Sauron

What? Are you implying that I, Sauron, am mythical? :-)

Photocrat

I believe that he's quite aware of that; it's just a matter of who it is, exactly, that has been tricked into believing a nut *cough*Doherty*cough* ...

Dihydrogen monoxide, AKA water... a very old joke.

One common way of abusing someone's implicit trust is to appear to think like your victim, there, as an environmentalist. It also works on skeptics. Doherty's methodology could be rewritten as: "if you don't believe anyone, there's precious little evidence for much of anything." Abusing implicit trust is quite effective, moreso if the victim thinks that they know better than to fall for such things... Not so long ago, I had a fellow who refused to even look at some evidence I offered ['knew' it was wrong, because there was no evidence... maybe he was confused about the nature of tautology? :] and a moderator once tole me that I wouldn't be believed if I said that my car was red [it is; in context, they were (sadly) serious, rather than jovial] ...

E.G., there's empirical evidence for what I'm saying here...

Indeed, people don't check up on what other people say most of the time, because the time spent is prohibitive.

Hence we have people retelling old urban legends, like this one, in various, occasionally novel, forms... This one is true, though, but you're missing most of the details. Nathan Zohner made that report (based on the old joke) in 1997. Of course, his target audience was 9th graders and there is no mention of him asking them to verify that it was harmful...

Ref: <a href="http://www.snopes2.com/toxins/dhmo.htm" target="_blank">http://www.snopes2.com/toxins/dhmo.htm</a>

Why don't we look at the most recent fake religion? Everyone's favorite: Scientology. Has it fooled people? Some, but at the same time, there are tons and tons of well written pieces demonstrating how absurd it is. Where's the first guy to think "hey, those guys are pretty dumb, worshipping someone who doesn't even exist!"? Find me one ancient historian who said that... [the 1800's aren't "ancient," BTW]. In contrast, we have L Ron, who's been quoted as saying that the real money is in starting a religion, who was likely delusional according to the FBI files on him, who started a wierd mishmash of Buddhism (reincarnation, Nirvana, etc.) & Christianity (Sunday services, the "it's not really a cross but it looks like one" symbol, and just enough to trick people into thinking it's a mission instead of a franchise...), with a generous helping of science-fiction, including a "pre-history" which extends well before the Big Bang and asserts that we evolved from clams (that's why you have jaw pains, BTW, ...

[For the record, I'm not a YEC/OEC, so a non-literal Genesis doesn't bother me, any more than a non-literal "Good Samaritan" does... LRH is also even stranger than his mini-biography here can show; a real biography of him is reccomended reading--it's rather entertaining, if somewhat disturbing :]

In conclusion: yes, people can be fooled. Yes, they usually twist facts to fit in with what they already "know." No, skeptics are not invulnerable to it, moreover, they're actually somewhat more vulnerable to it, because when they hear a 'skeptical' line of reasoning, they tend to assume that the person is correct, rarely verify things [e.g. the real story of DHMO]. Hence, they champion a fellow more serious scholars ignore...

*shrug*

Sauron

This is nonsense. Skepticism has rationalism amd scientific process at its very core. If it cannot be proven, then it shouldn't be believed or relied upon - that is the skeptic's creed.

And in that respect, skepticism is 180 degrees opposed to religion. And, given the emphasis on proof, there is a built-in correction mechanism for the skeptical position, a mechanism which does not exist for religionists. So if a religionist gets off track, there's no objective yardstick to demonstrate that point. Not so with skepticism.

As for your argument that skeptics are more likely to believe a "skeptical line" because they are sympathetic to it. Hmm. Even if I were to grant that argument (which I do not), there's a strange thing at work here. It is interesting that you don't see religionists as being, at a minimum, equally as susceptible to the same fallacy-by-sympathetic agreement. Indeed, since religion rejects the use of science and rational process as a valid method to discover truth, religionists are even *more* susceptible to such a process. After all, they have abandoned the only tools that could have saved them from such a predicament.

[ June 02, 2002: Message edited by: Sauron ]

[ June 02, 2002: Message edited by: Sauron ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Why don't we look at the most recent fake religion? Everyone's favorite: Scientology. Has it fooled people? Some, but at the same time, there are tons and tons of well written pieces demonstrating how absurd it is. Where's the first guy to think "hey, those guys are pretty dumb, worshipping someone who doesn't even exist!"? Find me one ancient historian who said that...

'Crat, in the ancient world all legendary figures were thought to be real in some sense. Big deal.

You can answer the issues raised in thread in a couple of ways.

--you can supply us with a valid methodology for extracting truth from legendary material. But NT scholars don't have one.

-- you can give us a criterion of relevance that shows that the Jesus myth cycle should be regarded separately from all other legends and myths. In all other cases, legends seem indifferent or contrary to reality. Could the faith-commitment Christians have to Jesus-as-history have anything to do with the special treatment afford the Jesus legend?

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

William Tell is probably a better example of a myth.

Don't forget that there are many founders of religions who never existed - Osiris, for example.

The question is - Did Jesus of the Gospels exist?

There is no doubt that there was a Jesus in the first century AD. We even have his grave!

In fact, there were many, many Jesus's. I think Josephus lists 27 (or so)

Answerer

Well, you are just a failure as a result of being over dependence on a small ring. Hey, by the way, I got lots of rings in my home, haha.

excreationist

Photocrat wrote:
His believers believe that he is truly enlightened and other amazing things like that.

Even in the N.T. itself it talked about many skeptics of Christianity. Then it became the official religion of the Roman Empire and then apparently the rest of Europe was forced to become baptised Christians or be slaughtered (<a href="http://www.geocities.com/osred/persecution.htm" target="_blank">"How Europe was overrun by Christians"</a>) This also happened to primitive cultures all over the world. Sometimes they'd get slaughtered anyway (like the Tasmanian Aborigines - they are extinct) or maybe they were just made to suffer rather than get killed if they didn't believe. Maybe they mostly converted because we seemed so smart with all our technology. Anyway, my point is that those who spoke against the church in the Middle Ages were usually killed because they were heretics.
Their writings would be destroyed so it would be unlikely that criticisms of Christianity's origins would have survived.
I think the Jews have a few beliefs about what happened to Jesus - this probably would have been passed down from people who lived in Jesus's time. But since they reject Jesus's divinity I guess you'd think they are biassed.
In the N.T. most of the Christians were converted by Paul anyway - not by Jesus. And at the time of the crucifixion, the crowd seems to hate Jesus. That's unusal... did they forget all those miracles? Or perhaps those miracles never happened. Then a few of his friends apparently witnessed him after he died and also ascend into heaven. How convenient... rather than ascend in front of many historians he just ascended in front of many anonymous friends who already believed.

Bede

Steven,

William Tell is another good one for my case and a disaster for yours. The facts:

- William Tell first mentioned in ballads from the end of the fifteenth century.

- Canonical version of the story only assembled in the 18th century.

- Tell thought to have lived around 1300.

Now Steven, if you could show the earliest mention of Jesus was in Christian hymns of around 200AD and that the Gospels were written about 600AD, you'd have a point. But sadly Mark was written about 40 years after Jesus's death, so all you've done is erected yet another strawman. Well done.

The way the sceptics here are willing to draw parallels that they must know are bogus is really disappointing. What you need is a mythical figure whose life history had been written, say, 50 years after he was said to have died, who all his followers (and nearly everyone else) from that date on thought was real. Can you think of any?

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

Vorkosigan

The way the sceptics here are willing to draw parallels that they must know are bogus is really disappointing.

I don't know it is bogus. Composite figures are common across hundreds of mythologies. So far you haven't supplied any criterion by which we should distinguish the Jesus cycle from any other mythology.

What you need is a mythical figure whose life history had been written, say, 50 years after he was said to have died, who all his followers (and nearly everyone else) from that date on thought was real. Can you think of any?

Yours

Bede

Sure Bede. First prove that Jesus died forty years before Mark wrote. Now if only NT scholars had a methodology for that....

Also, Mark did not write a "life" history, but a propaganda tale mostly about the last year of Jesus' alleged life.

Also, you can quit misunderstanding now. The history is mythical and composite; the underlying figure may be real. Plenty of mythical biographies of real people are available; writings on religious figures like Sai Baba, Katherine Kuhlman or Rebbe Schneerson are already well on their way to myth. Their followers all think the myths about them are real; Schneerson was named the Messiah while he was still alive, and a devoted band of madmen think he is going to return. Do you think reality plays any role in curbing the growth of religious belief?

Even within the rather irrelevant way you've erected this challenge, there are literally hundreds of such figures. For example, there is Dr. Faust, a windbag and braggart from the early 16th century, who became an important figure immortalized in song, play and legend in later years. The Faust legend is composite, just like the Jesus legend, but is based on an obscure magician who actually lived, and became the source of a legend in his own time and right after. The "real" Faust died around 1540; Marlowe was writing based on an extant legend in the early 1590s.

If it is discipleship you demand, than discipleship you shall have. There are several Jewish Messiahs, such as Tzvi, who retained wide followership in their own lifetimes and a couple of generations later. There are Indians today who have revived the Ghost Dance of the end of the last century, even though it failed all of its promises to make the white men disappear and the buffalo return, and its messianic leader died a silent movie actor. I'm too tired to write more. If you want more examples, I'll be happy to dig up a few thousand more. Do you think there is something unique about having dozens of followers fooling themselves about the death of their messiah? Nothing is more commonplace. I've read that even Manson has believers......

Vorkosigan

Layman

Why do you think so many evolutionists bother with young-earth-creationists?