God as the ultimate child abuser

[Elok]

Originally posted by Lorizael
This is why I think there was probably something the gospel writers were basing their new cult off of, but it didn't necessarily have to be Jesus as described in the gospels.

That is quite possible. I'm only fighting Agathon's suggestion that Jesus might have somehow been invented from whole cloth and become wildly popular in no time despite his story directly contradicting people's own knowledge of past events.

This is debatable, and I don't feel like debating it.

Fair enough.

[Alexander's Horse]

amusing but no cigar aggie

your whole case seem to rest on

a. rejecting religious text as primary sources because they are religious

b. denying the authorship or existence of contemporary writers like Peter, James and John, or their relationship with jesus

c. putting great weight on secular sources and then discounting those mentions that do exist

d. putting no weight at all on the fact that many of the witnesses, if we accept they existed, were willing to die for their accounts

I mean really, its a long bow

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
amusing but no cigar aggie

your whole case seem to rest on

a. rejecting religious text as primary sources because they are religious

Which I've made a case for in previous posts based on human religious behaviour. It's not like I did an Asher in this case. You are free to address the case. The fact is that even the earliest Christian texts were written well after the events of Jesus' life, and most likely by people who weren't witnesses. For example: the Gospel of Matthew is attributed to Jesus' disciple Matthew, but there is absolutely no evidence of this and the later acceptance of this view by the church seems to have been entirely arbitrary.

The problem we face is that everyone who grows up in the west, including atheists, is bombarded with the story of Jesus' life and the lives of the Saints as if they were established fact. We are so used to it, that it sounds strange if anyone chooses to deny it. But the fact remains that when you look at the actual evidence for this interpretation, it simply isn't there. These "facts" were decided upon by people long after the event, who were constructing a new religion, and in no way shape or form represent an honest appraisal of the evidence available to them.

b. denying the authorship or existence of contemporary writers like Peter, James and John, or their relationship with jesus

That's unfair. I simply denied that we really knew anything about them, and that Christian interpretations of their lives were likely made up. This isn't a denial based on nothing, but a denial based on the complete lack of evidence as to who these people were and what they did. You are free to come up with some independent evidence that doesn't suffer from the problem of being a religious text.

c. putting great weight on secular sources and then discounting those mentions that do exist

Which ones? Josephus' mention is a known forgery. The sources that come after him tend to say that Christians existed and that they believed X, not that X was true.

As the commerical said: "Where's the beef?"

d. putting no weight at all on the fact that many of the witnesses, if we accept they existed, were willing to die for their accounts

According to whom? We don't really know who wrote the gospels, and modern scholarship has thrown traditional claims into doubt. Compare them with works of presocratic philosophy. We know that the presocratic philosophers existed, because they are mentioned by contemporaries. We also know that their works were written by them because their quotations are often identified by multiple sources (including each other). Even then, our picture of their lives and their ideas is notoriously incomplete, and we have much more independent evidence about them than we have about early Christian authors, Jesus Christ or the Apostles. The latter were held to exist via the weight of tradition, not because of the the weight of evidence, for there is none.

[Dracon II]

Agreed. The burden of proof should be on believers to prove his existence and ministry... not on non-believers to prove he didn't exist at all.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

That is quite possible. I'm only fighting Agathon's suggestion that Jesus might have somehow been invented from whole cloth and become wildly popular in no time despite his story directly contradicting people's own knowledge of past events.

That isn't quite what I said. I said there is very little evidence that this man existed.

Some commentators argue that he didn't, and that the early christian tradition is not based on the life of a person, but are mythological in intent.

But that isn't my main point. My main point is that even if Jesus did exist, the evidence linking him to the views of most Christians is virtually non-existent. If we were to make a modern historical case concerning the veracity of the Christian interpretation of Jesus' life and works, we would conclude that there was no real evidence.

Look, no-one seems to have written about this man when he was alive. The first writings about him come much later, and we have no idea who wrote them or why they were written (and the Christian tradition messed this up by simply asserting that they were written by various people mentioned in them). These works are simply there, and most obviously represent the state of the Christ cult at the time when they were written, and for the particular author who wrote them.

Not only are these works inconsistent, but there were other works written at the same time that Christians deny as apocryphal. There is no evidentiary basis for this denial. It's a fine thing to say that the early writings are evidence for Jesus life, while at the same time ignoring other texts written at the same time which give a different account. On what basis are these judged apocryphal? The answer seems to be that they don't fit in with later views of what Christianity is supposed to mean, but that means that it is these later views that are driving the interpretation of the early works, and not the early works determining the interpretation of Christianity. In any case, we have a load of early "gospels" and writings, and we have no idea in most cases who wrote them, and why or where they were written. We have no idea whether they represent Jesus actual life, or whether they are the "official version" of his successors. We just don't know.

Later people inherited this stuff and had to make decisions on what was going to count and what was not going to count as "official" Christianity. Because they didn't have much evidence, they had to make judgement calls or simple snap decisions. They had to do this since they wanted a coherent religion, and the primary sources for this religion were not coherent.

But if we are historians who are interested in reconstructing what we know of Jesus actual life, and not in establishing a coherent religion based on it, then we find that the evidence for the former does not justify the claims of the latter. The early church fathers and assorted people wanted to make a coherent religion. This necessitated them making **** up and making arbitrary decisions.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Agathon

As the commerical said: "Where's the beef?"

Saint Paul said it best

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

1 Corinthians 1 : 21-24

And that brings us back to the topic, you Greek

[Elok]

Cover your ears, Aggie, I'm about to say a dirty word:

"Oral traditions."

That's right, there were days when people didn't automatically dismiss everything that wasn't written down. They allowed history to be made without extensive documentation. They even used their traditions to judge written works' validity, if you can imagine! I can only comfort you with the assurance that none of the barbarians involved got tenure, and remind you that these events took place in the benighted days long before the iMac.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok
Cover your ears, Aggie, I'm about to say a dirty word:

"Oral traditions."

That's right, there were days when people didn't automatically dismiss everything that wasn't written down. They allowed history to be made without extensive documentation. They even used their traditions to judge written works' validity, if you can imagine! I can only comfort you with the assurance that none of the barbarians involved got tenure, and remind you that these events took place in the benighted days long before the iMac.

Oral traditions are notoriously unreliable. In fact the existence of oral traditions supports my case rather than yours.

Oral traditions can maintain a fair amount of stability. The problem is that they don't start out that way. Consider the story of the Iliad, which is fairly stable. The events it is based upon are true, but the Iliad doesn't represent them very well except in the broad outline. What happened is that the stories were transmitted and changed until they reached a form that was aesthetically pleasing, whereupon the same story basically got repeated and repeated.

The idea that Christianity had a stable oral tradition right from the get go faces the insuperable obstacle that no oral tradition has that.

Consider what happens when you tell a story and it gets repeated and repeated by word of mouth. Often it will come back to you in a radically changed form. The reason is that every human being is a poet. Life is a series of more or less random events, and to make it intelligible we have to impose some sort of narrative form on it. Man the storyteller (muthopoietes), we should be called, not "Man the wise". Unfortunately, this involves pretty severe editing and creative license on our part.

The Gospel story is so obviously like this. It is much more a piece of art than it is a record of historical events. Remember we are dealing with a time where myth had a much more central role in human consciousness, so this would not have bothered the audience as much as it bothers us.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lorizael


Why would they be? Most didn't have the easy access to public education we have today, but does that make them dumber?

I think that most people didn't have as good of a diet as we have for one. Two, I don't think they were as mentally stimulated. Three, dumb is not the same as not intellectual, but I think they were both.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Elok


No, they were the same kind of critter as us,

Same species, but very different.

and many of them had far more experience with logic than the average human today, thanks to various intellectual traditions.

What is many? I don't think most of them used logic on a regular basis.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I don't think most of them used logic on a regular basis.

And you think most of us do today?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lorizael


And you think most of us do today?

'


I think living in todays world requires using logic more regularly, which is why stupid people get into so much trouble.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I think living in todays world requires using logic more regularly, which is why stupid people get into so much trouble.

When you say "so much trouble" do you mean "high paying management positions?"

[Elok]

No, I think he means "careers in television." Or possibly "degrees in sociology."

Agathon, of course there were conflicting accounts. We called them heresies, and quite notoriously moved to stamp them out based on our understanding of the correct story. This process may not meet with your approval, but it is hardly arbitrary or made up out of thin air, as you imply. Remember that we are not just talking about a pleasant story, but a fairly recent event of earth-shattering importance, an event around which a whole community was built. A bit different from an entertaining story like the Iliad. You shouldn't assume people are so stupid as to treat the two identically.

[Kidlicious]

Yes, well, compared to herding farm animals, all of those things require you to use logic more often.