120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[Keith&Co.]

Meanwhile, if you really want to see the argumentum ad populam in full-flight, just see how often Christian apologists get scolded and reprimanded by condescending atheists about how;

...nobody here believes that
...everybody here knows you're making that up
...we all see what you're trying to do

The argument is still invalid.

Kind of a Tu quoque fallacy, nu?

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

That Jesus actually performed the miracle acts best explains the early spread of the Jesus cults and the "Gospel" accounts.

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?

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.

No, there is no such evidence. They all knew and believed the basic miracle claims such as in Mark, and especially the resurrection story -- both the empty tomb and appearances. These early believers must have understood this Jesus narrative in terms of both Paul's resurrection claims and also the general picture we have in Mark.

What cannot be doubted is that those early believers all united around some basic Jesus story which was circulating, which clearly included the miracle stories as an intrinsic component, and that these believers were so widely divergent in their sentiments that it's impossible that one evangelist or crusader like St. Paul can be credited with uniting them all into a new single Christ cult. In fact, it was NOT a single cult, but several different cults, each having its own version of the Jesus gospel, and having sharp conflicts between them. But still united around some basic story, which must have included the miracle events.

II Peter is a polemic against such "heresy."

But nothing in II Peter suggests that these "heretics" disbelieved the basic miracles of Jesus. Rather, they are condemned for their false practices or disobedient behavior. They are called "false prophets," but this does not refer to doctrinal differences about who Jesus was or about his power. The closest language to this would be:

II Peter 2: 1 -- But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled.

Close reading of the epistle shows that this all refers to bad behavior, lust, greed, immorality on the part of these heretics, and not about their doctrinal errors concerning Jesus, such as disbelieving the miracles or the resurrection.

Who were these heretics referred to in II Peter? Here's one description:

In the second century Christianity embraced in its membership persons who were disposed thus to pervert the Pauline principle of spiritual liberty. At first these individuals were to be found scattered among different churches. They affirmed that, as persons who possessed the Spirit and who had superior knowledge of the way of salvation, they were free from the legalistic restraints that had characterized Judaism.

So these trouble-makers are partly to be blamed on Paul, i.e., perhaps an abuse of his doctrine that salvation is FREE, based on faith rather than works. It's not anything about them rejecting the miracles and resurrection.

For them salvation was an affair of mental comprehension and not a matter of morality. It is this type of Christian whose presence in the communities worries the author of 2 Peter, and he writes his tract in order to warn the churches against the activities of these liberalists whom he regards as gross falsifiers of Christian truth.
Second Peter, Shirley Jackson Case, Abingdon Bible Commentary

This commentator uses the term "libertine" to describe these 2nd century trouble-makers:

The rise of libertine Christian sects came about through the adoption of Christianity by Gentiles who were less sensitive to moral purity than Jews had been. These sects had become sharply differentiated from the main body of Christendom by the year 200 AD. The situation which the author of 2 Peter confronts seems to represent an early stage in the course of this development. In his day people of the libertine tendency were still within the church.

You won't find any scholar or Bible critic who identifies these 2nd-century "heretics" or trouble-makers as someone who disbelieved the miracles of Jesus and the resurrection. And there's nothing in II Peter identifying them that way.

So again, there's NO evidence of early Christians who disbelieved the miracle stories. This includes divergent groups like the Essene-types, Zealots, Apocalyptic-types, Ebionites. They all united around the Jesus character, but there's no way to explain how any one promoter could have brought such divergent groups together into one new movement. There was too much division/conflict between them.

The best explanation how they all came together is that they all believed the Jesus miracle stories, because there was too much evidence that these events really happened, too many reports, and so they all started out from this one point of agreement, and from there each group went its own separate way in interpreting what "the Gospel" meant and deciding its particular doctrine.

If this isn't what they united around, then what was it? It could not have been Paul alone, even if he might have been able to win some converts, because it's impossible that all these divergent factions would all coalesce around any one Teacher or Promoter of some new cult promoting some new peculiar messianic fantasy they cooked up. There was some general Jesus story they all somehow converged on, but how could such a divergent group be brought together by any one oddball clique or guru?

Any notion that one hot-shot promoter like Paul brought them all together can be dismissed as incoherent babble.

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.

But other competing cults had the same opportunity to recruit or acquire whatever scribes they needed, if they had anything to record and get copied and published.

There was no shortage of persons, including non-Jews, trained in copying whatever needed to be copied, as long as those wanting something copied had resources to be able to pay them. There was nothing special about "scripture" that it required any special kind of "training" different than other writings.

There is no reason to think Paul or the Christians had any advantage over other groups trying to promote a guru or a new cult. They all had equal access to any scribes needed to copy their writings.

That said scribes would have good scripture to copy because of Paul's early epistles which became hits.

The only reason they became "hits" is that he chose for his main character a certain miracle-worker which people wanted to know more about and wanted an explanation for. Except for this, there is no way to explain how Paul's writings attracted any interest or were any more important than any other writings. He first had to have a product to sell. Without that, no large supply of extra scribes could make any difference.

If his main Jesus character had been an invented cosmic figure who never existed outside Paul's imagination and who "resurrected" only in an imaginary spirit realm only Paul understood, then his epistles would have been ridiculed and no one would have paid any attention to such delusionalism or would have read the writings.

That once that ball got rolling other folks tried to generate scripture for these converted scribes . . .

What "ball" are you talking about? Whatever scenario you're fantasizing, it explains nothing about how Paul or anyone else came to produce so much copying of the epistles and the gospel accounts. No one wasted resources copying reports about someone's hallucinations. If these writings were about a real person that thousands of readers knew of and wanted to know more about, and this was a very special person who did something of great importance, then we have an explanation why accounts were written and copied.

But if this was an imaginary character Paul invented which he was trying to market as a Cosmic deity for people to worship, then there's no way to explain why there was any response (other than to ridicule Paul as a lune) or any interest in writing about this imaginary character or copying such writings.

No folks would try to "generate scripture" for such nonsense. You have to keep in mind that the "Turn-on tune-in drop-out" generation did not exist until the 20th century. People were not tripping out on this kind of nuttiness in the 1st century AD.

That Paul somehow had an army of Jewish scribes he could force to write or copy scrolls expounding on his hallucinations is laughable.

. . . other folks tried to generate scripture for these converted scribes to copy, . . .

What "other folks"? What are they trying to generate "scripture" for? You mean they see this army of inactive scribes who need some makework to keep them out of mischief, so they "generate" some work for them? like "job creation"? an "economic stimulus" to put unemployed Jewish scribes to work? You need to stop projecting your 20th-century mindset onto the people of 2000 years ago. They would scratch their heads in disbelief hearing someone describe them in these alien terms. Writing and copying scrolls was a long tedious painstaking and costly procedure which people did not do without there being an important need.

. . . some with greater success (pseudopigraphical epistles and eventually canonized gospels) . . .

What "success"? to accomplish what? "Success" implies something is being achieved, a goal being reached. What goal are these scribes achieving by copying Paul's delusions?

No, you're not explaining why anyone was writing down Paul's hallucinations. You're just assuming they wrote and copied all these scrolls and pretending that this explains WHY they did this writing and copying. Just saying that someone did something does not tell us WHY they did it, or how it came about that they did it. Why did these hundreds of scribes do all this writing and copying, if all they were writing about was only Paul's hallucinations?

This is not something people did. They did not spend long hours writing and copying the ravings and hallucinations of some crank.

. . . and some with not so good success . . .

What does "success" mean? No one reads or copies writings about a non-existent Cosmic Character invented by a crank. About a deity from 1000 years ago, yes, about Zeus, or Apollo, etc., but not the ravings of a goofy contemporary crusader inventing a new cult and an imaginary god that only he has any contact with. There's nothing to be gained by writing or copying such crap and spreading it around. What's the point of it? What is there to "succeed" at?

. . . (non-canonized christian scriptures such as the Didache and outlaw gospels).

Of course you can enumerate different writings, and you can say these were written, but why do you think by just enumerating these that you've explained WHY they were written or copied?

So Paul has these hallucinations and then somehow legions of scribes suddenly mobilize into action to write and copy thousands of manuscripts expounding on his hallucinations, or to create "gospel" accounts about his hallucinations? Why do you assume there was such an unusual number of wackos at this particular time and place in history? There was never any other time or place where hundreds of people suddenly tripped out like this. What's an example before the age of modern printing where a new upstart cult got its instant miracle legend published and circulated in multiple documents?

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.

You could say the same about MOST of our recorded history from the period. We believe our historical facts for the same reason people believe the Jesus miracles. Writers recorded it for us, and it was copied and passed on to future generations.

You can keep repeating your slogans and rhetoric about "sharpshooter" and "popularity" and other "fallacies" without showing any fallacy. Just because you know this terminology and can repeat it by rote does not prove that any fallacy is taking place.

You have to show how other historical facts are not also guilty of the same fallacy. There are millions of historical facts, taken from only 1 or 2 sources, written 100 years later than the events, based on gossip or rumor or whatever -- you don't know, but you accept it because someone wrote it, and you believe it for no other reason. You can't say why you believe it other than simply that someone wrote it.

Yes, we get it. The Jesus story was a big seller.

But you can't explain why. There's nothing special about it if it did not really happen. There's no reason for anyone to care about it, to read about it, to copy accounts of it, to pay any attention to it at all if it was only fiction. There were thousands of other stories circulating around which had equal appeal, with the only difference that in this case there were too many reports, too much evidence, too much corroboration.

You can't say what made this story different than all the others.

It was a megahit. Everyone was buying it.

But not buying anything else? only this story? Why only this one? There were plenty of other fiction stories just as good, just as marketable. Why is this the only one that didn't end up in the trash heap like all the others?

There were lots of things unique about it and how it developed.

Come off it! ---- EVERY story is unique. Every story, every new cult, every fiction, every fraud has its own unique elements and its own special development. There's no reason why only this fiction could sell, why ONLY THIS one had any appeal, ONLY THIS one was worth recording in writing and copying for future generations to read about.

It's OK to admit that it's a mystery and you're puzzled that ONLY THIS story was able to sell and none of the others were able to. Just admit that there's no known explanation for it.

That does not mean it was true.

That it was true would explain why only this story succeeded and all the others failed.

You can insist that there must be a different explanation, but you can't insist that it's unreasonable for people to believe this explanation. No other explanation has been given, except to just say that this happened, somehow.

One can find reasons to reject this explanation, but with no other explanation offered that makes any sense, it's reasonable to believe this one, i.e., it's a reasonable possibility or hope.

 

[Keith&Co.]

No, there is no such evidence. They all knew and believed the basic miracle claims such as in Mark, and especially the resurrection story -- both the empty tomb and appearances. These early believers must have understood this Jesus narrative in terms of both Paul's resurrection claims and also the general picture we have in Mark.

That's cute how you just make shit up, in your defense of why the Jesus story can't be just made up shit.

 

[Jarhyn]

No, there is no such evidence. They all knew and believed the basic miracle claims such as in Mark, and especially the resurrection story -- both the empty tomb and appearances. These early believers must have understood this Jesus narrative in terms of both Paul's resurrection claims and also the general picture we have in Mark.

That's cute how you just make shit up, in your defense of why the Jesus story can't be just made up shit.

I generally think it happened much as Scientology did, or much like Mormonism: the result of a carefully sold fiction-as-fact fraud.

To date the most plausible explanation I have seen is "some jackass wrote a play full of philosophical shit that never took off, and he decided to sell it to ignorant jackasses as non-fiction to get status as an 'apostle' and pussy and then later, some authoritarian jackass saw a bunch of rubes he could play 'prophet' to, also for status and pussy"

Though admittedly, Paul might have been asexual, so he might have also done it simply for power.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

"Miracle" stories are defined as fiction, which is then the "evidence" that they could not have happened.

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.

Of course miracle events generally don't happen. However, there's evidence that Rasputin the mad monk caused the son of the Czar to recover, even though he had no medical training. So history indicates that such acts cannot be ruled out as impossible, even if they are extremely rare or limited. (There's probably a few other cases where there's evidence like in the Rasputin case.)

You can reject this evidence and insist as a premise that miracle acts can never happen, despite any evidence showing that such an event did happen. However, you have to recognize that not everyone accepts this dogmatic premise.

Nothing in science or logic requires us to accept this premise that miracle events per se cannot ever happen, by definition.

That's not to say there aren't people who believe such tales nonetheless and pass them along.

Yes, in cases where there is evidence, some do believe it. And also in cases where there is no evidence but they are persuaded by a charismatic, or where other factors of mythologizing give rise to such fictional accounts. We can recognize when these factors are at work.

But generally, for 99% of the population, miracle stories are rejected as fictional, usually because there is not enough evidence.

The history is that these tales were repeated.

But most miracle stories were NOT repeated, i.e., were not believed and were rejected, and also today, except that today many get published because it's so easy and inexpensive, whereas 2000 years ago fictional miracle stories were not easily published, and the only ones that were recorded and survived were ones that accumulated and evolved over centuries of myth-building before anyone finally wrote them down.

The fiction is the tales themselves.

Yes, in other words, the reason you're sure the Jesus miracle stories are fiction is that any such stories per se have to be rejected as fiction, ipso facto, because any such stories are automatically fiction by definition.

This is the only evidence for saying they are fiction. You're right -- there is no other evidence except this definition as a premise.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

But generally, for 99% of the population, miracle stories are rejected as fictional, usually because there is not enough evidence.

No. They're rejected because they're fictional - meaning impossible.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Miracle claims are not automatically false by definition. Even if all such claims are false, still each one has to be judged on the evidence.

But generally, for 99% of the population, miracle stories are rejected as fictional, usually because there is not enough evidence.

No. They're rejected because they're fictional - meaning impossible.

No, "fictional" doesn't mean impossible. The statement, "Mitt Romney was elected President" or "Mitt Romney is the President" is fiction, but it's not impossible.

Most people, when they hear of a reported miracle event, will check to determine if it really happened or not, if there's a way it can be checked. And their judgment that it's false is based on the lack of evidence. But if there were evidence for it, then they would believe it. So it's whether there's evidence or not that decides if they believe it or reject it.

A claim that something happened is true or false based on the evidence showing that it did or did not happen, not on a dogma about what's "possible" or "impossible." If it's a miracle claim, then one is more skeptical and less easily persuaded.

There's nothing in logic or science that requires rejecting the claim based on the dogmatic premise that it has to be fiction. Not everyone has to accept the dogmatic premise that no miracle event can ever happen, or that a "miracle" claim has to be "fiction" or "impossible" by definition.

 

[Lion IRC]

The argument is still invalid.

Kind of a Tu quoque fallacy, nu?

No, I dont think they are comparable.
Lumpenproletariat isn't saying people should think 'x' because so many other people think 'x'.
Whereas some members of team atheism here at TFF have used the supposed weight of (their own group_think, herd_mentality) numbers to try and dismiss the plausibility of what Lumpy is asserting.

A tu quoque fallacy would be me saying both sides are equally right/wrong. In this case I'm drawing a distinction not a comparison.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Kind of a Tu quoque fallacy, nu?

No, I dont think they are comparable.
Lumpenproletariat isn't saying people should think 'x' because so many other people think 'x'.

Yes, he is. He's literally saying that the wide spread of belief iin the story is evidence that the story is factual. He pretends that this is how historians work, too.

Lots of people believed, the only possible explanation is that it's real.

Whereas some members of team atheism here at TFF have used the supposed weight of (their own group_think, herd_mentality) numbers to try and dismiss the plausibility of what Lumpy is asserting.

Please point to the post where someone says that Lumpy is wrong BECAUSE none of us believe him.

A tu quoque fallacy would be me saying both sides are equally right/wrong. In this case I'm drawing a distinction not a comparison.

A tu quoque fallacy is an accusation of hypocrisy.
If you point out that we reject Lumpy's popularity argument while at the same time make our own popularity arguments, that's an argument from hypocrisy. Or so it seems to me.

But whatever it is, could you please point out where members here use an actual popularity argument against Lumpy?

 

[Atheos]

No, there is no such evidence. They all knew and believed the basic miracle claims such as in Mark, and especially the resurrection story -- both the empty tomb and appearances. These early believers must have understood this Jesus narrative in terms of both Paul's resurrection claims and also the general picture we have in Mark.

This is a baseless assertion. There is no evidence that the earliest believers understood this Jesus narrative in terms of an empty tomb and (physical) appearances. The language used by Paul is completely consistent with visions of Jesus and are used by him to refer to visions that he saw.

Meanwhile the "no such evidence" part of this refers to whether or not there is any evidence of people who believed that Jesus was never an actual physical person. Lumpenproletariat is evidently unfamiliar with Gnosticism. II Peter mentions heretical teachers who "Deny the lord that bought them." This is certainly subject to interpretation but a fair interpretation is that they deny there is such a person.

Having said that I must confess to a blunder when composing the post to which he was responding. It was not II Peter, but II John that I meant to say was a polemic against such people as denied the historicity of Jesus. For that I apologize.

II John 1:7 - For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

While the quote from Peter may be subject to interpretation, the quote from II John is much more specific: Some people were teaching that Jesus was never a physical person. The problem for Lumpenproletariat is there is no way to determine which doctrine came first. Were the earliest pockets of Christians worshiping an entirely celestial Jesus or was the story of him becoming a human and going back to heaven in place from the get-go? The evidence is completely inconclusive. But the evidence in II John is pretty solid that this cohesive belief Lumpenproletariat keeps baselessly asserting did not exist.

If his main Jesus character had been an invented cosmic figure who never existed outside Paul's imagination and who "resurrected" only in an imaginary spirit realm only Paul understood, then his epistles would have been ridiculed and no one would have paid any attention to such delusionalism or would have read the writings.

Again this is a baseless assertion. Lumpenproletariat cannot demonstrate this to be true, but we have thousands upon thousands of examples of large groups of people being convinced to believe the most bizarre things based on the charismatic power of a cult leader. Even today we have J.Z. Knight making millions because people believe her delusional bullshit about Ramtha.

Okay, that's enough for now. More would become a wall of text and I'd rather avoid that. Lumpenproletariat continues with his appeals to popularity and sharpshooter fallacies.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Kind of a Tu quoque fallacy, nu?

No, I dont think they are comparable.
Lumpenproletariat isn't saying people should think 'x' because so many other people think 'x'.
Whereas some members of team atheism here at TFF have used the supposed weight of (their own group_think, herd_mentality) numbers to try and dismiss the plausibility of what Lumpy is asserting.

A tu quoque fallacy would be me saying both sides are equally right/wrong. In this case I'm drawing a distinction not a comparison.

I suggest you read up on tu quoque:

Tu quoque (/tuːˈkwoʊkwiː/; Latin for, "you also") or the appeal to hypocrisy is an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the validity of the opponent's logical argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).

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

 

[Lion IRC]

No, I dont think they are comparable.
Lumpenproletariat isn't saying people should think 'x' because so many other people think 'x'.

Yes, he is. He's literally saying that the wide spread of belief iin the story is evidence that the story is factual.

I haven't seen exactly that. When we make reference to whatever number of people think something or believe something we aren't asserting the necessity that it MUST be true. We are simply alluding to an unanswered question - namely, what is the best explanation for that belief.

What's wrong with historians concluding that something is probably historical based on the numbers of corroborated accounts? What's wrong with scientific consensus that a certain theory is probably or tentatively true based on the number of people who claim to have observed the same data?

Sure, the skeptic can always claim that it doesn't matter how MANY people claim something is true. But exactly how many people have to corroborate something before the skeptic is willing to reconsider their doubt?

You say you want more evidence but asking for more evidence concedes the point that there is a correlation between the volume of testimony and the probability that something is true.

Whereas some members of team atheism here at TFF have used the supposed weight of (their own group_think, herd_mentality) numbers to try and dismiss the plausibility of what Lumpy is asserting.

Please point to the post where someone says that Lumpy is wrong BECAUSE none of us believe him.

I haven't seen exactly that either.
But I have seen the collective 'spokesperson' type of response along the lines of nobody here believes you or we all know...etc. And that is an appeal to numbers. It doesn't matter how many people agree or disagree - that doesn't make you right and him wrong.

.A tu quoque fallacy would be me saying both sides are equally right/wrong. In this case I'm drawing a distinction not a comparison.

A tu quoque fallacy is an accusation of hypocrisy.

Yes it can be as simple as that.
But it can also be a rhetorical method of justifying your own position.

Me - Lots of ppl think 'x' so there must be some basis for their belief.
You - Lion don't you realise it doesn't matter how many ppl think 'x'? We all keep telling you that.
Me - So what you're saying is that lots of ppl think I'm committing an ad pop fallacy?
You - Yep! Because you ARE.
Me - in other words lots of ppl think 'x' so there must be some basis for their belief.

 

[Lion IRC]

I suggest you read up on tu quoque...

No thanks. I've read up on it heaps of times.
I'm not accusing that "you also do it".

Because "it" isn't being done by Lumpenproletariat in the first place.

 

[Lion IRC]

Anyway - back to the topic.

...They all knew and believed the basic miracle claims such as in Mark, and especially the resurrection story -- both the empty tomb and appearances. These early believers must have understood this Jesus narrative in terms of both Paul's resurrection claims and also the general picture we have in Mark.

That's cute how you just make shit up, in your defense of why the Jesus story can't be just made up shit.

This isn't being 'made up'.
This is central to the question of historicity. If you take away extraordinary claims about Jesus' miracles there is nothing left for historians to even consider or bother lifting a pen.

Atheos makes a big deal about (heretical) dissent among early believers but there wouldn't be ANY dissent at all if Jesus never got their attention in the first place.

How soon would Jesus return? Well that's a question that can't be doctrinally contentious UNLESS you think Jesus might be able to fulfill His promise.

Debate over whether or not the Gentiles should be evangelized? Evangelized about WHAT?
No Messiah = nothing to see here, move along.

Lumpenproletariat's main argument here is about the best explanation for the suddenness of Christianity's appearence in the history books - not as myth but as assertions of historicity.

I would be interested to see if anyone can answer his challenge to show an equivalent explosion of "myth" in such a short time. Christianity is unprecedented.

Myths take a lot longer than 20 - 30 years to take root and become widespread 'belief'. Show us an ancient myth which developed within one lifetime.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Anyway - back to the topic.


Myths take a lot longer than 20 - 30 years to take root and become widespread 'belief'. Show us an ancient myth which developed within one lifetime.

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

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are many legendary accounts surrounding the life of Alexander the Great, with a relatively large number deriving from his own lifetime, probably encouraged by Alexander himself.

 

[Lion IRC]

Anyway - back to the topic.


Myths take a lot longer than 20 - 30 years to take root and become widespread 'belief'. Show us an ancient myth which developed within one lifetime.

There are many legendary accounts surrounding the life of Alexander the Great with a relatively large number deriving from his own lifetime, probably encouraged by Alexander himself.

Um...Alexander lived in 350BC. I'm pretty sure we don't have ANY written history of such mythology dating anywhere close to his lifetime.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yes, he is. He's literally saying that the wide spread of belief iin the story is evidence that the story is factual.

I haven't seen exactly that.

Then i would hope that means you haven't read all of this 180+page thread. Or worst case, you purposefully misinterpret what Lumpy has been claiming.

When we make reference to whatever number of people think something or believe something we aren't asserting the necessity that it MUST be true. We are simply alluding to an unanswered question - namely, what is the best explanation for that belief.

'We' isn't the word you want, here, as Lumpy has exactly stated that THE only acceptable explanation for the widespread belief of the Jesus Miracles is that they really happened.

What's wrong with historians concluding that something is probably historical based on the numbers of corroborated accounts?

Nothing. But Lumpy hasn't been able to provide any corroborating accounts.

What's wrong with scientific consensus that a certain theory is probably or tentatively true based on the number of people who claim to have observed the same data?

There's a slight difference in the consensus of experts and the accumulation of anonymous reports of unknown source, time, location or purpose in being written down.

Sure, the skeptic can always claim that it doesn't matter how MANY people claim something is true. But exactly how many people have to corroborate something before the skeptic is willing to reconsider their doubt?

Well, if we could start with ANY corroboration, maybe, see how that goes?

You say you want more evidence but asking for more evidence concedes the point that there is a correlation between the volume of testimony and the probability that something is true.

I don't think we've been asking for 'more' evidence, though. I think we've criticized the story provided as being anonymous. So we want evidence that could be sourced, dated, established if it was or was not an eyewitness, and maybe the motives of the author made apparent. It's the quality of the evidence we're skeptical about, not the amount.

Please point to the post where someone says that Lumpy is wrong BECAUSE none of us believe him.

I haven't seen exactly that either.

Then stop saying we do that.

But I have seen the collective 'spokesperson' type of response along the lines of nobody here believes you or we all know...etc.

Fine. Where? What post?

And that is an appeal to numbers. It doesn't matter how many people agree or disagree - that doesn't make you right and him wrong.

Right. But where does anyone here do that?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Anyway - back to the topic.

That's cute how you just make shit up, in your defense of why the Jesus story can't be just made up shit.

This isn't being 'made up'.

Yes, it is. Early Christain beliefs were all over the map. The 'widely held beliefs' that Lumpy says everyone shared just weren't there. People called themselves Christain with an incredible variety of beliefs. Lumpy has a fantasy that everyone heard the same gospel tales and everyone believed them and that somehow proves everyone could tell fact from fiction based on shelf life of the story.

It runs counter to actual history.

Myths take a lot longer than 20 - 30 years to take root and become widespread 'belief'. Show us an ancient myth which developed within one lifetime.

The story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree was an invention by one biographer which ended up in textbooks until historians tried to track down the story and realized it was bogus.
Myths do not take a generation to 'take root.' Just look at Snopes.

 

[James Brown]

Lost Christianities, the Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.

In Lost Christianities, Bart D. Ehrman offers a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and shows how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus's own followers. Modern archaeological work has recovered a number of key texts, and as Ehrman shows, these spectacular discoveries reveal religious diversity that says much about the ways in which history gets written by the winners. Ehrman's discussion ranges from considerations of various "lost scriptures"--including forged gospels supposedly written by Simon Peter, Jesus's closest disciple, and Judas Thomas, Jesus's alleged twin brother--to the disparate beliefs of such groups as the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and various "Gnostic" sects. Ehrman examines in depth the battles that raged between "proto-orthodox Christians"--those who eventually compiled the canonical books of the New Testament and standardized Christian belief--and the groups they denounced as heretics and ultimately overcame.

Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, Lost Christianities is an eye-opening account of politics, power, and the clash of ideas among Christians in the decades before one group came to see its views prevail.

It's a very common myth that early Christians were more or less united in their beliefs.

 

[Lion IRC]

Very commonly held myth? LOL

The bible itself clearly shows that there was division among Jesus' disciples as well as the other, wider circle of early church leaders.