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Atheists and historical illiteracy

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youkrst

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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ant wrote:If weve come to a point where one person can judge another's life as valuable and worth living, or not, then i say we have reached potentially dangerous and deadly mindset .
ant wrote:The atheists I've encountered at Skeptic forums are extremely arrogant and just plain boring assholes
ant wrote:It's funny how atheists really are the ones claiming they're effin know-it-alls.
ant wrote:Atheism is brutishly exclusionary.
ant wrote:I admire a few atheists myself.
gut busting, right there :-D

in fairness ant has also said thusly
ant wrote:I am not without fault
me too ant

I am not without fault

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Last edited by youkrst on Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DWill

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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youkrst wrote:
DWill wrote:We have someone named Jesus of Nazareth interacting with both of them
it looks doubtful that Nazareth was even sufficiently there at the time
However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god – surprise, surprise! – no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.
You might have heard the line of thinking that starts with the fact that Nazareth is said to be the birthplace of Jesus in Mark, while in Matthew and Luke it's said to be Bethlehem. The reason for this difference is that
Mary and Joseph must travel to the place of Joseph's birth (Bethlehem) to be present for a census ordered by Rome. It's unhistorical and illogical and just done to get the story in line with prophecy. It "corrects" the mistake of Mark putting Jesus in Nazareth. This is the kind of argument that appeals to me, though, involving the internal consistency (or lack of, in this case) of the whole story. Wouldn't be likely, I think, that a made-up Nazareth would be replaced by the real town of Bethlehem. So we can avoid the difficulties in explaining why, if Nazareth isn't supposed to have existed until after the time when Jesus was supposed to have lived, Mark and the others do mention it. Nazareth was a tiny, insignificant town, perhaps not worth a mention by OT writers, is how it looks. The argument from silence, used by Nazareth myth folks, isn't often a very strong one.
youkrst

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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yeah, heard that one, from Bob Price. (the bible geek podcast)

possibly the Nazareth thing was a botching of Nazarene. (points to later dating to me).

so i see yet another indication (not that one was needed but it's welcome anyway) that we are dealing with mythology (which i love) not history (which i also love but not when it's confused with mythology).

the census itself (dubious in the extreme), Nazareth or lack thereof early enough etc etc

not history, mythology

as you say, It's unhistorical
Last edited by youkrst on Wed Apr 23, 2014 3:58 am, edited 3 times in total.
youkrst

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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here's some of that famous "historical illiteracy" that "atheists" are famous for :wink: (j/k ant)
25. In the gospels Jesus is sometimes called "the Nazarene," sometimes "the Nazorean," though no translations known to me reflect the difference. It is an important one, though, because "Nazorean" ("observer" or "guardian," i.e., of the Torah) seems clearly to denote a sect label, while "Nazarene" seems to embody a subsequent misunderstanding or redefinition. Christians could no longer imagine their Lord had himself been simply a "believer" like themselves, so they inferred that his famous epithet had denoted he had hailed from Nazareth.

Robert M. Price. Deconstructing Jesus (Kindle Locations 1025-1027). Kindle Edition.
the Elchasites (named after the baptizing prophet Elchasai), and the Nazarenes/Nazoreans. Patristic sources tell us that the Nazarenes agreed with emerging Hellenistic-catholic Christianity in most respects, except that they believed that they as Jews still needed to keep the Torah, though Gentile Christians needn't trouble themselves. My guess is that these Nazarenes represented a compromise with Gentile Christianity, as F. C. Baur had once suggested, a kind of theological assimilationism.

Robert M. Price. Deconstructing Jesus (Kindle Locations 345-348). Kindle Edition.
Their scriptures were the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels according to the Ebionites, to the Hebrews, and to the Nazarenes. All these were variant versions of a basic gospel more or less identical with our Matthew (though ours may be merely one among many versions, not necessarily the original from which the others stemmed, as is usually thought).

Robert M. Price. Deconstructing Jesus (Kindle Locations 332-334). Kindle Edition.

it bears repeating that the “various confraternities”—the religious associations, which included the Therapeuts, Essenes and Nazarenes—“possessed the same tenets” and were frequently linked together, fashioning a formidable network of religious brotherhoods, long prior to the common era.

S, Acharya; Murdock, D.M. (2011-01-29). Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection (Kindle Locations 10537-10539). Stellar House Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The “various Jewish or Baptist sects, such as the Essenes, Galileans, Ebionites, Samaritans, Nazarenes,” are also the forerunners of the main Gnostic sects, including that of the Egyptians Basilides and Valentinus, according to Church father Hegesippus.[2282]

S, Acharya; Murdock, D.M. (2011-01-29). Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection (Kindle Locations 11591-11593). Stellar House Publishing. Kindle Edition.
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DWill

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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youkrst wrote:yeah, heard that one, from Bob Price. (the bible geek podcast)

possibly the Nazareth thing was a botching of Nazarene. (points to later dating to me).

so i see yet another indication (not that one was needed but it's welcome anyway) that we are dealing with mythology (which i love) not history (which i also love but not when it's confused with mythology).

the census itself (dubious in the extreme), Nazareth or lack thereof early enough etc etc

not history, mythology

as you say, It's unhistorical
Yeah, but there are levels--it's not "historical" vs. total fabrication, sort of like George Washington not throwing a silver dollar across the Delaware, but definitely being present on the banks (insert your own English king anecdote). There are a considerable number of people and places in the Bible that can be verified from other sources, which in the case of the people doesn't mean that what is said about them is historical in the way we now understand it. Scholars say that this type of accuracy wasn't the name of the game for the ancients, which I believe though can't quite wrap my head around. But the point for me is that when you have, for example, Pilate and John the Baptist in your story and you know they were real guys, filtering in a total fiction--Jesus--seems a kind of post-modern, E.L. Doctorow thing to have happen. That involves a more general question of likelihood. Could it have happened that way? Myth and history do appear together, as they do in these Bible accounts, but the myth seems more likely to me to have been a development from the actual.
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ant

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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ant wrote:
geo wrote:
youkrst wrote:. . . and once again ant escapes the thread without answering a single question let alone argument.

no response at all to Dhyin's brilliant post that directly addressed ant's objections.
Not to mention that Ant called Taylor a Nazi on the "Challenge from The Week" thread based on his own twisted interpretation. Despite having his error pointed out, Ant couldn't bother to even respond to the man, let alone apologize.
Taylor wrote in the post youre talking about that the author offered nothing to a life worth living
I asked what he meant by that and what is the requirement for someone to live a life "worth living"
If weve come to a point where one person can judge another's life as valuable and worth living, or not, then i say we have reached potentially dangerous and deadly mindset . and all because one person opines about a religious figure and the other disagrees.
Are you willing to overlook that?
You obviously have and would rather cast me as the villain for calling that person out.

To that I say youre blind.
To the person that adheres to that hateful attitude, I say Fuck You!

Hello, Geo?
What? No response?


Here's Taylor's initial remark again to jog your memory:
The article should have drown in the cesspool, It and the author lend a great deal of nothing to the life worth living.

The author "lend a great deal of nothing to the life WORTH living"

Did you get that?
What don't you understand about that remark? Do you condone this attitude..,that certain people with certain beliefs and opinions have lives not worth living?

You've received two "Thank You" remarks for your pointing out that I called this person out for it.
Yes, you're correct, I asked if he was a Nazi.

Do you know that the word Nazi is often used to describe an individual who believes specific people with specific beliefs should be marginalized. That it's a good thing to characterize certain people and look upon them as mere abstractions to devalue their existence and reduce it to something not worthy of life?

The author, Damon Linker writes about matters of politics and religion.

Here is more about him. Seems like a very learned, intelligent man.

http://www.damonlinker.com/bio.htm

He's taught political philosophy and BYU and received a Phd from Michigan State.

I'm unaware of Taylor's academic credentials, but apparently it was the author's article in which he opined why he believes ATHEISM doesn't have the upper hand on religion that caused Taylor to state that Mr. Linker's life is not worth living.

Do you think Taylor is a religious kind of guy?
Do you think Taylor is more than likely an atheist?
Do you think that comment was warranted?
Do you think starting a conversation by claiming someone's life is not worthy of life is a great start?
What is your motivation for jumping to Taylor's defense after a comment like that?

I would have expected more from an intelligent, reasonable, fair-minded person like you.


Bonus question:

Do you think Atheism is always the more rational position?
Last edited by ant on Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
youkrst

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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DWill, i think the point is you simply use history as a setting to place your mythology, the history and setting can be updated to suit if required.

It would be interesting to see if what we know of the historical pilate matches what we hear of him in the gospel account.

the idea would be that the myth isnt something that built up around a guy, the myth was placed in a particular setting.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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I will come back to discuss some of the falsities promulgated in this thread, such as the claim that Jesus came from Nazareth (in fact Nazareth was founded after the Roman destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD and was named after Jesus the Nazarene). My view is that the only way Christianity can thrive is to switch its faith to a purely mythical Christ, and accept that Jesus was fictional, so I am unusual in actively promoting a mythicist atheist spiritual Christian faith, for which I assume Shea thinks I am a howler monkey as bad as the Scopes Trial.

What I want to do in this post is draw attention to the violent language used by Tim O’Neill in the shocking propaganda howler piece linked by ant in the opening post. Mark Shea quotes Tim O’Neill as stating “the myth of medieval Flat Earth belief was invented by the novelist Washington Irving in 1828.” Shea goes on to abusively compare atheists to fundamentalists for accepting that Christians have believed in the conventional triple decker flat earth with heaven above and hell below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth sets out the current Catholic apologetic view that “The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century.”

Allow me to cite a conflicting source. Former Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney in Australia, William O’Neil, was also a historian of astronomy. In his magnificent book Early Astronomy from Babylonia to Copernicus, O’Neil makes the following claim, which I am typing up because I would like to know if his allegations about Tertullian, Lactanius and Kosmas are true:

“The early Christian Fathers contributed to the decline of the Hellenistic astronomy and other branches of science in both the west and the east of the empire. After Constantine had adopted Christianity as the official religion (early fourth Century) not only was paganism discouraged, if not suppressed, as a religion, but also pagans had obstacles placed in their way in teaching or otherwise promulgating views on secular matters where these views seemed to be in conflict with the Scriptures. Extreme examples of the rejection of Hellenistic astronomy were provided by Tertullian (early third century), by Lactanius (early fourth century) and by Kosmas (sixth century). Without differentiating amongst the details of their several views it may be said that they rejected the Hellenistic notion of the sphericity of the earth and of the universe in favour of a layered, flat, square scheme as suggested in Genesis. Indeed to varying degrees they tended to support the view that the Mosaic Tabernacle represented the shape of the universe. Rather than conceding that the Sun between sunset and sunrise passed underneath a spherical earth, such thinkers argued that at sunset it fell behind a mountainous wall and after passing south behind the wall rose again in the east. They could not admit that there was a ‘beneath’ to their supposedly flat earth.”

O’Neil is incorrect in his questioning whether paganism was suppressed (it was, violently). But it is a shame he does not cite his sources more specifically than the names of the three fools. It would be very good to get a scholar of the early dark ages to indicate if these idiots actually expressed this ‘sun goes round the south’ idea. I suppose it has a logic - the sun is good, hell is evil. If hell is under the earth, then it is repugnant to all proper magical faith to assert the sun goes to hell every night where it could be influenced by Beelzebub. Far better for Tertullian to imagine the sun chucks a left at sunset and switches course to track along the southern horizon.
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DWill

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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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youkrst wrote:DWill, i think the point is you simply use history as a setting to place your mythology, the history and setting can be updated to suit if required.

It would be interesting to see if what we know of the historical pilate matches what we hear of him in the gospel account.

the idea would be that the myth isnt something that built up around a guy, the myth was placed in a particular setting.
That is not quite right, youkrst, as far what I'm doing. It seems you're implying that in general I use history as a starting point for myth. That would go along with the so-called "evemerist" position, which is something a little annoying. I have no general position on the historical basis of figures who have been infused with myth. I'm only talking about whether Jesus was once discussed as someone who lived and breathed for a time, however distanced he became--through myth-making--from flesh and blood. If you read Reza Aslan's Zealot, maybe you could see why I find it impossible to believe that someone decided to concoct this figure from whole cloth and set him in a very particular context within pseudo-historical writings. The "pseudo" I fully acknowledge, but it seems a case of black-or-white thinking to claim that the known inaccuracies and even fabrications tell us that therefore nothing links to the historical background we know about.

Most certainly, what we know about Pilate does not square with the Bible. Aslan goes into that in detail. Pilate was hardly the hands-off guy who reluctantly turned over a nationalistic zealot to be executed at the urging of "the Jews." He would not have even blinked at signing an order. The whole trial scene is most likely fiction.
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Re: Atheists and historical illiteracy

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DWill wrote: I find it impossible to believe that someone decided to concoct this figure from whole cloth and set him in a very particular context within pseudo-historical writings.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whole_cloth gives two definitions: complete fabrication; and something made completely new, with no history, not based on anything else.

I don't think that the argument that Jesus Christ did not exist actually requires either of these ‘whole cloth’ approaches. If there were a number of messianic pretenders or schools of thought, the unification of these stories into a fictional Jesus Christ is only partial fabrication. And it certainly is not completely new, since messianic yearning was expressed by earlier prophets. The longstanding desire that a King of the Jews would establish a messianic kingdom shows how we can apply to Christ Voltaire’s dictum that if God did not exist it would have been necessary to invent him. Christ was a necessary invention, as a way to provide a unifying vision of hope and faith for a suppressed people, an integrated way to express disgust at the evil of Rome and teachings about new religious ideas, in an evolutionary continuity with earlier expectations.

As to why Jesus was set in a particular context, it appears plausible to me that all of the pseudo-history of the Gospel biographies of Christ was invented as an elaborate cover for a sect who faced political persecution. Rome was extremely aggressive towards the Jews, completely banning them from Jerusalem and crucifying thousands of them. In such an environment, documents would be studied by soldiers for evidence of sedition, and the Christians had to edit their texts to conceal anything that would get them crucified. Fear of Roman proscription may well be why Nazarene was edited out and replaced by Nazareth, to produce plausible deniability against accusations of disloyalty to Rome.

Mark based his fictional Gospel account on Paul’s celestial Christ, a figure who never provides the type of instruction expected of a founder of a historical movement but seems purely ethereal. For Paul, Jesus is always explained by reference to scripture, with no mention by Paul of Jesus ever being in Jerusalem, Nazareth, Galilee or Bethlehem.

The slender reeds of historicity in Paul, his statements that Christ is born of a woman of the seed of David, contain strongly allegorical meaning that does not prove Jesus existed, and in no way balance the extensive mythical spirituality by which Paul understands Christ.

To restore any ethical meaning in Christianity, a prerequisite is an end to the hypocrisy about truth. It is unethical for Christians to cite Bible verses such as 'the truth will set you free' and 'I have come to bear witness to the truth', but then to apply such an appalling double standard for historical criteria of truth regarding Jesus and everyone else.

With history written by the victors, the actual Christian evolution from Gnostic to Orthodox has been turned backwards in church accounts. Recognising that Jesus was imaginary enables a clear explanation of Christian construction and evolution within the broad milieu of the mystery wisdom schools of Gnosticism, and how this framework was used by orthodox schemers to ally with the ignorant to obliterate trace of the real origins.

Normal standards of evidence give no grounds to believe Jesus existed. All the Biblical sources depend on Mark, and the independent sources who we would have expected to mention Jesus if he were real, notably Josephus and Philo, do not. This was such a scandal, with Origen citing the chapter of Josephus where Christ is supposedly mentioned but failing to notice it, that the church had to insert the pious fraud in later editions.
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