Reactor

I've wondered about those guys, sure. But I can't draw much of an accurate conclusion about them. Some of them I feel are working what they do (assuming they actually did what they claim to have done) by the devil. And yes, that means I believe in the devil. But, that still isn't much of a conclusion, is it? There's not much (if any) evidence to support my belief, but if I'm pushed to say something, that's what I'll say.

You all have the same beliefs about these guys, or...? ...is it just that they add to the confusion of the matter? Maybe you can elaborate on that one for me.

Sure I have a distaste about the 'Jesus is a mythic hero' conclusion. Aside from being a Chirstian, where's the real hard-hitting proof? Would the way you've come to this conclusion hold up in court? I sure wouldn't want to try my luck with it had I been a lawyer. Jesus has some aspects of a mythic hero. Big deal. Give me something more than that. Jesus filled all the OT prophecies- Isiah 53, you should know it. I suppose that was added after? Or what? the deciples made it all up, and it somehow stood the test of time? If that's the case then... well done!

You can't just slap a bunch of stuff on a guy who rocked up, and theologically hammered the OT beliefs into a new era (with amazing accuracy-- show me a theological imperfections, please), who fulfilled so many prophecies it just isn't funny, and liken him to Hercules. If that is true, then I'm going to get down and worship Jesus anyway, since his deciples did such a damn good job of creating an almot infinitely complex story, twisting it into historical events, reshaping an entire religious system (while keeping everything theologically sound) and then dying themselves for what they believed in (asuming they existed too).

Lex Talionis

Hrm. Actually, I think that other JC, Julius Caesar would score a bit better than Alexander.

I'd give Caesar points for:

(2) The Julians were prominent aristocrats and Caesar's unclue Gaius Marius served as consul for seven years.
(8*) Caesar spent much of the time building his political power away from Rome itself as a governor of Spain and Gaul.
(10) Caesar crosses the Rubicon...
(11) ...and defeats Pompey.
(13) After winning the civil war, he declares himself dictator for life.
(14) From 48 BC, Caesar ruled relatively uneventfully...
(15) ...reforming Roman law.
(16) But a group of senators plots his assassination as they fear his power.
(18) He is killed by a group of senators led by a political ally.
(19) This murder happens on Capitoline Hill.

I'd give Caesar 9.5 on the list. Better than Alexander, and rather remarkable for a real human.

GunnerJ

Eh-Hem. Twins?

GunnerJ

Well, hey, don't worry. No one mentioned anything like that. But don't let that stop you from building your little straw man.

If you're an intellectually honest person, you'll wnat to look at the evidence and make a conclusion rather than throwing it out to support your preconcieved bias.

In other words, you've made up your mind, you have no reasoning behind it, and you're not willing to challenge your own beliefs.

BTW, this profile was based on other myths besides the Christ myth. It's called an archetypical profile and is used in the study of mythology to tell us about the beliefs of ancient culture. Very useful for people who like to actually learn new things and who cherish knowledge. Your unreasoned heaping of scorn upon it tells us more about your intellectual honesty (or lack thereof) than it does about the profile.

In other words, you have again already made up your mind, and you don't want people confusing you with the facts, especially when you don't understand them.

To translate again, you are confused by Ryan's logical deconstruction of your logically fallicious argument, and don't want your beliefs challenged, so you will ignore all the criticisms of it and use it to ridicule your opponent, rather than dealing with his refutations like a thinking human being.

Once again, you are saying that you don't have the intellectual honesty to evaluate a challenge to your cherished beliefs, and that you therefore will ignore them.

Hey! Did that fistful of straw fall out of your misdirection doll? Why do you have to cram it back in?

Perhaps it would do you well to study the major logical fallacies and then re-evaluate your arguments. Of course, since you've already admitted that you dont want to open your mind and put its (meager) contents at risk, you probably won't. <a href="http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html" target="_blank">List of Logical Fallacies</a>

In other words, you have constucted an unfallsifiable and unevidenced explaination to defend your cherished beliefs, and even though you know that you have no evidence to support them, you're too attached to your cherished beliefs to put your own ideas to the challenge of proving them.

For Christianity? We're still waiting for it.

For Jesus' status as a mythological hero/god/king/savior? Read the Gospels.

What, the conclusion that Jesus existed? Since its based on hearsay evidence, probably not. But a court viewing the similarities between Jesus and other mythological figures, and given no evidence to assume Christ is any different, might go our way.

You're surprisingly reluctant to "try your luck" with anything that challenges your preconcieved notions, so this further admission of a lack of intellectual honesty on your part is not surprising either.

I don't suppose you'd be willing to say the same about Krishna, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Orpheus, Mithra and Osirus, and yet you don't think of them as anything but myths. Or are they demons? Or are you again to afraid to deal with the actual criticisms of your beliefs? Grow a spine, will you?

No, Reactor, you must give us more reason to believe that Jesus even existed. If someone looks very mythical and there is no solid evidence for his existence, it is safe to conclude his mythical status. Once again, the burden of proof is squarely upon you, no matter how many straw men you costruct to misdirect it.

No, Reactor, we are told, in a set of conflicting hagiographies written by a set of biased men trying to establish a religion that a man called Jesus existed who fulfiled the prophesies. We have no evidence that he actually did.

Jesus' status as the fulfiller of the Old Testament Messianic prophesies is overrated anyway. For example, in Isiah 53, all the "prophesies" are written in past tense, indicating that an already existing person is being discussed, not one to come. In other words, it's not even a prophesy. If you're not afraid of having your beliefs challenged (but then again, you've show repetedly that you are), <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_lippard/fabulous-prophecies.html" target="_blank">click here</a> for a discussion of why Jesus was not the foretold Messiah, and why the "prophecies" sometimes aren't.

You strangely heap scorn upon these rational explainations without giving a reason why. Wait, I take it back. That's not strange, as denying possibilities that contradict your preconcieved beliefs has been your strategy this whole time.

As for the "test of time," you still have to account for the various other mythical heros and why their claims stood the test of time (for a while, sometimes a great deal longer than 2,000 years)... but outside of your lame demonic non-explaination, I doubt you will.

Can anyone make sense of this statement?

Arguing from unporven, and already refuted, premises...

In other words, if your cherished beliefs are disproved, you'll hold to them anyway, even knowing that they are a lie, because of the cleverness of the lie's perpetuators.

Assuming they actually died for their beliefs. More argument from an unproven premise.

I probably shouldn't have bothered with this. Reactor has already admitted to being a <a href="http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame78.html" target="_blank">Stone Deaf</a> unwilling to think about anything that challenges his beliefs. I hope this has been instructive to some lurker, though.

RyanS2

Touche'. Actually, I originally put, "you could say twins if you're being pedantic", but I'm speaking of cloning a post-birth being into a genetically identical "clone". Guess I should have clarified that.

Lpetrich, I'm sorry if my verbiage doesn't make sense, to you the point was that in a scientifically controlled setting, certain, (or actually "lots") of variables do not creep into the experiment which are absolutely unavoidable in real life. Scarcity of foods, toxins, bad water, mosquitoes, mutated cells, bears, tigers, wars, etc. simply aren't commmon in the laboratory setting. We can make a chicken cell live forever, (there was a scientist who thought this meant he could live forever, he died at the age of 69), but as the dear scientist showed us, that doesn't mean that we can live forever. Therefore, it's not conclusive to say, "If a grouping of cells can live forever in a laboratory setting, a human can live to be 961 years old".

Make sense?

Jayhawker Soule

I don't mean to sound dismissive, but: What's the point of this topic?

GunnerJ

I don't want to be just pedantic, I want to be really pedantic. So I'll mention budding in hydras and sponges.

RyanS2

DOH!!! <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Ever thought about writing political speeches?

Mageth

You could also mention parthenogenesis, a form of reproduction in which the ovum develops into a new individual without fertilization. Natural parthenogenesis has been observed in many lower animals (it is characteristic of the rotifers), especially insects, e.g., the aphid. Parthenogenetic all-female races of amphibians, reptiles and fish occur in nature.

Asha'man

Ok guys, I think you are being a little too hard on Reactor. He is here to learn, and is asking some valid questions. He just hasn’t run into all the arguments that we have seen, at least not yet. Give him time, and be very clear about your evidence.

Reactor, the point of the mythic hero is simple, it is one argument among many. While it isn’t conclusive proof, the type that would hold up in court, it is at least interesting enough to look at and think about. Jesus clearly has many of the same “special” qualities as other non-existent characters. Since these other characters were invented, could the same thing be true of Jesus? Could the similarity be deliberate? Could someone have been copying old ideas when they were writing the story, rather than recording history or inventing a purely original story?

Obviously, more evidence is needed than just this one similarity, but this is part of the whole case that has been made. At least in American civil courts, there is a concept called “preponderance of the evidence.” While no fact is absolutely provable, most people will be convinced if most of the evidence points to that fact, and little solid evidence can be found that opposes that fact. Consider the mythic hero as a single piece of evidence in a larger case.

As for a strawman, I’m guessing you may not have heard the term before. A commonly used tactic in debate is to describe your opponent’s position, and then attack that position. If your description isn’t very accurate, it is called a strawman, because it really only exists for you to have an easy target.

Another of the arguments that has been made is that all of the OT prophecies that support Jesus have been wrongly applied. Either the Jesus story was written in such a way that the prophecy was fulfilled, or the prophecy was effectively invented, and never really existed in the first place. This issue should probably be part of another thread, and you might want to add this topic to your reading list.

You raised a point about the complexity of the story, but I don’t think that is an issue. I can name a dozen fictional books I have read in the last year that are equally complex, including multi-volume sets. It becomes even less of an issue if you think about the time span that these writings must have taken place in. Since the story was being constantly preached as it was written, the audience would provide feedback on the message. Problems in the story could be ironed out long before it was committed to paper, and more problems could be fixed before the oldest paper copies that we have were written. The evolution of this story over time is also an important issue to look into. But again, this may be a topic for another thread.

Ok, someone else mentioned “blasphemy was not a crime in Roman or Jewish courts.” This is not correct according to the reading I have done. Romans were quite tolerant of other religions, as long as you paid your taxes. Jewish law, however, made blasphemy a capital crime, you can look in Deuteronomy to see this. In fact, the law requires death by stoning, followed by the hanging of the corpse on a tree till sundown. There are accounts in Jewish records of exactly this punishment being carried out, including at least one Jesus executed around a Passover Sabbath. Do they refer to a historical Jesus or just someone with the same name? If Jesus was stoned to death, why does the bible say crucified? Well, maybe this is another fact that was altered to make the story work better. Ok, perhaps this is a topic for yet another thread….