occurred in the past'--with the corresponding senses for 'historical' and 'historically'--rather than in the sense of 'events recorded to have occurred in the past'. In the sense I intended, all religions have a historical origin, although it is not in all cases part of recorded history.

I don't know of any historical record of how belief in any deity began (I would be interested to hear of one). Hence, I see no historical evidence that the reality of a deity is a possible explanation, and I rule it out on other grounds. I don't need to know what other possibilities there may be to do this. On the other hand, there are multiple historically recorded instances of religions, sects, denominations, and religious movements having their origin in people's response to real human religious leaders. This suggests that it should be considered at least a historical possibility for Christianity until we find definite grounds to rule it out (which I haven't seen). I don't say that there is no other way a religion can start: but I have never yet seen anybody explain how any other possibility could explain the origin of Christianity in particular. If you could do that, it would put my premise 4, and hence my whole argument, into doubt: but so far, you haven't.