The Christ Myth Theory

[dbz]

@Politesse , as a snarky commenter on bad arguments, do you have an opinion on conflating Christ Myth with Holocaust denial?

I don't even see what one has to do with the other.

• Godfrey, Neil (June 16, 2010). "Christ Myth and Holocaust Denial". Vridar.

[W]hen historical Jesus scholars flippantly dismiss Jesus mythicism as comparable to Holocaust denial, they are deluding themselves over the real nature of the evidence they deal with. Holocaust evidence is tangible, real, palpable, readable, touchable, visible, audible, testable even in court. It is primary, abundant, corroborated a thousand times over. It is readily and freely publicly accessible.

Historical Jesus evidence is inferential — not inferred from facts, but inferred from arguments over criteria applied to narrative details that are nowhere corroborated. Corroboration means more than simple multiple attestation. Multiple attestation may (and in historical Jesus studies often does) mean nothing more than multiple repeating of something — like multiple testimonies of alien abductions. Multiple attestation only carries weight when it can be established that the different witnesses are truly independent.

Historical Jesus scholars know all of this. They know the weaknesses of the evidence at hand. But they also immerse themselves in it as their livelihood. Their scholarly reputations are reliant upon it. So it is easy to slip into denial of the reality of what they do work with.

Because of this "bad argument" by historical Jesus scholars, this "bad argument" was still being presented as "encyclopedic" by pro-historicity contributors on Wikipedia until 2019.

• "Talk:Christ myth theory". Wikipedia. 1 August 2019.

Holocaust denial = Questioning the historical reality of Jesus ???​

I have three points to make here. The two first points concern the very extensive textbox "Quotes on the historicity of Jesus" (in the section Reception > Scholarly reception > Lack of support for mythicism). The third point is more general:

First, and of imperative importance: I insist that the final section of the above-mentioned textbox ("Comparison with Holocaust-deniers") be deleted. There is no conceivable justification for comparing (a) the mass murder of millions of innocent people within living memory with (b) doubting or questioning the existence of a single person 2,000 years ago, no matter how holy. I am not being polite about this, since there is nothing to be polite about. Making such a comparison is tantamount to trivializing all those meaningless deaths. I am convinced that Jesus would agree with me on this.

Secondly, and of importance only for the credibility of this article: I suggest that the entire textbox be deleted. In this textbox (excluding the section on holocaust denial) are collected 65 quotes arguing against any and all forms of denial, doubt or questioning of the historical existence of Jesus, and 4 (!) quotes that support such denial, doubt or questioning (and please note that all four quotes are extracted from the original source in such a way that it is easy to gain the impression that they too are arguments against such denial, questioning or doubt). This is quite the opposite of the "neutral point of view" (Wikipedia:NPOV) that is one of Wikipedia's basic standards.

Thirdly, and more generally: A clear distinction should be made between (a) serious scholars (e.g. Price) who cast doubt on the historical reality of Jesus, and (b) all kinds of popular, speculative and sensationalist authors (on and off the web). The (b) group should (in my humble opinion) be relegated to one or two short paragraphs, without going into any kind of detail. The (a) group should be treated seriously and not be met with counterargument or ridicule every time they make an appearance. They may be wrong (in my opinion they probably are) and they may be a small minority, but they deserve a hearing. Particularly because this professes to be an article about (not against) their views.

I just went back to the Wikipedia page on the Christ myth theory, which I haven't looked at in years, to find it is basically being portrayed as analogous to Young Earth Creationism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory .

 

[No Robots]

Jesus mythicism is closer to the Holocaust itself than it is to Holocaust denial. Jesus mythicism seeks to eradicate Jews and Judaism from the New Testament, just as the Holocaust sought to eradicate Jews and Judaism from the planet.

 

[dbz]

"Jesus: The Evidence (1984)". BFI. Film details: United Kingdom Television

• [YouTube_playlist] Jesus: The Evidence

[40:55] If the Jesus of history is that elusive, can we be certain that he even existed? [Music] By definition no Christian scholar has any doubts on that score nor do most historians. Only one man in academic circles is prepared to argue the opposite case.  George Albert Wells is professor of German at London University... [41:23]

• Dunn, James D. G. (1985). The Evidence for Jesus: The Impact of Scholarship on Our Understanding of how Christianity Began. SCM Press. ISBN 978-0-334-00411-0.

This book is an expanded version of public lectures given in Durham in 1984 in response to the London Weekend Television series broadcast that year entitled Jesus: the Evidence.

Dunn was able to persuade Wells to modify his viewpoint! Writing: "The alternative thesis... that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him." [Dunn, James D. G. The Evidence for Jesus. (Louisville: Westminster, 1985) 29].

Per Wells:

I propose here that the disparity between the early [New Testament] documents[8] and the [later] gospels is explicable if the Jesus of the former is not the same person as the Jesus of the latter. Some elements in the ministry of the gospel Jesus are arguably traceable to the activity of a Galilean preacher of the early first century, who figures in what is known as Q (an abbreviation for Quelle, German for ‘source’). Q supplied the gospels of Matthew and Luke with much of their material concerning Jesus’s Galilean preaching. [...] In my first books on Jesus, I argued that the gospel Jesus is an entirely mythical expansion of the Jesus of the early epistles. The summary of the argument of the Jesus Legend (1996) and the Jesus Myth (1999) given in this section of the present work makes it clear that I no longer maintain this position. The weakness of my earlier position was pressed upon me by J.D.G. Dunn, who objected that we really cannot plausibly assume that such a complex of traditions as we have in the gospels and their sources could have developed within such a short time from the early epistles without a historical basis (Dunn, [The Evidence for Jesus] 1985, p. 29). My present standpoint is: this complex is not all post-Pauline [there is also a historical Galilean preacher from the Q source] (Q, or at any rate parts of it, may well be as early as ca. A.D. 50); and if I am right, against Doherty and Price - it is not all mythical. The essential point, as I see it, is that the Q material, whether or not it suffices as evidence of Jesus's historicity, refers to a [human] personage who is not to be identified with the [mythical] dying and rising Christ of the early epistles. (Can We Trust the NT?, 2004, pp. 43, 49–50).

 

[Jarhyn]

Jesus mythicism is closer to the Holocaust itself than it is to Holocaust denial. Jesus mythicism seeks to eradicate Jews and Judaism from the New Testament, just as the Holocaust sought to eradicate Jews and Judaism from the planet.

Wow, Godwin much?

You seem to be taking it very hard, this discussion that the reality behind the NT does not include two impossible human resurrections and an impossible unpowered human flight.

Perhaps it might behoove you to consider maybe you have been wrong this whole time about what needs to have happened for a story to be mostly right about the important parts while still being fabrication.

Consider that you are an outlier in thinking that stories need to be reified to have value, and that most of us here can acknowledge the fact that the original influencers of this cult either just misunderstood reincarnation or most of the people they taught did.

If you would like to actually talk about why that is and what was most likely the original message, and why it was important, we can do that, too. Just start a new thread about it

 

[dbz]

[. . .]

Consider that you are an outlier in thinking that stories need to be reified to have value, and that most of us here can acknowledge the fact that the original influencers of this cult either just misunderstood reincarnation or most of the people they taught did.

Carrier has documented systemic dishonesty in the ranks of "Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus",[229] writing:

I’ve repeatedly documented how dishonesty typifies historicists in the academic community. And this should be a scandal. Their peers should not be endorsing that behavior but condemning it, as it discredits the integrity and professionalism, and reliability, of their entire academic field.[230]

A simple Litmus Test

to weed out potentially biased non-secular scholars is to ask the following: Do these scholars have an on-the-record position, in clear and unambiguous language, without equivocation for the Historicity of the Mosaic authorship of the Torah

and the Historicity of the resurrection of Jesus

?

Additionally the following questions should be presented to any secular or non-secular "Defender of the Historicity of Jesus":

• What is the "minimal theory of historicity" that they hold? (And then compare it with Carrier's rigorous and robust "minimal theory of historicity"[231])?
• Do they denounce the scholars and the enablers that are party to the systemic censorship of free thought
  
  found within religiously affiliated institutions?[228]

Many critics of leading mythicist scholarship assume that the motivation behind the arguments is a hostility towards religion in general and Christianity in particular. However that canard

will not fly (so to speak), since the worst way for anyone to attempt to undermine a person’s faith is to deny the very existence of the figure at the center of their faith. Carrier opines that one should "Dump the strategy of arguing that Christianity (or the New Testament, or this or that teaching, or anything whatever) is false 'because Jesus didn’t exist.'"[232] Lataster writes, "Christian believers should generally not become involved in this debate, nor should non-believers thrust it upon them. . . . I have no desire to upset Christians."[233] James Crossley writes:

[Instead] of more polemical reactions on all sides of these debates about the historicity of Jesus, perhaps it would be more worthwhile to see what can be learned. In the case of Lataster’s book and the position it represents, scepticism about historicity is worth thinking about seriously—and, in light of demographic changes, it might even feed into a dominant position in the near future.[234]

[T]he majority of biblical historians in academia are employed by religiously affiliated institutions. This fact alone explains much of the resistance to Jesus Myth theory even among scholars who personally identify as secular. Furthermore, of those schools, we can quantify that at least 41% (if not 100%) require their instructors and staff to publicly reject Jesus Myth or they will not have a career at that institute of higher learning. So the question shouldn’t be: “How many historians reject mythicism?” but “How many historians are contractually obliged to publicly reject mythicism?”

—David Fitzgerald[228]

 

[Jarhyn]

[. . .]

Consider that you are an outlier in thinking that stories need to be reified to have value, and that most of us here can acknowledge the fact that the original influencers of this cult either just misunderstood reincarnation or most of the people they taught did.

Carrier has documented systemic dishonesty in the ranks of "Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus",[229] writing:

I’ve repeatedly documented how dishonesty typifies historicists in the academic community. And this should be a scandal. Their peers should not be endorsing that behavior but condemning it, as it discredits the integrity and professionalism, and reliability, of their entire academic field.[230]

A simple Litmus Test

to weed out potentially biased non-secular scholars is to ask the following: Do these scholars have an on-the-record position, in clear and unambiguous language, without equivocation for the Historicity of the Mosaic authorship of the Torah

and the Historicity of the resurrection of Jesus

?

Additionally the following questions should be presented to any secular or non-secular "Defender of the Historicity of Jesus":

• What is the "minimal theory of historicity" that they hold? (And then compare it with Carrier's rigorous and robust "minimal theory of historicity"[231])?
• Do they denounce the scholars and the enablers that are party to the systemic censorship of free thought
  
  found within religiously affiliated institutions?[228]

Many critics of leading mythicist scholarship assume that the motivation behind the arguments is a hostility towards religion in general and Christianity in particular. However that canard

will not fly (so to speak), since the worst way for anyone to attempt to undermine a person’s faith is to deny the very existence of the figure at the center of their faith. Carrier opines that one should "Dump the strategy of arguing that Christianity (or the New Testament, or this or that teaching, or anything whatever) is false 'because Jesus didn’t exist.'"[232] Lataster writes, "Christian believers should generally not become involved in this debate, nor should non-believers thrust it upon them. . . . I have no desire to upset Christians."[233] James Crossley writes:

nstead of more polemical reactions on all sides of these debates about the historicity of Jesus, perhaps it would be more worthwhile to see what can be learned. In the case of Lataster’s book and the position it represents, scepticism about historicity is worth thinking about seriously—and, in light of demographic changes, it might even feed into a dominant position in the near future.[234]

Honestly this is yet another reason Amalgamism is such an important advance in the discussion.

Rather than purporting that there was no person who satisfied or acted as the kernel of truth to any of these many tall tails, we can recognize instead that it is an amalgam of such tails about real people which were then distorted and polemicized in both directions.

Doing so in fact allows the reader to parse out the idea that sections of the text are metaphors and cheeky in-jokes and allusions to metaphysics -- not actual events.

In reality the majority of discussion on almost every "scholarly" topic is a massive quivering pile of sophistry, especially when the original message was "love each other, love yourselves as much, and the parts of you that you find important will survive owing to the love of others for what you are."

 

[dbz]

[. . .]

...what was most likely the original message, and why it was important...

Carrier (15 June 2012). "The Dying Messiah Redux". Richard Carrier Blogs.

[How the Jews always read the text] For example, the Septuagint says the Christ will come after the 62-and-7 weeks as one period, in which scheme there was only one Christ, the same Christ in both verses. Even if that translation comes from a Jewish translator of the 1st or 2nd century A.D., it still demonstrates the verse could be read that way even by a Jew. I still also wonder whether “Anointed Prince” in verse 25 may have originally been “an Anointed and a Prince,” due to the fact that in the next verse there are two men, an Anointed and a Prince (exact same word, in both the Hebrew and the Greek). In other words, verse 25 may have meant two men will come after 69 weeks, a Christ and a Prince. Verse 26 then says the Christ will die and the Prince will destroy the temple. But I will admit this is not something we can conclude with any certainty, as if it is what was intended, it was lost before the manuscript record we have, and the alternative can still be made to fit the historical facts.

•"You're All Gonna Die!! How the Jews Kept Failing to Predict Doomsday and Caused Christianity Instead" (PDF). Richard Carrier Blogs.
• "Richard Carrier, Rapture Day". YouTube. Desipio. 20 June 2011. Talk at the Madison Freethought Festival.

 

[No Robots]

Mythicism perpetuates the de-Judaizing of the New Testament that more than one researcher has connected to the Holocaust:

[W]e may wonder whether this Jewish inquiry into the historical Jesus could have saved the situation, or, conversely, whether--to ask a more painful question--the bitter anti-Semitism of the Nazi period was in some degree a consequence of the previous, massive de-Judaizing of Jesus on the part of (generally Christian) scholars. Aside from the entirely frivolous contentions of a few, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain or Walter Grundmann, that Jesus was Aryan, a much harder issue would be to come to any judgement about the impact of the widely prevailing image of Jesus as virtually a non-Jew held in almost all western centers of learning at the beginning of the century and for some time into the century. Certainly anti-Semitism was no special possession of Germany, though its roots seemed to run deeper there, and the countervailing forces provided by a C.G. Montefiore or an Israel Abraham did not prevail in Germany. But the question of demonstrating a link between historical Jesus portrayals and the subsequent Holocaust would require a monumental investigation of its own and is so amorphous that the probability of success would be minimal. My own suspicion, merely to venture an intuition, is that the treatment of Jesus in scholarship, and thereby in churches as well, had an indirect influence in preparing people to think of Jesus as disconnected from Judaism and therefore to separate the two in making moral evaluations. The same could, of course, be affirmed of places other than Germany. The instinct of Jewish scholarship to attempt to reclaim Jesus was then not merely an exercise in recovering its own history, but a movement of self-survival as well.--The historical Jesus in the twentieth century, 1900-1950 / Walter P. Weaver, p. 256

It is ironic that mythicists, who generally see themselves as fighting bravely against traditional scholarship, are actually extending and deepening its worst tendencies.

 

[dbz]

"Jesus Was Wrong!". YouTube. MythVision Podcast. 22 July 2022.

Derek is going live to discuss the issue of  cognitive dissonance pertaining to the failed apocalyptic message of Jesus and the kingdom of God. How the clear soon end of the world passages in the New Testament lead me to try saving the savior from being a failed apocalyptic prophet. I went into Partial then full  preterism and how I left this movement as well.

• Sign up for Bart Ehrman's course "The Unknown Gospels" here https://ehrman.thrivecart.com/unknown-gospels/?affiliate=mythvision
• Time statements in the New Testament - https://reformedeschatology.com/preterism-101-by-david-green/

 

[dbz]

[W]e may . . . ask a more painful question--the bitter anti-Semitism of the Nazi period was in some degree a consequence of the previous, massive de-Judaizing of Jesus on the part of (generally Christian) scholars. Aside from the entirely frivolous contentions of a few, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain or Walter Grundmann, that Jesus was Aryan, a much harder issue would be to come to any judgement about the impact of the widely prevailing image of Jesus as virtually a non-Jew held in almost all western centers of learning at the beginning of the century and for some time into the century. Certainly anti-Semitism was no special possession of Germany, though its roots seemed to run deeper there, and the countervailing forces provided by a C.G. Montefiore or an Israel Abraham did not prevail in Germany. . . . --The historical Jesus in the twentieth century, 1900-1950 / Walter P. Weaver, p. 256

Carrier (18 December 2016). "No, Hitler Wasn't a Pantheist". Richard Carrier Blogs.

The horrors of the holocaust were a Christian-imagined, Christian-enacted, Christian-led atrocity. It was just an efficient realization of the dreams of mainstream Christians throughout history, from the Rhineland massacres of 1096 to Martin Luther’s declaration in 1543 that “we are at fault in not slaying them.” Hitler and the Nazis were simply a culmination of this; not of social Darwinism. It is important not to hide from history the participation of Christianity and Christian leaders, and the use of Christian, even Biblical arguments, in advancing evil causes. Trying to paint Hitler as a pantheist, which is really just a code word for crypto-atheist, does not do humanity a service. It is an attempt to hide what really happened, and what dangers really lurk within Christian ideology and the Christian mind.

We shouldn’t be trying to hide or deny the role of Christians or Christianity in creating and sustaining the Holocaust, any more than in creating and sustaining antebellum slavery, or the genocide of Native Americans. That the Bible, creationism, a belief in heaven, even revering the teachings of Jesus, can all be turned to evil purposes must not be forgotten. Trying to play games with definitions is only working to conceal the truth, not preserve it or teach it. And misusing evidence to get implausible conclusions about this that the evidence doesn’t honestly support, aims to the same unsavory end. Indeed, if we are to condemn Hitler’s Positive Christianity as “not really Christianity” because of arbitrary technicalities, we have to condemn Hitler’s social Darwinism as “not really Darwinism” for exactly the same reason. Indeed, the latter is even more clearly the case, because there is nothing in Darwin or Darwinism that endorses Hitler’s designs on the Jews and gays and “gypsies” and Witnesses. Yet there is a long, clear history of Christian leaders and Christian ideology doing so. Where Hitler got the idea then should be obvious.

 

[No Robots]

Carrier: there is nothing in Darwin or Darwinism that endorses Hitler’s designs on the Jews and gays and “gypsies” and Witnesses.

Darwin: At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.--

 

[dbz]

Carrier: there is nothing in Darwin or Darwinism that endorses Hitler’s designs on the Jews and gays and “gypsies” and Witnesses.

Darwin: At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.--

Here's something recent that corroborates Waton's critique:

Desmond, Adrian J.; Moore, James Richard (1994). Darwin. W. W. Norton & Company. p. xxi. ISBN 978-0-393-31150-1.

What of Darwin’s own latter-day prejudices? He thought blacks inferior but was sickened by slavery; he subordinated women but was totally dependent on his redoubtable wife. How did his views on sex, race, and empire reflect the late-Victorian ethos? Was he still remaking the world in the image of his times in the Descent of Man (1871)? Did he see society, like nature, progress by culling its unfit members? ‘Social Darwinism’ is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwin's image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start — ‘Darwinism’ was always intended to explain human society.

Per "The Dark Side of Darwinism | Philosophy for the Many". sites.williams.edu.

How can Desmond and Moore claim to know Darwin’s intent? They reached their conclusions after an exhaustive search through “a wealth of unpublished family letters and a massive amount of manuscript material,” and use “Darwin’s notes, cryptic marginalia (where key clues lie) and even ships’ logs and lists of books read by Darwin. His published notebooks and correspondence (some 15,000 letters are now known) are an invaluable source” (xx). Using these sources, Desmond and Moore attempt to make a substantial case against the idea that Darwin was racist, citing evidence such as the diary that Darwin kept during his Beagle voyage. Darwin writes of slavery, “It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty” (quoted in Desmond and Moore, 183). Darwin often wrote thoughts that don’t quite align with the ideas in The Descent of Man. In his theory, Darwin suggests that it is natural for more successful races to dominate over others, and speaks comfortably of white Europeans exterminating other races. However, he wrote in his diary that “the white Man … has debased his Nature & violates every best instinctive feeling by making slave of his fellow black” (quoted in Desmond and Moore, 115). Desmond and Moore view Darwin’s later contradictions of his racist ideas in The Descent of Man as reason to interpret the text of Darwin’s theory cautiously.

Desmond and Moore also offer details of Darwin’s life that they claim are incongruent with his purported racism. Darwin came from a family that fought to emancipate Britain’s slaves, and many of his friends and readers were abolitionists as well. As a young man, Darwin took lessons in bird-stuffing from a local African American servant. Desmond and Moore write, “Evidently the sixteen-going-on-seventeen year old saw nothing untoward in paying money to apprentice himself to a Negro, and the forty or so hour-long sessions which he had with the ‘blackamoor’ through that frosty winter clearly made an impact” (18). Desmond and Moore see Darwin’s willingness to associate with African Americans as evidence that he was not prejudiced. Finally, the authors bring up a story that is actually mentioned in The Descent of Man. When Darwin writes of similarities he has noticed between savages and himself, he mentions “a full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be intimate” (232). Again, Desmond and Moore see Darwin’s personal experiences with colored people as evidence that he is not biased against them; further, they believe this information should influence our interpretation of The Descent of Man.

A final argument made in favor of Darwin blames the time period in which he wrote. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education writes that “Darwin, like [Abraham] Lincoln, believed in white supremacy, but he was far more enlightened and sympathetic to blacks than most white men of his time” (39). In this view, The Descent of Man must be considered within the context of its conception, namely a period and location in which white supremacy was the norm.

The external information supplied by Darwin’s personal notes, experiences, context, etc. adds to our understanding of Darwin himself, but it cannot change our understanding of his theories. The question of whether Darwin was a racist man is separate from the question of whether his theory was racist, and the answer to the former question has no bearing on the latter.

 

[No Robots]

The question of whether Darwin was a racist man is separate from the question of whether his theory was racist, and the answer to the former question has no bearing on the latter.

Marx: I'm amused that Darwin, at whom I've been taking another look, should say that he also applies the ‘Malthusian’ theory to plants and animals, as though in Mr Malthus’s case the whole thing didn’t lie in its not being applied to plants and animals, but only — with its geometric progression — to humans as against plants and animals. It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘inventions’ and Malthusian ‘struggle for existence’. It is Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes and is reminiscent of Hegel’s Phenomenology, in which civil society figures as an ‘intellectual animal kingdom’, whereas, in Darwin, the animal kingdom figures as civil society.

 

[Jarhyn]

Wow, that's some serious Godwinning here going on.

Personally I could care less about Judaism. There's no obligation anyone, especially an atheist, has to respect or care about any religion.

It's interesting insofar as Darwin was absolutely right, but his knowledge had a hole.

Of course, the NT talks about the unkillable idea, the idea that even if one person dies, another person will live to learn.

It's all I've been saying in the discussion of social Neo-Lamarckism for... Over a decade now, and perhaps longer: that the thing which separates the solipsist from the socialist is the interest in social lamarckism and living as an immortal idea rather than just-so genetics.

That cannot possibly happen when people clamor for physical immediate resurrection. The resurrection story is in fact an  attack on human post-darwinistic Neo-Lamarckian "social" evolution .

 

[dbz]

Marx: I'm amused that Darwin, at whom I've been taking another look, should say that he also applies the ‘Malthusian’ theory to plants and animals, as though in Mr Malthus’s case the whole thing didn’t lie in its not being applied to plants and animals, but only — with its geometric progression — to humans as against plants and animals. It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘inventions’ and Malthusian ‘struggle for existence’. It is Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes and is reminiscent of Hegel’s Phenomenology, in which civil society figures as an ‘intellectual animal kingdom’, whereas, in Darwin, the animal kingdom figures as civil society.

• Marx, Karl. [1862] 1985. “Marx to Engels in Manchester, 18 June 1862.” Pp. 380–381 in Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Marx and Engels: 1860–1864. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Now copied to @ "Karl Marx - Wikiquote". en.wikiquote.org.

My objections to Marx are of two sorts: one, that he was muddle-headed; and the other, that his thinking was almost entirely inspired by hatred. The doctrine of surplus value, which is supposed to demonstrate the exploitation of wage-earners under capitalism, is arrived at: (a) by surreptitiously accepting Malthus's doctrine of population, which Marx and all his disciples explicitly repudiate; (b) by applying Ricardo's theory of value to wages, but not to the prices of manufactured articles. He is entirely satisfied with the result, not because it is in accordance with the facts or because it is logically coherent, but because it is calculated to rouse fury in wage-earners. Marx's doctrine that all historical events have been motivated by class conflicts is a rash and untrue extension to world history of certain features prominent in England and France a hundred years ago. His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere mythology. His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process. […] I have always disagreed with Marx… But my objections to modern Communism go deeper than my objections to Marx. It is the abandonment of democracy that I find particularly disastrous.

• Bertrand Russell, "Why I am Not a Communist", in Portraits From Memory And Other Essays (1956), p. 211

 

[No Robots]

Personally I could care less about Judaism.

Huh. Weird, then, how you prate on and on about Jewish literature.

 

[dbz]

Am I correct to infer that Ναζαρὲτ and Ναζαρηνέ and Ναζαρηνοῦ have a routine morphological relationship? In that case the distinction matters little — is this word indeed unrelated to "ha-Notzri" or whatever word the mythicists are pulling out of their bag of tricks?

Per:

• Ναζαρὲτ
• Ναζαρηνέ, Ναζαρηνοῦ

see:

• Strong's G3478 - nazara
• Strong's G3479 - nazarēnos

• "CALLED BY THE NAME OF THE LORD: EARLY USES OF THE NAMES AND TITLES OF JESUS IN IDENTIFYING HIS FOLLOWERS" A Dissertation by Eric Row

According to Epiphanius, these Ναζωραίοι are to be distinguished from Ναζιραίοι, or persons who had taken the Nazirite vow described in Numbers 6 ( Pan. 29.5.7). He also describes another sect of the Jews that was apparently not Christian in any sense, called the Νασαραίοι [Nasaraíoi] ( Pan. 18). These may or may not be related to a group only mentioned in passing by Pliny the Elder, living in a tetrarchy in southern Syria in the first century, called the Nazerini ( Nat. Hist. 5).

[ALSO] finally, the name naṣuraiia is used centuries later in Mandaean literature, sometimes for all Mandaeans, other times for the wisest among them, and once to their Christian antagonists. Although the precise origins of this Mandaean term are obscure, it probably derives from early application of the label Ναζωραίος to Christians. (p. 97)

...the pre-Christian Nasarenes, whose name is more intelligible in Aramaic or Hebrew as Natsarene.

René Salm writes, "Like Epiphanius, we should also carefully observe a distinction: the Nazoreans were early Christians (cf. Mt 2:23; Acts 24:5), but the Nasarenes were pre-Christian . . . . I shall use the English spellings 'Natsarene.' (rendering the Semitic tsade) and 'Nazorean'." see: Salm, René (30 September 2012). "Mythicists, docetists, Nazoreans". Mythicist Papers.

N.B: it was beyond the linguistic capacities of the evangelists to preserve the Semitic tsade (“ts”), which is an unvoiced phoneme and in the natural permutations of language yields the unvoiced “s” and not the voiced (aspirated) “z”: Tsforah→Sepphorah (wife of Moses); Tsarephat→Sarepta (place); Yitshak→Isaac; Tsidon→Sidon, etc. This is one clue that the true heirs of Yeshu ha-Notsri were the Natsuraiia (Mandeans) and the Nasarenes of Epiphanius (Panarion 18), while all the ancient groups and related places that have the “z” sound in their name are bogus (Mk 1:24, Mt 2:23, Acts 24:5, Panarion 29, Nazarenes, Nazoraeans, Nazara, Nazareth, etc).

 

[Copernicus]

Wow, that's some serious Godwinning here going on.

Personally I could care less about Judaism. There's no obligation anyone, especially an atheist, has to respect or care about any religion.

It's interesting insofar as Darwin was absolutely right, but his knowledge had a hole.

Of course, the NT talks about the unkillable idea, the idea that even if one person dies, another person will live to learn.

It's all I've been saying in the discussion of social Neo-Lamarckism for... Over a decade now, and perhaps longer: that the thing which separates the solipsist from the socialist is the interest in social lamarckism and living as an immortal idea rather than just-so genetics.

That cannot possibly happen when people clamor for physical immediate resurrection. The resurrection story is in fact an  attack on human post-darwinistic Neo-Lamarckian "social" evolution .

I agree that Darwin somehow tacitly endorsed the post-Darwinian nonsense of social Darwinism is beside the point in this discussion. My take on social Darwinism is that it was just an attempt by people with political and ideological axes to grind at using a landmark scientific breakthrough to justify their own social opinions and biases. There is nothing in his theory that justifies social Darwinism or Nazi atrocities.

The issue of social Darwinism derives from a point that Politesse tried to make earlier in the thread--that the evidence for the existence of Julius Caesar was not much different from the evidence for Jesus. I felt that he could have made the point better with examples that did not have so much corroborating archaeological evidence for historical existence--e.g. legendary figures like Buddha, King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.

The problem is that we have no autographs attesting to the existence of Jesus and no other archaeological evidence that he existed. All we have for evidence is texts that have survived through the filter of the centuries-long Christian-biased, historicist-biased copying machine and recovered documents that date back to decades or centuries after Jesus is claimed to have been executed. So all arguments in favor of historicity are always going to attract skepticism. If only we could find graffiti left over from the followers of Jesus that was created during his alleged period of existence. We have such evidence for Pontius Pilate, but not Jesus, his alleged witnesses, or his execution at the hands of Jewish or Roman authorities. Crucifixion was a terrible punishment that was reserved to make a point for serious crimes, not necessarily minor religious cult movements, so, if he did exist, he must have done something to merit such extraordinary cruelty. Are there records of other minor cult leaders that were crucified? Did he lead an armed revolt against Roman rule like Spartacus did?

 

[Politesse]

The issue of social Darwinism derives from a point that Politesse tried to make earlier in the thread--that the evidence for the existence of Julius Caesar was not much different from the evidence for Jesus. I felt

I would prefer not to be credited for a point I neither made nor intended to make. Especially since I don't see how it relates to Social Darwinism one way or the next. I have commented extensively on the latter topic however, so you are welcome to read over and refer to those postings, if you wish to credit me for a perspective on Darwin.

 

[steve_bank]

Both Marx and Darwin were products and people of their times. Darwinism is an obsolete term, as is Marxism excep for the few die hards who hink he was a secular Jesus to the world.

Darwin racist in some way? I am shocked, shocked I tell you!!!! What's next, claiming the Pope is Catholic?

The question would be who were the European intellectuals from the time of Darwin who were not racist.