Chris Weimer

Yes, no, no. But none of that was in your quote. I'll quote you again:

"Please stop this nonsense. Creationists do not use a paradigm that says that missing evidence shows that evolution is false. Creationists' paradigm is that the Bible is true, therefore evolution is false, therefore any lame argument can be raised just to annoy evilutionists."

Toto

Yes it was in my quote. Point 1 is directly in my quote, the rest are by implication.

Are we typing in the same language? Do you think you could spend a little time and explain what you mean? It might save you time in the long run.

Chris Weimer

Please show me in your quote where you mention creationists "[doing] anything other than start with the requirement that the Bible is true". Do you seriously think this is the only contingent? Christian theology, even "fundamentalist" isn't so simplistic.

And do you have anything to back up the highly prejudiced statement: Creationists' paradigm is that the Bible is true, therefore evolution is false, therefore any lame argument can be raised just to annoy evilutionists.

Sounds like pure slander motivated by anti-Creationist hatred. Creationism is wrong on so many accounts, but imagining their motives to be merely to annoy "evilutionists" is so incredibly vain that it shows ultimately how poor your character really is, Toto.

This is no different than any other broad, hyperbolic stereotype. This is a pattern with you - over and over again make snide remarks about the motives of Christians and their simplistic thinking.

gurugeorge

But that's a different thing from what you were saying about MJ-ers having to show that the HJ was fabricated. "Available evidence" does not include "clear, unambiguous references to a human being". It includes "clear unambiguous references to a fantastic entity with some possibly historical characteristics". You think those references are genuine history, that there's a man behind the myth? Then prove it - otherwise "myth all the way down" is the rational default. Despite what people several decades after the supposed advent of the mythical entity thought, despite 2,000 years of tradition, despite the consensus of biblical scholarship today, until a man behind the myth can be proven, there's no rational reason to prefer that explanation to pure myth, pure myth is what fits the available evidence, with just a bit of leeway for a possible HJ who needs some stronger backing than is available.

Christ is evidently a mythical entity (a fantastic god-like entity who does things that are impossible in terms of a rational understanding of Nature). Some entities that are mythical are also historical. The burden of proof is on someone who wants to say that this particular mythical entity is historical.

Nonsense. "Myth" (as in fantastic, rationally unlikely entity) doesn't automatically mean "non-existent as a human being", but it usually does (unless you really believe that all myths have people behind them, but I don't think that's a strongly supported position), so as I said, if you think the Christ myth is eheumeristic, it's up to you to show that there was a human being behind it.

Oh really? So was Quetzalzcoatl not a myth then? Fantastic entities who will come and sort things out (or screw them up) and usher in utopies (or armageddon) aren't all that uncommon. And they are properly called myths. The Messiah is such a a myth; a Messiah who's advent has been shifted from the future to the past is also a myth.

Nothing fallacious about it at all. The concept of a future Messiah invites a continuous stream of contemporary claimants. The concept of a past Messiah shuts off the possibility of contemporary claimants. You bear the burden of showing that the early Christian view is about something other than a new concept of a Messiah whose advent has been, because at first glance that's what it looks like. i.e., once again, it's not specific enough with regard to human details to be unambiguously based around a human claimant to the old Messiah idea who lived in the past.

Think of it this way: if you are looking for something "revolutionary" that could have caused a "buzz" with early Christianity, yet another poor sod claiming to be the traditional Jewish Messiah and dying an ignominious death isn't it.

But a cute inversion of the traditional Messiah idea? Now you're talking about something that could be a "stumbling block" to the Jews!

Yes, but the mythicist is not under the extra burden of proving that an HJ has been fabricated, which is the unreasonably high bar you set. Naturally the MJ-er will try to do so, but it's obviously going to be harder to do that than just to show that an MJ position fits the evidence (which it does - it fits the bulk of mythical/spiritual/mystical material, and it fits the few vague, ambiguous historical references).

Once again: the evidence for there being a human being at the root of the myth is not so clear and unambiguous that HJ-ers can afford the luxury of laying the burden of disproving its validity on MJ-ers.

If it was clear and unambiguous (say if there was a reliable contemporary reference or two in non-cultic writers, or some writing or something from the man himself), but MJ-ers still thought it was myth all the way down, then yes, it would be as you say (they would have to prove that what look like clear unambiguous references are fabrications), but it's not.

The way it is is that we have to do with a fantastic entity, a rationally impossible entity, a mythicalentity. That's what Christ looks like on the face of it; the few references that look historical are so vague that they are quite consistent with myth all the way down (they are consistent with vague historical-seeming references in myth generally).

If you think there's a man behind the myth then show us the friggen' man.

Chris Weimer

No, MJers have to show that the Jesus of tradition was fabricated.

Except in Josephus...and Paul...and Mark...and the Ebionite gospel...

False dichotomy.

Yes, and is there any reason to think otherwise?

First of all, you don't "prove" anything in historical studies. That you keep repeating that mantra is clear evidence that you are clueless. And despite you incessant claiming, "myth all the way down" is not the rational default.

Try hundreds of years.

There you go with proof again.

That's an anachronistic view of the world. The ancients didn't see it like that. Vespasian was said to have cured a man's blindness - that doesn't make Vespasian mythical. Alexander the Great was said to have been born of Zeus - that doesn't make Alexander the Great mythical. Some modern televangelists have been said to have cured people's illnesses - that doesn't make them myth either. You've selected Jesus out while leaving everything else intact. That's a sign of biased judgement.

Do you know what the term "myth" means" Didn't we already go over this before?

Illogical. Your position does not win by default. That's creationist speak "if I disprove evolution, then creationism is ergo true". It's fallacious thinking.

You're using myth in a very unusual manner.

Quetzalzcoatl was a myth. The idea that a man will be appointed by God to lead the Israelites from the hands of the oppressors is not a myth. Simon Bar Kokhba, a messianic contender, was not a myth. All the messianic contenders were human except, in your opinion, Jesus. Sounds like special pleading to me.

Prince Charles is a myth? Simon Bar Kokhba is a myth? Vespasian is a myth?

Sort out your thoughts and try adding a bit of logic first.

Wow. That has got to be the most ignorant statement I've ever seen. You mean to say that Jesus came around into an already existing Christianity? And that by fact that he must have been revolutionary and trying to create a "buzz"? 100% pure bullshit above.

But the earliest Christians didn't believe this. Check out Paul, the Ebionites, the Gospel of Mark.

Oh poor you. Only HJers have to prove their case, while the MJers get off scot free. Nope, son, it doesn't work like that. Ask any logician.



I've said it over and over again. Not my fault you refuse to read.

Nothing in antiquity is "clear and unambiguous". We're still debating if Lesbia is Clodia, if the sparrow is his dick.

You have to provide evidence for your assertions.

There are books about him. Read Ehrman's book for his portrait.

gurugeorge

Well unless you think Jesus' advent, despite the glowing description, was a "disaster that befell the Jews", the Testimonium looks like an interpolation on the face of it. (Could it be based on some real reference underneath? Possibly, if the Jesus originally spoken of there was a "disaster that befell the Jews". But it's hardly evidence of the level of solidity you'd need to shift the burden of proof. The burden of proof is on those who would show that the Testimonium isn't the obvious-looking interpolation it seems to be). Paul (the earliest potential window on what happened) has the very mythical/historical ambiguity I'm talking about, Mark is too late, as are the Ebionites. If you think these are references are strong enough so that they actually shift the burden of proof (so that they look like apparently sound historical references that need to be shown to be fabrications), then I don't know what to say.

No it isn't, it's a plain statement of what we find in Paul and Hebrews, the closest we can come to the contemporaneity with this "Christ" entity.

Oh for heaven's sake get off your high horse. One talks about a "burden of proof" even though one doesn't necessarily mean a mathematical or engineering level of proof. You were talking about who has to "show" something "from the evidence", that's what I'm talking about too.

Irrelevant. We're talking about us, today, deciding whether there was a man behind the myth. Certainly that means taking into account what people thought then, and sometimes they mythologised real people. But more often, there are no identifiable real people behind myths.

If the only kinds of myths that existed were these kinds, based on real people, then you would be right. But the category of myth doesn't just include "human beings mythologised", it's actually more like "wild stories about fantastic entities, a few of which are based on real people": it's the broad category of (what we now think of) as fantastic stories with fantastic entities. Now we (as some people then) see that some myths have real people at the root of them, and we see that sometimes human beings were mythologised. But more often, stories were simply made up based on vision, philosophical ideas, theological ideas, mystical ideas.

I'm using the idea of myth as "a recurrent, archetypal story that purports to describe reality and offers 'exemplary' models" or "stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity".

Ignoratio elenchi. I'm not saying "Jesus could never be a man mythologised". I admit it's a possibility, it's just not a very likely one: it's a possibility that just doesn't have much going for it.

What's the difference between Queztalcoatl and the Messiah? The fact that the Messiah isn't named? But he is given (beforehand) a family isn't he? Really, this is straw clutching of the highest caliber.

We have precisely the kind of independent evidence of a real Simon bar Kokhba that we don't have of a real man behind the story of "Christ". What we lack is precisely the evidence of a "messianic contender" in this case. Josephus is the only possible thin thread on which this could hang, and that's far to thin to support the reversal of the burden of proof you require.

I don't know what you think you understand from my paragraph, but whatever it is it's not what I meant. What I'm saying is this: clearly Christianity did "take off" to some extent. For it to have taken off it must have been remarkable in some way. It can't have been remarkable in the sense of a worldly guy creating a stir, because there isn't enough external evidence to show that (not like Simon bar Kochba for example). It must have been a spiritual stir of some sort. Yet another minor Messiah claimant (like Josephus' other minor messiah claimants) isn't a likely candidate. But a visionary theological revision of the Messiah concept (from one to come to one who has been and has already been victorious - the "good news") is a likely candidate - it's something that could be considered heretical and a "stumbling block" by Jews, especially along with the "revaluation of values" (he wasn't a famous military victor but a failure, etc.). The whole idea is the Messiah turned upside down and inside out: now of course that could be something laid after the fact, on a guy who actually lived, but to show that (to show the majority mythical component of the story is like Vespasian's rather than Dionysus') you need something more than an obvious interpolation in Josephus - you need the kind of external evidence that there was a man like Vespasian or Simon bar Kochba, onto whom all this cute mythological inversion was tacked. Absent that, it's just cute mythological inversion.

On the contrary, that's exactly what it looks like the Jerusalem crowd and Paul (and the author of Hebrews) believed in.

There are numerous reconstructions of a possible historical Jesus, but they are all question-begging.

Lucretius

I see from later posts here that you are trying to compare the "historicity" of Lesbia and Jesus .
Well I have gone back to my Collected Poems of Catullus and nowhere does Catullus claim that Lesbia had any "supernatural powers" ,he does I must admit at times claim "Divine Inspration " of sorts from the "Muses", but unless you believe the ancient Muses are as real the "Christian God" I do not see this as a valid comparison in any real sense .

Chris Weimer

So are you saying that people who were claimed to have supernatural powers did not exist? Or is one person's claim of the supernatural really relevant to the historicity of a person?

Chris Weimer

Gurugeorge - what's "obvious" doesn't fly in here. If you think something's obvious, you should be able to demonstrate it. So far all you keep doing is saying "it's obvious this and it's obvious that".

Toto

Most Christians are not creationists, and certainly most theologically sophisticated Christians are not creationists. In case it is not clear, I mean YEC creationists who deny evolution.

Again, most Christians are not creationists. Most Christians do not exhibit simplistic thinking - more often, Christians have evolved overly complex thinking about things that could be simple if they didn't have to reconcile a good god and evil in the world. I don't know where I have ever said anything different.

I think my description of creationists' thinking is accurate, based on what I observe. But there's nothing personal about it. I don't hate them, I just think that their arguments are ridiculous.

Do you deny that creationists start by assuming that the Bible must be true and that therefore evolution is false? Do you just object to the idea that creationists make some of their arguments to annoy evolutionists? Why would that be such a crime if it were true?