120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[Keith&Co.]

Thanks for the snippet I wouldn't have bothered reading otherwise!

why this Jesus person became mythologized so greatly despite failing to meet the requirements that all myth heros must meet in order to become mythologized.

Probably the same way he was selected as a messiah despite failing all the prophecies about the coming messiah.

Marketing.

Wait...there is an Mythogical Heroes Official Requirements Checklist?

Yes, it's stapled to the left most upright of the wheeled goalpost.

 

[funinspace]

Thanks for the snippet I wouldn't have bothered reading otherwise!

why this Jesus person became mythologized so greatly despite failing to meet the requirements that all myth heros must meet in order to become mythologized.

Probably the same way he was selected as a messiah despite failing all the prophecies about the coming messiah.

Marketing.

Wait...there is an Mythogical Heroes Official Requirements Checklist?

Yes, it's stapled to the left most upright of the wheeled goalpost.

But why is there a velvet paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field near the goalpost?

 

[Atheos]

Lumpenproletariat, you continue to make baseless assertions, never dealing with the real and tangible evidence presented by myself and others in this thread.

You seem to be making some big deal about the uniqueness of the Jesus myth because supposedly the stuff was written down within 50 years of when it actually happened. You've continued to ignore the fact that as far as we can tell the stuff never actually happened, so when it was written down has nothing to do with anything, even if that somehow added credibility to the stories, which it doesn't.

I've personally spent a fair amount of time presenting plausible scenarios that agree in every way with the available evidence and do not require that anyone resort to believing that a magic man healed blindness, leprosy, paralysis and deformities with a touch.

To reiterate:

• There is no evidence that places the activities of the "Jesus" character in the time frame the narratives in the canonical gospels place him.
• There is abundant evidence that the earliest legends about the Jesus character were little else besides a collection of anecdotes without a time frame.
  • The Gospel of Peter, for example, has Jesus being executed around 100 BC.
  • The authentic Pauline epistles say absolutely nothing about the time frame of Jesus.
  • Paul never mentions any of the towns in which Jesus supposedly lived, the miracles he supposedly did or the people with whom he supposedly interacted.
  • Even if one concedes that a "Jesus" character existed during the time frame in question, for over 30 years the only things written about this character are nothing but nebulous references to someone who for all intents and purposes could have never stepped foot on planet earth.
• There is compelling evidence that the stories of Jesus incorporated details from pre-existing mythological characters, so much so that Justin Martyr recognized the similarities and said that they were no different than what others said about "sons of Jupiter."
• It is entirely feasible that the Jesus myth began with the simple version presented in the Pauline epistles and evolved over several decades with anecdotes being added.
  • The miracle periscopes gave Jesus various powers appropriated from well known Greek and Roman gods such as Bacchus, Asclepius, etc.
  • "Mark" collected many of these anecdotes and provided an adoptionist story with Yahweh choosing his "son" from the disciples of John the Baptist.
  • Mark places Jesus in the same time frame as John the Baptist and Pilate, but provides little else by way of backdrop.
  • As fans clamored for more childhood details the story of Perseus provided a tidy framework for the author(s) of "Matthew" to use, adding the drama of an infancy menace, a flight to a far-away land and a return to the homeland to perform many incredible deeds.
  • "Luke" spares us Matthew's drama and contradicts his birth narrative gratuitously, concentrating his efforts on consolidating the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist.
  • The miracle periscopes that everyone hungered for were pretty much kept intact.

Since the stories already existed in one form or another for hundreds of years before the Jesus myth started getting traction it's no surprise that the written versions of the story could "quickly" appropriate all those details (even though 30+ years is plenty of time for legend-building to run amok). Others have pointed out the extreme amount of disagreement over what (if anything) Jesus did as a human being, and the decision was made by the council of Nicea (circa 325 AD) to summarily pronounce all versions of the Jesus myth that didn't include an actual earthly life as heretical. Books were burned, heretics were persecuted, competing religions were outlawed and the victors wrote the history books to hide their guilt.

Say it all you want to. Scream it if it makes you feel better. But there is no evidence Jesus ever existed that is any better than the evidence that Santa Claus exists. The existence of people telling stories is not evidence of the truth of the stories. Agenda-filled testimony is the worst evidence imaginable.

 

[bilby]

Thanks for the snippet I wouldn't have bothered reading otherwise!

why this Jesus person became mythologized so greatly despite failing to meet the requirements that all myth heros must meet in order to become mythologized.

Probably the same way he was selected as a messiah despite failing all the prophecies about the coming messiah.

Marketing.

Wait...there is an Mythogical Heroes Official Requirements Checklist?

Yes, it's stapled to the left most upright of the wheeled goalpost.

But why is there a velvet paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field near the goalpost?

Eddy's in the space-time continuum. It's his sofa.

 

[Atheos]

What made Jesus stand out? Why aren't there several other similar messiah figures?

The question to answer is: Why does Jesus stand out among all the many possible preaching messiah prophet figures during this period of history?

If he does not stand out, then there should be other similar messiah figures or hero figures who were made into gods during this time. Who would they be? Not just the 1st century -- how about from 500 BC to 1500 AD. Who is a comparable reported historical figure who displayed superhuman power and who was worshiped as a god?

That's just the point: Jesus was not a "reported historical figure." Jesus was a myth from the get-go. There is no historical evidence necessitating that Jesus had to exist or the evidence would be different. Not one letter home talking about the great miracle worker, not a single pot-shard depicting the acts this person did, not a single record of what would have been significant disturbances had thousands of people flocked to him. You don't get to have it both ways. You can argue that he was such an obscure figure that he managed to live his whole life without making a blip on the historical record, but then the magnitude of people who believed he did all the miracles later would be far better explained by the lying skill of a few (or only 1) people making such bold claims decades later than an abundance of witnesses. Or you can argue that he was this well-known figure who made a big impression on his generation to explain the acceptance of these tales later, but then you run afoul of the very real fact that not one piece of evidence apart from these tales places him there. Using the tales as evidence that the tales are true is so absurd as to be laughable.

How did such a singular figure arise out from everyone else if he had no unusual power? What distinguished him to cause so many to make him into a god?

We've been over this before, and will continue to do so for as long as you make this ridiculous implication. Jesus is not a singular figure. His story is very similar to the stories of Perseus, Horus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithras and dozens of other epic hero legends. Heck, his story is so similar to the story of Moses that it's ridiculous that christians don't recognize how warmed-over the story is. Menaced by a powerful ruler as an infant, survived the menace by some extraordinary stroke of fortune, did something significant as a youth, lived for awhile in a far away land, came back to the land of his birth, performed many wonders but the bad old skeptics just wouldn't believe, triumphed in the end.

If ... and that's a big if ... Jesus actually existed and the original version of the Jesus legend presented by Paul (which only includes the crucifixion/resurrection/promotion to god's right hand) was based on this historical nugget of an itinerant preacher, there is no reason to believe he performed any miracles at all. He could have simply been a charismatic preacher who developed a tiny but intense cult following (a-la Jim Jones, Brigham Young, Marshall Applewhite or David Koresh). The marketing prowess of Paul is all that is necessary to explain why this cult grew and others petered out. The miracle stories came later. They are not evidence of witnesses, only believers.

The myth/legend grew with the telling and repeating of a story.

What myth? What was the myth at the beginning? Why aren't there other similar myths about other god/hero/savior figures? Why couldn't other myths/legends also grow from being repeated? Why only this one?

You've got to be shitting me. I've said this numerous times now. The myth at the beginning was the one presented in the authentic Pauline epistles. That's where we read about a Jesus who was nebulous. Paul never talks about Joseph, Mary, the manger scene, the wise men, the threat from Herod, the confounding of the temple rulers at age 12. Paul never mentions John the Baptist, Jesus's temptation in the wilderness, any of the miracles, any of the people or places Jesus visited. Paul never mentions anything that would place Jesus in recent history or put him at any specific location. Paul's Jesus is a nebulous god-myth who performed a sacrifice by dying and being resurrected to save humanity from their sins. Paul's Jesus communicated with Paul via visions and revelations. Paul's Jesus was no different from the epic hero sacrifices on behalf of others made by Prometheus, Horus, Perseus, Hercules. or Mithras. All these are hero/savior god figures. All of their stories bear remarkable similarities to the Jesus myth. For all we know these legends did grow from being repeated. Sheesh.

Whatever kernel of truth lies at the heart of it, the existence of the man, the character of the man, etc, is hard to determine.

Why is it so easy to determine in the case of Gautama and Simon Magus and others, but hard to determine in this case? One reasonable answer is that he actually did perform the miracle acts attributed to him in the legends.

This is absolutely hilarious. It's as if you're a poker player, bluffing because you have nothing. Okay, I'm calling your bluff with my royal flush. The existence of Simon Magus is every bit as difficult to verify as the existence of Jesus. All we have about him starts with "Acts," where he could very well be little else besides a plot device cooked up by the author to convince the already-convinced reader that somehow the magic tricks Peter did were so far superior to those did by Pharoah's magicians ... whoops, wrong myth ... Simon ... that even Simon was convinced.

Everything else written about Simon Magus was sourced from later christian writers and it includes evidence of legend building, such as the claim that Simon was God himself, descended to rescue his Ennoa (first thought, the source of creation). There are claims that Simon could levitate himself at will and fly.

Simon Magus need not have lived in order for these legends to grow or for someone to concoct the Simonean cult from Simon's infamy. Yet such a cult grew for centuries, ironically dying out not long after it was outlawed by the christian power brokers of the Nicean Council.

To summarize, Simon was a god-man who performed miracles and other works in a heroic effort to rescue the source of all creation from a horrid fate. Far from providing a counter-point to your Jesus myth, the myth of Simon Magus demonstrates yet again how common that sort of myth building was, and is a perfect parallel to your Jesus myth which succeeded at the tip of a sword and the Simonians who yielded to the power of that sword.

You mean apart from the literally hundreds of hero god saviors that existed before the Jesus myth was invented? Perseus, Hercules, Osiris, Horus, ect.

If these figures are real historical persons, they lived at least 1000 years earlier than any written source we have about them. And the legends about them accumulated over a period of 500 years or more.

So they are not comparable to the Jesus person whose reputation became established in less than 50 years after his death and for whom we have sources within that time frame. The earliest sources are even as little as 20 years later.

And by the same token Joseph Smith lived within the same decade as the written documentation we have about him. He was a heavily-witnessed miracle worker and a prophet. Do you give him the same respect you give your Jesus? Do you believe he actually performed miracles of healing, such as healing lameness, deadly diseases, curing deafness / mutism and casting out demons. Is it more likely that Joseph Smith actually did these things or is it more likely that his followers made them up? Don't bother with red herring arguments such as "but Joseph Smith was not considered a god" and simply answer that question first. Which is the more likely explanation?

The Paul epistles attest to the resurrection of Jesus, and these are mostly from the 50s AD. Also there is the Q document, which both Matthew and Luke used, which is from about 50 AD, and it narrates two of the Jesus miracle events plus also has one passage which refers to a number of the events without narrating them.

I notice you dance around the fact that Paul never mentions any miracles Jesus performed. His resurrection doesn't count in this context because there is nothing in Paul's references to the resurrection that require it to have happened on this planet at all. For all purposes, Paul's Jesus died and was resurrected in a spiritual place from which Jesus communicated with Paul through visions and revelations. Nothing Paul wrote required a Jesus who had recently lived and nothing he wrote puts Jesus in any particular location.

We have no idea what Q said. Claiming that it "narrates two of the Jesus miracle events" is misleading at best and downright fallacious if we choose not to mince words. There are no copies of Q in existence. The existence of Q is only inferred from portions of GMatt and GLuke that contain similar information not recorded in GMark. The date of Q is even less certain. Many quality scholars argue that Q never existed in the first place, citing the obvious question of "If it did and it was such an important source document during early christian development, how could it possibly have been completely lost forever?" Add to that the fact that Q is believed to be a collection of sayings of Jesus, not activities of Jesus and we have all we need to demonstrate just how horrid your knowledge of the subject matter is. This sort of argument is nothing but bluster, the sort of thing done when one has no argument to present but hopes that those reading/listening will be cowed by the certainty with which the argument is presented and fail to go look things up for himself. I'm not saying that's what you're doing here. In fact the evidence seems pretty strong that you lack the inclination to go and research this stuff for yourself and choose rather to simply go find apologetic websites and copy/paste (with some redaction possibly) such arguments uncritically.

There is nothing like this documenting the miracles of Perseus or Hercules or Osiris or Horus. Where are the other examples of historical persons for whom we have any credible evidence or sources relating the miracle acts they did, such as we have in the case of Jesus? Why is it that this one alone is the only one for whom there is any credible evidence?

But there is something like this documenting the miracles of Joseph Smith. And the sudden appearance of the Jesus miracles is easily attributed to the fact that they are adaptations of the deeds of Perseus along with the powers of earlier gods such as Bacchus, Asclepius and Poseidon. The stories already existed; they were appropriated by early Christians who didn't want their favorite god-myth to play second fiddle to other popular god-myths.

I've challenged you on this before in this thread

(above url):

Then why aren't there several of these Jesus myths? Why aren't there other characters, other names, in other places, where the same story unfolds and we would have several of them instead of only this one?

You mean like the myth of Simon Magus, after whom the Simonean cult thrived for centuries?

There are. Your lack of knowledge about the various non-canonical gospels is your problem, not mine.

But those sources give us the same Christ figure again, not someone else. You're supposed to give us examples of different hero myths similar to the Jesus one. Is there any other hero messiah figure in the non-canonical gospels than the Christ figure, or Jesus the Galilean? That's what you need to show. So again, where are the other Jesus-like myths?

You mean like the myth of Simon Magus, after whom the Simonean cult thrived for centuries? Or the mysteries of Mithras?

I'd recommend googling "Early Christian Writings" and reading up so you don't look so ill-informed about the subject matter at hand.

Those will all give the Jesus Christ figure again. I know that Simon Magus is contained in some of those writings. But here again the miracle stories don't come until centuries AFTER the character actually lived. There is nothing relating his miracles in the 1st-century references to him. They come only 2 centuries later. You need to give us an example of a mythic hero miracle-worker for whom there is evidence near to the time he lived, not 2 centuries later.

So again, where are the Jesus-like mythical heros who are supposed to be a dime-a-dozen?

Except for that pesky Joseph Smith, whose miracles are documented in the same decade. These exclusions you keep tossing up in order to draw a circle around your favorite invisible friend and exclude everyone elses are really humorous. There is nothing -- nothing fantastic or incredible about when the stories appear, how many of them appear, etc. There is nothing incredible or fantastic about god-myths featuring humans born of the union between a god and a human woman. Such stories truly were a dime a dozen. There is nothing incredible or fantastic about legends of people performing all sorts of miracles. Such stories were literally a dime a dozen. There is nothing incredible or fantastic about legends growing overnight. You keep adding zero + zilch + nada + aught + nothing and presenting it as if somehow it adds up to a million. It doesn't. Your arguments are bereft of substance.

Additionally it would be helpful for you to be aware of the magnitude of hero-gods that inspired the legend of "Jesus the Magic Jew."

Why don't you give an example of these? They are persons in history for whom we have sources near their time reporting on the miracle acts they did? Why are you claiming these Jesus-like myth heros are all over the place but can't give one example?

The similarity between the Jesus myths and the Egyptian / Roman / Greek myths that inspired them was so striking that people who actually knew about the similarities (such as early christian apologist Justin Martyr) offered insane rationalizations such as "The devil got people to make these stories up hundreds of years before Jesus was born so folks would think Jesus was just another "me-too" hero god."

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.

Justin Martyr - First Apology Chapter 21

Those "gods" were not real people, or those that were historical persons lived many centuries before any sources we have about them. Where are the actual historical persons who were mythologized into miracle-working gods within 50 years of the time when they lived?

What does that have to do with whether or not the story is true? It is quite possible that "Jesus" never actually lived as such. Claiming that these stories were within 50 years of his life is irrelevant because we don't actually have a life to reference it to. We know for a fact that the earliest mentionings of Jesus in the authentic Pauline epistles provide absolutely no time frame and no geographic place in which Jesus lived. We know that those details did not start getting written about until at least 30 years after they allegedly occurred. That leaves plenty of time for stories to get made up.

That some of the pagan myths attached themselves to the Jesus figure leaves unanswered the question: WHY did these myths get attached to him? Why did the pagans want to attach their myths or symbols to Jesus? There had to be something there, an object or entity, that they identified as desirable to attach their symbols to. What was that object and why did they choose this as something to attach their symbols to?

And some of the pagan myths did not attach themselves to the Jesus figure. What of it? The Jesus myth was popular. It had been marketed quite successfully (probably by Paul). Why not parlay some of that popularity into personal profit?

Unless you have a better answer, it is that He already had a unique unprecedented reputation as a miracle-worker and so they switched or expanded their myths/symbols to him, because his already-existing reputation then gave stronger credibility to those myths/symbols, and they were more credible being attached to him than to the previous "gods" to which they had been attached earlier.

See above for a better answer. The Jesus myth was marketed successfully and popular enough to generate some cross-breeding. But the Jesus myth took much more than it gave, as the story of Perseus and the powers of Bacchus, Asclepius and Poseidon were appropriated by its adherents.

There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- in the Jesus myths that requires that any of it happened in order for it to have been written down as it appears today.

Yes there is something that requires that it happened: If they didn't happen, then they are fictions which emerged TOO EARLY after him for them to be a result of normal mythologizing. None of the other persons who were mythologized into dieties had this happen to them within such a short time after they lived, including getting published in documents within 50 years, or even as soon as 20 years.

Too early!?! If they didn't happen then "too early" is meaningless. There is no statute of limitations on how quickly a myth can fabricate. Combine an excellent cult leader with an audience motivated to listen and you've got the makings of any story imaginable, no matter how ridiculous. Your argument in this regard is a non-starter.

So in the case of Jesus the normal mythologizing process is not the explanation for the miracle stories. So you have to find an explanation that is unprecedented, so that something totally unique happened in this case. What is it that happened? The best answer is that in this case the miracle acts really did take place. It is not reasonable to suggest that in this one case only a mythologizing process took place that never happened in any other case before or after.

In the case of Jesus the mythologizing process is exactly the best explanation. Your pitiful attempts at attempting to extricate your favorite invisible friend from the thousands of invisible friends invented in the fertile imagination of human beings throughout history are pointless. Not one thing you have presented lends credibility to the absurd tales.

There is no historical evidence that any of it happened, no artifacts, nothing.

There is more evidence, from documents, for these events than there is for many historical events that we assume did happen.

There are many events that are not documented until centuries later and for which there is only one source. But in this case we have events documented within 50 years and earlier, and we have multiple sources. So the evidence for this is greater than it is for many historical facts that we take for granted.

Please be so kind as to provide an example of one of these events that are not documented until centuries later and for which there is only one source. Let's compare it to the stories of Jesus the Magic Jew and see if there is anything obvious that makes the Jesus stories a bit harder to swallow than the example you give.

Meanwhile we do have ample evidence of hoaxes being perpetrated by various people for whatever purpose.

We need examples. Each case has to be examined. Usually there's only one source for them. Isn't there usually evidence of a hoax? Or in some cases, maybe something really did happen. Unless you give an example, it's not possible to draw a conclusion, or compare them to the Jesus case.

I mentioned alien abduction stories as an example, one which you dismissed even though the examples are very similar to "eyewitness testimony" you appear to believe about equally unlikely events from completely anonymous people.

Not all alien abduction stories should be dismissed. Each one should be investigated. In some cases something unusual probably did happen. I might judge tentatively that such a story is fiction, but no strong conclusion should be drawn until it is investigated. It's better to say we don't know than to automatically reject any such story regardless of the evidence.

A lot of time has been wasted by specialists investigating UFO abduction stories. Not one shred of credible evidence has ever been uncovered but lots of eyewitness testimony has. The point of this is to show just how poor a form of evidence "eyewitness testimony" actually is. And this is true even when skilled investigators can critically cross-examine the testifiers. The "evidence" we have available for the Jesus myth comes to us completely anonymously, with no possibility of investigative corroboration. It comes to us courtesy of now unknown people who likely stood to gain much in terms of power and wealth by convincing people to believe these myths, to behave and think as they would have them do, and to give them money. It makes extraordinary claims unsupported by even mundane, let alone extraordinary, evidence. The only rational stance to take on such abysmal evidence is one of skepticism. Yet spurred on by the ongoing power and wealth available from fleecing believers, skilled people continue to sell these absurd tales. This is not evidence the tales are true, it is evidence that people can be bilked into believing just about anything, no matter how absurd it is.

You keep asking "why Jesus and not someone else?" I might as well ask "Why Microsoft and not Digital Research?" We could get into endless debates over whatever happened that allowed one competitor to succeed where another disappeared into complete oblivion, . . .

That's not analogous. There are several successful companies, or legendary hero companies that have emerged. For an analogy to the Jesus legend, you have to show that one stands out uniquely apart from all the others. If there was only one giant mega-corporation that stood out far beyond all the others, with none of the others even close, and if this uniqueness continued on for centuries, then we'd have an analogy to the Jesus legend and one could ask for an explanation. And it might even be proper to consider if it's not some kind of miracle that this one company alone stands out so uniquely.

No. The existence of Hindu, Buddhism and other world religions that have nothing to do with Christianity are sufficient to demonstrate that one giant mega-corporation is not the only possible defense of this comparison. And the comparison is not about that anyway. It's about marketing. Marketing is what drove Christianity, not the credibility of the myths upon which it was based. You've sort of hoisted yourself on your own petard by bringing Simon Magus into the picture, as Simon is a contemporary example of someone who may have been an actual person, who was painted as a God at some point, who had many devoted followers and whose followers were eventually out-marketed by someone else.

. . . but what's the point? It remains true that Digital Research once existed as the Goliath to Bill Gates' David. Did it take a god's intervention to make Microsoft successful and dissolve their once vast pool of competitors? No.

There needs to be a reason why one succeeds or wins out above the others. You can probably find those reasons.

And there needs to be a reason why one hero-legend figure is the only one who gets deified into a miracle-worker in such a short time, while all the others require generations or even centuries for this mythologizing process to take place. And why for this one we have several sources near to the event, while for the others there is usually only one source. And also, why this one had the shortest public career of all the hero legend figures and yet still has been mythologized more than all the others.

And what makes this point more extreme is that there is not any other hero legend figure who even ranks a close 2nd to this Christ figure in this regard. There is not any other one who comes close, in terms of the degree of mythologizing that took place, who is identified in writings where the evidence is given to indicate the power he possessed, and whose public life was anywhere near as short so as to reduce the time during which he could develop his reputation and create the necessary public image wherefrom the later mythologizing could take root and grow.

There needs to be an explanation for this extreme uniqueness, if it is not that he actually did perform those miracle acts, because these actual events in history in the period of about 29-30 AD would totally explain this uniqueness, i.e., how he got mythologized in spite of having so short a time period in which to establish his public image.

You keep calling it a short time period. It wasn't. A legend can grow overnight. 30 years is plenty of time for such stories to germinate and you cannot put any of the miracle narratives any closer to the events in the historical record than that no matter how hard you try. Paul's non-miracle Jesus with no historical or geographic time frame doesn't qualify. And that's conceding that the dude in question actually existed, which is the very issue in question. In a pre-technology era when people's ability to research claims was limited by the logistical issues of time, travel, education and numerous other handicaps, claims of a great teacher who performed miracles 10 years ago would have been as impossible to debunk as claims of a perfectly formed teapot orbiting a planet around Alpha Centauri would be today.

And it did not take any sort of divine intervention to make one religion more appealing than another either.

Correct, we would probably still have "Christianity" as the dominant religion, in some variant form, even if no Galilean Jesus figure had been available to be adopted as the center god figure for it. And one religion would prevail over the others. And we might be able to identify some factors that helped this one or that one gain more followers and be more successful. No appeal to divine favor to this one or that would be necessary.

But when something strangely unique happens, there needs to be an explanation. Something had to make the Galilean Jesus figure stand out so singularly. And rather than just saying "God intervened" to do it, all we need to do is look at what happened, or what the people who mythologized him actually saw or witnessed, and we have the explanation right there, easy to recognize. He performed acts of power that in themselves proved he had a life-giving source or was in contact with such a source, and this power could be accessed and put to the benefit of humans.

So we have the phenomenological explanation based on particular events that happened, or particular acts that he did, and we don't need any theological or metaphysical or cosmological explanations. We can simply recognize those acts and a power that caused them and not know the further explanation of them. Or each "theologian" or "cosmologist" is free to speculate on the nature of that power. And surely a hundred theologies or cosmologies have become attached to the Christ figure to try to use him as their vehicle, and maybe some of them offer some truth, and probably most of them are pretty far off base.

Why is it that the Mormons are now the fastest growing non-catholic christian denomination? Is it because God is with them? Is the spread of Islam, second only to Catholicism as an organized religion, evidence that Allah is real and approves of that religion? What, exactly, is your point in pursuing this line of argument?

There's probably a reason in each case why this religion succeeded more than that one. Or why anything happens, why this thing succeeded and another failed. It's good to ask why, or seek the reason or cause. And saying "God did it" is hardly an answer. But there does have to be an answer. And even if "we don't know" is the best we can do, it is also appropriate to consider all the possible answers other than "we don't know" and ask which of these possibilities is most likely.

And of all the explanations for the Jesus hero phenomenon, the best one, other than "we don't know," is that he must have actually performed those miracle healing acts, because this solves the mystery of how he got mythologized even though he failed to meet the requirements a hero figure always has to meet in order to become transformed from a normal human into a god.

No, the best one is the one I've already offered. Itinerant cult leader pisses off the ruling class, gets his ass crucified and his zealous devotees refuse to believe he's dead. They start off with tales of him visiting them in visions. As time passes they add tales of him healing sick people and performing other miracles. Eventually his spiritual resurrection turns into a physical one and the miracle periscopes continue to develop to encompass nearly every power once attributed to some Greek, Roman or previous god-myth. Finally the movement is popular enough that they've even converted some Jewish scribes whose job is to write things down. The scribes start writing down the stories, which first appear as "Mark." The legends continue to grow, "gospels" abound. Eventually (325 AD) the council of Nicea decides what the official teachings of Christianity are going to be, launches a campaign to destroy competing pagan religions (both those that use a variant of Jesus and those that don't) and burns all the books they can get their hands on to destroy the evidence. Some of it survives anyway, which is why we still have the gospel of Peter (for example). Their attempt to galvanize Christianity is successful for awhile but eventually the religion splinters off into tens of thousands of different sects.

You ask "What miracles did Joseph Smith perform?" Wikipedia is your friend. Once again your ignorance of the subject matter you are discussing is your own problem, not that of those with whom you are having the discussion.

You aren't going to name one miracle he did?

I already did mention several miracles he did. Your responses demonstrate a profound lack of willingness to research.

I've already noted earlier that I found there are some anecdotes that he performed some healings. These are surely more of relevance than some mere dead tablets sitting on a table and just looking "awesome" or at best glowing a bit?

Where is the act of power? The healing acts are much better examples of something to cite.

And I have said, and I'll repeat it, no matter how many times it is necessary, to make the point: It is fine if J. Smith did in fact actually do something to make someone recover from an illness. If it can be proved that he did something, just as it is proved that Rasputin the mad monk did something to cause an apparent dying child to recover, then that "miracle" should be recognized for what it is. And Smith did something good if he caused that person to recover.

However, we all know that most such healings would have happened anyway, and it's just a coincidence that it happened on this occasion and failed to happen in the dozen other cases when the same healing technique was tried. So we have to look at the whole collection of anecdotes or reports and try to figure out if there is a real pattern or only a few coincidences and a relatively low batting average.

Ahhh, so "we all know" the paralyzed arm Smith healed would have healed itself anyway. But "we all know" the paralyzed man Jesus healed would never have healed of its own accord. Even though we have no record of who this person was, we don't know who related the tale of Jesus doing this and we don't have any documentation from signed witnesses attesting to the event as we do with Joseph Smith. Gotcha.

The people in 30 AD who witnessed the Jesus miracle acts were not stupid, even though we pretend that everyone living 100 (500) years ago and earlier were simpletons who imagined whatever they wished for. But they knew the difference between a real pattern of healings, with a high batting average, or 1.000, and a pattern of hits and misses and a low batting average of only .100 or .200.

Who are these people? Got any names? What research have you done, and what evidence can you present demonstrating these people's ability to know the difference between a "real pattern of healings with a high batting average" and "a pattern of hits and misses and a low batting average?" I'd be interested in the statistical analysis you've one on this and the documentation you have accumulated while doing all this research.

A very high average, or even 1.000, definitely would astound them, just as it would astound us, and anyone who ever achieved that or close to it would be mythologized immediately and be taken seriously and would quickly attain to a record of his acts that would begin to spread through word of mouth and then through written documents.

Names? Who are these witnesses you're talking about? How many documented instances of 1.000 batting average miracle workers did you research in this effort? What evidence do you have to demonstrate that Jesus rarely attempted to perform a miracle and ended up with the equivalent of a fumble? You've got me genuinely interested now. I've been looking into this stuff for a long time and somehow was never aware that this research had been done.

So, we should look at the Smith reported miracles, and any other reported cases of this, and anyone who wants to present the case that he had a high batting average should do so. It doesn't look to me like anyone seriously wants to present that case. Most ordinary preachers accumulate a few anecdotes from among their "flock" of folks who recovered more quickly, or rarely even immediately, after being prayed for. The Smith examples seem to fall into this pattern, with of course only the "hits" getting any notice and the "misses" being ignored.

If Smith really had a high batting average, we would have a better record of his successes at this.

So you've got evidence that these anonymous documents, none of which even claim to be written by eyewitnesses or even claim to be written by anyone who actually talked to an eyewitness, contain comprehensive lists of every attempted miracle in the life of this Jesus character and that he never attempted to perform a miracle and whiffed. I'm interested in seeing this evidence that we can use to ascertain that not one attempted miracle was neglected to be reported. Waitaminute, wasn't there a pesky passage in Matthew 13:58 where Jesus struck out on the miracle at bat "because of their unbelief?" Hmmmm.... that sounds suspiciously like what all the Televangelists today say when they can't seem to get it done.

There is no shame in being ignorant, but there is great shame in choosing to remain ignorant when information that would avoid such embarrassing gaffes is so readily available. So I ask you again, upon what criteria should one accept the testimony of anonymous people making these claims in the bible and reject the claims made by actual, named individuals who swore and even signed documentation attesting to the miracles of Smith?

No, those tablets sitting on a table are not a "miracle" or act of power. I'm sure I could put some odd-looking tablets on a table, make them look strange or reflect light in some way, and then get 1000 witnesses to look at them and attest that they are there.

No, sorry, that is not a "miracle" -- just because something is sitting there and looks interesting.

As to the healing acts of J. Smith, which would be something to take more seriously, I don't think these are any more than the kind of occasional anecdote that worshippers experience and relate to their pastor, and are offset by all the "misses" that far outnumber the "hits."

And obviously you're much too busy to actually go read for yourself. The information is there, it's not that hard to find and I even quoted it for you so you wouldn't have to keep appearing so completely devoid of familiarity with the subject matter and yet you still hide behind ignorance. It's perplexing.

However, once again, if there is good evidence that Joseph Smith or anyone else really did heal someone, I would have no problem believing it. Go ahead and give the examples and show us any indication that it wasn't just that occasional "hit" among a much larger number of "misses."

In reality, you think the Joseph Smith "miracles" are silly and not worth paying any attention to. And since that's obviously what you think, why do you expect me to take them seriously? They are not in the same category as the Jesus miracles recorded in the gospel accounts. We have good reason to believe that Jesus had a high batting average, if not 1.000.

Except for his strikeouts in Matthew 13:58.

Do you hope that by doing this somehow the process of repeating these baseless assertions will convince someone they're true?

I'm becoming more convinced that they're true by the repeated failure of anyone to give an explanation as to why this Jesus person became mythologized so greatly despite failing to meet the requirements that all myth heros must meet in order to become mythologized.

And by some of the pathetic comparisons, like to Joseph Smith and to Horus and Perseus and Apollonius and the others. Such poor comparisons, which all fall hopelessly flat, only serve to confirm that the Jesus case is astoundingly unique and still unexplained.

And I'm becoming more convinced that you are unwilling to deal with the actual problems pointed out with your arguments. Quick appearance does not make an incredible story more credible. An anonymous story claiming that thousands of people witnessed a miracle doesn't mean the miracle happened and it doesn't mean that thousands of people witnessed it. Using the story to bolster the story is a circular argument. You have nothing. Nothing but hand waving, smoke screening and much ado about nothing.

The Jesus story is an adaptation of the Perseus myth with elements added from Bacchus, Asclepius, Poseidon and others. It contains some elements not contained by the others but that doesn't make it any more credible than the others. The others contain elements not contained in the Jesus myth. The sudden appearance of the Jesus myth (if you want to call something developing slowly over a minimum of several decades as "sudden") can best be explained by the fact that it was little else besides a clone of these other popular god-myths tidily adapted to fit the latest Johnny-come-lately god-myth. The success of the myth is best explained by successful marketing. The dearth of competing myths is consistent with the aggressive book burnings subsequent to the council of Nicea's decision to outlaw anything other than their orthodox version of Christianity. No miracles necessary, everything gets explained, all the evidence points to this. It truly is the best explanation. You're welcome.

 

[Keith&Co.]

You don't get to have it both ways.

Maybe Lumpy is trying to be ironic?
I mean, he's here to foil kyroot's attack on Christainity, not to actually save souls or learn about other cultures or the history of his own religion.

And kyroot likes to have it both ways.

He criticizes christainity for not dealing well with "the complexities and varieties of human experience." But he holds all of Christainity accountable for problems he has with the New international Version. Not all Christains accept the NIV, or the authority of the authors of the NIV. So his list of critiques (now 212) doesn't deal well with "the complexities and varieties of (Christain) experience."

Maybe Lumpy thinks it's justified to 'have it both ways' if his opponent 'started it?'

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Why are the gospel accounts the only documents we have to reject as totally unreliable? Who says?

You mean, do we have the eyewitnesses available to question? No, 1985-year-old people are difficult to arrange an interview with.

Thus you are forced to invent odd and rather fatuous "superior standards" to make your favored account seem more likely.

What is my "superior standard"? that an extra source helps confirm or make more credible the first source? Don't two separate sources for the miracle acts of Jesus make it more credible than if there's only one? or 3 make it more credible than if there's only 2?

So you think having extra sources does NOT add credibility to an account? I.e., part of the "superior standards" -- having more than one source about the same event(s) helps to increase the credibility -- You reject that standard as "fatuous"?

E.g., I gave the example of Sallust being in agreement with Cicero that Catiline was a bad guy. So, since Sallust also accuses Catiline of treason, doesn't that increase the chance that Cicero was right in making this accusation? Though we have reason to doubt Cicero because he has his own political agenda, yet it makes his account more credible, i.e., increases the possibility that his judgment of Catiline is correct, that he has this concurrence from a separate witness to the events, and so it reduces the likelihood that his tirade against Catiline is just self-serving propaganda. Right? Doesn't extra source increase credibility?

Though everyone agrees that Cicero had a political agenda and tended to exaggerate in his polemics, doesn't it make his version more credible that we have an extra source to confirm it? You think this extra source does nothing to add to his credibility?

According to you it is "fatuous" to use that as a standard for judging a source, because having source 2 which agrees with source 1 does nothing to increase the credibility of source 1? And you reject all those scholars who say that because Sallust concurs with Cicero it increases the credibility of Cicero's judgment? You accuse all those scholars of inventing an "odd and fatuous" standard in thinking that the extra source gives support to the credibility of the first source?

And similarly you would reject the idea that the testimony of a witness is supported if a 2nd or 3rd witness agrees with the first one? That extra testimony is a waste of the court's time, if it adds nothing new but only confirms what the first witness said? So if you were the judge, you'd throw out that extra testimony, or instruct the jury to disregard it, because the testimony of the first witness is all that is legitimate and anything extra to confirm it adds nothing, and the jury is being misled to believe that any additional testimony saying the same thing increases the probability that it's true?

Without those, we cannot compare the later, written accounts of an event and determine if there were details lost, added or changed.

We can determine some of that. We can compare differing accounts of the same event and determine what kind of changes took place in the text, and these comparisons can help us answer questions about what happened.

No, they do not. We have no way to tell if any of the common elements were invented or not.

So in other words, the fact that both Cicero and Sallust say there was a conspiracy to kill some of the senators and stage a coup says nothing about whether there was any such conspiracy, because this common element might have been invented? So their writings tell us nothing about whether there was any such plot? Just because they both mention the plot tells us nothing about whether there was any such plot, because it could be "invented"?

So, no 2nd testimony confirming the earlier testimony adds any credibility to the 1st one because what they agree on could have been "invented"? Isn't the likelihood of the latter REDUCED by the existence of the 2nd testimony confirming the 1st one?

We cannot compare them to the accounts of disinterested observers, . . .

No doubt there were plenty of Romans who were disinterested in the squabbles among the senators, such as that between Cicero and Catiline. And since we don't have their accounts of this squabble, we should assume there was no squabble, or there was no plot by Catiline? We can't know about it until after we first find accounts from disinterested observers, and if there are none, then we must withhold judgment as to whether there was any dispute or any plot going on?

We can't know anything from history from any source because there might have been "disinterested observers" around who wrote nothing about it, and without their accounts we can't give any credibility to what is told in the source we do have? It has to be thrown out and disregarded because it's not accompanied by additional accounts from "disinterested observers" who never wrote any account? It's necessary to first find non-existent accounts to compare to the sources we do have before we can give any credibility to these sources?

How much of our recorded history would have to be thrown out because of this requirement that before any report can be accepted we must have non-existent reports from "disinterested observers" who might have written about it but didn't? Where are we supposed to dig up these non-existent reports in order to meet this requirement? And yet you say we can't believe any reports or any facts of history unless we first come up with these non-existent reports that the disinterested observers didn't write?

So virtually all historical documents have to be disregarded, because we don't have accounts from disinterested observers around who didn't write anything about it. So the history books are virtually all useless, because they exclude all those accounts that weren't written. "Fascinating."

. . . or an account which was not subject to the Christain efforts to edit the historical record (such as all the gnostic gospels which were destroyed because they were gnostic gospels.)

(First, your history needs to be corrected: Gospels were "destroyed" only in the sense that they were not preserved, and these were neglected NOT "because they were gnostic gospels" or any reason other than the simple fact that all scrolls did corrode and rot away unless someone took the trouble to copy them, and recopy them again, because the originals generally did not last more than 100 years, except in rare cases where they were secured in a condition that protected them from the elements. There was no network of book-burning squadrons, like in the movie "Fahrenheit 451," dispatched to hunt down and destroy all the gnostic gospels or other subversive publications.)

But it's true that very few gospels were preserved by being recopied, because it was not possible or feasible or cost-efficient to try to do copies of every scroll being written by someone.

And what was in those lost gnostic gospels that has been eliminated? What did those gospels tell us about Jesus that conflicts with the canonical gospels? Your point presumably is that these writings would undermine the credibility of the canonical gospels. But how do you know that?

We do have some of the gnostic gospels. The only one that might be early is Thomas, and even it is probably 2nd century. These writings are later than the canonical gospels and for that reason less reliable. But some of the Thomas sayings might be early-dated sayings of Jesus. Suppose they are early and just as authentic as sayings in Matthew or John etc. How does this contradict the general miracle events reported in the canonical gospels?

Some of the gnostic gospels also contain miracle stories about Jesus. But the important question is: Why did gnostics want to put their teachings into the mouth of Jesus?

You must answer this question if you're serious about the importance of these gnostic gospels. Why did they choose Jesus as their mouthpiece? Why was he so special that they thought it necessary to use him in this way?

The best answer: because he had a reputation as a miracle-worker messiah figure of some kind and therefore people would believe anything he said. And how did he acquire this reputation at such an early point after his death and after a very short public career? (Because of these factors he did not have a long-enough period in which to become revered as a hero to be mythologized.)

The gnostics could have chosen someone else to transmit their teachings. In 40 or 50 or 60 AD there must have been plenty of other messiah-type figures they could have chosen rather than this one who was not yet notable for anything special (unless you believe the accounts of his miracle acts). Even if he was one of several who were gaining a reputation, why did the mythologizers all agree on this one? The gnostics were not a singular united monolithic movement who all met together in an annual conclave to decide on such things as who to choose as the mythic hero mouthpiece for their teachings.

So why is it that in all the gnostic gospels it's this same Christ person who is presented as the holy sage or God Incarnate who reveals the Truth to the listeners? This same mythic hero figure is always there -- no one else. Why is that? Doesn't the fact that they couldn't find anyone else to be their mouthpiece tell you something about this Christ person? Doesn't it prove that he's unique and stands out from all the other hero mythic messiahs? not just in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but throughout this period from around 30 or 40 AD onward?

We can draw some reasonable conclusions, but only the kind which still leave doubt.

If they still leave doubt, they're not conclusions.

There's always some doubt. Or usually. But that doesn't preclude drawing conclusions.

I have Will Durant as my authority that history is not just absolute certainties with no doubt. He said: History is mostly guessing, the rest is prejudice.

We can reasonably conclude that the gospel accounts give an accurate picture of Jesus performing the miracle healing acts. There is doubt, but it's a reasonable conclusion because it best explains how he became mythologized into a god. Without the miracle events, it is virtually impossible to explain how he might have become transformed from a normal human into a god, which transformation the gnostics participated in, also transforming Jesus into their version of a god.

So there IS doubt, but these are reasonable conclusions. We can draw reasonable conclusions while still having doubt.

As stated before, historical records are evaluated based on who wrote them, when and for what purpose. Not knowing any of these for the gospels, we cannot use them as trustworthy historical records.

And what's an example of a document from history that is rejected on these grounds as having no historical trustworthiness?

You can't dictate to others which writings they can trust and which ones not. You are not the Appointed Overseer Censor who determines what is acceptable for people to believe and accept as reliable. You can personally reject them because you don't like some of their content, but don't pretend you're being scientific or objective or are stating a general rule that must be followed by others. Just say "I cannot use them," not "WE cannot use them."

Someone else can just as reasonably accept them as having reliability for determining what happened, while still keeping a critical attitude toward them. Scholars of that geographical area and of that historical period DO rely on the Bible accounts, including the gospels, to help them determine some of the historical events for which there is little or no other source. To reject this source totally as of no historical trustworthiness is ideological fanaticism.

Of course these writings are not in the same category as Tacitus etc., so one would reasonably have more doubt about them than about some other writings that are more conventional. But that doesn't mean they are "untrustworthy" for historical information.

Not all writings that are trustworthy for historical information have to fit into your personal subjective test which you impose, and then go even further by dictating which writings fit into your prescribed formula and which ones do not. Will you also issue an "approved reading list" containing all the sources we may be permitted to use?

And it's not really true that you know "who wrote them, when and for what purpose" whenever you read a history source. You may pretend you know this, but often you don't, or what you know is virtually zero. Just because you have an author's name doesn't mean you know "who" he is. And you don't really know in many cases when it was written and for what purpose, anymore than the gospel accounts. Those are often doubtful, and especially "for what purpose" is very subjective and debatable. Not every historian agrees what the "purpose" is, and yet the writings are relied on anyway, without pretending to know that kind of information with certainty.

What is another example of documents, outside the Bible, that are rejected as untrustworthy because they don't meet these requirements you're imposing here? Have you created a special category here for this one group of writings you don't like and thus want to exclude?

If there are some such documents, which report events as historically factual, as in the gospel accounts, but which are rejected as totally unreliable or of no value for the historical record, there has to be more than the reasons you've given here. Simply doubt about their origin is not enough to totally exclude them from offering any historical value.

Do you put the gnostic gospels also into this category? What about the Dead Sea Scrolls? They are all to be rejected for any historical value because there is doubt about who wrote them or when or for what purpose? You're wrong -- it's not true that we have to reject documents because there is this doubt about their origin. Such documents are examined and used to provide some answers, despite these doubts, to try to learn what we can about events or conditions of the time.

There are varying degrees of reliability, so you would have more doubt about this document than that one, but that doesn't mean the more doubtful one has no credibility for the historical record. Certain texts can be identified as problematic without meaning that the entire source is excluded as having no value. You can't impose this dogmatic standard on the gospel accounts only, as if they alone have to meet a standard that other documents do not have to meet.

I will cite here an incident mentioned in all 3 synoptic gospels which tells us that Jesus, at the time of the arrest and trial, had a reputation for possessing psychic power of some kind. We can piece together what happened by comparing all 3 of the accounts.

No, we cannot. We can examine the gospels to see if they're consistent with each other, but not whether they're consistent with history.

We CAN determine that the gospel accounts are consistent with history on some points and inconsistent on other points. That Herod Antipas executed John the Baptist is consistent with history, or is even verified by history, whereas the decree of Caesar Augustus reported by Luke is inconsistent with known history.

When Durant said, "History is mostly guessing, the rest is prejudice," he surely meant that he himself was doing some guessing. And there is a difference between good and bad guessing. Our published history is mostly good guesswork, hopefully. But some of the guessing is not so good. And when we try to piece together what happened, there is some guesswork, but it's good to do this guesswork, and often we're right in our guessing.

None of them invented this incident, because they would have put together something that makes sense.

Which in no way means that there is a factual event behind the oral tradition they were cribbing from.

But the best explanation for the accounts we have of this scene is that there was an original factual event such as described here, with some confusion of the detail. Matthew (26:67-68) and Mark (14:65) each leave something essential out, so that the question, "Who is it that struck you?" (Mt) and the command, "Prophesy!" (Mk) loses its meaning. Why did they each leave an important element out? It's probably because it was not in their source. And why did their source leave it out? At what point did it get lost?

The best explanation would NOT be that someone made up this as a story, because if they're going to invent a story, they will not leave something essential out of the story, plus also it's not plausible that 2 invented stories would be so similar, i.e. the same story invented twice, in 2 different versions, each of which leaves something essential out so that each version by itself makes no sense.

So the best explanation is this: It's a real scene, and witnesses who saw it and reported it noticed it differently, one remembering only the blindfold, the striking, and the command "Prophesy!" (Mk version) while the other remembering only the striking and the words "Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?" (Mt version).

Both of these accounts are incomplete because of the part left out. This is best explained as something missed or not noted by each respective witness at the event, and not as something that got dropped out of the account later. Each witness would be shocked at the scene and report their version of it even with the unnoticed part omitted, but it's less likely that the omitted part got dropped out later. Why would an essential element of the scene get dropped out later in the retelling of it?

It's very plausible that one witness remembered one element and another witness a different element in the violent scene. Probably the striking and harsh command "Prophesy!" caught their attention, and then one noticed the blindfold (Mk), while the other caught the question "Who is it that struck you?" (Mt), and so each one reported what they noticed. They were shocked by the scene, though not understanding it totally.

No one is inventing anything here, because if someone makes up a story, they make sure to give all the elements needed for the story to be complete and leave no confusion about what is supposed to be happening.

So the best explanation is that it's a real incident, not invented, with the 3 elements: 1) Jesus is blindfolded, 2) he is struck, and 3) the command/question, "Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?"

This explanation is not the absolute truth provable with 100% certainty. But it's the best explanation, or this description of the event is most probably what happened. And it illustrates how the earlier sources and the final writers who used them relied on what happened earlier and didn't invent their own story.

You can dismiss it as "conjecture" or whatever, but "history is mostly guessing," and this is the best guesswork to explain this scene. If you don't have any better explanation, then you can't say there's anything wrong with this explanation.

The accounts of this must have come from the actual event, . . .

Bullshit. "Must have" is way too firm a conclusion from the evidence provided.

But it's easier or more reasonable to explain the discrepancy, or the elements left out in each account, as due to the original witnesses each missing something in an actual scene that happened, which they saw, rather than due to someone leaving it out in the retelling of the event, or due to two separate individuals each making up a story -- and two such similar stories -- in which they each left out an important element in the story.

So the final versions we have of this event "must have" originated from 2 different accounts of one actual event that was witnessed -- "must have" meaning that this is clearly the best explanation, or no other explanation of the present accounts explains how these accounts have arrived to us now in the present form that we have them. Do we need to split hairs on the precise meaning of "must have come from the actual event"?

If they're recording an oral tradition, that's the best you can say, that there was a story and all three heard it.

No, we can do better. We can question where they got the story and why at least 2 versions of it leave out an essential element without which the story is incomplete. If we can find a reasonable answer to that, especially one that is more reasonable than the other proposed answers, then we're justified in accepting that as the explanation, while at the same time recognizing that we're doing what historian Will Durant calls "guessing," which we're entitled to do.

The garble or clarity of the account cannot help us determine fact from fiction.

EVERY detail about the account can help us determine fact from fiction. If something is unclear, we can try to find an explanation for it. The best explanation is the one which best answers the questions raised. Finding good plausible answers, rather than answers which only create more confusion, is the way to change the guesswork from bad guessing into good guessing.

How can this incident be explained without assuming that Jesus had a reputation as a psychic of some kind who could see what's happening even though blindfolded? And we must ask: How did he acquire this reputation in 30 AD?

Again, humans do not need hundreds of years to simply make shit up.

But they generally do require a long time, at least generations, to make up the "shit" we're talking about here, because all the examples we have of someone being mythologized into a god (or into a psychic with power to see through a blindfold) with miracle stories becoming attached to them are cases where the one mythologized actually lived generations earlier than the mythologizing that took place. The closest to an exception is a sage at an advanced age who had already been teaching several decades prior to the mythologizing, or, at least a very famous or powerful individual with widespread public recognition (e.g., Vespasian), which obviously was not so in the case of Jesus in 30 AD.

So the evidence indicates you're wrong when you say "humans do not need hundreds of years to simply make shit up," because you can't name one example where such "shit" was made up in a short time. Or, the example of Jesus is the only exception.

It's also possible that it is an historical event, but not that it happened to Jesus. See the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. That's fictional. It did not take 200 years to establish that reputation, it was circulating within 50 years of his childhood. One theory is that the person who started telling this tale stole it from an earlier English tale about someone else.

This is not analogous.

First, it's not a miracle story, so that makes it easier for the story to get going and for people to believe it. And this incident before the trial of Jesus also is not itself a miracle event, where the guards struck him and one said "Who is it that struck you?"

But for Jesus to have a reputation as a psychic or a miracle-worker does require a long time in which he might acquire such a reputation. It doesn't require 200 years, but it requires that he have a widespread reputation as a public figure, which means decades.

Washington was a famous public figure at the time this story about him was circulating. Probably it began, or became attached to him, at a point when he was already famous. So this makes it similar to the case of Emperor Vespasian who is reputed to have performed a couple miracle healing acts.

But Jesus was not a famous public figure by the time of his death. The person to whom the stories become attached has to have an established reputation before the mythologizing can begin. This is the pattern of all heros who become mythologized.

Either way, having a story does not mean it's historical.

You could probably say that about half of all the historical accounts about anything: Just because the account exists does not mean it really happened. However, the existence of the accounts, reported as real events, is evidence (not proof) that the events did happen. If not, then you have to throw out much of what we all accept as historical fact.

The best explanation for the accounts is that the reported events really did happen, except that in those cases where we can easily explain the accounts as fiction, and where this explanation is more plausible, then the accounts are less credible, or the events are improbable. But you have to show something implausible about the accounts. You can't just say you don't like the accounts, and so therefore they must not have happened.

How could this be anything other than an accurately-reported incident?

Easy. Someone made shit up.

You could say this about a great deal of what we accept as historical fact. You could toss out all history books, or most of what's in them, by just saying, "Aaah, someone made that shit up." There's a lot of history that is difficult to believe. Or just stuff we don't like. Why not just toss it all out by saying it was made up?

Doesn't it illustrate that the writers or compilers of these accounts tried to report accurately what happened, based on their sources?

But no matter how much fidelity they used with their sources, that does not in any fucking way help prove that their sources were factual.

Again, you could say that about most of what we accept as historical fact. Just because the scholars use their sources with fidelity does not prove that their sources were factual.

You can't single out this one case, the gospel accounts, and say they are unreliable for this kind of reason. You have to apply the same standards to them as you apply to other sources.

We can distinguish: Some parts are problematic and less reliable. But other parts are just as reliable as the standard sources we accept routinely for the historical record.

 

[none]

Doesn't it illustrate that the writers or compilers of these accounts tried to report accurately what happened, based on their sources?

But no matter how much fidelity they used with their sources, that does not in any fucking way help prove that their sources were factual.

Again, you could say that about most of what we accept as historical fact. Just because the scholars use their sources with fidelity does not prove that their sources were factual.

You can't single out this one case, the gospel accounts, and say they are unreliable for this kind of reason. You have to apply the same standards to them as you apply to other sources.

We can distinguish: Some parts are problematic and less reliable. But other parts are just as reliable as the standard sources we accept routinely for the historical record.

Sure we can apply different standards to different stories.
If there was a bowl of soup on the table and I told you I ate it but it is still full, is the explanation a miracle has occurred... a supernatural event... or is the story suspect?
this isn't rocket science...

 

[Barbarian]

Lumpen, you keep bringing up historical documents referring to other events than those in the gospels and keep asking us why do we lend credence to those documents if we don't believe the gospels about the non-supernatural claims. You should square your position with two facts: first, that we discard any part of any document that deals with supernatural events, including those parts which are obviously mere background setup to those events; and second, that the point of the gospels does not seem to be anything else but to prop up the supernatural aspect, so the entire document can, in this case, be discarded.

You have it all backwards, trying to prove the supernatural, in this case Christianity, from scripture. Even if we disregard all the fishy aspects of the Jesus story, we are still unwilling to accept that the gospels attest to supernatural events because we are convinced, based on a great shitload of other reasons, that supernatural events don't occur, while on the other hand men confabulate all the time. So you will sooner or later have to face the task of proving - in the present, without reference to documents from a very superstitious era - that the supernatural actually exists. Only then can you proceed to claim and prove that the gospels describe such events. Going the other way around will always run up against the fact that it is easier to imagine how your scripture came into existence via Chinese whispers and imperfect copying than to imagine that there's an entire supernatural world which does such a shitty job proving its own existence to us.

My proposal to you is to consider your proof of the historical Jesus accepted for the sake of argument. That does not include any miracles at all, including miracle healings. Some guy named Jesus kept walking around with a small following talking all sort of things and finally got himself crucified by the Romans. The stage is all yours: how do you propose to bridge the gap between what we have just agreed upon and what Christianity claims about the miracle aspect?

Also, please consider that brevity is a virtue. When you write a huge wall of text, you should suspect yourself merely trying to bury your lack of an argument under an abundance of words. Even apart from that it's damn hard to quote and process your long posts in replies.

 

[none]

Barbarian, he writes a rambling essay that is lengthy and largely bereft of substance so that a person can't reply conveniently so he can then look at the responses and say to himself that his points were not addressed.
Part of that Christian persecution complex run amok.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Thus you are forced to invent odd and rather fatuous "superior standards" to make your favored account seem more likely.

What is my "superior standard"? that an extra source helps confirm or make more credible the first source?
Don't two separate sources for the miracle acts of Jesus make it more credible than if there's only one? or 3 make it more credible than if there's only 2?

Two anonymous accounts do not make each other more credible, no.
You do not get far in court if your testimony is 'this one guy, he told me.'
Two people testifying to what 'some guy' told them about an event does not increase the credibility.

So you think having extra sources does NOT add credibility to an account?

I think if they're not credible sources, they can't be used to confirm each other, no.

I.e., part of the "superior standards" -- having more than one source about the same event(s) helps to increase the credibility -- You reject that standard as "fatuous"?

Since you only apply it to the gospels, yes.
Since that doesn't work for vampires, yes.
Since that method would not have worked for Washington's Cherry Tree story, despite it being in multiple history books, yes.
A widespread story is no better than a widespread story. Your counting them as 'multiple independent accounts' is fatuous.

E.g., I gave the example of

And you haven't yet shown that multiple history books makes the cherry tree story more credible.

And you reject all those scholars who say that because Sallust concurs with Cicero it increases the credibility of Cicero's judgment?

Ah. But that's a little different, isn't it?
We know who Sallust and Cicero were.
And when they wrote.

That's completely different than the gospels
You ignore the ACTUAL standards historians use, and just pretend that multiple attestations are enough, even of anonymous accounts.
Then get all upset that your gospels fail actual historical analysis.

And similarly you would reject the idea that the testimony of a witness is supported if a 2nd or 3rd witness agrees with the first one?

"Yeah, this guy... I don't know his name, i seen him around, he said that he SAW the accident, and what happened, is..."

You don't have eyewitness testimony to offer.
You're attacking a strawman, here.

So in other words,

Fourteen quatloos says that your 'other words' are going to be wrong.

the fact that both Cicero and Sallust say there was a conspiracy to kill some of the senators and stage a coup says nothing about whether there was any such conspiracy, because this common element might have been invented?

No. We have two identified authors. So when i dismiss unattributed writings of unknown date, written for unknown purpose, that's completely apart from Sallust and Cicero. it's not a case of 'in other words.' You owe me 14 quatloos.

So, no 2nd testimony confirming the earlier testimony adds any credibility to the 1st one because what they agree on could have been "invented"? Isn't the likelihood of the latter REDUCED by the existence of the 2nd testimony confirming the 1st one?

You continue to pretend that the gospels offer eyewitness testimony. They do not.
Until you grasp this, every time you compare them to eyewitness testimony, you look foolish.

So virtually all historical documents have to be disregarded, because we don't have accounts from disinterested observers around who didn't write anything about it. So the history books are virtually all useless, because they exclude all those accounts that weren't written. "Fascinating."

Strawman. Look, if you don't understand what i'm saying, just say so.
Maybe we can draw a picture or find a you-tube?
Going on and on, in an attempt to make an 'argument by absurdity' when you clearly don't grasp the significant points is just 'absurdity.' Not an argument.

. . . or an account which was not subject to the Christain efforts to edit the historical record (such as all the gnostic gospels which were destroyed because they were gnostic gospels.)

(First, your history needs to be corrected: Gospels were "destroyed" only in the sense that they were not preserved,

Wrong. They were actively hunted down for the express purpose of destroying them.

I honestly can't tell if you're just unaware of this aspect of early Christain history, or actually trying to cover it up.
But dismissing it, that's not advancing your credibility.

There was no network of book-burning squadrons, like in the movie "Fahrenheit 451," dispatched to hunt down and destroy all the gnostic gospels or other subversive publications.)

Hilarious.

And what was in those lost gnostic gospels that has been eliminated?

Since we only know of some of them by the titles (mentioned in those reports of their purposeful destruction), we don't know.

What did those gospels tell us about Jesus that conflicts with the canonical gospels? Your point presumably is that these writings would undermine the credibility of the canonical gospels. But how do you know that?

My point is that you claim the Jesus gospels survived because they're somehow special.
They survived because they were approved by the people in power. People who did not tolerate dissent.
It's a little more ugly than the glorious rosy history you're trying to present.

Some of the gnostic gospels also contain miracle stories about Jesus. But the important question is: Why did gnostics want to put their teachings into the mouth of Jesus?

You must answer this question if you're serious about the importance of these gnostic gospels. Why did they choose Jesus as their mouthpiece? Why was he so special that they thought it necessary to use him in this way?

The only reason i brought them up was because you are ignorant of so much history, esp. the parts that do not support the monotheology you've tried to attach to Jesus and early Christains.

The best answer:

Whenever you say 'best answer' you clearly mean an answer that supports the fantasy you already hold as true.

The gnostics could have chosen someone else to transmit their teachings.

We just don't know that they did not, Lumpy.
Remember that whole 'we don't know the contents because the early Christains destroyed them' bit?
Think about that when you try to tell us what the gnostics wrote and why.

So why is it that in all the gnostic gospels it's this same Christ person who is presented as the holy sage or God Incarnate who reveals the Truth to the listeners?

Pure fantasy.
A rather self-serving interpretation of DATA YOU DO NOT HAVE!
NO ONE DOES!

This same mythic hero figure is always there -- no one else.

Ummmm....I'm going to reiterate: Bullshit.
This flight of fancy offers evidence that you don't have to reach conclusions you already hold.
You're testifying to the contents of gospels no one's seen for about 1900 years.
And you wonder why a skeptic might not accept your interpretation of history as being the 'best' answer?

Laughable.

 

[Keith&Co.]

We can reasonably conclude that the gospel accounts give an accurate picture of Jesus performing the miracle healing acts.

No, we cannot. YOU may conclude that, but you're also reasonably concluding Jesus was the key figure in books you've never heard of, much less read.
So, no, you're just making a fallacy

There is doubt, but it's a reasonable conclusion because it best explains how he became mythologized into a god.

Again, you're using 'best' in a special sort of way.
One that'll grow hair on your palms.

You can't dictate to others which writings they can trust and which ones not.

I'm not dictating to YOU what you can trust.
But when you try to say that history would, should, or could trust the gospels, you're fucking up.
It's not how historians work.

You are not the Appointed Overseer Censor

Which may be why i never said 'I' evaluate history by who wrote it, when and why. Maybe.
Of course, you're writing your own script for what i actually said, so carry on with your strawman attack on what i did not claim.

who determines what is acceptable for people to believe and accept as reliable. You can personally reject them because you don't like some of their content, but don't pretend you're being scientific or objective or are stating a general rule that must be followed by others. Just say "I cannot use them," not "WE cannot use them."

Someone else can just as reasonably accept them as having reliability for determining what happened, while still keeping a critical attitude toward them. Scholars of that geographical area and of that historical period DO rely on the Bible accounts, including the gospels, to help them determine some of the historical events for which there is little or no other source. To reject this source totally as of no historical trustworthiness is ideological fanaticism.

Of course these writings are not in the same category as Tacitus etc., so one would reasonably have more doubt about them than about some other writings that are more conventional. But that doesn't mean they are "untrustworthy" for historical information.

Not all writings that are trustworthy for historical information have to fit into your personal subjective test which you impose, and then go even further by dictating which writings fit into your prescribed formula and which ones do not. Will you also issue an "approved reading list" containing all the sources we may be permitted to use?

And it's not really true that you know "who wrote them, when and for what purpose" whenever you read a history source. You may pretend you know this, but often you don't, or what you know is virtually zero. Just because you have an author's name doesn't mean you know "who" he is. And you don't really know in many cases when it was written and for what purpose, anymore than the gospel accounts. Those are often doubtful, and especially "for what purpose" is very subjective and debatable. Not every historian agrees what the "purpose" is, and yet the writings are relied on anyway, without pretending to know that kind of information with certainty.

Jesus fuck, Lumpy, you sure do project a lot.
And you know nothing of historians.
Don't blame me for knowing a tiny bit more.

There are varying degrees of reliability, so you would have more doubt about this document than that one, but that doesn't mean the more doubtful one has no credibility for the historical record.

The thing is, if an account is going to try to claim IMPOSSIBLE SHIT happened, then that magnifies the doubts and decreases the reliability.
I have no doubt scholars can use the gospel accounts for some of the details on how people lived their lives back then. Except for anachronisms, like camels being used before the camel was domesticated, or money paid using coins that wouldn't have existed. But if they're going to say 'supernatural events' took place, that's less likely to be accepted unless the account is very very very reliable.
Anonymous accounts are not very very very reliable.
Anonymous accounts that were preserved by people with an agenda (which meant also that they destroyed other accounts) are not MORE reliable, they're less.

Certain texts can be identified as problematic without meaning that the entire source is excluded as having no value. You can't impose this dogmatic standard on the gospel accounts only, as if they alone have to meet a standard that other documents do not have to meet.

I'm not and i've never tried to treat the gospel accounts different.
That's what you're doing.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Barbarian, he writes a rambling essay that is lengthy and largely bereft of substance so that a person can't reply conveniently so he can then look at the responses and say to himself that his points were not addressed.

But it's the same point over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
And over.
"The Gospels ARE history! They really, really are! Because the best explanation for (argument from incredulity).
And you (guys) (argument from ignorance). And (just plain ignorance)."

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

You say G. Washington chopped down a tree? and then what -- he raised it from the dead?

1 guy.

1 guy writing about the life of George Washington, interviewing people who were still alive and had known GW as a child, invented the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree.

A kid chopping down a tree is not a miracle story. This is no analogy to Jesus.

And aside from that, the miracle stories of Jesus could not have originated this way. Washington was a famous public figure when this story was invented. It would not have been invented and attached to him if he had not been a famous public figure with a long career behind him and a widespread reputation.

Jesus was not famous during his life and did not enjoy any such career or reputation (unless you believe the miracle stories, which are the reason given for his fame in the only references that say he had fame). To find an analogy to him, you have to find an example of a mythologized miracle hero who had no long career or widespread reputation when the mythologizing began.

Why can't you find such a case?

He wrote it down. He sourced ALL the accounts of GW that showed up in history books and social studies books and any other damned place you could find it. It was taken as fact from that one source.

UNTIL historians actually started to question the account.

NOT that they were skeptical, they just felt that before THEY wrote the story down in their history books, they wanted actual corroboration.... You know, holding the story to a 'higher standard' for evaluation.

From  George_Washington# Cherry_tree

"Joseph Rodman in 1904 noted that Weems plagiarized other Washington tales from published fiction set in England."

Plagiarized! That means he stole stories from other accounts and attributed the anecdotes to Washington.

Please consider your claims that a short amount of time helps make a story credible.

A short time span from the actual event to the later report does make it more credible, and let's say this was a relatively short time, compared to stories about Asclepius or Horus or all those other miracle gods.

But this George Washington example fails on so many grounds, it's a miracle that you're even offering this as any kind of analogy to Jesus the miracle-worker.

In addition to not even being a miracle story at all, which totally disquaifies it, this is a case where there is ONLY ONE SOURCE for the story. Have you forgotten that we need multiple sources for the miracle-worker and not only one?

In the light of this evidence, it does show that to be an empty approach to establishing historicity.

No, the time duration from the actual alleged events and the reports of them IS important. There are probably some further Washington legends that developed later and might even be more impressive than something so silly as chopping down a tree. The fact that all you can find is a tree-chopping story helps to prove that real legends, such as miracle stories, take longer to develop.

But remember -- Washington needed to have an established reputation as a public figure before this story could become attached to him. It required some time period for him to establish this reputation.

It only takes one person to create bullshit.

So, if it's so easy to create a Jesus-like miracle-worker, why do we have only one? only one for whom there are multiple sources and who became mythologized in less than 50 years and who wasn't a well-publicized public figure with a widespread reputation when the mythologizing started? If it takes only one person to create such a mythic hero, we should have hundreds of examples of them, or even thousands. And yet you can't name one, other than the Jesus case.

If it's popular bullshit, it'll spread quickly . . .

Then we should have hundreds of Jesus-like miracle workers. Why do we have only one? You're giving arguments that prove my point. The evidence is that whatever happened in the case of Jesus, it has never happened in any other case in history. And I don't mean today -- I mean that in the 1st century we had a person who stands out uniquely from any other mythic hero figure ever.

If it's so easy to create such a mythic figure and spread his fame quickly, why is there no other case in the historical record? Obviously this one is not the popular bullshit kind of mythic hero you're thinking of. Maybe all the others are, but this one clearly is not.

(Are we really talking about someone who only chopped down a tree?)

Even if the Washington story was true and he really did chop down that tree when he was a kid -- still, if General Washington had been in a presidential debate, Lloyd Bentson would have said to him, "George, Jesus Christ is a friend of mine, I know Jesus. General, you're no Jesus Christ!"

 

[Keith&Co.]

A kid chopping down a tree is not a miracle story. This is no analogy to Jesus.

A story appeared and was taken at face value. It appeared in many history textbooks.
When the historians decided to search for actual historical basis to the story, they came up empty.
They found that the author of that story attributed it to someone anonymous who told him about it.
They also found that this biographer copied a number of anecdotes from much older English books and attributed them to George Washington. For no better reason we can see than to make George seem more impressive.

This is an exact analogy to the Jesus myth. Your adding this requirement for miracles does not mean the story is MORE credible because impossible shit happened. This would be moving the goalpost on your part.

And aside from that, the miracle stories of Jesus could not have originated this way. Washington was a famous public figure when this story was invented. It would not have been invented and attached to him if he had not been a famous public figure with a long career behind him and a widespread reputation.

A meaningless quibble. Special casing again.
It doesn't make the Jesus myth any more credible, nor that it's impossible to have been cribbed from other god accounts.

To find an analogy to him, you have to find an example of a mythologized miracle hero who had no long career or widespread reputation when the mythologizing began.

Why can't you find such a case?

I don't know that i can't.
I do know that if i did, you'd just change the requirements once more, or find some other way to disparage, dismiss or otherwise reject the account.

But i'm not trying to convince you that you're wrong, here.
I'm just pointing out that people who are conversant with history and religions other than yours have no reason to accept your claims.

A short time span from the actual event to the later report does make it more credible,

So, you just keep repeating this baseless claim. That'll eventually make it credible?

In addition to not even being a miracle story at all, which totally disquaifies it, this is a case where there is ONLY ONE SOURCE for the story. Have you forgotten that we need multiple sources for the miracle-worker and not only one?

Have you forgotten that there was no sign it was ONLY ONE SOURCE until historians actually tried to find the source? It was all over history classes in the schools of the land.
When they asked for history, it failed.

We're asking for historical evidence of the miracles. You've got no witnesses.
You've got no disinterested commentary.
Your only 'evidence' is anonymous accounts of dubious provenance.

So...no evidence.

No, the time duration from the actual alleged events and the reports of them IS important.

Only according to you.
And you make so many mistakes when you assert stuff, there's no reason to accept this as a valid point.

So, if it's so easy to create a Jesus-like miracle-worker, why do we have only one?

Because all the other Christ candidate stories were stamped out.

The evidence is that whatever happened in the case of Jesus, it has never happened in any other case in history.

Hardly.

If it's so easy to create such a mythic figure and spread his fame quickly, why is there no other case in the historical record?

Because Christains wrote the historical record.

(Are we really talking about someone who only chopped down a tree?)

We're talking about a lie that spread because people didn't challenge the source. You ought to think long on that.
Longer than you thought before telling me what the gnostics wrote in books that were burned a hundred generations ago.

 

[Barbarian]

Jesus was not famous during his life and did not enjoy any such career or reputation (unless you believe the miracle stories, which are the reason given for his fame in the only references that say he had fame). To find an analogy to him, you have to find an example of a mythologized miracle hero who had no long career or widespread reputation when the mythologizing began.

You are assuming again that Jesus existed. The stories could have been around for a century or more and then they could have simply been attributed to the hero du jour. In popular retellings the story is more important that the protagonist; the protagonist's identity is a minor detail. We even have church fathers trying to wriggle out of this one by claiming that the devil must have planted those stories such that Christianity, when it finally arrived, would look like a composite rip-off.

Why can't you find such a case?

You aren't supposed to claim that until someone tried to do it, and judged from your performance here, I have to agree with Keith & Co. that it's not worth even trying.

A short time span from the actual event to the later report does make it more credible, and let's say this was a relatively short time, compared to stories about Asclepius or Horus or all those other miracle gods.

That there was a short time span from the event or that there was even an event is part of what you have to prove, not part of what you can use to prove the rest of the fairy tale.

So, if it's so easy to create a Jesus-like miracle-worker, why do we have only one?

The alleged short timespan of Jesus' ministry is one arbitrary story aspect of Christianity which you are elevating to the pedestal of objectively positive proof of veracity. If the Christian legend said Jesus lived to 150 years, you'd be flaunting that as the differentiating aspect of Christianity. It's not more widespread because it's a somewhat arbitrary invention; either from whole cloth or from earlier myths or perhaps because the actual rebel who got crucified by the Romans and later got affixed all those legends originally referencing other people, was only about 30 years old. There's no reason for it to be widespread because, despite of your objections to the contrary, it's an insignificant detail you are grasping at because you've really got nothing to show.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Let's go Gang -- you can do better than this! Where are those Jesus-like miracle-workers you keep promising but fail to deliver?

You challenge me with the following:

But you're too embarrassed to name one? You know there is no evidence for them. If there is one who is comparable to the case of Jesus, then just name one.

I've named several already but will name some again:

Horus, Osirus, Perseus, Promethus, Mithras, Hercules, Bacchus.

Each of these epic hero-god myths was around for centuries before their stories were reheated with your favorite hero-god's name inserted in place of their names.

But these are not historical persons, or alleged historical persons, who reportedly did miracle acts. My claim is that the accounts we have of Jesus performing these acts is evidence (not proof) that he did these acts, which indicates that he had super-human power. And there are no other cases of such miracle-workers in history, i.e., actual historical persons, for whom we have evidence.

So there is no evidence that Horus, Osirus, etc. were historical persons who performed miracle acts. But there is evidence that Jesus had such power because of these reported acts that he did. That's how he differs from the gods you're citing. They are not analogous to him.

That some mythic symbols also became attached to Jesus is irrelevant. Why did they choose only Jesus to attach these symbols to? Where are the other reputed historical figures who became mythologized like he did? They could find only one figure to whom they could attach these symbols?

That is the exact reason I copied the Justyn Martyr quote which you evidently didn't read (or comprehend). The quote doesn't imply that Jupiter was a man, it implies that Martyr was aware of many similar myths about Roman god-men who were "sons of Jupiter" whose story lines followed virtually identical paths to the one attributed to your favorite hero-god myth.

But there is no evidence that those gods did perform any miracle acts, and they were not even historical persons. The legends about them obviously evolved over many centuries and are not based on reports written during their lifetime (if they did live 1000 years earlier as real persons), and so there is no comparison between them and the historical Christ person of 29-30 AD. Nothing about them is any evidence that the Jesus accounts are untrue.

I'd also encourage you to actually click on the link to the "Miracles of Joseph Smith" before embarrassing yourself yet another time with your lack of knowledge of the subject matter at hand. Since you evidently can't be bothered to do so I'll quote a brief portion of the article:

Healing
According to a number of eye-witness accounts, Joseph Smith is credited with the miraculous healings of a large number of individuals.

• Oliver B. Huntington reported that, in the spring of 1831, Smith healed the lame arm of the wife of John Johnson of Hiram, Ohio. This account is corroborated by the account of a Protestant minister who was present. However, he did not attribute the miraculous healing to the power of God.
• Smith related an experience in which he said the Lord gave him the power to raise his father from his deathbed in October 1835.
• Smith related another experience, occurring in December 1835, in which he said the Lord gave him the power to immediately heal Angeline Works when she lay dying, so sick that she could not recognize her friends and family.
• In his personal journal, Wilford Woodruff recorded an event that occurred on July 22, 1839 in which he described Smith walking among a large number of Saints who had taken ill, immediately healing them all. Among those healed were Woodruff himself, Brigham Young, Elijah Fordham, and Joseph B. Noble. Woodruff also tells of how, just after these events occurred, a ferryman who was not a follower of Smith but who had heard of the miracles asked Smith to heal his children, who had come down with the same disease. Smith said that he did not have time to go to the ferryman's house, but he charged Woodruff to go and heal them. Woodruff reports that he went and did as Smith had told him to do and that the children were healed.

Please note that the "evidence" in this case is of considerably greater quality than the evidence you keep presenting about Jesus.

Assuming we have the two accounts of the first case, which is not clear, then for this one there are two sources, and one of them qualifies it by saying the healing did not come from "the power of God," which makes it questionable. Why would he say this if he didn't think there was something suspicious about it?

Nevertheless, if there really are two written sources for this, then I'd say this is evidence that Joseph Smith may have performed a healing in this case, or an unusual recovery took place that is coincidental. If there were many other healing acts reported about Smith, with more than one source, then it should be taken seriously. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Though it looks like this one healing event would be the only one with any credibility.

The other two examples you give have only one source each, and one of those sources is Joseph Smith himself, which hardly is sufficient. The last example is impressive, but there is only one source for it, so it fails to meet the reasonable standard that we must have more than one source.

I do not discount the possibility of other miracles happening in isolated cases. There are many faith-healing stories. Of all the thousands or maybe millions of healing stories through the centuries, I believe there is likely some truth for a few cases, though 99% of them are no doubt just coincidence or examples of "hits" while at the same time there are 10 times as many "misses" that go unmentioned.

It is normal for believers to attribute miracle healings to their pastor or teacher-guru, such as to Joseph Smith, and most of these are just the "hits" that are noted while the "misses" are ignored. The preacher has a strong reputation among his followers and so becomes mythologized, as a result of his reputation. This did not happen in the case of Jesus, who did not have a long career in which to establish his reputation like the standard preacher-guru does.

Since Joseph Smith had only 10-15 years to establish his reputation, I will grant that he is more unique and so there is extra evidence that he might have had something beyond normal power. Maybe it was entirely charismatic, or I would not rule out the possibility that he could have had some healing power. But we should have more examples than these ones given above.

If he did have some healing power, it seems to be quite limited, if these are the only reported cases. He was a well-recognized public figure, which helps explain it. Plus, we should expect there to be some normal praying-healing stories with any highly successful preacher-religious founder, so this doesn't seem to be an irregular case of this.

Whereas for a teacher-healer whose career was less than 3 years, a great number of miracle acts reported in multiple sources is highly irregular and requires an explanation.

In these instances the people who wrote the things down are named (and even signed in many cases). Actual named eyewitnesses were the writers as opposed to the completely anonymous NT gospels.

Having a name is much less important than having multiple sources. Since Joseph Smith had the advantage of the print media, we should expect far more examples of his miracle acts than these few, plus multiple sources instead of only one, or only himself.

But if he did heal someone in a few cases, this does not somehow prove that Jesus did not heal anyone. So what is the argument? If there is good evidence, multiple sources, near to the time of the reported events, not apparently due to normal mythologizing -- then I have no problem recognizing that Joseph Smith may have performed such an act. If the evidence is strong, maybe it's true.

The location and date of the events is considerably more precise. Much of the source documentation for these events can be dated to within days of the events in question rather than decades.

I'm not insisting that these half-dozen or so events did not happen. But we need more than one source. Having the date is less important than having some corroboration from a separate source. For the first event you list, there is the 2nd source, so it's more credible. But I'm still not sure if you've given adequate information about that one case. At best, that's the only one that is serious. It doesn't matter if the one source gives the date and exact time of day down to the second.

I would say tentatively that Smith may have had a higher-than-normal batting average for healing acts, compared to other preacher-healers. Maybe .150 rather than the normal .100. If he had an average of .700 or .800 we would have many more healing stories about him. But I think there's reason to believe Jesus had a 1.000 batting average. This would explain how he became mythologized into a god so quickly.

Why aren't you Mormon?

You mean why don't I believe in Joseph Smith? I don't think he had much power. A low batting average isn't good enough. And he attributed all his power to Christ anyway. So in a sense I believe essentially the same as he did.

I think a better case can be made that the mad monk Rasputin performed miracle healing acts in the case of one child, because there is good evidence from the historical record. But that doesn't mean I should join the Rasputinist Church or become a Rasputinist.

As I've already pointed out there were several other hero-god figures who had reputations of being able to perform miracles.

But they were not historical persons who really existed. I'm not saying there were no other legends or hero myths, but rather, that there is no evidence, or virtually none, that there were any other historical persons who performed miracle acts. Just running out a list of legends for which there is no evidence does not offer any comparison to Jesus for whom we have evidence.

There remains nothing in the Jesus myth that requires him to have ever existed for these stories to exist.

Yes there is: the accounts of him meet a standard of evidence that does not exist for any of the other miracle-worker hero legends. If such a figure is easy to create as an imaginary hero myth, we should have hundreds, or at least dozens, of other examples for whom there is evidence on this scale. The existence of this high degree of evidence is best explained by the fact that he actually did exist and did perform the particular acts described in the accounts about him.

Joseph Smith and Mohammad are both examples of individuals who started fast growing and extremely successful religious movements. When you answer the question of why each of these movements succeeded while other folks who tried to create religions met with less success . . .

This has nothing to do with trying to create a successful religion. There's no need to answer this. No doubt sociologists have answers to that.

The question here is how to create a miracle-worker legend about an historical person and get this hero transformed into a god in less than 50 years. Or even less than 30 years. From an original person who either did not exist at all or whose public career was less than 3 years.

Changing the subject to whose religion grew faster is not the point.

So no, it is not impossible to explain. There are many possible answers considerably more plausible than . . .

You've not given the explanation. Normal mythologizing like in the case of the ancient gods and various religious founders or mythic heros does not explain the case of Jesus. Because in order for that mythologizing to take place, we need an already-established public figure with a colorful career behind him, or a long tradition of myth-building over many centuries.

You can keep pretending to have explained how Jesus became mythologized in the same pattern as all these others, but you've not explained how he attained to this status despite having no distinguished career or recognition as a public figure, and you've not explained why he is the only one of this description.

Do you understand?

1. His career was LESS THAN 3 YEARS.

2. We have Multiple sources attesting to his miracle acts (a large number of such acts, not just 3 or 4).

3. These sources are all dated to within 100 years after his life, and some less than 50 years.

You do not address these points by continuing to fall back on Perseus and Hercules and Horus etc., or on popular gurus or founders of new religions who were famous public figures having status or recognition.

 

[Keith&Co.]

There are varying degrees of reliability, so you would have more doubt about this document than that one, but that doesn't mean the more doubtful one has no credibility for the historical record. Certain texts can be identified as problematic without meaning that the entire source is excluded as having no value. .

This gave my wife a chuckle. No where in the world does it work this way.

See, she's grading coursework. And the plagiarism policy is pretty clear. If you catch one sentence that's plagiarized, the whole work is given a zero. You don't just take marks off for that sentence.

Also, if you can identify part of a book review which includes elements that came from the movie instead of the book, you don't assume that the student read the book for the parts that matched. And one of her geniuses supposedly read 'Lord Of The Rings,' and wrote that it was 'a shame they removed Tom Bombadill' from the book, because he was a critical part of the book.' Clearly she is plagiarizing a REVIEW of the movie, not the book, and she blindly replaced every instance of 'movie' with 'book.' It makes for a funny read, but she's still graded for having no credibility at all.

If a scientist is caught faking data for one research project, his entire body of work for his entire career is suspect. Well. Better to say his former career.

Once you lose credibility, you lose credibility.

When you say that no one purposefully burned the gnostic gospels, you make it clear that you have no credibility on the subject at all. You'll say anything, anything at all, to preserve your view of how Christain history happened.



So when you say 'we can still use' you mean 'i will not discount,' because you work backwards from the conclusion you want, to the evidence you'll accept.

 

[Barbarian]

Why did they choose only Jesus to attach these symbols to?

The only identification of Jesus is that he's the figure these symbols got attached to. It's not a miraculous coincidence of symbols being attached to exactly the right figure, it's a case of attaching these symbols to a figure. If they were attached instead to an Eleazar son of Shumi, you'd be yapping here about how amazing it is that out of all people they were attached to Eleazar and not to, say, Joshua son of Joshua.

These sources are all dated to within 100 years after his life, and some less than 50 years.

Get into your head already that you haven't demonstrated yet that he even had a life from which something could be 100 or 50 years away. You are assuming your conclusion, and not just in one way.

Your claim boils down to a) Jesus' story is unique for many reasons and b) those unique aspects make it more likely that it happened. As to a), just consider how many ways there are to make up a story; an infinity of ways, that's how many. Every story will be unique and different from the others; that's what designates it as another story. As for b), every single bit of your reasoning presupposes that the stories are true, from where you draw the surprising conclusion that the stories are true.

My claim is that the accounts we have of Jesus performing these acts is evidence (not proof) that he did these acts, which indicates that he had super-human power.

I think that's exactly the other way around. We know there aren't such things as superhuman powers because the only 'evidence' for them are fairy tales from a stupid and superstitious age. Such things don't happen today. This is why I told you you'd have to prove the existence of anything supernatural before claiming the gospels can be taken seriously.

And there are no other cases of such miracle-workers in history, i.e., actual historical persons, for whom we have evidence.

We have better evidence for the emperor Flavius Vespasianus.

 

[DBT]

2. We have Multiple sources attesting to his miracle acts (a large number of such acts, not just 3 or 4).

No we don't. There are no first hand eyewitness accounts documenting his 'miraculous acts,' everything that has been written is based on word of mouth and penned a considerable time after they are supposed to have occurred. We know how stories change and grow with retelling. There are modern examples of miracles and miracle workers. The reliability of these accounts tend to fade under close examination. The gospel accounts are not reliable.

3. These sources are all dated to within 100 years after his life, and some less than 50 years.

Stories can change and grow with the retelling in a matter of days. In a matter of months they may not even resemble the initial events. Years? Forget about accuracy.