MortalWombat

Uh... OK. Whatever.

Layman

And you sir, are blatantly misrepresnting what I said. This statement was clearly contingent. There was a big IF in front of it.

This was a true statement.

Make a fair point and you'll get a fair response.

Layman

Doing homework? You accuse me of saying something I did not say (but claiming I indicated such by my "tone") and then accuse me of expecting you to read my mind.

What I was holding you to account for was the idea that I was just dismissing Doherty's point. You were on notice that I had offered a detailed response to the argument, yet you never looked into it or asked about it.

Do you realize how much whining you guys do about "tone" and being mean and dismissive? Especially when many of you are completely dismissive about other points of view or rant on about "prove it, prove it."

Toto

I am not trying to get into this slugfest, but this is not a true statement. It is hyperbole at best. If that is your definition of "true" it does not reflect well on your belief system.

I do make a point of linking to Amazon.com when I can, because the Infidels board earns money when people follow links from here to Amazon. Amazon reviews are also useful sources of information at times. But you can look at my recent posts and count the space devoted to Amazon links versus arguments, and "most . . . are nothing more than references" would be shown to be false.

doubtingt

Radorth said and discounted:

"11. Applying Occum's Razor to the Gospels and agreeing there is an "essentially historic" core to them is simply outdated, and hundreds of scholars and historians were mistaken to do so, even though they include many skeptics."
---------------

The fact is that Occum's Razor favors the ahisoricist position and the burden is upon
those claiming a historical Jesus to provide
evidence.
Here are the facts as they exist independent of
the issue of Jesus as actual man.
Fact 1: The Gospels are a work of fiction evidenced by their numerous impossible claims.
Fact 2: Virtually all works of fiction contain characters and events that have some historical referent, but this in no way means that any individual character or event is a historical telling of an actual character or event.
Fact 3: Many, many, religious myths that predate the Gospels consist of clearly fictional characters (in many cases non-human) who are portrayed and claimed to go through trials that are virtually identical to most of those that the
character Jesus went through.
Fact 4: Stories involving the Jesus character that did not fit the vision of Jesus Paul wanted to portray were destroyed or hidden, thus demonstrating a lack of intent on creating a historical account.

These facts provide no basis to assume that Jesus is anything other than a fictional character, who might have had some historical referent (i.e, a carpenter of the times who happened to be named Jesus), but no more so than any other fictional character. In addition, the facts are quite inconsistent with intent to record history.
Everything in the Gospels is consistent with the
cultural myth hypothesis.

Thus, those who claim that select parts of the Gospels (the non-supernatural parts of Jesus' life) happen to be accurate historical accounts
are making unwarranted assumptions that are difficult to reconcile with the facts. The burden is squarely upon them to bring forth new facts that are predicted by their hypothesis and cannot
be accounted for by a cultural myth explanation.
Their shakey and sparse evidence has not met this burden.

Layman

Let me put it this way. When you bother to refer to a source, its usually a link to an entire book on Amazon.com

Hope that makes you happy.

Toto

It's still untrue, but somewhat irrelevant.

Just keep digging yourself into that hole. I'm watching to see how low you can go.

Layman

Toto, when it comes to Biblical Criticism and Archeology, it does not get any lower than "Matthew's Census."

Peter Kirby

I am closing this thread because it has degenerated into insults. Please continue any legitimate discussion in new or other threads.

best,
Peter Kirby