120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[GenesisNemesis]

The first four words of the bible say it all.
Genesis 1 "In the beginning God"

So all you have is a bullshit argument from authority. Alrighty.

 

[Kharakov]

As long as everyone is bullshitting, I'm going to throw a little bit of truth into the conversation. Conveniently, after the financial industry's black market labs released the virus into the population of the unchosen (the poor), they all developed the tendency to follow authoritarian doctrines and believe that authority and riches were given by God... but let's backtrack a bit to a couple decades after the FBI and CIA got complacent (around say '10):

The lazy, corrupt asshole side of the financial industry created something called the Revolution Financial Group, that exchanged favors among its members while claiming to provide a service to those that the financial services industry had already ripped off (we'll save you money on those loans, we'll only keep what we've taken, and.. you'll be fine).

The members of the FSI didn't receive monetary compensation in a lot of cases, but instead they received hidden benefits, loan forbearance, conveniently time windfalls, while all along they appeared to be just scraping by. They looked poor from any financial angle, but they weren't.

They traveled, ate good foods, did the best drugs, and had the best entertainers, all along crediting a God they had made up for giving them the riches they had stolen from everyone else.

The God ride was on, and as long as the majority either was falling for it or complacent, they could make a small percentage of the population do all the shit work for shit pay, and take all the good stuff for themselves (while truly abandoning a God they never knew).


That's Christian God for you. In the beginning, shit was fucked up. People were animals. Some saw that things could be good, and decided to try and make things good by using a God. Some were assholes, who would use the name of God for personal gain. Not one preacher who preaches does so for anything other than personal gain. They do not believe- they lie, for the very thing built into the bible is this: if God is there, and all powerful, and welcome, God does not need one preacher. God does not need one prophet. God does not need one book. Only liars need a book to teach them to lie, and a prophet to give them lies. And that is what every Christian is in their heart of hearts- a liar who turns their back on reality, to gain a little, petty piece of the pie.

They kill God in their hearts and minds every time they pray, and they do not care. The don't care that praying does not solve problems- diligence, the scientific method, and discipline do. They just don't care, as long as they have eachother to blow smoke up one another's asses.

Or they're just a bunch of confused, greedy apes, that really wish there was something better, and they're stupid enough to fall for analytics and AIs that are designed to make them complacent. I know I am.

 

[none]

There is a Bible?

 

[DrZoidberg]

There's something very suspicious about somebody only doing miracles in ways that cannot be verified for posterity. God's miracles is the equivalent of a stage magician turning his back to the audience before each trick.

And the old Christian thing about that it's a question of faith. You need to come to God yourself, and that it can't be too obvious. Ok, fine. Then why did God do any miracles? Wasn't the whole point of the miracles to convince people of Jesus divinity? So obviously God is not above using magic to convince people. Which brings us back to the original point. Why the fuck hasn't he done miracles that are on camera, or which can be measured in a scientific experiment? All God needs to do is, using his Jedi powers, to pick up a rock and suspend it somewhere in mid-air and just let it stay there. The fact that God doesn't, tells me that, assuming God really exists, that God does not want us to believe in him. I can oblige.

Suspicious .. still don't get it? After Jesus's death and ressurection it is then the period of revelation to follow. These are the steps just as it is written , no more sripture to be added later! Direct interaction from God is NOW only through Jesus! Hence forth the unique terms only to Christians; "Witness and testimonies" and teachings for future generations ... the present and onwards for the time till the return.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is the stage magician turning his back to the audience when doing the trick. There's no point to any of this. Why is there a "period of revelation"? It makes no sense. There's nothing stopping an omnipotent agent to keep doing miracles (we can measure in a lab). Why would a God, on purpose, make it hard for people to accept him?

Here's how it looks to me. There were no miracles at any point. Somebody misheard, mis-saw or were bullshitted by a conjurer. Or different stories were conflated. There's a vast array of more likely explanations than that there had been miracles.

There will be people who will see various signs in all manner of things and accept along the way including scientists, when they discover more ... not all of course ... not untill its right in front of them as it says in revelation. As it says ; All will believe eventually.

When I was a child we had a secret club. You had to be a member to hear the secret. The joke was that there was no secret. That was the secret. We had people begging to be members. They were willing to degrade themselves at any length to hear the secret. They were wiling to jump through hoops, and convince themselves of so much nonsense to make it worth their while. That's Christianity.

Witness psychology is notoriously unreliable. Believing is seeing. If you believe in something you will see it all around you. Unless you can measure it in a lab using scientific equipment it's not likely to be true. If you have to have faith in order to see God, that's just witness psychology at play. It's just exploiting a cognitive defect in our brains. That's what con artists do to fool people.

You're not making the case for God especially well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

Suspicious .. still don't get it? After Jesus's death and ressurection it is then the period of revelation to follow.

How long is this "period of revelation"? And when did it begin? It couldn't have begun right after the so-called "resurrection", because the earliest Xian writings we have are from at least 2 decades after that supposed event. How does that work, anyway? Imagine, supposedly the most momentous events in world history occur, and nobody thinks, "Hey, I'd better write this down" until 20 years later ... and then the one who first writes it down is somebody (Paul) who wasn't there when it's all supposed to have happened anyway, and (understandably, given his absence) doesn't even write about the events, giving instead some information about a celestial saviour who apparently suffered and died in some heavenly realm and not on this planet at all? Not to mention that half the supposed Pauline Epistles are forged, and concern debates the church was only having decades after Paul was dead and gone. Sounds fishy to me.

These are the steps just as it is written , no more sripture to be added later! Direct interaction from God is NOW only through Jesus! Hence forth the unique terms only to Christians; "Witness and testimonies" and teachings for future generations ... the present and onwards for the time till the return.

"no more sripture to be added later!"
Except the bits that were tacked on later, such as the last few verses of Mark, which originally said nothing after the discovery of the empty tomb, and the story in John of the woman take in adultery ("let he who is without sin", etc.) ... and who knows what all else in the centuries between the original writings and the oldest extant full copies. We know that scribes altered the gospels - sometimes by error, sometimes by design - so by definition, if you accept the gospels as scripture, there most certainly has been "scripture added later". Again, that's without going into the forged and falsified books and epistles designed to settle factional arguments in the church around the beginning of the 2nd century. Again, sounds very fishy.

There will be people who will see various signs in all manner of things and accept along the way including scientists, when they discover more ... not all of course ... not untill its right in front of them as it says in revelation.

I take it, by "revelation", you're referring to the Book of Revelation? I wouldn't put too much stock in that, if I were you. Certainly not when it comes to predicting future events, given that it's all about what was going on in its own time in the Roman Empire. And there were many in the early church who didn't accept it as any kind of "scripture"- it was unlisted in several canonical lists right up to the 5th century, and excluded from the 4th century Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest extant bible manuscripts. Very unreliable, if you ask me.

As it says ; All will believe eventually.

So how long is this "eventually"? Because, 2000 years on from Jesus supposedly saying he'd return before some of those with him would die, you're still a very, very long way from "all" believing. And getting further by the day, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[lpetrich]

I haven't seen her mentioned in the bible ...being a book of prophecies. Not forgetting that she belonged to one of many denominations and if you ever did find fault with MT by a particular theist "standard" say, that wouldn't be enough of an example in context to Christanity, based on one sole individual.

So what about Mother Teresa not being mentioned in the Bible? My point is that big miracles don't seem to happen anymore.

Bertrand Russell noted in his History of Western Philosophy, some miracles worked by a certain St. Benedict, around 500 CE. He mended a broken sieve with prayer. When some monks tried to poison him with a glass of poisoned wine, he made the sign of the cross, and the glass broke. When someone's billhook came loose from its handle and fell into some deep water, St. Benedict put the handle into the water and the billhook rose up and put itself back in place. An envious neighboring priest once sent a loaf of poisoned bread to him. But he miraculously knew that it was poisoned, and a crow that he liked feeding bread to obeyed him when he stated "In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, take up that loaf, and leave it in some such place where no man may find it."

Why don't saints work miracles like that anymore? Or like St. Genevieve's? Or like St. Francis Xavier's?

 

[Learner]

This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is the stage magician turning his back to the audience when doing the trick. There's no point to any of this. Why is there a "period of revelation"? It makes no sense. There's nothing stopping an omnipotent agent to keep doing miracles (we can measure in a lab). Why would a God, on purpose, make it hard for people to accept him?


Here's how it looks to me. There were no miracles at any point. Somebody misheard, mis-saw or were bullshitted by a conjurer. Or different stories were conflated. There's a vast array of more likely explanations than that there had been miracles.

Who said miracles would stop? Testimonies are called testimonies for a reason whether one is inclined to believe or not is another thing. That doesn't mean all claims are true even for Christians ,depending on individual circumstances. Miracles are a variety of things. Did you think that Christians should then walk on water if they make the claim for miracles? These are personal one to one things through Jesus ... Its says so. All you were doing was trying to make out an argument by a flawed logical contradiction - a generalization in this regard to the texts. That's how it looks to me.

When I was a child we had a secret club. You had to be a member to hear the secret. The joke was that there was no secret. That was the secret. We had people begging to be members. They were willing to degrade themselves at any length to hear the secret. They were wiling to jump through hoops, and convince themselves of so much nonsense to make it worth their while. That's Christianity.

Christianity is no secret and all are welcome ... if any individual wants.

Witness psychology is notoriously unreliable. Believing is seeing. If you believe in something you will see it all around you. Unless you can measure it in a lab using scientific equipment it's not likely to be true. If you have to have faith in order to see God, that's just witness psychology at play. It's just exploiting a cognitive defect in our brains. That's what con artists do to fool people.

You're not making the case for God especially well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

What is it that we can measure today with scientific equipment? We are learning everyday and STILL discovering. (a little brief ..busy at the mo)

 

[Kharakov]

Why is there a "period of revelation"? It makes no sense. There's nothing stopping an omnipotent agent to keep doing miracles (we can measure in a lab). Why would a God, on purpose, make it hard for people to accept him?

That's a question for Oz, the great and powerful!


We're off to see the Wizard
The wonderful Wizard of Oz
We hear he is a whiz of a wiz
If ever a wiz there was
If ever, oh ever a wiz there was


The Wizard of Oz is one because
Because, because, because, because, because
Because of the wonderful things he does
We're off to see the Wizard
The wonderful Wizard of Oz

 

[Keith&Co.]

Who said miracles would stop?

Well, Self-Mutation used to insist that miracles stopped when Jesus left the Earth, exactly to solve the question of why we don't see bible-level miracles in modern day.

Of course, he also would tell us about the miracle when God saved him from having to walk home in a skeevy neighborhood by usurping the free will of a tow-truck driver... This one time when he was all alone... And retained no evidence of the miracle besides his testimony that it really, really happened, for sure, trust me, and the truck driver's testimony (only available as part of SM's testimony) confirmed it, yep, yepper.

 

[lpetrich]

Who said miracles would stop?

Well, Self-Mutation used to insist that miracles stopped when Jesus left the Earth, exactly to solve the question of why we don't see bible-level miracles in modern day.

That would mean that the alleged miracles of Catholic saints are completely bogus.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Well, Self-Mutation used to insist that miracles stopped when Jesus left the Earth, exactly to solve the question of why we don't see bible-level miracles in modern day.

That would mean that the alleged miracles of Catholic saints are completely bogus.

You'd think so, but that only works if you remember that argument while evaluating claims of miracles. Self was one of those apologists who only consider one thing at a time, tailoring the argument of the moment to the question of the moment, without regard to continuity or remembering what he argued yesterday...

 

[James Brown]

I miss Self-Mutation.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Do the Gospels belong in a "GENRE" of literature which makes them necessarily "FICTION"?

I'm not impressed by Lumpenproletariat's spews. I haven't seen in them anything close to a discussion of modern scholarship concerning the origin of the Gospels. No discusssion of:

• We have no clue as to who "Matthew", "Mark", "Luke", and "John" were.

You mean we don't know who the authors were, assuming those named persons are not the authors. Why should anyone have sleepless nights over this? Even when authors are named, we still know hardly anything about them. We know who Philostratus was, sort of -- he names himself in his biography of Apollonius of Tyana, and yet that doesn't make his miracle tales any more credible.

We have good reason to believe those Apollonius stories are fiction, whereas the Jesus miracle stories are probably factual, because we have 4 sources for them instead of only one, and they are written within decades of the reported events, whereas the Philostratus stories date 150 years later than the reported events. What's important is the evidence, not whether we have an author's name. How does having the name of an author make the account any more credible?

They don't identify themselves in the text, and . . .

The historical persons Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are identified.

If all you're saying is that the Gospels are "anonymous," we've hashed over this many times and no one has shown how the accounts are any less credible just because they're anonymous. Those raising this point have been asked again and again to explain why an "anonymous" account is any less credible, and no one has answered why.

. . . and those names are a later tradition.

You mean the Gospels were attributed to those names later, which is possible, but we don't know that. It may be that shorter versions of the original Gospels were actually written by these persons as the authors, but then later text was added to those original writings, so that what we have now might be mostly later additions to the original Gospels of Mt, Mk, Lk, and Jn.

But even if the attributions to Mt, Mk, Lk, and Jn are false, this does not undermine the credibility of the Gospel writings, which do not include any attribution to these persons.

We don't know the answers to this, and "modern scholarship" has shed no new light on it. Why does it matter that the identity of the authors is uncertain?

If you're complaining that these writings are "anonymous" and this buzz-word frightens you -- well, others are not frightened by it. No one has given any reason why we should be afraid of a source just because it has the "anonymous" label attached to it by crusader-debunkers who are desperate to find some flaw in these writings. This is not a flaw -- those crusaders need to come up with something of substance instead of mindlessly throwing around the "anonymous" label again and again.

• Matthew and Luke plagiarized Mark very heavily, making word-for-word copies of much of that gospel.

Only a small fraction is word-for-word quotes. And even so, it doesn't make Mt and Lk any less credible. There is nothing wrong with quoting a previous source. This only shows that they were careful to take account of what earlier sources said, rather than just relying on their own memories and current oral reports only.

• Either Matthew and Luke plagiarized an additional source, "Q", or else Luke plagiarized Matthew also.

Despite your glee at repeating the buzz-word "plagiarized" again and again for bombastic effect, the truth is that there's nothing wrong with a document quoting an earlier source. How does this make a source less credible? Instead of just repeating over and over that they used earlier sources, why not for once give a reason why using a previous source makes the account any less credible.

• The Gospels are very bad at giving sources, and even worse at discussing them.

Very few ancient writings give their sources. There's usually no need to, and yet they are still reliable as sources for historical events. One conspicuous example of a book which gives its source is II Maccabees, and yet this book is of lower credibility compared to others which give no source and are anonymous. So giving the source does not mean higher credibility.

We do not demand that the history writers for 1000+ years ago give their sources. We believe them without knowing their sources. Even if it's true that the more famous historians usually mention something about their sources, this is a minor part of their writing, and they still do not provide the sources individually for most of their particular facts. So when you read a particular fact in Tacitus or Josephus or Suetonius, etc., there is usually no source given for it. We just believe them and assume they have some source for it -- maybe only popular beliefs or rumors floating around, which could be reliable. It's reasonable to believe them even though they usually don't give us the source.


Every source -- even ONLY ONE -- is evidence.

And what good is a "source" if you don't know the "source" for this "source"? The demand for a "source" is really a form of circular logic: If you disbelieve the document/source in front of you, then why wouldn't you also disbelieve any "source" which this "source" might be relying on? and the "source" for that source, and so on? However, if you trust the source you're reading directly, because it is itself one source, then it makes sense that even further sources add more weight to the evidence.

So it makes no sense to say "This source itself can't be trusted unless it names a source" = circular logic. Rather, it makes sense to say "This source itself is evidence, and if even more sources agree with it, then that's even more evidence."

So just one source/document by itself is evidence. A document from the time saying x, y, or z happened, is evidence for x, y, or z, and then if there are further documents also saying it, that increases the evidence for it. But if you reject the document in front of you because there's no "source" for it, then you have to reject ALL documents and sources, because ultimately any document must trace back to an original "source" for which there is no earlier source. So don't make a mindless religion out of sources by saying that a source which doesn't name its source has no credibility and must be fiction.

• The Gospels use lots of direct speech (lpetrich said "I am writing a post") as opposed to indirect speech (lpetrich said that he is writing a post), making them much more like fictional works than like historical works.

No, Herodotus and Livy are historians who used many "direct" speech quotes, like the gospel accounts. Josephus, by contrast, avoids quoting characters. This is not about "fictional" vs. "historical" works, but about differing style of writing from one author to another, or from one part to another within the same source or author. It's optional which style to use -- it has nothing to do with whether it's fictional or factual.

(The term "indirect speech" is somewhat meaningless, because many passages saying person A influenced person B can be interpreted as "indirect speech" because it implies someone said something. E.g., here are 3 random passages from Josephus I came across in a very brief scan of a couple pages (Jewish War I, 524-527:

he would first proclaim to the world the sufferings of his nation, bled to death by taxation, and then go on to describe the luxury and malpractices on which . . .

. . . Eurycles proceeded to extol Antipater to the skies, as the only son who had any filial affection, . . .

Antipater, seizing this new opportunity, privily sent in others to accuse his brothers of holding clandestine interviews . . .

On and on there are easily hundreds of these, probably thousands, where someone apparently expressed something to someone else, proclaiming, describing, extolling, accusing, etc., always meaning words were spoken. Are these all "indirect speech" examples? This shows that "indirect speech" is really a subjective term you could apply or not apply to something remotely resembling a quote being attributed to someone.

Perhaps the Gospels don't use such phrases very much -- there's no way to objectively count the number of these -- but it's nutty to suggest this means they are less credible or more fictional. It would be OK to say Josephus and other historians use more style than the Gospel writers in describing the behavior of characters. But that doesn't make them more credible or less fictional.

The Gospels put extra focus on the one Jesus Christ figure, to put him at the center of everything, while making the normal humans less important, and so giving less emphasis to their words and motives. This is appropriate if Jesus actually did perform the miracle acts, which then drew the extra attention to him, making him the basic subject matter of these writings. It's this specialized focus in these writings which explains the choice of literary device used to communicate the message. It has nothing to do with the credibility or fact-vs.-fiction of the content.)

Even if many of the Bible "direct speech" quotes are really the words of the author and not the character named, or are a loose paraphrase of what the character might have said, this does not undermine the credibility of that Bible account. Of course there are credibility questions with many texts, such as whether some of it is fiction, but these cases have nothing to do with whether "direct" or "indirect" speech was used by the author.

In addition to Livy and Herodotus, Cicero uses many "direct speech" quotes, but that doesn't make him "fictional" rather than a legitimate source for historical information. He's generally reliable for historical facts even though he's not a certified "historian." Such "direct speech" quoting in no way undermines Cicero's credibility as a source for history, nor that of other writers such as the Gospel writers.

• The Gospels use a third-person-omniscient perspective instead of a first-person limited-knowledge perspective, also more like fictional works than like historical works.

No, historical works used the "third-person" perspective much more than the "first-person" perspective. Also their total use of the "third-person" perspective is far greater than that of the Gospel writers. This is not some kind of flaw which they redeem themselves from by also including some "first-person" perspective which the Gospel writers do not.

It's a false comparison to measure the Gospels by the standards of the official "historical" writers, because the former are much shorter works and of much less total quantity compared to the historical writers who provide some personal background within their far greater quantity of total text, so that within this large output they include some pages explaining their background and relationship to the information. Their much greater total output allowed for some space to be devoted to this personal background about themselves.

Mainline historians: more broad, comprehensively historical
Gospel writers: shorter, narrowly focused on one special event

No essential difference in credibility
​

The Gospels are focused in on one special event in history and its unique importance, not the broad historical scene, or an overview of the history, as with the mainline historians.

E.g., Josephus, as a part of his extensive overview of Jewish history, finds space to include his personal background and his place in the whole picture, and from this we see how he gained some of his information. But this personal background is only a tiny fraction of the total quantity of text from him, which is vastly greater than that of any Bible writer. Writers of shorter works, like the Gospel accounts, didn't have the luxury to provide all the background we find in most of the lengthy historical works.

Just because the Gospels are shorter and are not part of a voluminous series from the author does not mean they are more fictional or less credible. Even if there are more credibility problems with the Gospel accounts generally, these text problems have to be addressed individually, point by point, not with simplistic pronouncements that they are "fictional" because they don't include biographical information on the author, which is not a requirement for a document to have credibility as a source for the events.

There's nothing about the writer giving background information which makes the source more credible. If your default position is to disbelieve your source about the events it reports, you can just as reasonably disbelieve it on whatever it says about the author's background. The author can just as easily "make up shit" about his own background as about the historical events he reports.

If you want to prove this or that document is more fictional/factual than another, you have to show this by analyzing the content of each text within the documents. You prove nothing by citing the supposed category or "genre" of the document.

Here are some links on what the Gospels have in common with various works from antiquity nowadays considered fictional.

Virtually all the works from antiquity contain some fiction, so the phrase "works from antiquity nowadays considered fictional" is meaningless. All that the Gospels have "in common" with any fictional works is that they contain some fiction, like all ancient literature does. For each case we need to separate the fact from the fiction, in ALL sources and all literature types, and this is not done by declaring it to have something "in common" with a category branded by someone as fictional compared to other categories.

There is no official category containing all the "fictional" literature -- such categorizing or compartmentalizing of items in order to be able to judge certain ones as inferior and to be dismissed or downgraded to lower status is a subjective exercise only, not based on science or objective analysis. Any categorizing done in order to dismiss or denigrate a literature type to a lower class and unworthy as a source is a false and fraudulent use of any legitimate classification of literature types.

The proper approach for determining credibility of a source, such as for historical events, is to analyze each part of the document, its content, considering the date of the source and proximity to the reported events, the details or descriptions in it, its relation to other sources with similar content, what it implies if it is true, or the author's possible motive if it's false, or psychological factor which could explain a discrepancy, and other questions about the particular content and the occasion for it being written.

But it's an improper approach to place the source into a discredited or taboo category in order to simplistically debunk it without legitimately treating it critically on its merit as a possibly credible source.

There is a premise here that anything in the taboo category, or "in common" with it, has to be fiction because it is in that category or "genre" of literature -- which is false. We do not determine if something is fiction by declaring what "genre" it belongs to, or is "in common" with, and then concluding that it must be fiction because certain supposed experts assigned it to that "genre" vs. some other category.

There's nothing significant "in common" with fiction shown in these links, and nothing showing any evidence that the Jesus miracle stories belong in a fictional category. All these listed links follow the methodology of trying to assign the Gospel accounts to an inferior "genre" which is supposed to have only fiction literature in it and then declaring triumphantly, "See, the Gospels must be fiction because they're in this genre of literature reserved for fiction only."

This is not the way to judge the credibility of a source.


What "GENRE" do the Gospels really belong to?

In all the following links, Matthew Ferguson artificially places the Gospel writings into some kind of "fiction" category, based on supposed similarities between them and the literature in the category, and then because of this categorization we're supposed to consider them fiction, on the rationale that they must be if they're in that category, as decreed by certain scholar-experts who have neatly classified all literature types into an all-encompassing universally-recognized categorizing scheme binding upon all.

But the real GENRE of the Gospel accounts has to be something like the following. Or, any document in this "genre" must meet the following description:

• It relates historical events, alleged to be factual, which are placed into a historical timeframe and into the events of that time, whether or not the document is tainted with some fictional or religious or propaganda elements in the text, which can be treated critically but do not, by being present, negate the reported factual events.

• It was written near to the time of the events, not several hundred years later. (It becomes marginal if the date of writing is 100-200 years later than the time period of the events -- this time span might still be short enough, but the comparison is weaker when the gap becomes this wide.)

• It focuses on one important event, or narrow range of events, presented as special, rather than a wide range of events, or general overview of a historical subject matter.

Ferguson basically does not give examples of literature meeting the above legitimate description for comparison to the Gospels. Rather, he puts the Gospels into a false category, placing them along with other literature not of the same category or "genre" described above, but having certain alleged literary style similarities, unrelated to the important fact-vs.-fiction question, which requires addressing the content or the claims being made in the document, regardless of the writing style. The writing style can be used to communicate fact or fiction, and is thus irrelevant to whether the document has credibility as to claims it makes about the historical events. It's in studying those claims and the proximity of the writer to the events which leads to a determination of the credibility.

This will be shown in subsequent Walls of Text to deal with the listed links, each of which is a still longer Wall of Text mostly just repeating over and over the categorizing methodology of putting the Gospels into an artificial "novelistic" or "fiction" category and then concluding from this categorizing that the miracle stories must be fiction, or that the entire Gospel accounts must be fiction, because of having been assigned to that category.

Whereas the proper methodology is to treat each text separately to judge its credibility, by analyzing its content to determine its likely "fiction" or "fact" status, regardless of anything about the literary style -- recognizing the likelihood that certain parts are fact and other parts fiction, rather than dogmatically pronouncing the whole document as fiction -- out of a rage to condemn it all as hogwash -- or as entirely fact, out of a religious sentiment to make the Bible into an infallible sacred object.

I.e., the text is not made fiction by someone claiming the whole document belongs in the "fiction" category. Rather, this or that text might be put into a fiction category because you first determined that it separately is fiction. So the categorization of it comes only AFTER determining its fact-vs.-fiction status, as a result, not before. So certain parts of this or that Gospel account might go into a fiction category -- i.e., not the entire document, but certain parts of it -- from having first been analyzed and found to be probably fiction. So you find the text in itself to be fact or fiction by analyzing what it says, or the content, or claims in it. Regardless of any category someone claims it belongs to.

If there is such a thing as a "novelistic" or "fiction" category, the items in it are placed there because each one was analyzed and determined to be fiction, regardless of its literary style. It's not the literary style which put it into that category, but the determination that it was fiction, i.e., by judging it according to its content, or what is claimed in it, and considering the likelihood of these claims to be fact or fiction.

So a Gospel text might legitimately be put into a "fiction" category after first determining that it's fiction, but not judged to be fiction because of a prejudgment that it belongs in the "fiction" category, or "reads like" fiction, etc., as Ferguson reasons perversely and backwardly, in the following links, repeatedly putting the Gospels into some "novelistic" or "fiction" category first, and then reverse-reasoning from this that they must be fiction because of being in that category.


(This Wall of Text to be continued)

 

[DBT]

Walls of text makes it difficult to respond. Too much information to deal with at any given time.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Walls of text makes it difficult to respond. Too much information to deal with at any given time.

Well, too many QUOTES to deal with.
It's the same information. "It's true because i say so. And here's some made-up rules about how it's more credible than other scriptures."

 

[bilby]

Walls of text makes it difficult to respond. Too much information to deal with at any given time.

It's what we in IT call a 'Write-only' document.

 

[DBT]

Yeah, assert ten thousand points in one post, so many that your opponents cannot address a sizable fraction of them and be certain that most remain unchallenged. That's the right way to debate, by Golly.

 

[none]

4 sources of euhemerization

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Do the Gospels belong in a "GENRE" of literature which makes them necessarily FICTION?

(continued from previous Wall of Text)

Here are some links on what the Gospels have in common with various works from antiquity nowadays considered fictional.
Ancient Historical Writing Compared to the Gospels of the New Testament | Κέλσος
The Certamen of Homer and Hesiod and the Gospels: Some Comparanda | Κέλσος
Lawrence Wills: “The Life of Aesop and the Hero Cult Paradigm in the Gospel Tradition” | Κέλσος
Are the Gospels Ancient Biographies?: The Spectrum of Ancient Βίοι | Κέλσος
Greek Popular Biography: Romance, Contest, Gospel | Κέλσος
Patterns of Myth-Making Between the Lives of Alexander the Great and Jesus Christ | Κέλσος
 Ancient Greek novel

There is a premise here that anything in the category has to be fiction because it is in that category or "genre" of literature -- which is false: We do not determine if something is fiction by designating a fiction "genre" it belongs to and then concluding that it must be fiction because of its assignment to that "genre" vs. some other category.

There's nothing in these links showing any evidence that the Jesus miracle stories belong in a fictional category. All these links follow the methodology of trying to assign the Gospel accounts to a "genre" which is supposed to have only fiction literature in it and then declaring "See, the Gospels must be fiction because they're in this genre of literature reserved for fiction only."


What "GENRE" of ancient literature do the Gospels really belong to?

• Any document of this "genre" relates historical events, reported as factual, which are placed into a historical time frame and into the events of that time, despite whether intermixed with fictional or religious or propaganda elements.

• The document was written near to the time of the events, not several centuries later.

• The document is short, by comparison to mainline historical writings, and focused on one special event or limited range of events rather than treating history broadly.

The above literature type, which the Gospel writings belong to, is ignored by Matthew Ferguson, throughout these links, while he instead places the Gospels artificially into some kind of "fiction" category, by fixating on supposed similarities between them and the literature in that category; and then, because of this categorization we're supposed to designate them as fiction, on the rationale that they must be because they're in that category, as decreed by established scholars with Authority to Bind and to Loose all literature types neatly into Ferguson's all-encompassing universal scheme.


(Virtually all quotes from here to the end (several Walls of Text to follow) are from these Matthew Ferguson blog links.)

Ancient Historical Writing Compared to the Gospels of the New Testament | Κέλσος

All this Wall-of-Text link shows is that the Gospel accounts are not in the same category as the official historical writings, like Herodotus and Tacitus, etc. Which really proves nothing important -- everyone already knows this.

Not being Herodotus or Tacitus etc. does not automatically relegate something to a supposed "fictional" category. Cicero is also not an historian, and yet his writings are not fictional. There are many non-historical works which contain historically factual content and are credible sources for historical events. Even if they contain some error and fictional elements, that does not negate the historically factual element, which is more prominent. And meanwhile, even the officially-recognized historical accounts also are tainted with some error and fictional elements, so these do not automatically consign a document to the "fictional" category.

Showing that the Gospels are not in the "historical" category does not automatically put them into a fictional or other low-class category which negates their credibility.

As someone who studies ancient historical writing in the original Greek and Latin languages, it is clear to me that the Gospels are not historical writing.

One doesn't need a credential in Greek/Latin to figure that out. The Gospels are not Tacitus or Suetonius or Plutarch, all of whom wrote voluminous works at least 10 times longer than any of the Gospels. But that does not downgrade the Gospels to the "fictional" category or negate their credibility for accurate historical information. Being of a different category than "historical" does not make them "fiction" or inferior and taboo as a source for historical information.

These texts instead read like ancient novelistic literature.

Here we go with Ferguson's repeated use of "novelistic" and other jargon words without giving examples of it, so it's not clear what he's comparing the Gospels to. In the later links down the list he might make up for this deficiency and give examples, but in the earlier Walls of Text here he just keeps repeating these terms in order to drive home his talking point that the Gospels must belong to some "fiction" category, which is supposed to make them entirely fiction because he says they're in that category, and he cites dozens of scholar-expert-authorities who supposedly corroborate his classification scheme which we are thus obligated to accept based on higher authority.

He does not deal with the individual parts of the Gospels as containing fact or fiction and analyzable to determine which is which, but just simplistically keeps pounding away at the "fiction" theme over and over, as though every document ever written fits neatly into one category or the other, and the Gospels are in the fiction-only category, by decree from the higher authority of the established scholarship, because of the overwhelmingly long list of his cited authorities.


Definition of the NOVELISTIC or FICTIONAL category

This "genre" can be broadened or narrowed depending on what ideologically-based crusade one wants to use it for. Virtually any kind of ancient literature contained some fiction element.

E.g., it might mean that each Gospel writer/editor thought he was only making up stories and giving no factual content at all, which is false, as we can easily see elements in these accounts which the writers/editors could not have invented themselves but must have taken from earlier sources.

So Ferguson's constant pounding away at the "fiction" and "novelistic" and "novella" rhetoric does not make clear if he's saying the writers/editors thought they were only inventing stories, or if they mistakenly thought they were repeating facts reported in earlier sources, or -- a 3rd possibility -- if they thought they were repeating fiction stories invented by earlier storytellers.

We can answer definitely some of this: These writers/editors did believe the stories were true, taking them from one source or another which they mostly believed, which does not rule out a fictional element, but the final writers/editors did not make up the stories or believe their source made them up.

Citing a list of authorities without giving us the reasons, other than just these citations, is not sufficient to prove that the Gospel accounts must be fiction.


Is a FACT vs. FICTION Scoreboard necessary to classify it?

Does the document require a certain ratio of facts to fictions for us to be able to categorize it in this or that category? How did Ferguson's scholar-experts count the number of these in each document in order to arrive at the score? Where's the data on this scoring?

We don't know if these scholarly authorities are saying the Gospel accounts are TOTAL fiction only, containing only fiction stories, or if there is fact mixed in with it, or the writers/editors believed the stories were fiction, invented by themselves or by earlier storytellers. For determining the credibility, or separating fact from fiction, we must get beyond the categorizing fallacy and examine each piece of the content.

Ferguson's point is only to keep insisting that the Gospels go into a "genre" or category he identifies as "fiction" or "novelistic" or "novella" etc., but it's only this categorization which makes them "fiction" and nothing about the content per se, i.e., nothing about the claims made in the text, except to note a suspected case of fiction here or there, as can be done with any literature of antiquity, all of which contained some fiction, even the historical writings.

Virtually ANY document could be put into this "novelistic" or "fiction" category, if the only requirement is that some fiction appears in the document. How much fiction element must be shown in order for the document to be pronounced "fiction" and put into that category? What if a large part is found to be fiction, and yet the most important parts are still not, but are fact? Ferguson ignores this important question, and instead pretends he finds some literary style similarities which characterize all the "fiction" examples. And yet, what prevents a document from communicating historical facts but using the "fiction" literary style? How do you know there are no cases of this?

One can reasonably suspect there are fictional elements in the Gospels, but these vary throughout the content and have to be treated individually from one point to another in the text, whereas the general simplistic pronouncement that the Gospels are "fiction" is just an emotional outburst meaning nothing. Containing some elements of fiction doesn't require us to condemn the entire work as "fiction."

These texts instead read like ancient novelistic literature.

It's a subjective judgment to say they "read like" fiction, i.e., a feeling you get reading them -- that you feel the same vibes from reading x as from reading y does not mean that a flaw you see in y must also be in x. Many texts might seem similar to the "novelistic literature" but not be fiction, and much of the historical literature might also be fiction, though they don't "read like" ancient novelistic literature (and again Ferguson mostly keeps secret what "novelistic" literature means).


The neat categories "historical" vs. "fiction" don't fit real examples.

An example of an "historical" work having major fictional parts is the Philostratus Apollonius of Tyana biography, which relates many miracles performed by this Apollonius. So, because this is "historical" writing, i.e., following the rigorous critical rules laid out by Ferguson, does that therefore make these miracle tales fact and not fiction? Of course not. So, just because you can place the literature in the "historical" category rather than the "novelistic" category does not make it more factual or more credible.

Perhaps Ferguson would not put Philostratus in the "novelistic" category -- but why not? It has major fiction in it. And yet Philostratus does follow Ferguson's rigorous requirements for "historical" writing and so seems to belong in his "historical" category, even though the Philostratus biography of Apollonius contains many miracle tales. So is it "historical" or "novelistic"? Ferguson does not subject his categorizing scheme to such questioning as this, failing to consider such ambiguous cases and giving examples of his categories to make it clear what writing goes into which category.

Ferguson merely pronounces that the Gospels are in the "novelistic" or "fictional" category while the mainline history writers are in the "historical" category, disregarding that the Gospels do contain historical elements and that the "historical" writings do contain some fiction. Actually he admits this somewhat, but just continues pounding away at his categorizing scheme as though every piece of literature ever written is neatly in this or that category without ambiguity, such that his entire point requires that each document be 100% branded in one category or the other.


There are hundreds of literature categories, not just 2 or 3.

His scheme is false not only because all these documents really contain both fiction as well as historical fact, but also because there are really many additional categories, dozens, or even hundreds of minor categories, so that it is simplistic and petty to keep insisting that if it does not fit into category A it must go into category B, "historical" vs. "fiction" -- or later adding a "biographical" category, so we have A, B, and C, and everything ever written must fit neatly into one of these three.

Though everyone agrees that the Gospels do not go into the "historical" category, that doesn't change the fact that factual historical elements are in these accounts -- even if it's admitted that fictional elements are there also.


Are the Gospels in a unique category, different than all others?

This cannot be ruled out as a possibility. The experts cannot pretend that they have neatly classified all the literature examples into their proper "genres" and thus explained them away, in case some of them are difficult to explain.

There could be many "genres" which have only one example each -- or only 2 or 3, and dissimilar to all other cases.

The Gospels "genre" can be easily described, as noted earlier:

• The subject matter is reported historical events, put into a real historical setting.

• The range of this subject matter is narrow, not broad history. I.e., focused on one event or one narrow sequence of events treated as special.

• The reported events are RECENT relative to the date of the document, not several centuries earlier.

You want to compare the Gospels to something of the same "genre"? Then find examples of the above -- cut out the phoniness such as vague rhetoric about "novelistic" genres and find something meeting the above description and do an honest comparison.

You don't determine if it's "fiction" by putting it into a category, based on your feeling that it's similar to something in that category. Calling them "novelistic" does not make them fiction, or getting certain vibes from them -- they "read like fiction" -- that you also get from something in the "novelistic" category. No, get serious and find particular examples of the above, and set aside your fanatical crusade to prove they have to be fiction because of your dogmatic premise that miracle stories must always be fiction.

We have to judge by the particular content of the texts, not the category you put them into based on what they "read like" or how you react to it emotionally. If this "novelistic literature" is only fiction, it's in a different category than the Gospels, regardless what it "reads like" or other stylistic features. It has to contain at least some history, and then let's see what non-historical part it also contains.

The Gospel miracle stories are a part which read more like fact than fiction, except if you impose the premise that there can never be any miracle events, which is the only rationale to put this into the fiction category. And this ideological premise is obviously the only reason Ferguson puts them into that category.

But an impartial or objective judgment of this requires setting aside the phony categorizing fallacy and instead going through each part to determine the credibility of each. A reasonable person should be able to admit the possibility of both fictional and historically factual elements in the Gospel accounts, as with most other writings, and we can analyze each part and figure out which is which. But Ferguson's categorizing scheme instead circumvents such analyzing and just promotes his ideology that any miracle claims must be fiction, regardless of any evidence, and fast-tracks the Gospel accounts into the desired "fiction" category -- not scientific, not objective, not impartial, not honest.

Instead, the Gospels provide story-like narratives, where the authors . . .

Again the buzz-words -- here, "story-like" is added to "fiction" and "novelistic" and "novella" repeated over and over, pounding these words in relentlessly, drilling them into the mind, like chanting, to program the reader to the desired mindset seeing the Gospel writings as welded to a "fiction" literary style which then automatically invalidates further inquiry into the content, the claims about reported events, or relevant evidence -- the literary style buzz-words eliminate all that and condemn it all as not worthy of inquiry.

. . . where the authors omnisciently narrate everything that occurs rather than engage in any form of critical analysis.

No -- this is also what the historical writers do, in most of their pages. Within their hundreds or thousands of pages they also devote a small space to "critical analysis" which the Gospel writers do not, but this does not make the Gospel writers inferior or less credible -- nothing about the credibility requires them to follow the procedure of the more prolific historical writers by devoting a page or two to "critical analysis" -- most ancient writings don't do this, including ones having historical content.

So the "critical analysis" in the mainline historical literature might occupy 2 or 3 pages out of 500 pages. This does not make them more credible than a 40-page document not having space for this but limited to a special set of events and written by a non-professional non-elitist non-scholar whose function was different and who was not paid professionally to report the deeds of the rich and famous and powerful, as the mainline historians were paid to do.

Accordingly, the Gospels all fall short from the criteria that can be used to categorize a piece of historical prose.

And so also does Cicero "fall short" from that criteria, but that doesn't make Cicero into fiction or something inferior to Tacitus or Suetonius. The "fall short" language implies an inferiority or lower-class category unfit as a source for history, which is false. Much or most of the ancient literature is outside the "historical prose" category and yet is credible as a source for the historical events.

It is not necessary to meet "criteria that can be used to categorize a piece of historical prose" in order to accurately report historical events. The same narrating style can be used to relate either fact or fiction, and often the "historical" writings use the same narrating style as the Gospels. These are not inferior or less credible because of a certain writing style they use. To keep repeating the "fall short" language over and over does not make a case why we cannot believe the Gospel accounts.

So what are these criteria? The ways in which the Gospels diverge from and fall short of the historical writing of their time . . .

Stop the judgmental "fall short" rhetoric! This does not make them less credible. They are not "historical" writing and don't pretend to be, but are much shorter and focused on limited subject matter, which is legitimate and does not "fall short" of anything. The writers did not enjoy the luxury of being able to include all the "critical analysis" and background which professionally-paid mainline historians enjoyed. Plus their readers needed something more direct and concise, rather than lengthy scholarly treatises on all the sources and background.

You can disparage them by saying they "fall short" of something else, but these are only different categories serving different functions, and you could just as easily say the historical writings "fall short" of being concise and effectively targeted to communicating something specific to the non-elitist masses.

An objective analysis should avoid this put-down language and "fall short" innuendo to brand something as inferior and contemptible just because it's targeted to a different audience you disdain as lower-class. If we want to know what happened back then, we must consider ALL the sources, granting credibility except where the evidence shows otherwise, instead of condemning some sources as tainted because they are non-elitist or lower-class.

. . . are perhaps too numerous to exhaustively treat here, but I will discuss ten relevant areas of distinction that are helpful for understanding how historical writing is different.

1. Discussion of Methodology and Sources

Ancient historical works at their beginning (or somewhere else within the body of the narrative) are often prefaced with statements from the author about the period they will be investigating, the methodology they will be using, and the types of sources they will be discussing.

But this is only a tiny fraction of their voluminous writing, and where it's absent it does not mean the writing is less credible or inferior. Shorter works mentioning something historical do not include such a preface about the methodology and sources. And even longer works which include it do not need it as a requirement for credibility. It's an option, not a requirement.

None of the Gospels, with the exception of a very brief statement at the beginning of Luke, even come close to following this convention.

Nor does virtually anything else of the ancient literature follow this convention, which is not required for writings in order for them to be credible. Especially for much shorter works it's not required and is even inappropriate.

The Gospels were not written for elitist scholars needing all the background. It's not necessary that only scholars should learn past events -- such learning is also for the masses. And there are noteworthy events beyond that of only the rich and powerful and the military and political events controlled by the top .1% of the population. There are lower-class people and events, the 99%, who sometimes experience something that matters, but who are ignored by the mainline ancient historians. Those writing to this broader audience did not have the resources and luxury to produce the voluminous works of the establishment historians.

That doesn't make them fiction, or less credible or less reliable as a source for the events.

What is even a greater problem with the Gospels’ historical reliability, however, is not their failure to cite the written sources that they consulted about the life of Jesus, but rather their fulfillment of scripture citations derived from the Old Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew, for example, the Old Testament is frequently cited regarding the fulfillment of “prophecies” about Jesus.

These "prophecies" might contain a fiction element, like the birth narrative, but it's easy to separate these from the historical or factual elements. The other Gospels do not contain these same prophecy elements in Matthew, meaning there's only one source for them and thus they're less credible. But this does not taint the factual element, which is more prominent.

Just because a fictional birth narrative got added to the Jesus story does not make the whole story fictional, any more than the myths of Alexander the Great make the story of that military celebrity fictional. Rather, we have to ask: WHY did they add the supernatural prophecy element to the Jesus story, or rather, what was the original Jesus story before the mythical element was added, and what made Jesus an important figure to whom such mythology had to be added?

The Jesus miracle acts, as actual events, are the best explanation. I.e., it was the miracle healing acts, and his resurrection, which made him important and brought him the attention that resulted in such mythological additions as the birth in Bethlehem. Without the actual miracle acts, there is no explanation why the Hebrew prophecy-fulfillment myths became uniquely attributed to Jesus.

The healing miracles and the resurrection are attested to in all 4 of the Gospel accounts, making them more credible, whereas the Star of Bethlehem and massacre of the infants is only in Matthew.


(this Wall of Text to be continued)

 

[lpetrich]

4 sources of euhemerization

What do you mean?