Evangelical Christians

[Guest]

2 hours ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

How you do you know if he's ever met someone who called themselves an evangelical?  Presumably he'd read the thread and saw you had already done so.  If that qualifies as "knowing" you, then he was demonstrably wrong, because you had already self identified at that point.  Before you agreed with him that you don't know anyone that would self-identify that way.  After you'd already done it.  This is a confusing turn of events.  I'm just going to leave it at that.

Enjoy your walk with the lord, man.  

I've never heard anyone self identify as an evangelical.  I did not read the entire thread and did not see Rex identify as such.  Also, there is a large difference between adopting someone else's term for the sake of conversation and self identifying with a term.  When in Europe, sometimes people will ask if I'm a southerner or from the south of the US.  Personally, I wouldn't self identify as a southerner and instead identify as a Texan and I consider the two things to be distinct.  But I don't always feel like explaining all this to those outside of the US and I know what they're getting at and so sometimes I just answer with "yes."  Would you say this is the same as self identifying as a southerner?

There is not a consensus definition for what constitutes an evangelical.  Does is just mean protestant?  Or low church protestant?  Or those who like Billy Graham?  Or politically active conservative Christians?  Or whatever a given sociologist or pollster defines it to be to best fit their study?  I don't know.  Nobody knows.  Few people even bother to ask. 

"Depending on how you define the term, evangelicals comprise between 7 percent and 47 percent of the American population."  Wouldn't you agree that this is a massive range and opens the term for one to define it how it suites their purposes?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/evangelical-christian/418236/

 

1 hour ago, David Dennison said:

There's a good amount of doubt among scholars.

What are the names of those Jewish and Roman historians?

Is there really?  Serious doubt among some non insignificant number of scholars of this subject and period of history?  I'd be interested in seeing your support for this from scholars of this specific subject and period of history - not just from some person with a phd in any unrelated subject. 

I have a quote for you from an actual leading expert on this subject.  He is also an outspoken religious skeptic and certainty no advocate for Christianity:

"Every week I receive two or three e-mails asking me whether Jesus existed as a human being. When I started getting these e-mails, some years ago now, I thought the question was rather peculiar and I did not take it seriously. Of course Jesus existed. Everyone knows he existed. Don’t they?

But the questions kept coming, and soon I began to wonder: Why are so many people asking? ...I discovered, to my surprise, an entire body of literature devoted to the question of whether or not there ever was a real man, Jesus.

I was surprised because I am trained as a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity, and for thirty years I have written extensively on the historical Jesus, the Gospels, the early Christian movement, and the history of the church’s first three hundred years. Like all New Testament scholars, I have read thousands of books and articles in English and other European languages on Jesus, the New Testament, and early Christianity. But I was almost completely unaware—as are most of my colleagues in the field—of this body of skeptical literature.

I should say at the outset that none of this literature is written by scholars trained in New Testament or early Christian studies teaching at the major, or even the minor, accredited theological seminaries, divinity schools, universities, or colleges of North America or Europe (or anywhere else in the world). Of the thousands of scholars of early Christianity who do teach at such schools, none of them, to my knowledge, has any doubts that Jesus existed. 

The reality is that whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist."

-Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist

https://strangenotions.com/skeptic-bart-ehrman-on-whether-jesus-really-existed/

Edited May 17, 2018 by Guest

[In10se 175]

Damn, you bitches are still rambling about these cults

[David Dennison 18662]

3 minutes ago, Aphelion said:

I've never heard anyone self identify as an evangelical.  I did not read the entire thread and did not see Rex identify as such.  Also, there is a large difference between adopting someone else's term for the sake of conversation and self identifying with a term.  When in Europe, sometimes people will ask if I'm a southerner or from the south of the US.  Personally, I wouldn't self identify as a southerner and instead identify as a Texan and I consider the two things to be distinct.  But I don't always feel like explaining all this to those outside of the US and I know what they're getting at and so sometimes I just answer with "yes."  Would you say this is the same as self identifying as a southerner?

There is not a consensus definition for what constitutes an evangelical.  Does is just mean protestant?  Or low church protestant?  Or those who like Billy Graham?  Or politically active conservative Christians?  Or whatever a given sociologist or pollster defines it to be to best fit their study?  I don't know.  Nobody knows.  Few people even bother to ask. 

"Depending on how you define the term, evangelicals comprise between 7 percent and 47 percent of the American population."  Wouldn't you agree that this is a massive range and opens the term for one to define it how it suites their purposes?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/evangelical-christian/418236/

 

Is there really?  Serious doubt among some non insignificant number of scholars of this subject and period of history?  I'd be interested in seeing your support for this from scholars of this specific subject and period of history - not just from some person with a phd in any unrelated subject. 

I have a quote for you from an actual leading expert on this subject.  He is also an outspoken religious skeptic and certainty no advocate for Christianity:

"Every week I receive two or three e-mails asking me whether Jesus existed as a human being. When I started getting these e-mails, some years ago now, I thought the question was rather peculiar and I did not take it seriously. Of course Jesus existed. Everyone knows he existed. Don’t they?

But the questions kept coming, and soon I began to wonder: Why are so many people asking? ...I discovered, to my surprise, an entire body of literature devoted to the question of whether or not there ever was a real man, Jesus.

I was surprised because I am trained as a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity, and for thirty years I have written extensively on the historical Jesus, the Gospels, the early Christian movement, and the history of the church’s first three hundred years. Like all New Testament scholars, I have read thousands of books and articles in English and other European languages on Jesus, the New Testament, and early Christianity. But I was almost completely unaware—as are most of my colleagues in the field—of this body of skeptical literature.

I should say at the outset that none of this literature is written by scholars trained in New Testament or early Christian studies teaching at the major, or even the minor, accredited theological seminaries, divinity schools, universities, or colleges of North America or Europe (or anywhere else in the world). Of the thousands of scholars of early Christianity who do teach at such schools, none of them, to my knowledge, has any doubts that Jesus existed. 

The reality is that whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist."

-Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist

https://strangenotions.com/skeptic-bart-ehrman-on-whether-jesus-really-existed/

Maybe. 

No one really knows.

Probably, though.

Or not.

[cactusflinthead 27594]

is this Axiom of Choice?  Shag handle?  @Aphelion

[cactusflinthead 27594]

7 minutes ago, In10se said:

Damn, you bitches are still rambling about these cults

We can start another for Fundamentalist Hindus if you'd like to try a different flavor?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Sure, Cookie and Rex, but what is belief, really? You’re acting like that’s some trivial thing with no output. That’s why the whole grace vs works debate is such bullshit: if your faith is the real thing a whole lot of other behaviors and aspects of your inner life show it.

So when I hear about how all it takes to be a a Christian is belief, that’s like saying all you need to be rich is money.

 

One of my favorite parables is the very tough parable of the wicked tenants as told in the Gospel of Luke, where he says

“‘The stone the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone’

 

Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

 

I had a pastor at one point who had a short prayer given to him in seminary that he repeated once to me:

“Lord, break me.”

 

If your faith is so whole and complete that you have no doubts intruding into your heart or sin between yourself and the divine, you don’t need that prayer, so good for you.

 

But I do live in doubt and sin. All I can do about it is fall on the stone.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your post; I mostly agree with it all. If you’ve truly been changed and transformed through Grace and Faith, it’s a circuitious thing. You might stray, but generally won’t go too far. Like you, I need all the help I can get and I ask to be broken all the time. The worst thing I do is start to reconstruct with the bricks of my own self-will, ambition and ideas.

That being said, I don’t know Briskets walk or where he is on his spiritual journey, but I wish him well. He seems more troubled than most, based on posting behavior trend degradation over the last few months, so in an effort to help I think I over corrected and came off as an asshole to him and I apologize big guy. My bad.

[Jack Burton 35]

When you go to church on Sundays and give money, please recognize that youre subsidizing a fat virgin's house, car, cable, phone bill, and utilities.

[blackmarketbaby 118]

So when everyone does it, everyone is equally guilty regardless the validity of character they are justified in protecting religiously, politically, economically, and relatively relating to acting the same way using different excuses educated as facts humanity has the right to tell humans who they are each generation playing reality's games of hide and seek what is really going on.

[cactusflinthead 27594]

20 minutes ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

Thanks for your post; I mostly agree with it all. If you’ve truly been changed and transformed through Grace and Faith, it’s a circuitious thing. You might stray, but generally won’t go too far. Like you, I need all the help I can get and I ask to be broken all the time. The worst thing I do is start to reconstruct with the bricks of my own self-will, ambition and ideas.

That being said, I don’t know Briskets walk or where he is on his spiritual journey, but I wish him well. He seems more troubled than most, based on posting behavior trend degradation over the last few months, so in an effort to help I think I over corrected and came off as an asshole to him and I apologize big guy. My bad.

Your name on the Shag was what?

[F250 28700]

22 minutes ago, Jack Burton said:

When you go to church on Sundays and give money, please recognize that youre subsidizing a fat virgin's house, car, cable, phone bill, and utilities.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Your name on the Shag was what?

Khorn7, I mostly lurked

[Anastasis 23398]

22 minutes ago, Jack Burton said:

When you go to church on Sundays and give money, please recognize that youre subsidizing a fat virgin's house, car, cable, phone bill, and utilities.

oh this is good. 

[Cacti 191]

33 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

is this Axiom of Choice?  Shag handle?  @Aphelion

Surly Aphelion = Shag Axiom of Choice = Hornfans Coelacanth?

Maybe. 

No one really knows.

Probably, though.

In any case, Coelacanth (among others) contributed to lively, in depth and informative religious discussions on HF. I guess those discussions, some of which date back to 2010, are forever lost. Too bad. 

 

Edited May 17, 2018 by Cacti

[cactusflinthead 27594]

13 minutes ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

Khorn7, I mostly lurked

Check. I remember you. Thanks.

[cactusflinthead 27594]

12 minutes ago, Cacti said:

Surly Aphelion = Shag Axiom of Choice = Hornfans Coelacanth?

Maybe. 

No one really knows.

Probably, though.

In any case, Coelacanth (among others) contributed to lively, in depth and informative religious discussions on HF. I guess those discussions, some of which date back to 2010, are forever lost. Too bad. 

 

I seem to recall a brief flurry that Axiom was an alt for Escriva. I barely lurked on HF for about three games, so me no sabe Coelecanth, but that sounds like it might make sense.  I'm going to stick to my gunz on this one. I still haven't figured out who FCHorn is in this incarnation. I picked this name long ago in the intertubz. I've decided to goad those that chose a different handle to hide. at least for now

[RPM 26232]

5 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

what was your handle on the shag? I am going to start calling out names I do not know. 

[BrickHorn 18197]

10 hours ago, Brian Fantana said:

That's a weird belief, honestly. I'm not a believer in God personally, but I have little doubt that he was a real person that existed. Almost all scholars of antiquity agree.

Jesus is a mirage.  Scholars who believe he existed do so largely out of momentum.  They do not have solid evidence to support their view.  Two flawed excerpts of Josephus - both almost certainly insertions or revisions - are pretty much it.  

The non-secular record (I.e. the New Testament) is historically inaccurate, self-contradictory, and clearly mythological.  Read in order, it’s clear that Jesus originated as a fairly basic myth and the supposed facts of his life were elaborated over time by various authors as needed to make certain theological points. 

If a Jesus ever existed, he bore almost zero resemblance to the Jesus of the Gospels.  

[Guest]

1 hour ago, BrickHorn said:

Jesus is a mirage.  Scholars who believe he existed do so largely out of momentum.  They do not have solid evidence to support their view.  Two flawed excerpts of Josephus - both almost certainly insertions or revisions - are pretty much it.  

"Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. Just to read the ancient sources requires expertise in a range of ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and often Aramaic, Syriac, and Coptic, not to mention the modern languages of scholarship (for example, German and French). And that is just for starters. Expertise requires years of patiently examining ancient texts and a thorough grounding in the history and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity, the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, both pagan and Jewish, knowledge of the history of the Christian church and the development of its social life and theology, and, well, lots of other things. It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure." - Bart Ehrman

"There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that anymore." - Richard A. Burridge

""In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." - Michael Grant

Edited May 17, 2018 by Guest

[BrickHorn 18197]

You know better than to rely on an appeal to authority. 

And look at Ehrman’s description of an “expert” carefully.  He explicitly says that an expert is someone who has a thorough grounding in “the history of the Christian  church.”  What is that history, as it applies to Christianity’s origins?  For millennia, church historians have based their understanding on clearly fantastical writings like the Gospels and Acts.  It should not be shocking at all that someone trained to read mythology as history assumes the mythical hero actually existed.

Edited May 17, 2018 by BrickHorn

[BrickHorn 18197]

And Biblical scholars may largely agree that Jesus existed as a historical figure, but they can’t seem to agree about who he was.  One scholar argues this diversity of opinion isn’t an “academic embarrassment” and nothing but theology disguised as scholarship:

• Historical Jesus research is becoming something of a scholarly bad joke. There were always historians who said it could not be done because of historical problems. There were always theologians who said it should not be done because of theological objections. And there were always scholars who said the former when they meant the latter. Those, however, were negative indignities. What is happening now is rather a positive one. It is the number of competent and even eminent scholars producing pictures of Jesus at wide variance with one another. . .Even under the disciplines of attempting to envision Jesus against his own most proper Jewish background, it seems we can have as many pictures as there are exegetes. . . But that stunning diversity is an academic embarrassment. It is impossible to avoid the suspicion that historical Jesus research is a very safe place to do theology and call it history, to do autobiography and call it biography.”
• (The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, John Dominic Crossan, Kindle location 422-430).

So all these scholars can’t be right about who the real Jesus was.  Indeed, the vast majority must be wrong.  Which raises the question: are any of them right?

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

You know better than to rely on an appeal to authority. 

And look at Ehrman’s description of an “expert” carefully.  He explicitly says that an expert is someone who has a thorough grounding in “the history of the Christian  church.”  What is that history, as it applies to Christianity’s origins?  For millennia, church historians have based their understanding on clearly fantastical writings like the Gospels and Acts.  It should not be shocking at all that someone trained to read mythology as history assumes the mythical hero actually existed.

An appeal to authority is better than an appeal to nothing at all.  Why do you think that it is unanimous among historians of this period (including the many religious skeptics) that Jesus was a real historical figure?  Conspiracy?

Ehrman spends most of his time writing on the subject known as the "historical Jesus," which seeks to strip out any perceived myth from his life.  That is true for many of the scholars of this period who are historians, not religious apologists.  They all agree that Jesus was a real historical figure.  

[BrickHorn 18197]

1 minute ago, Aphelion said:

An appeal to authority is better than an appeal to nothing at all.  

Right.  The fact that there is no credible evidence supporting the historical Jesus is precisely why you resorted to an appeal to authority.  

[Guest]

1 minute ago, BrickHorn said:

Right.  The fact that there is no credible evidence supporting the historical Jesus is precisely why you resorted to an appeal to authority.  

Of course there is evidence.  Unless you think the scholars I quoted are just lying about the evidence they mention.  Or unless you think that there is consensus among the scholars of this period that Jesus was a real historical figure for no particular reason or possibly nefarious reasons.  I could post evidence here, but I'm not going to because you could easily find it yourself if you earnestly looked for it and I don't feel like pretending that this is not the case.

You didn't answer my question:

Why do you think that it is unanimous among historians of this period (including the many religious skeptics) that Jesus was a real historical figure?  Conspiracy?

[BrickHorn 18197]

20 minutes ago, Aphelion said:

Why do you think that it is unanimous among historians of this period (including the many religious skeptics) that Jesus was a real historical figure?  Conspiracy?

Conspiracy?  No.  That’s stupid.  

There could be any number of reasons why supposed experts collectively get an answer wrong.  Why did the foremost scientists of antiquity misunderstand cosmology, virology, economics, etc.?  Smart people sometimes get the answer wrong, and sometimes they err in packs.  

The study of history is particularly ripe for propagation and amplification of errors.  Historians rely heavily on the conclusions of others, and, unlike the physical sciences, there are few checkpoints to force course correction.  For centuries, the history of Christianity was written by the Church.  Whether innocently or not, Church historians filled in details as needed to fit how they believed the story should go, which was, in any event, ultimately based on fiction from the NT.  They also selectively discarded works by early Christians that did not fit what they believed should be the true history of the Church.  

It is impossible to decouple the vast trove of Christian historical work from its ultimately mythical source material.  So historians who are trained to rely on predecessor scholars really have little recourse.  They point back to the guy before him, in an ever-recursive appeal to authority.  “All those guys said Jesus existed.  Who am I to disagree?”

Scholars who have broken that chain of analytical outsourcing and taken a close look at the original source materials (the epistles, the Gospels, Acts) often come to the opposite conclusion: Jesus was a myth elaborated and misinterpreted by later authors and adherents.  

So that’s my view on appeal to authority in this case.  You relied on a logical fallacy that is particularly problematic in this context.  And you offer nothing else to evidence the existence of a historical Jesus.  The original sources do not support your view, so what else do you have?

Edited May 17, 2018 by BrickHorn

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

The study of history is particularly ripe for propagation and amplification of errors.  Historians rely heavily on the conclusions of others, and, unlike the physical sciences, there are few checkpoints to force course correction.  

 

So your argument is that the entire discipline of the study of history is ultimately not trustworthy?  Wouldn't it follow that you should be skeptical of all historical facts since the very foundation of the study of history is not to be trusted? 

[BrickHorn 18197]

Your game of deflection is tiresome.  Choose to believe in fairy tales if you want.  But Jesus is a myth and no amount of self-defeating epistemic nihilism will change that. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, BrickHorn said:

Your game of deflection is tiresome.  Choose to believe in fairy tales if you want.  But Jesus is a myth and no amount of self-defeating epistemic nihilism will change that. 

What am I deflecting?  I'm addressing most of your points and I'm the one actually providing facts and support for my claims.   I honestly don't know what you believe I am supposedly deflecting.  Is it this point?

42 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

Scholars who have broken that chain of analytical outsourcing and taken a close look at the original source materials (the epistles, the Gospels, Acts) often come to the opposite conclusion: Jesus was a myth elaborated and misinterpreted by later authors and adherents.  

The scholars who've studied the topic and have done the most work on breaking the "chain of analytical outsourcing and taken a close look at the original source material" all agree that Jesus actually existed, which is the subject we are debating.  Whether or not they think extra myths were added to him (which some, but not all, do) is beside the point.

Do you think I'm deflecting the appeal to authority accusation?  You clearly wrongly accused me of that.  Appeal to authority is when one claims that a fact must be true because the authorities believe it.  But I never stated that.  I offered quotes from scholars of the subject against the claim that "There's a good amount of doubt among scholars" and against your claim that " Scholars who believe he existed do so largely out of momentum."  Quoting scholars against these claims is valid evidence for refutation.  I also stated that appealing to authority (i.e. if one were to state that a claim is true because authorities believe it) is better than providing no support at all (stating a claim is true merely because I say so).  But this is not making an appeal to authority fallacy; this is a comment on appeal to authority vs. simply stating ones desires.  

I

[BrickHorn 18197]

Half a dozen posts later, and you’re still squarely resorting to appeal to authority (all while insisting, Trump-style, that you’re doing no such thing).  I have neither the time nor patience to indulge your gaslighting bullshit.  

Believe whatever fairy tales you want.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

Half a dozen posts later, and you’re still squarely resorting to appeal to authority (all while insisting, Trump-style, that you’re doing no such thing).  I have neither the time nor patience to indulge your gaslighting bullshit.  

Believe whatever fairy tales you want.

Oh yeah?  Well, I think you’re a logic fallacy, even though I can’t articulate why but if I say it enough it must be true.  And you remind me of Mussolini.  And I think you’re the one who believes silly things and I’m going to rage quit now.

 

[David Dennison 18662]

33 minutes ago, Aphelion said:

What am I deflecting?  I'm addressing most of your points and I'm the one actually providing facts and support for my claims.   I honestly don't know what you believe I am supposedly deflecting.  Is it this point?

The scholars who've studied the topic and have done the most work on breaking the "chain of analytical outsourcing and taken a close look at the original source material" all agree that Jesus actually existed, which is the subject we are debating.  Whether or not they think extra myths were added to him (which some, but not all, do) is beside the point.

Do you think I'm deflecting the appeal to authority accusation?  You clearly wrongly accused me of that.  Appeal to authority is when one claims that a fact must be true because the authorities believe it.  But I never stated that.  I offered quotes from scholars of the subject against the claim that "There's a good amount of doubt among scholars" and against your claim that " Scholars who believe he existed do so largely out of momentum."  Quoting scholars against these claims is valid evidence for refutation.  I also stated that appealing to authority (i.e. if one were to state that a claim is true because authorities believe it) is better than providing no support at all (stating a claim is true merely because I say so).  But this is not making an appeal to authority fallacy; this is a comment on appeal to authority vs. simply stating ones desires.  

I

Counter point.

[F250 28700]

LOL

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, Aphelion said:

Oh yeah?  Well, I think you’re a logic fallacy, even though I can’t articulate why but if I say it enough it must be true.  And you remind me of Mussolini.  And I think you’re the one who believes silly things and I’m going to rage quit now.

 

lol.

[BrickHorn 18197]

28 minutes ago, Aphelion said:

Oh yeah?  Well, I think you’re a logic fallacy, even though I can’t articulate why but if I say it enough it must be true.  And you remind me of Mussolini.  And I think you’re the one who believes silly things and I’m going to rage quit now.

 

Not rage.  Annoyance.  The kind you might feel if a pesky child kept tugging on your shirt and demanding you consider his half-baked theories on the mechanics of Santa Claus’s sleigh.  Except worse, because at least a child has a legitimate developmental excuse for magical thinking.

[softlynow 1785]

4 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

Jesus is a mirage.  Scholars who believe he existed do so largely out of momentum.  They do not have solid evidence to support their view.  Two flawed excerpts of Josephus - both almost certainly insertions or revisions - are pretty much it.  

The non-secular record (I.e. the New Testament) is historically inaccurate, self-contradictory, and clearly mythological.  Read in order, it’s clear that Jesus originated as a fairly basic myth and the supposed facts of his life were elaborated over time by various authors as needed to make certain theological points. 

If a Jesus ever existed, he bore almost zero resemblance to the Jesus of the Gospels.  

Are we still on this? I thought we settled all this in '03 or '04. 

[Sawbonz 27443]

1 hour ago, Aphelion said:

Appeal to authority is when one claims that a fact must be true because the authorities believe it. 

 

you'll have to forgive Brick. I don't think they actually teach logic in law school, just pursuasion

Edited May 17, 2018 by Sawbonz

[hayden_horn 11360]

On 5/15/2018 at 9:50 PM, Rex Kramer said:

Why don’t you fuck your own face. 

ladies and gentlemen, this man is a christian!

[JBJ 3649]

Appeal to authority is a deductive fallacy but it is rationally sound.  The historical nature of anything involves rational, not deductive, logic.

So you are strengthening his argument when you say he is appealing to authority.

 

Conversely, it's not rational to ask for historical references to Jesus then accuse him of appealing to authority when they are produced.

 

Also, there's dozens of Rabbinic and Christian writings from that time period, but I would guess that you'd dispute the authority of them.

 

I can also name an aurhority who denies the existence of Jesus and is educated in at least a related field - Robert Price.  Surprised he hasn't shown up here yet.

Edited May 17, 2018 by JBJ

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

ladies and gentlemen, this man is a christian!

Yep. What’s your point?  That Christians can’t cuss on message boards, gratuitously insult people, and go family style on cougars?

[F250 28700]

5 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

ladies and gentlemen, this man is a christian!

Eh, while I've never told someone to fuck their own face (It's good retort by the way), I have called someone a fuck face.

[David Dennison 18662]

13 minutes ago, JBJ said:

Appeal to authority is a deductive fallacy but it is rationally sound.  The historical nature of anything involves rational, not deductive, logic.

So you are strengthening his argument when you say he is appealing to authority.

 

Conversely, it's not rational to ask for historical references to Jesus then accuse him of appealing to authority when they are produced.

 

Also, there's dozens of Rabbinic and Christian writings from that time period, but I would guess that you'd dispute the authority of them.

He's not producing any contemporary accounts of Jesus of Nazareth. You know, from when he was alive.

Because there are none.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, F250 said:

Eh, while I've never told someone to fuck their own face (It's good retort by the way), I have called someone a fuck face.

Hayden is of the opinion - like many people - that Christians cannot be hypocrites. When in reality everyone on the planet is a hypocrite. 

[hayden_horn 11360]

1 minute ago, Rex Kramer said:

Hayden is of the opinion - like many people - that Christians cannot be hypocrites. When in reality everyone on the planet is a hypocrite. 

actually, no, that's not the case. i have myself told someone to fuck their own face. i love the turn of phrase and the imagery invoked. i just found it pretty goddamn funny that you choose to hold yourself out as evangelical, sort of, and then go straight into the ugly language in a thread about christianity. it's not like we were discussing something like buechele vs ehlinger, where it can get a bit rowdy. 

[JBJ 3649]

6 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

He's not producing any contemporary accounts of Jesus of Nazareth. You know, from when he was alive.

Because there are none.

If that's how you define contemporary accounts.  Then, we have exactly zero contemporary accounts of anything in classic history.

We literally have hundreds of documents in the following 50 years, though - including eyewitness accounts.

Edited May 17, 2018 by JBJ

[David Dennison 18662]

2 minutes ago, JBJ said:

If that's how you define contemporary accounts.  Then, we have exactly zero contemporary accounts of anything in classic history.

We literally have hundreds of documents in the following 50 years, though - including eyewitness accounts.

That's not true at all. There are plenty of first hand accounts of things that happened in classic history. 

There are none of Jesus of Nazareth. 

[WhatTheBuck 28717]

12 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Can we get a religion or philosophy board similar to the old quacks board so we can sequester these threads away from politics?

Religion is a political enterprise. 

[Guest]

Axiom - 2

Brick - 0

Because Brick lost in the free will argument of yesteryear too. Brick is a wicked smaht guy and I like him, but for some reason Axiom gets him all defensive and ugly when he's usually just whip smaht and funny.

[JBJ 3649]

15 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

That's not true at all. There are plenty of first hand accounts of things that happened in classic history. 

There are none of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Let's start with the most powerful man in the world at the time, Emperor Tiberius.  Find me one account.

 

And there are first-hand accounts of Jesus, just not written before his death, which was your criteria.

Edited May 17, 2018 by JBJ

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

actually, no, that's not the case. i have myself told someone to fuck their own face. i love the turn of phrase and the imagery invoked. i just found it pretty goddamn funny that you choose to hold yourself out as evangelical, sort of, and then go straight into the ugly language in a thread about christianity. it's not like we were discussing something like buechele vs ehlinger, where it can get a bit rowdy. 

I’m glad my tactics amuse you. God forbid we treat this thread too seriously. 

[Bozo_Casanova 26299]

16 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Mr. Bozo, may I please introduce you to Mr. Brick. 

No thanks, I find the whole historicity debate tiresome and, for what it's worth, irrelevant to the point. Among all the difficult things Christians are signed up for, believing that our mandate came from somewhere or that the central figure actually existed at some point seems like a pretty light lift.  

Edited May 17, 2018 by Bozo_Casanova

[Anastasis 23398]

3 hours ago, JBJ said:

Also, there's dozens of Rabbinic and Christian writings...

The rabbinical references actually bring to light a particular argument that undermines the jesus myth argument.

There was great tension between the jewish religious establishment and the jesus movement from the very beginning and it only grew stronger over the first couples centuries. The rabbinical tradition that emerged during this time transmits  a few things about jesus, none of them complimentary. They refer to his crucifixion, they call him a sorcerer, they even have this whole clever play on words in the process of describing him as the bastard child of a Roman soldier.  All the rabbinical references generally take a posture of discrediting Jesus. Never once do they just make the most straightforward argument to discredit if you beg the myth hypothesis: "Jesus never existed, he was a invention of gnostic Paul."   

Edited May 17, 2018 by Anastasis