Chris Weimer

[QUOTE=Toto;4520731]The evidence is obvious - we have the New Testament gospels which attest to that, Paul which attests to that, and the whole Christian tradition which attests to that. It is up to the mythicists to bear their burden of why they don't think such and such evidence is good, or why, as Doherty has done, they think it actually states otherwise. Where's the scholarly publication on that? Price? Wells? Wells' predecessors?

I've read some Wells, especially his online publications, and Price's recent "summary" is seriously lacking in critical scholarship, but then again, it was, after all, merely a summary. But over and over again I hear the same contention - that Christian literature is not to be trusted.

If you'd like to formulate a decent hypothesis in the vain of Wells or Price, be my guest. I'd love to discuss! But that's not what comes out from you, especially the "little ones" like dog-on or gurugeorge who are most uninterested in what the scholars have to say, and think with their "feelings" that what they "feel" is right or wrong. They don't trust because they don't know; they don't like it because its different.

I'll wait until you or anyone else will rise to academic standard.

I call bigotry where I see it. I don't say that all mythicists are bigots, but by and large singleing out Christian literature, or religious literature, is religious bigotry.

mountainman, dog-on, gurugeorge, post tenebris lux, Roland - there's quite a few who make specific exceptions for Christian works, or for some unknown reason become obscurantists and state that most of ancient history is lost since we don't have the original manuscripts for nearly any ancient work, certainly not for any ancient literature.

kais

Studies have also shown that, as the difficulty level of a task rises, best performers become less accurate in their self-evaluations relative to worst performers. I don't feel that you're being unfair in your scathing remarks about some participants, but I am surprised you're unaware of this citation:

Burson K.A., Larrick R.P., & Klayman J. (2006). Skilled or unskilled, but still unaware of it: How perceptions of difficulty drive miscalibration in relative comparisons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(1), 60-77.

People are inaccurate judges of how their abilities compare to others'. J. Kruger and D. Dunning (1999, 2002) argued that unskilled performers in particular lack metacognitive insight about their relative performance and disproportionately account for better-than-average effects. The unskilled overestimate their actual percentile of performance, whereas skilled performers more accurately predict theirs. However, not all tasks show this bias. In a series of 12 tasks across 3 studies, the authors show that on moderately difficult tasks, best and worst performers differ very little in accuracy, and on more difficult tasks, best performers are less accurate than worst performers in their judgments. This pattern suggests that judges at all skill levels are subject to similar degrees of error. The authors propose that a noise-plus-bias model of judgment is sufficient to explain the relation between skill level and accuracy of judgments of relative standing.

Chris Weimer

Thanks for the article, kais. It was a good read.

From the conclusion:

"When the task seems hard, poor performers seem perceptive, and the best performers underestimate their standing. When the task seems easy, good performers seem perceptive, and those near the bottom overestimate their standing."

So in actuality, the harder a subject is, the more a good performer underestimates his ability.

In normal terms, I just call that modesty. :blush:

kais

As you might expect, the first word that comes to mind when I think of you, Jeffrey, spin or many others here is "modesty"

I certainly wasn't trying to refute your point. I just hate seeing recent work in my own area of interest ignored :Cheeky:

Chris Weimer

I think it's just something in this beast, the encouragement that the ignorant have equal judgment over the educated, that brings out the immodesty in me. I should relax.

Thanks again for the article.

Minimalist

You know what's wrong with that argument? It's a bit like charging someone with tax fraud and having them stand up in court and say: " It's not FRAUD... here's my tax return."

The issue is not whether or not the tax return exists; obviously it does, it forms the basis of the indictment. The issue is how much evidence exists to SUPPORT the statements made on the return.

So, when you trot out the bible to prove the bible all it proves is that the bible EXISTS. We know that. The question is what other, ACTUAL EVIDENCE, is there to substantiate the claims made therein.

I'm solidly with the group which holds "not a hell of a lot."

Chris Weimer

Strawman. No one is arguing that the Bible is 100% accurate.

Edit: I'm not Dr. Dino, so I've never been charged with tax fraud, but I do know in normal criminal proceedings (in America, and logically in general), it's up to the prosecution to make a case that the defendant actually committed a crime. Now, if you can go through and show where every single statement in the Bible is false, be my guest, otherwise you'll have to admit that the Bible contains something historical somewhere sometimes, and sometimes not. The "not a hell lot" is a given - but does that mean that it is automatically negated of all testimony?

I think not.

Minimalist

I beg to differ. There are plenty of bible inerrantists out there who think that every word is a literal fact. The just built a museum in Kentucky.

But that is not the point. When someone questions Paul's writings it serves no purpose to repeat what "Paul" said. We know what he said.

When someone questions a gospel, you guys read from another gospel as if that "proves" the first.

I find it much more compelling that there seems to be virtually no knowledge that this guy ever existed prior to the Great Revolt. And....reading from a "gospel" which was written after the Great Revolt is not going to change that.

Minimalist

And if the case gets to court you can damn well bet that sufficient evidence was presented to the grand jury to get the indictment voted.

I am amused by your belief that somehow your "bible" is not a supernatural document and should be accepted at face value until "disproved." It is not that special. There are thousands of religions. I merely reject one more than you do.

Chris Weimer

*Sigh* I get accused yet again of being a Christian.

Minimalist - what does the above have to do with the Quest for the Historical Jesus? And are you saying that no religious documents can have any history in it? By all means, if you'd like to make that charge - go for it! I'll be expecting your thesis, and already have plenty to rebut it.

PS - And just for your information, my "bible" is not supernatural. I don't even have a bible, so I don't know how it could be "supernatural".