120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[DBT]

''Does everyone have to renounce their belief.....''

Convictions are justified, or not, by the quality of the evidence that supports a conviction/belief. As it stands, the central beliefs of all religions, their God or gods, their supernatural stories, etc, do not have the support of verifiable, objective evidence, hence these convictions/beliefs are held on the basis of faith....which is no justification at all.

 

[Barbarian]

Is your belief automatically refuted because there's some OTHER belief/religion out there that you don't know about?

Sure it is, if your belief is that there are no beliefs with a certain characteristic out there, which seems to be your case.

 

[Atheos]

Your colleague Atheos went a step further and identified a demigod named Hanuman and said there's more evidence for this character's miracle acts than we have for Jesus in the gospel accounts. So, having the identification of the "other" demigod, I could do the "homework" and disprove the false claim about the evidence for this character, for whom it turns out that there is no written record until at least 1000 years later than he lived, and so the miracles attributed to him can easily be dismissed as a product of mythologizing which happened over a long time span -- a normal process we know happens in the case of many miracle legends.

Sometimes I wonder if it is possible Lumpenproletariat can ever be right about anything. First of all it was atrib who made this claim, not me. Secondly his argument is/was that there is more individual accounts written about this character than there are/were written about the Jesus character (devastatingly demonstrating the vacuousness of Lumpenproletariat's proposition that GMatt, Gluke and GJohn's "independent" (har har) accounts count as "additional" evidence). Thirdly Lumpenproletariat has yet to demonstrate why it is impossible for someone to make up miracle accounts about someone the individual never met and who lived "only" 40 years earlier but it is quite possible for someone to make up miracle accounts about someone who lived hundreds of years before the maker-upper. Fourthly, Lumpenproletariat has yet to demonstrate why miracle accounts are evidence of anything inasmuch as by definition such stories are extremely unlikely to have happened and at the very least some form of physical evidence or reproducability are required by sane people to believe such claptrap. Finally, why the fuck would someone have to dig back to stuff that was discussed over 1.5 years ago other than to draw attention away from the pwning they took in current discussions?

But to answer the title question, the answer is "no." Fictional legends resembling factual events are not evidence that the factual event did not happen. Scarlet O'hara is a fictional character who did not live on a plantation named Tara. But there were plenty of actual debutantes living in or around Atlanta, GA during the civil war whose family fortunes and way of life were disrupted, never to be enjoyed again. Truly "Gone with the Wind."

Lumpenproletariat keeps making this category error, thinking that irrelevant attributes or circumstances unique to the Jesus myth are evidence that the myth is true. This never was and never will be the case no matter how much dust is raised in mind-numbing walls of text. No amount of makeup is going to hide the fact that it has always been easier to fabricate stories about someone who defies gravity by walking on water and levitating off into the sky than it is for someone to actually do these things. Magicians get in front of Penn and Teller and perform incredible miracles every show. Most of the time Penn and Teller know exactly how they did it. Get Jesus to do something that isn't just another parlor trick that any of thousands of magicians can replicate at will and maybe ... just maybe we'll have something to find of interest.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Where is the published record of miracle acts for all the other Jesus-like messiahs? Only the Christ-believers knew how to write?

Barbarian: Are you really surprised Christians preferentially copied Christian material?

-- and that stalwarts of all the other messiah cults did NOT copy theirs likewise -- yes, it's surprising that ONLY ONE cult group got their miracle legend recorded and copied and copied and finally published in permanent form to be passed on to future generations.

Why did all the other cults or hero-worshipers or guru-followers think their guru was not worth writing about or making up miracle stories about or deifying into a miracle-working god? or, if something was written, why didn't those devotees see fit to copy it and create a permanent record for the future?

Why didn't those others also "preferentially" write their accounts of their gurus and miracle events? Isn't it surprising that there are no other "gospels" than the Christ gospels?

Isn't it surprising that all the gospels that were "banned" or excluded from the New Testament were also about this same Jesus Christ person and about no other acclaimed messiah figure? Isn't it surprising that there is no John the Baptist "gospel" or Simon Magus "gospel" or Apollonius of Tyana "gospel" -- OK, for this character we have one "gospel," one source only, written 150 years later than the alleged events.

But isn't it surprising that we have all these "gospels" (canonical and non-canonical) and epistles etc. all focused on this one messiah figure, and virtually nothing about any of the many other assorted messiahs and saviors and gurus and miracle-workers? Why did all the messiah-crusaders converge on this one Jesus figure only?

And all this absence of other "gospels" long before any Council of Nicea or any alleged Constantine book-burning squads or library-burnings at Alexandria and other imagined events. 100 AD, 200 AD, 300 AD -- virtually no other messiahs, no "gospels" of this or that miracle-worker. Where were all the others hiding?

I've addressed this very point several times. There were literally thousands of religions in practice in the ancient world; of that there is no doubt. Most of the ones we know about today have been discovered through tedious excavation of artifacts, not through written documentation.

Assuming that's correct, the only reason there's no (or little) documentation of them is that they were not taken seriously enough and did not last long enough. And/or, they had no real urgent message that had a strong impact such that there was any need to write something down. If they worshiped a miracle-working messiah, hardly anyone really believed it, and no one saw any need to write anything down, because there was nothing there to write or nothing to report to people seeking a messiah or savior or means to salvation or Way to God.

Whereas in the case of Jesus many saw him as a connector to a superhuman power source offering the possibility of salvation or eternal life, and it was important to record what happened and let people know of him. I.e., there was "good news" to report in this case, but not in all the other cases of assorted religious beliefs and messiah cults and itinerant gurus.

If "taking it seriously" is a qualification for finding truth . . .

No, it's a qualification for writing something down, which was a lot of trouble in those days. And they they took it "seriously" because they believed it was true. I.e., the events they recorded really happened, or the writers believed they happened. There were plenty of miracle claims which were not generally believed and so were not written down.

I'm trying to answer why the Jesus miracle claims were written down and published and none of the others were. What's your answer for this?

. . . then the Muslims pretty much own truth.

No, they did not take the reported miracles of Mohammed seriously enough to write them down, i.e., not until 200 years later. Whatever early claims there might have been about Mohammed doing miracle acts, they were not generally believed, so no one wrote them down. But over time some such claims gained a few believers and someone wrote them down, 200 years later.

But are you agreeing that the Jesus miracle legend was taken seriously while none of the others were? and so this explains why this one case was published and the others were not? If so, then what is the reason why this one case only was taken seriously, of all the miracle legends, probably thousands of them, in ancient times, before 1000 or 1500 AD? back when it was so costly to publish anything and virtually nothing got published?

Ditto Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. People take things seriously all the time and it turns out they were wrong.

No, "not taken seriously" means the claims were not believed, i.e., miracle claims in particular, i.e., these were generally not believed, or not believed enough, by people generally and so were not recorded. And perhaps some other claims also, but mainly the kind which assert something about supernatural or superhuman powers, and beliefs about God or gods or cosmic entities or demons. These were not taken seriously except when they were part of an ancient tradition going back centuries. No such claim of a recent event, in the previous 50 or 100 years, was taken seriously, i.e., believed by people to the point that writers recorded it and it got copied and published for future generations.

In ancient times only -- modern times are different and cannot be cited for comparison. In modern times everything gets written down, because it's so much easier, less costly. Since the invention of printing even the non-serious stuff gets written down.

So don't use Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses for your analogy. Why can't you find something from ancient times, prior to 1500 AD, to make your point? Your failure to ever give an analogy from earlier times is actually making my point. You are proving the point that the Jesus case stands out as the only one where we have miracle claims that ought to be fiction -- ordinarily explained as fiction -- except that we can't explain where they came from, or how such stories came to exist.

If you want to claim these are just further examples of fictions that are "made up" all the time, then prove that by giving an example from ancient times, i.e., of such stories taken seriously, i.e., believed and written and copied and published in multiple documents. You can't give any example, and so you always fall back on examples only from recent times when widespread publishing has made it easy to distribute stuff which is not "taken seriously" but is published anyway.

As far as an urgent message, again what does this prove? It demonstrates that a bunch of (possibly) misguided people took a cult leader seriously and believed this message.

But why were no others taken seriously and believed? Why is this Jesus case the only "cult leader" who was taken seriously enough that some of his followers published these reports/accounts of his miracle acts and copied them so much that they became preserved for the future?

That believers took the trouble to write it and copy and copy and copy it this much indicates that this was a uniquely urgent message or that there was something more important in this case and that this case had more credibility than miracle claims of other cults or gurus claiming some messianic message.

The question is WHY we have such a written record for this one cult leader only, and for no other cult leaders or charismatic preachers etc. The best explanation is that in this one case the stories were actually true, i.e., the events really did happen, and enough people recognized it, because of some evidence they saw, so that writers recorded it and it got copied, unlike all the other miracle stories which were not taken seriously, i.e., hardly anyone believed them.

The people who flew the planes into the twin towers on 911 evidently took their religion seriously and believed it was . . .

No, there's no analogy here. Those who spread the early Jesus miracle stories believed those events happened a few years or decades earlier. And "taken seriously" means they believed those events really happened, unlike most miracle claims which were not "taken seriously" or really believed. So the "gospel" being spread by them was something recent in history.

But the 9-11 Islamic militants were promoting an ancient tradition, more than 1000 years old. An ancient tradition might be "taken seriously" by the believers, but it's very easy for them to be wrong, because there is a bias in favor of anything ancient which has been passed on for generations in one's family or clan or tribe. This is easy to explain. But not publishing reports of recent events.

A better comparison to the 9-11 attackers would be the Zealots in the 1st century, who were defending their ancient culture, preserving it against foreign influence, wishing to return to the ancient practices and eliminate outsiders and even traitors within their culture, like Islamic militants today kill Muslims they think are traitors. What they "take seriously" is their ancient culture or tradition, not a report of recent events -- gospel, "good news" -- which the early Christ-believers were promoting.

In those times the writers did not record recent events unless they were sure they really happened. This is what "taken seriously" means. They did not believe claims of recent miraculous events and did not record them. There are virtually no examples of it. All the miracle stories are of ancient tradition going back centuries.

This practice changed abruptly in the 1st century AD, after which new miracle stories did pop up quicker, but still not less than 100 years after the alleged event. Possibly there's an exception here or there, very rare, but still always one source only. The reason is that such miracle stories were not "taken seriously" -- i.e., not really believed, despite someone's claim.

But obviously this changed with the advent of printing and widespread publishing after about 1500 AD. In modern times such stories are published even though they're still not "taken seriously" -- it's different now with the publishing industry.

. . . urgent enough for them to sacrifice their lives and cause unquantifiable suffering.

But they were not promoting any claims about recent events like the gospel writers were. The question is: Why were the Jesus miracle stories published but no others were, other than the ancient traditions of the pagan gods etc.? And the answer is that they were actually believed. All other claims of any recent miracle events were rejected and ridiculed, or at least not "taken seriously" enough by people generally, i.e., not really believed, even in cases where the hearers received them sympathetically, but still they knew such stories were fictional.

But the Jesus miracle stories were "taken seriously" or believed for some reason, even though they were recent, and they became published even though this never happened in any other cases.

It has nothing to do with religious fanatics promoting an ancient tradition. Ancient myths and traditions and superstitions are also "taken seriously" out of reverence for that which has been passed down for centuries, but this in no way explains why the Jesus miracle stories were believed and recorded and copied and published.

The 1st-century writers of the Jesus events were responding to something which had happened only recently, and they kept copying and copying the accounts until these finally got published in the form we have them today. This took a huge amount of trouble, for those days, when writing and copying was extremely costly in time and effort and resources, and yet this was only an upshot cult, not an established centuries-old religion.

There are two problems with your "many saw Jesus as a connector" argument. First of all so what? If they were misguided then that's what they would think.

But why didn't any misguided persons write down any other similar miracle stories? You're not explaining why we have this written record of a particular "cult leader" and yet no similar written record for any other cult leaders, or any other miracle legend cult. Why did only this one cult leader get published for us and no others?

Doesn't mean they were right.

It means the events reported are more likely true.

A reasonable explanation why these stories of recent events were published is that in this one unique case the miracle acts described ACTUALLY DID HAPPEN, and that's what separates them from all the other miracle legends trying to get off the ground. This one case was credible, and so people wrote down the accounts and copied and copied them, because they believed it enough and took it seriously enough, because those events really happened. This explains why in this case there was a different reaction by educated people who could write.

But if that's not the explanation, then what is? Why do we have ONLY ONE case where an alleged miracle-worker is published in multiple documents being copied and copied and passed on down to the future? Is there another case? What? Who? We've been over many examples -- Apollonius of Tyana, Simon Magus, Hanuman, etc. etc. etc. There is no such written record for any of them -- all appear in a written account centuries later, or at minimum 100 or 150 years later in one document only.

What is the explanation for this over-reaction to the Jesus cult, and virtually no written record about any other miracle legend hero?

The Mormons believe their magic underwear connects them with some special power. Does that mean it is true?

In modern times everything gets written down, so this is not analogous. There are thousands (or millions) of odd beliefs or practices in modern times that would never have been recorded 2000 years ago. In fact there were probably some equally goofy beliefs back then, but they were never written down because no one took them seriously enough.

To make your point you need to find an analogy from the events going back 1000 years or more, when publishing was rare and costly and so all the goofy beliefs were ignored.

Secondly you have yet to provide any evidence that substantiates this baseless assertion. Find the evidence that convinced these people of these things and you've got something worth talking about.

By "these things" you mean what is written in the gospel accounts, or in the Paul epistles? No one was convinced of "these things"? Why did they write it down and copy and copy it if they were not "convinced" of it?

You think these writers did not believe the Jesus miracle events really happened?

Otherwise you're just doing like whoever wrote GMark and making shit up. It's a long-standing tradition, sure. But it really needs to stop if we're ever going to get to the truth.

You're grasping at straws trying to argue that it's more likely that a man walked on the storm-tossed waters of lake Galilee and levitated off into the sky never to be seen again than it is that people simply made up stories about these things.

But why didn't they "simply" make up stories about other alleged miracle heroes? Why this one only?

Of course some stories were probably "made up," especially 100-200 years later when all the additional "gospel" accounts started appearing. But something had to get them started in the first place. Why is it that virtually ALL the stories that got "made up" and published are about this one person only?

OK, we have the copycat Apollonius of Tyana stories appearing after 200 AD, in one source. But why, all of a sudden, beginning somewhere around 50 AD, do we have this outburst of miracle stories which come out of nowhere? And then only do we have some new miracle legends, including Simon Magus and others, but only 100 - 200 years later, and most of these are obvious copycat stories based on the Jesus miracles which start appearing around 50 AD.

What caused this sudden outburst of new miracle stories appearing from 50-60 AD or so?

If it's all because "people simply made up" stories, then why did they make up stories ONLY about this one person, Jesus in Galilee-Judea around 30 AD, up until about 100 AD? And then, after 100 AD, the stories increased, and finally they began adding 2 or 3 new miracle heroes. Why were there NO OTHER miracle-worker stories before 100 AD except these Jesus stories?

Why did all the story-maker-uppers pick this one only figure as the object for their stories? until about 100 AD, and then only did they start adding a few new characters?

Until there's something better than mythology rational people rightly remain skeptical.

Of course, they should, but remain skeptical about everything, including the explanation that it's only "mythology" and that people "made up" the stories, when there were no other cases of mythology ever being "made up" and being published within only a few decades of the alleged events. We have to be skeptical of ALL improbabilities, not just the improbable explanation that the events really happened.

But why is this one Jesus legend the ONLY one that happened? You haven't explained why this legend happened and was published and not the hundreds of other legends, all of which had equal access to those Jewish scribes to copy their epistles and gospels.

With all those other messiah legends which were equal to the Jesus legend, it is inexplicable that we don't have ONE SINGLE case of another one which got copied by these scribes and published.

This "supply of Jewish scribes" explains nothing. You're not explaining why they copied ONLY THE JESUS STORIES and no others.

Tell you what, before I respond to this please provide me with a short list of maybe five or six of these "hundreds of other legends" that had equal access to Jewish scribes along with the stories that folks chose not to copy and I'll look into it.

Obviously most of it is lost.

But there are plenty of indications of other legends or cults or beliefs in magic or in messiah figures or heroes, along with miracle claims. But none is published enough that we can identify them like we can identify the Jesus cult(s) which stand out so conspicuously.

But we know of the Simon Magus character, who apparently did "magic" of some kind which impressed people.

Here's a site giving several examples of exorcism stories from Jewish sources: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-exorcism/
In some cases a kind of miracle claim is made. Josephus claims in one case that an exorcist made a demon come out and knock over a bucket of water. There are some Jewish miracle-workers going back to the 1st century BC, but all the written accounts are much later, like after 100 AD. Honi the Circle-Drawer is one, who supposedly could cause rain. Also the Dead Sea Scrolls have some examples of treatments for illnesses and exorcisms. Probably the "Teacher of Righteousness" was thought to have some kind of superhuman power.

For all these examples there's almost no written source, but at least there's some small indication, and where a particular miracle event reportedly happened, the source is 100-200 years later than the miracle events allegedly happened. It stands to reason that there were easily dozens more, probably hundreds, which are totally lost with no written record whatever left behind. Josephus claimed to be an eye-witness to the exorcist who could cause a bucket of water to be knocked over by the demon. Is knocking over a bucket of water a "miracle"? Anyway, Josephus is the only source for this.

The best explanation why they were not recorded, or a few were mentioned only once or twice, is that hardly anyone really believed them, and they were mostly ridiculed just like they are today. But the Jesus miracle stories were taken seriously and were recorded and copied enough that they became published in multiple documents.

The emperor Vespasian can be included in this list, for whom there are 2 sources suggesting that he healed someone. This happened around 60 AD, and the written accounts of it appear after 100 AD. The Roman emperor is obviously a cult figure/deity, for whom stories are invented, including miracles, but they are generally not taken seriously and are discounted by any writers. We can only guess how many other such stories there were about the emperor doing a miracle but which didn't get recorded.

There were almost certainly some miracle claims about General Pompei who was very popular and was eulogized almost to divine status. But maybe no actual published stories that survived.

But also there must have been obscure figures, about whom nothing was recorded. Obviously there can be no "list" of these.

If your demand for a "list" of such legends means you doubt there were any other miracle legends, except the Jesus legend, then why would that be? How could this be the only figure in ancient history about whom there were miracle legends?

Obviously there were hundreds or thousands more which never got recorded at all. Because they were not credible.

 

[James Brown]

Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story

In 520 A.D. an anonymous monk recorded the life of Saint Genevieve, who had died only ten years before that. In his account of her life, he describes how, when she ordered a cursed tree cut down, monsters sprang from it and breathed a fatal stench on many men for two hours; while she was sailing, eleven ships capsized, but at her prayers they were righted again spontaneously; she cast out demons, calmed storms, miraculously created water and oil from nothing before astonished crowds, healed the blind and lame, and several people who stole things from her actually went blind instead. No one wrote anything to contradict or challenge these claims, and they were written very near the time the events supposedly happened--by a religious man whom we suppose regarded lying to be a sin. Yet do we believe any of it? Not really. And we shouldn't.

As David Hume once said, why do such things not happen now? Is it a coincidence that the very time when these things no longer happen is the same time that we have the means and methods to check them in the light of science and careful investigation? I've never seen monsters spring from a tree, and I don't know anyone who has, and there are no women touring the country transmuting matter or levitating ships. These events look like tall tales, sound like tall tales, and smell like tall tales. Odds are, they're tall tales.

 

[Atheos]

The best explanation why they were not recorded, or a few were mentioned only once or twice, is that hardly anyone really believed them, and they were mostly ridiculed just like they are today. But the Jesus miracle stories were taken seriously and were recorded and copied enough that they became published in multiple documents.

And on this we agree.

Now if you can just come up with evidence for why these myths were believed we can get beyond the best explanation for that, which right now remains, "Because someone convinced them it was true."

---ETA---

Meanwhile what I asked for is a short list of these "thousands of other myths" that had equal access to a good supply of Jewish scribes. Simon Magus, Vespatian and General Pompei would not be among the group that was essentially an offshoot of Judaism and therefore a natural haven for a supply of scribes. We know that claims of miracles during the time period in question are a dime a dozen and it would appear that you have finally come around on this point. I have provided a reasonable explanation of why the Jesus mythology took root. You haven't provided anything that would undermine that theory.

To refresh everyone's memory, and by way of summary, my theory is that it was a combination of three factors: (1) A well written codex of "scriptures" composed of the authentic epistles of Paul; (2) Well written mythology about the Jesus character (inspired in large part by the popularity of Paul's epistles); and (3) A good supply of scribes with interest in copying these things.

We know that the scribes existed, otherwise the original epistles of Paul wouldn't have survived the first century. The evidence seems very pervasive that Paul traveled extensively, pimping the Jesus myth to all whom he could convince, generating interest in this character. The codex of scriptures comprised of the original authentic Pauline epistles speak for themselves, so the evidence supporting my theory is pretty much rock solid.

This theory addresses all of the special pleading / appeals to popularity that have been offered to try to draw attention to the unique popularity of this myth and use that as evidence that the myth is true. This probably works well when used to convince those who are predisposed to be convinced. But skeptics recognize appeals to popularity as the fallacy they are and demand better.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Comparison of St. Genevieve to Jesus

Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story

In 520 A.D. an anonymous monk recorded the life of Saint Genevieve, who had died only ten years before that. In his account of her life, he describes how, when she ordered a cursed tree cut down, monsters sprang from it and breathed a fatal stench on many men for two hours; while she was sailing, eleven ships capsized, but at her prayers they were righted again spontaneously; she cast out demons, calmed storms, miraculously created water and oil from nothing before astonished crowds, healed the blind and lame, and several people who stole things from her actually went blind instead. No one wrote anything to contradict or challenge these claims, and they were written very near the time the events supposedly happened--by a religious man whom we suppose regarded lying to be a sin. Yet do we believe any of it? Not really. And we shouldn't.

As David Hume once said, why do such things not happen now? Is it a coincidence that the very time when these things no longer happen is the same time that we have the means and methods to check them in the light of science and careful investigation? I've never seen monsters spring from a tree, and I don't know anyone who has, and there are no women touring the country transmuting matter or levitating ships. These events look like tall tales, sound like tall tales, and smell like tall tales. Odds are, they're tall tales.

St. Genevieve is probably an exception to the "rule" about miracle stories being recorded much later than when the events allegedly happened.

However, there is ONLY ONE SOURCE for the miracle stories of St. Genevieve. And the account contains many monstrous tales which resemble childhood stories of Jesus in the apocryphal books which depict him doing violence, such as striking dead a child who had bumped into him.

Also, St. Genevieve lived over 80 years and so had a long life in which to accumulate a following and a reputation. So, perhaps she did some noteworthy acts of a normal nature, which drew attention to her, and some rumors or tales began to emerge even while she was still alive. There are a few cases where a long career allowed the hero figure to acquire a miracle-worker reputation even while still alive. But at least a long career was always necessary.

And of course by her time the Jesus miracle tradition had been established, which provided her with an environment in which the believers were prepared, having an appetite for new miracle-workers who would perform their deeds in the name of Jesus.

So there are plenty of factors present in her case to explain how the mythologizing took place. The only irregular factor is the early appearance of the written account. Actually, it is not firmly established that this "biography" was written so early after her death. Here's one source which rejects the early date:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Saint_Genevieve.aspx
Much of the information available about Genèvieve—its validity and worth—has been the subject of controversy. Her biography, not written until many centuries after her death, is considered unreliable. Still, the Celtic cult that developed for her began in ancient times—a reference to it can be found as far back as 592 AD in the Martyrology of Jerome—and it endured for years. Further, there is no doubt that she actually lived.

However, it looks like most sources believe the "biography" was early, maybe only 10 years after her death.

But except for this, all the signs of mythologizing are apparent in this case. Unlike the case of Jesus, who had a short career, who had no earlier miracle hero in whose name he performed his miracles, and for whom we have 4 (5) sources rather than only one. Also, our early sources for Jesus do not contain extremely bizarre tales like the "biography" of St. Genevieve.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Where is this babble about the meaning of "defend" and about "the Wager" coming from?

Beats me.
I've lost the thread of an argument that goes back almost two years, with huge skips of silence in the middle.

I skimmed a bit and it looks to me like just more and more Lumpy. You tried to refer to Pascal's Wager to defend your position, but you haven't actually read the actual wager. Bluff called, you tried bluster. You're yammering about things you're not qualified to discuss and pretending that it's merely my interpretation that's faulty, not your education.

Feh.

 

[Atheos]

But except for this, all the signs of mythologizing are apparent in this case. Unlike the case of Jesus, who had a short career, who had no earlier miracle hero in whose name he performed his miracles, and for whom we have 4 (5) sources rather than only one. Also, our early sources for Jesus do not contain extremely bizarre tales like the "biography" of St. Genevieve.

Again with these thoroughly debunked and demonstrably false baseless assertions. They have been debunked so many times in this thread I'm not going to bother doing it again. Just providing a marker for anyone skimming the last few posts of the thread so they won't get misled by this misinformation.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The early record of the Jesus miracles, widely circulated and believed, cannot be explained if the miracle reports were fiction.

The best explanation why they were not recorded, or a few were mentioned only once or twice, is that hardly anyone really believed them, and they were mostly ridiculed just like they are today. But the Jesus miracle stories were taken seriously and were recorded and copied enough that they became published in multiple documents.

And on this we agree.

Now if you can just come up with evidence for why these myths were believed we can get beyond the best explanation for that, which right now remains, "Because someone convinced them it was true."

In addition to being basically no more than a tautology -- "it happened because it happened" -- "it's so because it's so" -- this "someone convinced them" explanation cannot fit the facts of what we know about the early believers -- there's no way you can square that circle.

We know something about them, and they were NOT A MONOLITHIC GROUP of people, but were a very unlikely mix of characters, some of them misfits (Zealots etc.), some normal (rabbis etc.), and having widely-divergent beliefs. They included Zealot militants, Essene-type pacifists, mainline rabbinical types, apocalyptic-types ("Son of Man"), Gnostics (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel-of-John-types, Logos), and extreme Jewish hardliners (Ebionites) and messianists of one kind or another.


There may have been VIOLENT CONFLICT between some early Christ-believers.

ALL these elements had to be part of the early mix of Christ-believers, prior even to Paul's epistles, or at least contemporary to them, and NOT produced by Paul. Some, like the Ebionites, hated Paul, and there are legends of violent confrontation with Paul, perhaps having some truth to them. The famous scholar Robert Eisenman believes that Paul murdered James, the reputed brother of Jesus and early leader of the Ebionite community in Jerusalem. It's undisputed that there was sharp conflict between them.

ALL these conflicting groups believed the resurrection and the miracles of Jesus (probably not the virgin birth) and were preaching the "gospel" as they understood it, most of them recruiting converts, but to think there was any small clique which "convinced" them all is out of the question. It's impossible that all or most of the above groups could have been recruited by ONLY ONE propagandist like Paul or any other single person. Not even by 2 or 3.

So there had be a diverse GROUP of these "someones" who "convinced" all these early Christ-believers, and these recruiters did NOT like each other, but had extreme conflicts with each other and condemned each other.

Of course we have only hints of these conflicts, but all the evidence is that the early believers were the opposite of a monolithic group, all the earliest writings show strong divisions which clearly reach back to the very beginnings of the Christ cult(s), to the 30s, and it's impossible that only one or two inventors of the Jesus myth could have got this started. It's impossible that those early Christ-believers could have been "convinced" by a small clique who invented the legend.

So then, where did these miracle stories come from, appearing so early, within 30 years, and becoming widely published in less than 100 years, in multiple sources, totally contradicting all precedent?

Meanwhile what I asked for is a short list of these "thousands of other myths" that had equal access to a good supply of Jewish scribes. Simon Magus, Vespasian and General Pompei would not be among the group that was essentially an offshoot of Judaism and therefore a natural haven for a supply of scribes.

Everyone in Galilee and Samaria and Judea and Egypt, millions of people, had access to Jewish scribes. There's no one who did NOT have access to them, if they could afford to pay the price. And everyone everywhere had access to scribes of all kinds, not just Jewish.

Simon Magus and his followers, during his life and after him, had access to all the scribes they could possibly need. Both Jewish and non-Jewish.

All Romans had access to scribes, if they wanted something copied. The only barrier was simply the cost of paying them. If any Roman hero, such as a general or emperor, was believed to have performed a miracle, and a large number believed it, we would have some record of it, copied again and again. Someone would have written it down and others would have copied it for us. But only if it was widely believed.

The miracle story about Vespasian got written down and copied, because enough people believed it, and it's a virtual certainty that other such stories also existed, but they were not written down or preserved. No doubt some were written but never copied and so perished.

The idea that somehow ONLY the Christ-believers -- only Paul, or only the gospel writers -- had access to scribes is nutty and delusional.

We know that claims of miracles during the time period in question are a dime a dozen . . .

They are a dime a dozen during ANY time period throughout all history. What they always lack are believers. People generally do NOT believe miracle claims, and in ancient times these claims died without ever being recorded, and in the few cases where something was written it usually was not copied and finally perished. 99.9% of everything written down perished without being preserved. (Maybe only 99.7%, the precise number isn't critical.)

And virtually all miracle stories which did survive were ones which evolved over centuries, not ones which popped up suddenly, like the Jesus miracle stories. The very few exceptions are one-source-only stories, appearing mostly after 100 AD, but usually at least 100 years later than the alleged events.

So we have no written record of the vast majority of all the miracle stories of the time -- definitely nothing contemporary to the alleged events -- because they were rejected and ridiculed and not believed, or in some cases there was sympathy but no one took it seriously enough to get it into writing or to copy it.

. . . and it would appear that you have finally come around on this point.

If I ever said otherwise I should be taken out and shot. Of course they were "a dime a dozen" at that time and at every other time in history including today. Today they are published and virtually no one believes them, whereas 2000 years ago they were not published, and only a tiny tiny fraction got recorded in writing and preserved.

I have provided a reasonable explanation of why the Jesus mythology took root.

No, you've not explained why ONLY THIS ONE mythology and no others got published a short time after the events allegedly happened and preserved for the future.

You haven't provided anything that would undermine that theory.

Your theory imagines that ONLY the Christ-believers had access to scribes in order to be able to copy their written accounts, and that all other mythologies had no such access, which is about as nutty as a theory can be.

And your theory also imagines that ONE razzle-dazzle propagandist, Paul, somehow "convinced" a widely-diverse mass of new converts, who quickly coalesced around Paul and mythologized his hallucination into an earthly miracle-worker. Your theory undermines itself as incompatible with everything we know about those events. Any such charlatan as the Paul you imagine would have been laughed off the stage as a wacko.

Had there been other reputed miracle-workers, taken seriously, there is no reason why they would not also have been recorded in writing and copied just as the gospel accounts were, and the Paul epistles. Your pitiful theory gives no explanation how the Jesus legend had any advantage over the others such that only it got published and no others.

Of course there were other miracle claims, but virtually NO ONE BELIEVED THEM, so they were laughed off like virtually all such claims were, and no one wasted their time writing it down. There were probably some cults who believed some claims, but nothing taken seriously enough that anyone recorded or copied them. They had all the scribes they needed, but the stories were not worth writing and copying. And neither would the Jesus legend have been worth recording if the reported miracle acts had never happened.

Your theory does not explain the sudden emergence of the Christ cults and miracle claims.

To refresh everyone's memory, and by way of summary, my theory is that it was a combination of three factors: (1) A well written codex of "scriptures" composed of the authentic epistles of Paul;

These would never have been written if there had never been an actual person, Jesus, or Jesus Christ, who lived in Galilee-Judea and performed the miracle acts and went to Jerusalem where he was arrested and crucified and rose afterward.

There is no way to explain how the Paul epistles could have been written if this event had not happened in about 30 AD similar to that described in the Gospel accounts. But if such a thing could have been written by some wacko, no one would have believed it, and if he tried to recruit anyone to such nonsense, he probably would have been killed.

So this "factor" could not exist had this earlier event not taken place which Paul was writing about. That he spiritualizes it into a grand Cosmic Event does not change the fact that he started out from an historical event which he then interpreted into terms which were mostly spiritual or abstract. And yet he does include some elements to make it clear that it was an actual historical event that had happened.

(2) Well written mythology about the Jesus character . . .

These too, the Gospel accounts, could not possibly exist if there had not been an actual historical figure, about 30 AD, fitting the general description of the Jesus character. Even if some such account had been cooked up, no one would have taken it seriously and it would have perished with no trace.

. . . (inspired in large part by the popularity of Paul's epistles);

These would have had NO popularity at all had there not in fact been a real historical Jesus figure who was the main figure in Paul's epistles. It is nutty to think that people would rally around a fictional character invented by Paul or anyone else, and actually believing the character was real and wanting to spread such a delusion. It has never happened in history, and such a possibility is less likely than the likelihood of a miracle taking place.

. . . and (3) A good supply of scribes with interest in copying these things.

This "supply of scribes" was available to absolutely anyone with a small amount of resources to spend on spreading their "gospel" message or miracle myth or cult etc. If this was the main factor, we should see dozens of other Jesus-like cults, with miracle events and "gospel" accounts of those events, appearing in multiple documents.

We know that the scribes existed, otherwise the original epistles of Paul wouldn't have survived the first century.

They existed from 1000 BC to 1500 AD for thousands of other myth-makers to take advantage of.

Those scribes, Jewish and non-Jewish, were there for all the other epistles or accounts that might be written, all other myths or legends or miracle stories or new religions forming. To think that Paul had some kind of unique access to "scribes" is silly, or that "scribes" were unique to Paul's Jewish culture or to the 1st century AD.

The evidence seems very pervasive that Paul traveled extensively, pimping the Jesus myth . . .

So Paul was the ONLY one who traveled? the only one who tried to sell a story? or recruit believers to a new crusade?

. . . pimping the Jesus myth to all whom he could convince, generating interest in this character.

No one would take any interest in Paul's hallucinations. Never in history did any such insanity take hold. All the mythologies evolved over centuries of time, not overnight from one charlatan hallucinating a non-existent character who supposedly was crucified and became the Cosmic Deity in place of Zeus and other pagan deities.

Even if it's conceivable he might recruit a tiny number to his delusions, he could not recruit them from all the conflicting groups we know made up the original Christ cults.

You are not answering anything here. You're just saying this happened, and nothing else like it happened. But you're giving no explanation how ONLY this myth/legend/cult got published and all the others perished without a trace, or virtually no trace.

It answers nothing to just say "it happened, and this is the only case where such a thing happened, somehow."

The codex of scriptures comprised of the original authentic Pauline epistles speak for themselves, . . .

Yes, and what they speak is that there was a person, the Jesus figure, in Galilee-Judea, also described in the Gospel accounts, who did something highly unusual such that he drew this attention and became deified into a miracle-working God or Messiah of some kind, and the Paul letters offer an explanation of him, or interpretation, which became popular because so many people were seeking an explanation for this unusual person they already knew about.

There is no other explanation of the Paul epistles that makes any sense.

. . . so the evidence supporting my theory is pretty much rock solid.

Only the theory that this unusual historical figure existed about whom there was this flood of writings describing him or trying to explain or interpret him, and Paul "cashed in" on this phenomenon or got caught up in it. That theory is close to the truth.

This theory addresses all of the special pleading / appeals to popularity . . .

Yes, your special pleading that Paul made himself popular by inventing a fiction -- this is addressed and corrected by the much better theory that he responded to the unusual event which happened in Galilee-Judea, and that he found a way to explain this event or give it meaning which satisfied many Jews and Gentiles.

. . . that have been offered to try to draw attention to the unique popularity of this myth and use that as evidence that the myth is true.

Put more accurately, in this case we have "evidence" for the events which is the same kind of evidence we have for historical events generally. But which we do NOT have for other miracle legends.

I.e., we have only in this case a written record of the alleged miracle events such as does not exist for any other miracle myth prior to the invention of printing. These are the facts. Miracle claims were generally rejected, as they still are today, and at that time were not recorded or copied by writers. And what needs to be explained is why they were recorded in this one case only, and no others.

Or, how is it that in this one case the miracle claims cannot be explained as a product of mythologizing, whereas all the other miracle legends can be. You are not addressing this but are groping for "logical fallacy" rhetoric to dismiss these legitimate points which you cannot answer.

This probably works well when used to convince those who are predisposed to be convinced.

This is partly legitimate. There is reason to believe that the Jesus miracle events really happened. However, it's not proof, and one can find reasons to not believe it. So, one may end up believing whatever they're predisposed to believe.

Those predisposed not to believe it start out with the premise that there can be no miracle events, despite any evidence. But those not starting out from this premise, or those predisposed to believe miracle claims, might reasonably believe the events did happen -- or can leave open the possibility, whereas the dogmatic premise that there can never be any such event overrides any evidence and pronounces the accounts as false, regardless of the evidence.

There is no evidence to contradict the evidence from the Gospel accounts, attesting to the miracle events, other than this premise that there can never be any such events. (However, there may be some evidence to discredit certain of the miracle stories, selected in isolation, other than the Jesus healing acts generally and resurrection.)

But skeptics recognize appeals to popularity as the fallacy they are and demand better.

There is no appeal here to "popularity" except in the sense that ALL historical knowledge is based on evidence showing that the events were believed to have happened, and thus they were "popular" or believed by a large number, and this is the main evidence that those events really happened. You can't name any historical event you know of other than through claims made by writers that the event happened. It's only in this sense that there is any "popularity" argument here, and if this is a "fallacy," then ALL history is fallacious.

ALL historical knowledge (of ancient times) is based on this "appeal to popularity" evidence. You can't name an example of historical knowledge NOT based on this. I.e., Someone wrote that it happened, and a greater number of such writings increases the likelihood that it's true.

 

[Keith&Co.]

There is no appeal here to "popularity" except in the sense that ALL historical knowledge is based on evidence showing that the events were believed to have happened, and thus they were "popular" or believed by a large number, and this is the main evidence that those events really happened.

One of these days, take a course in history. Seriously. Or read a book. Look up any textbook that includes the phrase 'We know this to be a fact because' or 'we can accept this as true because' or 'so we consider this a historical event due to' and see if any historian matches your claims about how history works....

 

[atrib]

The early record of the Jesus miracles, widely circulated and believed, cannot be explained if the miracle reports were fiction.

Nonsense.

1. You have no evidence that the Jesus miracle stories were widely circulated and accepted as fact at the time the Bible was written. In fact, not a single historian of the time wrote anything about said miracles, at that time, or later, which would indicate that your claim is false.

2. You have not provided a compelling argument to support your claim that the Jesus miracle stories should be considered credible. In fact, you have dismissed every single miracle claim outside the Bible as fabrication and mythologizing, even when such claims are supported by vastly better quality evidence than the Jesus stories. You have not provided evidence to support your claims that Jesus existed, that Jesus was magically cloned by a supernatural entity that created this universe, or that Jesus did any of the supernatural things that the Bible claims he did.

3. The Jesus miracle stories can easily be explained as stories that somebody made up, or tall tales that got embellished over the telling. The Jesus miracle stories describe events that are impossible based on the natural laws of the universe, and it is FAR more reasonable to believe they are fictional than to assume that the mythical Jesus had the power to bend and break such laws. I am certain you know this, but your bias towards the Christian faith prevents you from acknowledging that your emperor has no clothes.

4. You have continued to make up and repeat falsehoods in this thread over an extended period of time, and you have not corrected your dishonest behavior even though people have pointed out the falsehoods in your claims over and over.

In short, you have no credibility here, and you are a terrible witness for your faith. If you believe in the Christian god and the Bible, you must also believe that he/it has a special place reserved for people like you in Hell, people who brazenly repeat falsehoods in his/it's name.

 

[Atheos]

ALL these conflicting groups believed the resurrection and the miracles of Jesus (probably not the virgin birth) and were preaching the "gospel" as they understood it, most of them recruiting converts, but to think there was any small clique which "convinced" them all is out of the question. It's impossible that all or most of the above groups could have been recruited by ONLY ONE propagandist like Paul or any other single person. Not even by 2 or 3.

Wrong. There is strong evidence of early variants of Christianity that did not believe any of these things. II Peter is a polemic against such "heresy."

The idea that somehow ONLY the Christ-believers -- only Paul, or only the gospel writers -- had access to scribes is nutty and delusional.

That's not what I said. I said that Christianity began as an offshoot of Judaism and would therefore have the opportunity to convert scribes who were trained in copying scripture. That said scribes would have good scripture to copy because of Paul's early epistles which became hits. That once that ball got rolling other folks tried to generate scripture for these converted scribes to copy, some with greater success (pseudopigraphical epistles and eventually canonized gospels) and some with not so good success (non-canonized christian scriptures such as the Didache and outlaw gospels).

Everything else you say -- everything else -- is a direct appeal to popularity or a sharpshooter fallacy, positioning completely irrelevant criteria as if it is a substitute for evidence.

Yes, we get it. The Jesus story was a big seller. It was a megahit. Everyone was buying it. There were lots of things unique about it and how it developed.

That does not mean it was true.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The early record of the Jesus miracles, widely circulated and believed, cannot be explained if the miracle reports were fiction.

People really don't fly around in the sky like superman, nor bring rotting humans back to life. That's not to say there aren't people who believe such tales nonetheless and pass them along.

The history is that these tales were repeated. The fiction is the tales themselves.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

We have better evidence for the Jesus miracle acts than we have for many historical facts.

The early record of the Jesus miracles, widely circulated and believed, cannot be explained if the miracle reports were fiction.

Nonsense.

1. You have no evidence that the Jesus miracle stories were widely circulated and accepted as fact at the time the Bible was written.

There is evidence of this, but "widely circulated and accepted" does not mean that half the population, or even 1/4, knew and accepted these stories at that time. In that sense my original words would be incorrect.

By 70 or 80 AD these accounts, especially the resurrection stories, were circulating, and were believed, among a much larger number than any other miracle stories of the time except those which had been around for centuries, i.e., stories about the pagan gods, etc.

And of course the circulation and wide belief increased much further, going into the second century. Still, this doesn't mean half the population. It's impossible to try to put a percentage on this. But this is a point of comparison to other claims about reported miracle events.

E.g., let's compare him to Hanina ben Dosa and Apollonius of Tyana, who were contemporaries of Jesus and also are reputed to have performed miracles. In comparison to either of these, it's clear that the reputation of Jesus as a miracle-worker, in the late 1st century, was vastly greater than that of either of these two.

There is no record of any miracles of either of them until 200 AD and later. Not one document mentioning any miracle act, and almost nothing about them at all.

So isn't it reasonable to assume that the miracles of Jesus were more widely circulated in the late 1st century than those of Hanina and Apollonius? And yet, these are both cited often as rival miracle-workers or rival "messiah" figures to Jesus, and it's common for Jesus nay-sayers to point to these examples and say, "See, Jesus wasn't special -- look at these other miracle-workers, they did the same things, so Jesus wasn't really special, was he?"

But when you look at the evidence we have, from written accounts, there are at least 4 (5) sources from the 1st century attesting to the Jesus miracles, and none about Apollonius or Hanina ben Dosa. So it's in this sense that the Jesus miracle stories were "widely" circulated and believed. I.e., more widely than for any other 1st-century figure, or for most any other period, except that obviously the stories about Zeus and other pagan deities were more popular from having evolved over 1000+ years of mythologizing.

So as a comparison, it is correct to say the Jesus miracle claims were widely circulated and believed, considering that it was so soon after the origin of the stories, or after the events reportedly happened. Such wide circulation and publication of the accounts does not exist in any other cases of miracle claims, i.e., not soon after the events reportedly happened.

In fact, not a single historian of the time wrote anything about said miracles, at that time, or later, which would indicate that your claim is false.

But that's only if I were claiming half or most of the population knew the Jesus miracle stories, which is not my claim. I won't speculate what the percent was of the population, in the 1st century, knowing these accounts or believing them, but the circulation of this "gospel" narrative must have been much wider than that of any other claims of recent miracle events.

And, dirty little secret: there were quite a few events that never got mentioned by mainline historians, like about 99.9999999999% of all the events that happened. And everything they wrote was only about the rich and powerful, not about ordinary people.

Since Jesus was a person of no recognized status or repute during his lifetime, it is amazing that we have any mention of him at all in any historical document, i.e., the brief mention in Tacitus and Suetonius and Josephus, who wrote only about people in high positions of power and military conflicts, and certainly about no one whose public career was less than 10 years.

There is probably not one other example of anyone ever mentioned in any history source, prior to 1500 or so, whose public career was so short.

You have not provided a compelling argument to support your claim that the Jesus miracle stories should be considered credible.

The evidence we have for this is greater than for many historical facts we routinely accept. Many facts are accepted on the authority of one source only. The only evidence for any historical facts are documents reporting them and which were written near to the time that the events allegedly happened.

This criterion rules out virtually all miracle claims, before modern times, which were ever made. Only the Jesus miracle stories are not ruled out by this criterion, while virtually all others are ruled out. (Maybe not 100%. And this rule may be only 99.9% correct, but close enough to be a good rule.)

Of course you can still claim the case for the Jesus miracles is insufficient, because ALL miracle claims are ipso facto false, despite any evidence, and so therefore there can never be sufficient "support" for any such claims. But if one does not impose that dogmatic premise, then the Jesus miracle stories are credible, or at least a reasonable possibility, based on evidence, and so they cannot be ruled out.

The case is not 100% full-proof, just a reasonable possibility.

In fact, you have dismissed every single miracle claim outside the Bible as fabrication and mythologizing, even when such claims are supported by vastly better quality evidence than the Jesus stories.

But all the examples of this offered here were NOT supported by better evidence than the Jesus stories. Some examples have been offered, but in every case it was shown how those were products of mythologizing. Whereas the Jesus stories were not produced by mythologizing.

However, the accounts of Rasputin the Mad Monk healing the child of the Russian Czar are credible. And there may be some other accounts of a "miracle" event which are credible. They cannot all be dismissed. Every claim has to be considered individually.

Claims of miracle healings are not credible if they originate ONLY from the direct disciples of the healer-guru, who were impacted by his charisma for a long time. These are the only examples anyone here offered for comparison.

You have not provided evidence to support your claims that Jesus existed, . . .

You know the evidence for this. It's contained in documents from the period. This is evidence better than we have for many historical facts which we routinely accept for which there is only one source, and which source often appears much later after the reported events.

. . . that Jesus was magically cloned by a supernatural entity that created this universe, . . .

This doesn't matter. We don't need to explain where Jesus came from to believe that he had power. It's OK to try to explain it, but it doesn't matter whether we figure out such things.

. . . or that Jesus did any of the supernatural things that the Bible claims he did.

Again, we have normal evidence for this, better than for many historical facts that we routinely accept.

The Jesus miracle stories can easily be explained as stories that somebody made up, or tall tales that got embellished over the telling.

But they are not comparable to any examples of this that you can offer. We can explain how mythologizing caused "tall tales" to emerge, but the Jesus miracle stories cannot be explained this way. Give an example so we can make the comparison.

Instead of giving a particular example, you just want to dismiss ALL miracle stories per se as automatically false, despite any evidence that applies in individual cases. You are just starting out from the dogmatic premise that no miracle event can ever happen. It is not necessary for everyone to begin with this artificial premise.

The Jesus miracle stories describe events that are impossible based on the natural laws of the universe, and it is FAR more reasonable to believe they are fictional than to assume that the mythical Jesus had the power to bend and break such laws. I am certain you know this, but your bias towards the Christian faith prevents you from acknowledging that your emperor has no clothes.

Again, not everyone has to accept your arbitrary premise that no miracle event can ever happen regardless of any evidence.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

How do you know what events happened in history? At last, the Universal Law of all historical events is revealed!

There is no appeal here to "popularity" except in the sense that ALL historical knowledge is based on evidence showing that the events were believed to have happened, and thus they were "popular" or believed by a large number, and this is the main evidence that those events really happened.

One of these days, take a course in history. Seriously. Or read a book. Look up any textbook that includes the phrase 'We know this to be a fact because' or 'we can accept this as true because' or 'so we consider this a historical event due to' and see if any historian matches your claims about how history works....

Better test: Consider any example of a fact you know from history, or of any alleged fact which you know is NOT a fact, and show how this example contradicts this Universal Law of History:

ALL historical knowledge is based on evidence showing that the events were believed to have happened, and thus they were "popular" or believed by a large number, and this is the main evidence that those events really happened.

Cite a historical fact which contradicts this Universal Law, or cite an alleged fact known to be false, which contradicts this Grand Universal Metaphysical Cosmic Absolute Definition of ALL Historical Truths for ALL Eternity.

Or, find a statement in your favorite history book which denies this Universal Law.

(And, needless to say, this refers to reported mundane historical facts only, not assertions about the Creation of the Universe or about the Sun being pulled across the sky by Hercules etc. -- just claims about down-to-earth events people said they saw.)

 

[Keith&Co.]

Better test: Consider any example of a fact you know from history, or of any alleged fact which you know is NOT a fact, and show how this example contradicts this Universal Law of History:

Lumpy, why would that be a better test?
There's no such universal law. You're making shit up.



Again.



You cannot cite a source for this law.

You have an agenda, so you want to pretend that history is favorable to your agenda.

But you're not qualified to discuss what historical evidence is or means, much less have the foundation needed to dictate your fantasies to people.

 

[Atheos]

The evidence we have for this is greater than for many historical facts we routinely accept. Many facts are accepted on the authority of one source only. The only evidence for any historical facts are documents reporting them and which were written near to the time that the events allegedly happened.

This criterion rules out virtually all miracle claims, before modern times, which were ever made. Only the Jesus miracle stories are not ruled out by this criterion, while virtually all others are ruled out. (Maybe not 100%. And this rule may be only 99.9% correct, but close enough to be a good rule.)

See, this is a classic example of what I mean when I (rightly) accuse Lumpenproletariat of employing the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. First of all, there is often considerably more evidence for historical facts than just documents reporting them which were written near to the time that the events allegedly happened. Secondly, he inserts the irrelevant criterion "before modern times" which allows him to draw this bulls-eye around his favorite fairy tale. The implication is that somehow human nature evidently completely changed between the period ill-defined as "before modern times" and whatever he arbitrarily calls "modern times."

In order to justify this exclusion an objective justification has to be offered. We have no way to determine how many accounts of miracle-working events were written in antiquity that have failed to survive. But we do have irrefutable floods of evidence that this sort of thing goes on constantly today. Did human nature fundamentally change just because literacy and the resources to write things down became more common? Or is it possible that Lumpenproletariat is abusing the fact that interested parties made handwritten copies of his favorite fairy tale and continued to propagate it through the centuries in order to fabricate a fallacious claim that this somehow proves the recorded events actually happened?

ALL historical knowledge is based on evidence showing that the events were believed to have happened, and thus they were "popular" or believed by a large number, and this is the main evidence that those events really happened.

This is a ridiculous statement. Laughable. Evidently Lumpenproletariat is unfamiliar with "He said, she said." The ability to convince lots of people to believe one version of a story has absolutely no bearing on the truthiness of the story. It also completely ignores the very real possibility that many people who heard these ridiculous myths did not believe them. The existence of these gospels and pockets of believers is evidence that people got sucked into a religious movement. Big whoop. Millions of Mormons today believe that Jesus ministered to ancient native Americans. The original stories about that were allegedly written near the time they happened and translated into English by Joseph Smith much more recently. Oh that's right. This happened in "modern times" so obviously the fact that human nature had completely changed by then lets us excuse this from Lumpenproletariat's special pleading criteria for accepting the Jesus Myth.

This is nothing more than a desperate attempt to shoehorn "appeal to popularity" in as an actual respected historical methodology, and it's not going to work.

 

[James Brown]

If people believe a story, then it must be true?

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

"Universal Law" for historical facts: Whatever the writers said happened is the basis for historical facts.

ALL historical knowledge is based on evidence showing that the events were believed to have happened, and thus they were "popular" or believed by a large number, and this is the main evidence that those events really happened.

If you don't like this version of the "Law" then what's YOUR version? Don't just whine that you don't like this version -- say what's wrong with it and rewrite it or produce the correct version.

One of these days, take a course in history. Seriously. Or read a book. Look up any textbook that includes the phrase 'We know this to be a fact because' or 'we can accept this as true because' or 'so we consider this a historical event due to' and see if any historian matches your claims about how history works....

Better test: Consider any example of a fact you know from history, or of any alleged fact which you know is NOT a fact, and show how this example contradicts this Universal Law of History:

Lumpy, why would that be a better test?

Because we know for sure what some of the historical facts are: George Washington was the first President, Julius Caesar was assassinated, etc. etc. -- and if all the examples of such facts fit this "Universal Law," that shows that the "Law" is reliable.

Whereas, your demand is to trust a certified "historian" to dictate to us what is the criterion for historical facts without testing that criterion to see if it fits actual historical facts that we all agree on. What is this criterion you expect to find in that text "We know this to be a fact because . . ." -- Why don't you just fill in the words yourself, and then explain how this fits common facts we all agree on but rules out the Jesus miracles as being non-historical?

Would all these certified "experts" agree on what this criterion is? Why do you think their criterion would contradict my version of the "Universal Law" for historical facts? I believe if there is any such criterion published somewhere, it would come very close to my version here.

It probably would say nothing about whether the Gospel accounts are factual, including the miracles, but rather would leave it open and just say we don't know what happened. But it would rule out most pagan miracle myths as fiction.

If you're sure my version is wrong, why won't you test it by applying it to an example of some historical fact that we all agree on? Why do you prefer the expert, the Authority, the "historian" to dictate it to us? Don't you have any notion of your own how historical facts are determined? Why can't you decide what is the criterion for what is and what is not an historical fact? Why do you need an official "historian" to dictate it to you?

There's no such universal law.

OK, rewrite the "Universal Law" as you think it should be worded. How are historical facts determined? You don't think you're capable of figuring out what we mean by "historical facts"?

You don't think these facts are determined from historical documents, where the writer said these things happened? Then how are they determined? You tell me. You don't need an "historian" or "expert" to define "historical fact" for you. Are you incapable of figuring it out? You can't determine where these "facts" come from? or what makes those sentences in the history book "historical facts"?

What is wrong with someone noticing that the writers of those books keep referring to Herodotus and other ancient writers, quoting them, and so concluding: The historical facts are the claims made by these writers from back there, 1000 years ago, or 2000, so that whatever they say happened are the historical facts? What's wrong with that definition? We're too stupid to draw such a conclusion?

Improve on the wording if you want. But do you need the "expert" to dictate to you what is the meaning of "historical fact"?

You're making shit up.

In other words, what those writers centuries ago wrote is NOT where we get the "historical facts" from? Those writings have nothing to do with "history"? You mean I'm "making shit up" because I say that the historical facts are the claims made by the ancient writers who wrote about what happened? Those writings have nothing to do with "history"? That's not where our "historical facts" come from?

Then where do they come from? You mean the "historians" today invent the "historical facts" for us independently of the writers who wrote those documents? But why do the history books refer to those ancient writers and quote them, if those writings are not where the "historical facts" come from?

Again.

You cannot cite a source for this law.

Then what is the correct "law"? Tell me where we really get our "historical facts" from. You write the "Universal Law" for historical facts if you don't like my version of it. You insist that a credentialed "expert" has to dictate something like this to us? We can't figure out for ourselves what "history" means?

You have an agenda, so you want to pretend that history is favorable to your agenda.

So in other words, "George Washington was the first U.S. President" is favorable to my agenda, because this is based on claims made by writers 200 years ago, fitting my "Universal Law" on what are the "historical facts," and so therefore, according to you, George Washington must NOT have been the first U.S. President, because that would fit my "Universal Law" and be favorable to my "agenda."

So then who really was the first President, according to your theory of "historical facts"?

But you're not qualified to discuss what historical evidence is or means, much less have the foundation needed to dictate your fantasies to people.

Translation: All historical facts that you know do conform to the above "Universal Law" -- you can't identify any fact of history which doesn't conform to this "Law."

If you knew of any such fact you would offer it to disprove this "Universal Law" of historical facts. By not giving any example of a fact, in order to test this "Universal Law" as a criterion for "historical facts," you are demonstrating that this "Universal Law" is a correct criterion for what is and what is not "historical fact."