The Gaming Den

Midnight wrote:Stupid shit

You have no points anywhere in there. Zero. Zip. You have provided no compelling argument that religion has in anyway been a useful tool in establishing a society's code of conduct, and indeed, given the fact that religious institutions are well-known for their use of force in order to assert their belief systems upon their own denominations and others AND the highly mutable nature of their belief systems as they adapt to a shifting moral landscape around them in order to survive, there is every reason to believe you are completely and totally full of shit.

Not only did Christianity have to threaten people with actual violence to get them to listen to their holy book, they routinely have to pretend parts of their holy book don't exist lest people abandon their churches in droves. Do you know what else uses a stick to enforce its agenda and adapts that agenda in response to fears of a popular uprising? A secular state. There is nothing special about religion. Nothing.

Relevant to this conversation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_jesus

tl;dr version: Bible scholars assume Jesus as a historical figure of some kind must have existed, because making a religious figure up out of whole cloth while not unheard of seems to beggar belief. That said, there is no physical or contemporary documentary evidence for the existence of Jesus, and some serious problems with his biography and depiction in the New Testament.

I just want to say this is the best thread title ever.

Ancient History wrote:Relevant to this conversation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_jesus

tl;dr version: Bible scholars assume Jesus as a historical figure of some kind must have existed, because making a religious figure up out of whole cloth while not unheard of seems to beggar belief.

Bible Scholars claim it beggars belief to make him up whole cloth the same way C.S. Lewis argues the trilemma, with an agenda, and by lying about the actual arguments.

Most New Testament Scholars by something like 85/15 ratio are devout Christians. Actual historians, when they look at this "Scholarship" regularly say, "WTF, that isn't how you do history." No one is claiming they made him up whole cloth. We are saying that some people took the idea of the Messiah and said, hey, maybe he was actually a spiritual messiah the whole time, and then they said they had visions of this spiritual messiah, like all crazy religious people do, and then they wrote stuff about the lesson to gain from this spiritual messiah, and then 100 years later, or 200 years later, some people thought maybe he was a real guy, because fuck it, there are these stories back in isreal really far away, and it is the council of Nicea, and we need to decide what to believe.

Bible Scholars claim it beggars belief to make him up whole cloth the same way C.S. Lewis argues the trilemma, with an agenda, and by lying about the actual arguments.

Truth. Assuming the conclusion and all that. Makes you glad Bob Price is around, yarr?

When you get down to it, the Bible (both testaments) was cobbled together by many people from different documents; there are more than a few remnants of old religions and mythologies embedded in it, and people have made a living arguing about the Q source.

Ancient unfuck your tags.

Also yes Kaelik is exactly on the point. When bible thumping "scholars" look at the evidence they come away with the conclusion they expected to find which surprises no one. When historians who are not priests look at the information they come away saying that the answer can't be confirmed but that the bible-thumpers are hugely off-base. The biblical scholars deal with this problem by writing so many books and paper and theses that the field seems like it leans their way. But that is propaganda with an agenda like literally everything else they do and say.

I think it is even being done unintentionally by many of those Biblical scholars. That many think they are doing due diligence but since they are being asked to research the question "Have you wasted your life on a mountain of lies" they understandably come away with a biased result.

Unfucked, apologies.

Does the idea of the Church of the SubGenius' J. R. Bob Dobbs never having actually existed beggar belief? There's actually more evidence that he was a real person, in that there are descriptions of him being a living person that date from when he was supposedly alive - a feat that Jesus historians cannot match.

-Username17

Of course, the Church of the SubGenius is an intentional parody of a religion. Christianity is more of serious a fringe cult of personality.

Take out the overtly supernatural elements (these are easily ascribed to a combination of sleight of hand and just making shit up) and the story of Jesus isn't that much different from the story of Jim Jones or David Koresh.
Charismatic guy convinces a bunch of gullible nutters that he's a messiah, enjoys hot and cold flowing cultist pussy for a while, and eventually drinks too much of his own koolaid and goes out in a blaze of glory.

It's not implausible that a minor cult leader wouldn't make much of a historical impression or leave many records.

Heck, it's not like it's an uncommon story. Crazy cult leaders are a dime a dozen.

hyzmarca wrote:It's not implausible that a minor cult leader wouldn't make much of a historical impression or leave many records.

It is extremely implausible that no one would make much of a deal at all about Koresh during his life, but then 20 years later a guy would be visited by Sky Koresh, and everyone would take him as seriously as the guys who spoke to actual Koresh. It is extremely implausible that no one would make a big deal about Koresh, but a whole bunch of people would later claim that a whole bunch of contradictory things are all the words of real Koresh 70 years later for no apparent reason.

It is extremely unlikely that no one would make a big deal about Koresh even when hundreds of factions of Koreshians are popping up all the time with different versions of what Sky Koresh thinks is important.

It is extremely implausible that no one would make much of a deal at all about Koresh during his life, but then 20 years later a guy would be visited by Sky Koresh, and everyone would take him as seriously as the guys who spoke to actual Koresh.

Not if the guy who spoke to sky-Koresh was more mobile and literate than Koresh's original followers.

It is extremely unlikely that no one would make a big deal about Koresh even when hundreds of factions of Koreshians are popping up all the time with different versions of what Sky Koresh thinks is important.

By the time hundreds of factions of Christians were popping up people did start taking Jesus seriously. That's when every extant account of his life was written.

Small illiterate cult starts gaining some traction, acquires a second or third wave of converts that includes people with more means and education, who begin penning accounts as the original members get old and die and the need for a record of some kind becomes more urgent.

Redshirt wrote:Not if the guy who spoke to sky-Koresh was more mobile and literate than Koresh's original followers.

By the time hundreds of factions of Christians were popping up people did start taking Jesus seriously. That's when every extant account of his life was written.

Small illiterate cult starts gaining some traction, acquires a second or third wave of converts that includes people with more means and education, who begin penning accounts as the original members get old and die and the need for a record of some kind becomes more urgent.

I read this, and I thought, "When did hyzmarca turn into such a colassal idiot?"

Then I noticed who posted it. The stupid troll who refuses to address actual arguments but chimes in with trolly replies to other discussions. My faith in hyzmarca is restored.

Why are you guys talking about the Church of the SubGenius when you have the Mormons as a case study?

Every independent analysis shows that Joseph Smith was some kind of mix between a charlatan and a dangerous lunatic. And still, his crazy cult has become a "respectable" religion that almost elected a President of USA.

More recently, you also have Scientology. Everybody that's not on the CoS payroll agrees that Hubbard was a bad taste joke, and still, you have people caring enough about the claptrap he wrote to get rich that you have splinter groups that want to practice dianetics without paying the dues to the original church.

You have two recent cases of non-joke religions arising, even when the prophets are clearly non-divine (and in these cases, clearly non-moral). That this same process could have happened in the past is proved beyond doubts.

nockermensch wrote:Why are you guys talking about the Church of the SubGenius when you have the Mormons as a case study?

Every independent analysis shows that Joseph Smith was some kind of mix between a charlatan and a dangerous lunatic. And still, his crazy cult has become a "respectable" religion that almost elected a President of USA.

More recently, you also have Scientology. Everybody that's not on the CoS payroll agrees that Hubbard was a bad taste joke, and still, you have people caring enough about the claptrap he wrote to get rich that you have splinter groups that want to practice dianetics without paying the dues to the original church.

You have two recent cases of non-joke religions arising, even when the prophets are clearly non-divine (and in these cases, clearly non-moral). That this same process could have happened in the past is proved beyond doubts.

No one is contesting that shit or joke religions could come from people. Muhammad exists too, unless your claim is that he only could have been insane and not power hungry.

The issue is that other religions based on a real person had contemporary people talking about it a fucking lot, and then had subsequent people who are valued based on how close they were to the original person.

Kaelik wrote:Whining

Oh fuck you.

"It is extremely implausible that no one would make much of a deal at all about Koresh during his life, but then 20 years later a guy would be visited by Sky Koresh, and everyone would take him as seriously as the guys who spoke to actual Koresh."

Is an argument. It's a transparently bad argument, made by someone who gets his history from apologetics sites.

Redshirt wrote:Is an argument.

It is not an argument directed at you. It is an argument directed at sane people who are not committed to the preconceived notion that their Lord And Savoir Jesus Christ Died And Rose From The Dead On The Third Day And Ascended Into Heaven Because Otherwise My Life Has All Been A Lie.

But I do notice how you ignore all the arguments that are directed at you because they attack the preconceived battle plans your apologetics have taught you, and so you have no response.

Redshirt wrote:made by someone who gets his history from apologetics sites.

Yeah, me and my sites full of atheists who have strong moral convictions on the existence of historical cult figures because my atheism would fall apart if some guy named Jesus was killed once, just like I converted to Islam when I decided Muhammad was probably a real guy.

Not like you and your sites of totally objective not at all precommitted Christian Scholars with Seminary degrees who believe that Tacitus really wrote that Jesus was killed by Pontus based purely on the good historical truth finding method of the criteria of embarrassment.

Disingenuous it is.

nockermensch wrote:Why are you guys talking about the Church of the SubGenius when you have the Mormons as a case study?

Joseph Smith was a charlatan, a thief, and a pedophile. But he was, demonstrably, a real person. The historicity of Joseph Smith is not in doubt. The evidence that he was a real person is simply too strong.

The SubGenius is interesting, because Bob Dobbs did not exist. So the fact that there is a lot more "evidence" that he was a real person than there is for Jesus is interesting.

Basically, the entire argument for the historicity of Jesus argues not from any primary evidence (there is none), or even from any evidence of the period (there also is none). The entire argument rests on incredulity that a major religion could start whose divine being never actually walked the Earth. This is a very strange argument, because I'm pretty sure no one finds it improbable that Hinduism managed to get off the ground with no Elephant headed dudes walking around or that the Egyptian Empire managed to have a state religion without there ever having been a real person upon whom Horus was based.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:This is a very strange argument, because I'm pretty sure no one finds it improbable that Hinduism managed to get off the ground with no Elephant headed dudes walking around

My youngest sister went to a Christian school for her primary school (now she's in secondary she's at the public school the rest of us went to). They seriously had a speaker there that said that India has a lot of people to this day who develop the symptoms the Elephant Man had, because of their beliefs. She didn't call him on his horseshit to his face, but identified it as such nonetheless.

So yes, there are people willing to tell you with a straight face that there are elephant-headed* people all over India and it's totally normal. I don't know whether to say "fucking Christians" or "fucking Australia" for that one.

*For a certain definition of "elephant-headed".

It is not an argument directed at you.

So? It's still a dumb argument.

It is an argument directed at sane people who are not committed to the preconceived notion that their Lord And Savoir Jesus Christ Died And Rose From The Dead On The Third Day And Ascended Into Heaven Because Otherwise My Life Has All Been A Lie.

But I do notice how you ignore all the arguments that are directed at you because they attack the preconceived battle plans your apologetics have taught you, and so you have no response.

I'm an atheist. I didn't ignore the arguments directed at me. I was getting swarmed by the same set of regurgitated apologia from multiple different people who are clearly a lot more emotionally invested in this than I am and I let some copies of it drop.

Yeah, me and my sites full of atheists who have strong moral convictions on the existence of historical cult figures because my atheism would fall apart if some guy named Jesus was killed once, just like I converted to Islam when I decided Muhammad was probably a real guy.

I'd guess the more likely explanation is that atheism has become a lot more evangelical in the last few years, and it's starting to pick up bad habits, but hey, maybe you will become a foaming at the mouth Baptist, I don't know.

In any event, the rationalwiki article Lago posted had a bunch of pieces that are classic apologist moves. The whole argument that Tiro was a slave, and he was taught to read and that's totally relevant to a provincial backwater like Galilee is just grade-A horseshit, but it's stuck in there anyway, because apologetics doesn't discriminate. There's other bad arguments in there as well that I already pointed out, and rationalwiki is one of the better ones. (For instance, it doesn't make the laughable argument that the reference to Jesus by Tacitus must be fake because Tacitus calls Pilate a procurator.)

Not like you and your sites of totally objective not at all precommitted Christian Scholars with Seminary degrees who believe that Tacitus really wrote that Jesus was killed by Pontus based purely on the good historical truth finding method of the criteria of embarrassment.

See, that you credulously believe that Tacitus' reference to Jesus is a forgery is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Rationalwiki doesn't lean on the procurator/prefect bullshit, but it does have a really disingenuous bit about the alteration to the manuscript in the Laurentian Library. It leaves out that Rao believes the alteration was made by the original scribe, it leaves out that there is no evidence that anyone tampered with the word "Christos", which is far more relevent, it doesn't engage at all with the weirdness that would result if Tacitus actually meant to write "good people" "who are hated for their filth" and are "enemies of mankind". It just splats it up there without context because hey, anything goes.

Basically, there's a passage in Tacitus that says Christians suck and Pilate executed their leader. There's no good evidence that the passage is a forgery, and it doesn't need to be a forgery to discount Christian claims, because the passage itself isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of Jesus as god. Somehow that isn't good enough though. It's has to be a forgery on top of that, because the dumb new trend of atheist evangelism demands it.

Redshirt wrote:(For instance, it doesn't make the laughable argument that the reference to Jesus by Tacitus must be fake because Tacitus calls Pilate a procurator.)

No one argues that it is a fake because he calls him by the "wrong" title. They argue that calling him the wrong title indicates that Tacitus was probably repeating a story told to him by Christians and not going off Roman records, and therefore Tacitus is not an actual claim to the existence of Jesus. But I can see how such subtle nuance as vaguely understanding the argument actually occuring amongst scholars would be a waste of your time.

Redshirt wrote:See, that you credulously believe that Tacitus' reference to Jesus is a forgery is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

See that you completely fail to understand the actual questions in history is my point. I don't credulously believe that the reference didn't come from Tacitus (Note, their are both forgery and unintentional interpolation arguments for the possible inclusion.) but I do recognize that it is actually in some doubt. I recognize and appreciate the arguments, and because I have no committed myself to a side I don't blithly dimiss entire arguments on less than a whim like you do. You seriously in this post throw off both inaccuracies in the text and the alteration of the fucking document in a single sentence each as obviously irrelevant, even though those are obviously relevant even if it actually was from Tacitus. And you will laughably dismiss in a single sentence every other possible argument too.

Redshirt wrote:but it does have a really disingenuous bit about the alteration to the manuscript in the Laurentian Library. It leaves out that Rao believes the alteration was made by the original scribe, it leaves out that there is no evidence that anyone tampered with the word "Christos", which is far more relevent, it doesn't engage at all with the weirdness that would result if Tacitus actually meant to write "good people" "who are hated for their filth" and are "enemies of mankind". It just splats it up there without context because hey, anything goes.

It's a fucking wiki. It is a pointer. It also leaves out all the evidence that Christian's weren't even called Christians in the first century and that the term likely only became used in the early to mid 2nd century, thus rendering any usage by Tacitus in the first highly unlikely and the inclusion later from some other source very likely.

Redshirt wrote:Basically, there's a passage in Tacitus that says Christians suck and Pilate executed their leader. There's no good evidence that the passage is a forgery, and it doesn't need to be a forgery to discount Christian claims, because the passage itself isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of Jesus as god. Somehow that isn't good enough though. It's has to be a forgery on top of that, because the dumb new trend of atheist evangelism demands it.

No, basically there's a passage allegedly attributed to Tacitus in ~100 CE in a ~1000 CE document in which Tacitus allegedly says that some guy named Christ was killed by some guy named Pialte, in the middle of a discussion about how Nero started a fire and then blamed it on Christians, and there are a huge number of very good reasons to doubt it's authenticity, ranging from the purely internal textual argument that the document actually reads better if you delete that whole sentence to the contextually historical that Christians weren't even called that in the first century, the passage probably doesn't date to then or didn't say what it now does, to the more fundamentally document questioning like the pretty good argument that Nero wasn't even in Rome when the goddam fire started so there wasn't much reason for him to blame it on a tremendously small sect of people that in the document are apparently a multitude, further underriding it's claim to 1st century authorship to those based on a more extensive reading of other ancient documents, and the fact that other authors such as Eusebius don't mention even this claim from Tacitus when specifically writing about Christians in Rome at the time seem to indicate that it did not exist at the time.

But unlike actual scholars, who write articles about how it is possible that Acacius specifically forged Tacitus based on Eusebius not mentioning it, but our actual existing document being traceable back to his collection, you carelessly dismiss all possible arguments as motivated by an animus that isn't fucking present amongst the scholars who actually debate this shit.

Personally, I'm willing to file the existence of a crazy but not supernatural cult leader named Jesus into "plausible but unconfirmed". Sure, even if he was some minor cult leader, someone would have written about him, but that is absolutely not the same thing as us finding stuff written about him. It's been over two thousand years and every major city in the area got sacked repeatedly. Furthermore, dammatio memorum is something the Romans totally did, even to members of the imperial family.

Of course, we do have intact sources from the time period in which we would expect the events as described in the bible to appear, but Romans and Christians both had a habit of making up shit to make historical people appear more impressive, so that's not counter-evidence against him existing at all. I mean, they appear to have made up shit about Constantine to make him sound more impressive, and we're pretty sure he existed.

However, at this point I have to ask if it fucking matters if there was some non-magic guy named Jesus. Clearly, as Christianity exists, someone started it. Is it really important who did?

name_here wrote:Clearly, as Christianity exists, someone started it. Is it really important who did?

Define important. It's certainly important to arguments about whether or not there is enough evidence to believe Jesus existed, which seems to be the current topic of the thread.

It's a double edged sword, really. Proof that a supernatural Jesus existed bolsters Christianity only so far as that proof matches Christian depictions of Jesus.

Proof that a non-supernatural con-artist named Jesus of Nazareth once existed would be the exact opposite of what the religious biblical scholars want.

I only have a few minutes, so I can only respond to this right now:

Kaelik wrote:No one argues that it is a fake because he calls him by the "wrong" title.

Actually, I've read people who do. That's fairly irrelevant though, because the actual problem with the procurator/prefect dichotomy is that it doesn't actually exist. Philo and Josephus both call Pilate a procurator too, because the distinction between the offices is not really that distinct.