Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Amaleq13 · 07-25-2008, 09:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilVaz

(C)...pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned; etc)...(D)...but the same can be said for such figures as Alexander the Great yet nobody regards him as mythical and fictitious;

IOW, if we find Jesus to be a myth, then all these other figures must be likewise considered myth and what we call "history" crumbles to dust. What is the difference between this argument and a fallacious argument from adverse consequences?

Quote:

(E)...no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus...

What is the difference between this claim and the No True Scotsman fallacy?

Quote:

(G) the view an historian should take is that everything the evangelists say must be assumed correct until it is proved wrong; the opposite view, that all contents of the Gospels must be assumed fictitious until they are proved genuine is too extreme a viewpoint...

How is the second viewpoint "too extreme" while the first is not when both make absolute declarations about the entire body of evidence?

Quote:

...and would not be applied in other fields; for example: when one builds up facts derived from accounts by pagan historians, judgment often has to be given not in the light of any external confirmation, but on the basis of historical deductions and arguments which attain nothing better than probability -- the same applies to the Gospels;

Is that really the same as assuming everything in the pagan texts is true unless proved wrong?

JoeWallack · 07-25-2008, 12:12 PM

JW:
Evaluating Eusebius as evidence for HJ.

Criteria:

1) Age

2) Credibility

3) Source

I'm going to assign ratings of 1-10 with 10 being the best, primarily to show the relative value of evidence and not so much to try and accurately determine values. Eusebius' claimed chain of witness is as follows:

1) Extant Church History.

2) Papias' Oracles of the Lord

3) Followers of the Elders

4) The Disciples Aristion and the presbyter John

5) Jesus

1) Age

All of this witness is close to 2,000 years old rounded to the nearest 1,000. A neutral rating here would be 5. Since this is about 2/3 of the way back in recorded history I downgrade to 3. The age criteria by itself prevents Eusebius by himself as being proof of HJ.

2) Credibility

I would start an Advocate out at 7 and a Liar at 3. Eusebius earns a point for criticizing Irenaeus here but loses a point for:

Quote:

7. And Papias, of whom we are now speaking, confesses that he received the words of the apostles from those that followed them, but says that he was himself a hearer of Aristion and the presbyter John.

JW:
No, Papias didn't say that. Eusebius receives another point for being a historian but loses another one for specific credibility problems as documented in my Eusebius Thread.

I give the credibility of Eusebius a 7.

3) Source

And here is the problem from an evidential standpoint. Start with 10 for first-hand witness:

Eusebius was probably looking at a copy written by ? = 9

We have at least 150 years between Papias' writing and Eusebius = 8

Papias claimed source was followers of the "Elders" = 7

The followers are unidentified = 6

The followers of the Elders supposed source was the Elders = 5

The Elders are unidentified = 4

The Elders supposed source was the Disciples = 3

So in summary:

1) Age = 3

2) Credibility = 7

3) Source = 3

This is a long way from proof of HJ

The related problem is that since HJ is the issue there are no accepted facts of HJ available to evaluate references to HJ. Based on what Eusebius wrote most of what Papias wrote was not canonical so we have an issue of what exactly is meant by Papias being evidence for HJ. Papias may be evidence of HJ but not GJ (Gospel Jesus). My guess is this is the situation. Papias did receive stories about the HJ from historical witness (originating with Peter & James). Papias rejected Paul and never mentions him and "Mark", the original Gospel, had not yet been written.

Joseph

aa5874 · 07-25-2008, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWallack

The related problem is that since HJ is the issue there are no accepted facts of HJ available to evaluate references to HJ. Based on what Eusebius wrote most of what Papias wrote was not canonical so we have an issue of what exactly is meant by Papias being evidence for HJ. Papias may be evidence of HJ but not GJ (Gospel Jesus). My guess is this is the situation. Papias did receive stories about the HJ from historical witness (originating with Peter & James). Papias rejected Paul and never mentions him and "Mark", the original Gospel, had not yet been written.

The problem with Eusebius is that except where there is corroboration, he lacks credibility. It must be remembered that Eusebius in Church History claimed that someone called Mark wrote a Gospel during the time of Philo, that gMatthew was written before gMark and that Paul knew that gLuke was written before 68 CE.

Eusebius appear not to know when the Synoptics were written.

If the author called Paul knew of gLuke and it was likely to be written no earlier than late 1st century, then the author called Paul was living at least up to late 1st century.

Eusebius appears not to know when the author called Paul lived.

These are indications that the information from Eusebius is likely to be erroneous.

Unless, the information about Papias can be verified to be credible, it almost a hopeless case to try to use the information from Eusebius about Jesus coming from Papias, and it must be remembered that even if Papias claimed Jesus lived, this Jesus is the one who ROSE from the dead, ascended to heaven and blinded Saul on the road to Damascus.

EarlDoherty · 07-25-2008, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

. . .Here is a summary from Grant's Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (1977 edition is what I have, it is also available used in the 1995 edition).
...
(E) modern critical methods fail to support the "Christ-myth" theory; it has again and again been answered by first-rate scholars;

But we can't locate those critical scholars.

No? I found them easy enough to locate. It's the world resting on the back of a turtle. But then what does the turtle rest on? Another turtle...

From the beginning of my "Alleged Scholarly Refutations of Jesus Mythicism" article (discussion of Grant starts at the second paragraph):

Quote:

There has been a consistent conviction regularly expressed that New Testament scholarship has, over the last hundred years, addressed and refuted in decisive fashion various expressions of the Jesus Myth theory. In the first few decades of the 20th century a number of books were written whose sole or main thrust was directed at discrediting writers and lecturers who argued for the non-existence of Jesus, mythicists such as J. M. Robertson in England, Arthur Drews in Germany, William B. Smith in America, Pierre Couchoud in France. In the last 60 years or so, there has been less activity, mostly found as passing sections within books devoted more specifically to attempts to extract the Jesus of history from the record, rather than to defending him against mythicists. But the conviction continues that this work of refutation has long since been completed and scarcely needs revisiting.

A typical example is historian Michael Grant, who in Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (1977), devotes a few paragraphs to the question in an Appendix. There [p.200], he says:

“To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has ‘again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars’. In recent years ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus’—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.”

One will note that Grant’s statement about answering and annihilating, and the remark about serious scholars, are in quotes, and are in fact the opinions of previous writers. Clearly, Grant himself has not undertaken his own ‘answer’ to mythicists. Are those quoted writers themselves scholars who have undertaken such a task? In fact, they are not. One referenced writer, Rodney Dunkerley, in his Beyond the Gospels (1957, p.12), devotes a single paragraph to the “fantastic notion” that Jesus did not actually live; its exponents, he says, “have again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars,” but since he declares it “impossible to summarize those scholars’ case here,” he is not the source of Grant’s conviction. Nor can that be Otto Betz, from whose What Do We Know About Jesus? (1968, p.9) Grant takes his second quote. Betz claims that since Wilhelm Bousset published an essay in 1904 exposing the ‘Christ myth’ as “a phantom,” “no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus.” This ignores many serious presentations of that very idea since Bousset, and evidently relies on defining “serious” as excluding anyone who would dare to undertake such a misguided task.

Betz goes on to provide a paragraph outlining “non-Christian sources” which “permit no doubt as to the actual existence of Jesus of Nazareth.” They include, of course, Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius, whose unreliability for such a purpose has been thoroughly discussed in my book, The Jesus Puzzle and on this website—and will be further discussed in the present article. Even in this cursory outline, Betz inserts all sorts of qualifiers: that the sources are “few and far between” and come at least two generations after Jesus; that the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus “is no longer in its original form but must have been revised by a Christian hand. Nevertheless it is quite possible that at this point Josephus spoke of Jesus…” In regard to Suetonius, he says: “ ‘Chrestus’ doubtless means Christ…though apparently Suetonius had only a vague notion of the actual facts.” Betz goes on to refer to the Jewish Talmud, a compilation produced centuries later whose description of Jesus is widely off the supposed historical mark. Betz admits, “These statements reveal little historical knowledge,” yet “…they indicate no doubt whatever about the genuine existence of Jesus.”

One supposes that, for Grant, such timeworn and superficial ‘answers’ to the Jesus Myth represent ‘annihilation,’ but one can perhaps forgive mythicists for begging to differ. Superficiality, reluctant qualifications, distortion of evidence, lack of imagination for thinking outside the box, and the appeal to constant “no doubt” assumptions, are part of the approach of all such refutations, including the most recent, as we shall see. And they bring the same questionable approach to their support for the contention that Jesus did exist and that the Christian record, especially the Gospels, can be relied upon to demonstrate that fact....

And who are the "first-rank scholars" who have dealt out annihilation prior to Dunkerly's and Betz's claims? The only one I could find who remotely qualifies would be Maurice Goguel, writing in the 20s. And quite frankly, it was not a difficult task shredding his effort, as Part One of my article has shown.

Earl Doherty

andrewcriddle · 07-26-2008, 02:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

and Peter Kirby demolished Habermas thoroughly in his review on the Amazon site, expanded on his Christian Origins site which is down again but can be seen here

Seems up again at http://www.christianorigins.com/habermas.html

Andrew Criddle

PhilVaz · 07-26-2008, 08:32 AM

Earl Doherty << And who are the "first-rank scholars" who have dealt out annihilation prior to Dunkerly's and Betz's claims? >>

You may be right on the "lack of annihilation" from "first-rank scholars" but of course there weren't ever that many books and scholars on the "Jesus myth" claims to answer and/or annihilate in the first place. It looks like Dunkerly (Beyond the Gospels, 1957) and/or Betz (What Do We Know About Jesus, 1968) only had to annihilate the arguments from two or three "Jesus myth" books of their time period (A. Robertson, H. Cutner, and John Allegro, see titles/dates below). The opposite question might be posed:

Who are the first-rank scholars from 1920 to 1970 who even postulated the non-historicity of Jesus (that Jesus did not exist) ?

Apparently, according to the Hannam chapter in J.P. Holding's book, after the few books that did postulate this in the early 20th century: "The generation of Jesus Mythologists represented by [William B.] Smith and [John M.] Robertson died out in the 1920s. They had based their work on theories of mythology from the history of religions school but scholarship itself moved on, leaving the Jesus Mythologists high and dry...." (Holding, Shattering the Christ Myth, chapter by James Hannam, page xv)

On the whole "history of religions" approach to scholarship, Eddy/Boyd note: "While the claim that aspects of the Christian view of Jesus parallel, even are indebted to, ancient pagan legends and myths has a long history, it gained prominence with the birth of the history of religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....The history of religions school was extremely popular in academic circles for several decades, but owing to trenchant critiques by such scholars as Samuel Cheetham [1897], H.A.A. Kennedy [1913], J. Gresham Machen [1925], A.D. Nock [1964], Bruce Metzger [1968], and Gunter Wagner [1967], it eventually fell out of fashion." ([amazon=0801031141]The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition[amazon] [Baker Academic, 2007], pages 134,136). They also mention a book by W.D. Davies and D. Daube [1956] with a chapter on the demise of the "history of religions" school.

Besides the first "Jesus mythers" from the early 20th century (e.g. Arthur Drews, who claimed all of Paul's letters were forgeries), Hannam names P.L. Couchoud The Enigma of Jesus (1924) who was a medical doctor, not a biblical scholar, and a French book La Fable de Jesus Christ (1967) by G. Fan. Then there's Archibald Robertson Jesus: Myth or History (1949) and Herbert Cutner Jesus: God, Man or Myth? (1950). In the 1960s there was John Allegro and his "sacred mushroom" hypothesis. Was there anybody else?

Among the thousands upon thousands of books and journal articles published on the historical Jesus and Jesus-like topics by thousands of various biblical or classical scholars and historians, can you name any others from 1920 to 1970 (a period of 50 years), that accepted these "great arguments" of the "Jesus myth" types that supposedly weren't rebutted (or annihilated) properly 100 years ago? Why did these "great arguments" for "Jesus mythicism" die out in mainstream scholarship in the 1920s? Why were these "great arguments" ignored for 50 years?

Maybe Hannam is leaving out a TON of "Jesus myth" scholars from 1920 to 1970 that you know about? Please tell me. BTW, here are the books I own on this topic so far:

Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977)
The Evidence for Jesus by R.T. France (Intervarsity Press, 1986)
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (volume 1) by John P. Meier (Anchor / Doubleday, 1991)
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant by John Dominic Crossan (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991)
The Historical Figure of Jesus by E.P. Sanders (The Penguin Press, 1993)
Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus edited by Wilkins / Moreland (Zondervan, 1995)
The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels by L.T. Johnson (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996)
Jesus and the Victory of God by N. T. Wright (Fortress, 1996)
The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ by Gary Habermas (College Press, 1996)
Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? : A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Baker Academic, 1998)
The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty (Age of Reason, 1999, 2005)
Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence by Robert van Voorst (Eerdmans, 2000)
The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition? by Robert M. Price (Prometheus, 2003)
What Have They Done With Jesus? by Ben Witherington III (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006)
Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels by Craig Evans (Intervarsity, 2006)
The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition by Eddy / Boyd (Baker Academic, 2007)
Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI (Doubleday, 2007)
Shattering the Christ Myth: Did Jesus Not Exist? edited by James Patrick Holding (Xulon Press, 2008)

I now own all of these books but it's gonna take some time to read them all a couple times so I understand the arguments. Hope to finish Part 2 of my little "historical Jesus" project by Christmas 2008. Part 2 will summarize what I consider the best evidence for Jesus (arguments and data culled from the above books), a brief refutation of "The God Who Wasn't There" DVD, and the best responses to Doherty's book. Part 1 on "pagan parallels" is finished. I am an amateur, like most of us, and like Peter Kirby (thanks for his review of Habermas), but I do enjoy this "online debate" we have (even if it's ignored by mainstream scholarship).

Phil P

Jeffrey Gibson · 07-26-2008, 08:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilVaz

Earl Doherty << And who are the "first-rank scholars" who have dealt out annihilation prior to Dunkerly's and Betz's claims? >>

You may be right on the "lack of annihilation" from "first-rank scholars" but of course there weren't ever that many books and scholars on the "Jesus myth" claims to answer and/or annihilate in the first place. It looks like Dunkerly (Beyond the Gospels, 1957) and/or Betz (What Do We Know About Jesus, 1968) only had to annihilate the arguments from two or three "Jesus myth" books of their time period (A. Robertson, H. Cutner, and John Allegro, see titles/dates below). The opposite question might be posed:

Who are the first-rank scholars from 1920 to 1970 who even postulated the non-historicity of Jesus (that Jesus did not exist) ?

You'll find the names of "scholars" (whether they are "first rank" is another matter altogether) who, between 1920 and 1950, postulated and/or argued for the non historicity of Jesus set out in Walter Weaver's The Historical Jesus in the 20th Century (or via: amazon.co.uk).

For the names of earlier "scholars", see the list of them(and the discussion of their views) in the revised edition (John Bowden editor) of Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Jeffrey

Steven Carr · 07-26-2008, 08:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilVaz

Part 1[/url] on "pagan parallels" is finished. I am an amateur, like most of us, and like Peter Kirby (thanks for his review of Habermas), but I do enjoy this "online debate" we have (even if it's ignored by mainstream scholarship).

Phil P

I had a look at part 1.

'central to the mysteries was the annual vegetation cycle where life is renewed each spring and died each fall; the cults found symbolic and spiritual significance in the natural process of growth, death, decay, and rebirth...'

Did Christians ever find any symbolic and spiritual significance in the annual vegetation cycle, perhaps using seed analogies or parables about seeds to explain any alleged symbolic and spiritual significance?

'The NCE article points out striking differences between the Christian and the Oriental beliefs: several "dying gods" were associated with the annual death and rebirth of vegetation....'

Have you ever read 1 Clement explaining how resurrection is like the annual death and rebirth of vegetation?

Yellum Notnef · 07-26-2008, 09:36 AM

What if a race of aliens have been watching human development from the beginning and what if these aliens came here tomorrow and told us that everything guys like Phil Vaz believe is total bullshit?

Would it be met with total denial and what would some of the new apologetics be?

I'd love to see this happen during my lifetime as I think this is the only scenario that could possibly end all this nonsense once and for all.

aa5874 · 07-26-2008, 10:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fenton Mulley

What if a race of aliens have been watching human development from the beginning and what if these aliens came here tomorrow and told us that everything guys like Phil Vaz believe is total bullshit?

Would it be met with total denial and what would some of the new apologetics be?

I'd love to see this happen during my lifetime as I think this is the only scenario that could possibly end all this nonsense once and for all.

Please, don't wait for aliens.

Real people like Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen and Eusebius have already written about the BS over 1600 years ago.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Church History 1.13.9

The answer of JESUS to the ruler Abgarus by the courier Ananias

Bessed are you hast believe in me without having seen me.

For it is written concerning me, that they who have SEEN me will NOT believe in me,

and they who have NOT seen me WILL believe and be saved...

It is confirmed, Eusebius did write BS, I don't have to wait for aliens to tell PhilVaz, he can read Church History.

07-26-2008, 08:32 AM	#136
PhilVaz Regular Member Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: St. Pete FL Posts: 216	1920 to 1970 Earl Doherty << And who are the "first-rank scholars" who have dealt out annihilation prior to Dunkerly's and Betz's claims? >> You may be right on the "lack of annihilation" from "first-rank scholars" but of course there weren't ever that many books and scholars on the "Jesus myth" claims to answer and/or annihilate in the first place. It looks like Dunkerly (Beyond the Gospels, 1957) and/or Betz (What Do We Know About Jesus, 1968) only had to annihilate the arguments from two or three "Jesus myth" books of their time period (A. Robertson, H. Cutner, and John Allegro, see titles/dates below). The opposite question might be posed: Who are the first-rank scholars from 1920 to 1970 who even postulated the non-historicity of Jesus (that Jesus did not exist) ? Apparently, according to the Hannam chapter in J.P. Holding's book, after the few books that did postulate this in the early 20th century: "The generation of Jesus Mythologists represented by [William B.] Smith and [John M.] Robertson died out in the 1920s. They had based their work on theories of mythology from the history of religions school but scholarship itself moved on, leaving the Jesus Mythologists high and dry...." (Holding, Shattering the Christ Myth, chapter by James Hannam, page xv) On the whole "history of religions" approach to scholarship, Eddy/Boyd note: "While the claim that aspects of the Christian view of Jesus parallel, even are indebted to, ancient pagan legends and myths has a long history, it gained prominence with the birth of the history of religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....The history of religions school was extremely popular in academic circles for several decades, but owing to trenchant critiques by such scholars as Samuel Cheetham [1897], H.A.A. Kennedy [1913], J. Gresham Machen [1925], A.D. Nock [1964], Bruce Metzger [1968], and Gunter Wagner [1967], it eventually fell out of fashion." ([amazon=0801031141]The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition[amazon] [Baker Academic, 2007], pages 134,136). They also mention a book by W.D. Davies and D. Daube [1956] with a chapter on the demise of the "history of religions" school. Besides the first "Jesus mythers" from the early 20th century (e.g. Arthur Drews, who claimed all of Paul's letters were forgeries), Hannam names P.L. Couchoud The Enigma of Jesus (1924) who was a medical doctor, not a biblical scholar, and a French book La Fable de Jesus Christ (1967) by G. Fan. Then there's Archibald Robertson Jesus: Myth or History (1949) and Herbert Cutner Jesus: God, Man or Myth? (1950). In the 1960s there was John Allegro and his "sacred mushroom" hypothesis. Was there anybody else? Among the thousands upon thousands of books and journal articles published on the historical Jesus and Jesus-like topics by thousands of various biblical or classical scholars and historians, can you name any others from 1920 to 1970 (a period of 50 years), that accepted these "great arguments" of the "Jesus myth" types that supposedly weren't rebutted (or annihilated) properly 100 years ago? Why did these "great arguments" for "Jesus mythicism" die out in mainstream scholarship in the 1920s? Why were these "great arguments" ignored for 50 years? Maybe Hannam is leaving out a TON of "Jesus myth" scholars from 1920 to 1970 that you know about? Please tell me. BTW, here are the books I own on this topic so far: Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977) The Evidence for Jesus by R.T. France (Intervarsity Press, 1986) A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (volume 1) by John P. Meier (Anchor / Doubleday, 1991) The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant by John Dominic Crossan (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991) The Historical Figure of Jesus by E.P. Sanders (The Penguin Press, 1993) Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus edited by Wilkins / Moreland (Zondervan, 1995) The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels by L.T. Johnson (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996) Jesus and the Victory of God by N. T. Wright (Fortress, 1996) The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ by Gary Habermas (College Press, 1996) Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? : A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Baker Academic, 1998) The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty (Age of Reason, 1999, 2005) Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence by Robert van Voorst (Eerdmans, 2000) The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition? by Robert M. Price (Prometheus, 2003) What Have They Done With Jesus? by Ben Witherington III (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006) Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels by Craig Evans (Intervarsity, 2006) The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition by Eddy / Boyd (Baker Academic, 2007) Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI (Doubleday, 2007) Shattering the Christ Myth: Did Jesus Not Exist? edited by James Patrick Holding (Xulon Press, 2008) I now own all of these books but it's gonna take some time to read them all a couple times so I understand the arguments. Hope to finish Part 2 of my little "historical Jesus" project by Christmas 2008. Part 2 will summarize what I consider the best evidence for Jesus (arguments and data culled from the above books), a brief refutation of "The God Who Wasn't There" DVD, and the best responses to Doherty's book. Part 1 on "pagan parallels" is finished. I am an amateur, like most of us, and like Peter Kirby (thanks for his review of Habermas), but I do enjoy this "online debate" we have (even if it's ignored by mainstream scholarship). Phil P

07-26-2008, 09:36 AM	#139
Yellum Notnef Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Gone Posts: 4,676	What if? What if a race of aliens have been watching human development from the beginning and what if these aliens came here tomorrow and told us that everything guys like Phil Vaz believe is total bullshit? Would it be met with total denial and what would some of the new apologetics be? I'd love to see this happen during my lifetime as I think this is the only scenario that could possibly end all this nonsense once and for all.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.