Stahrwe is "e"vading you bleachededen. Just as he's been "e"vading Interbane since the first page of this thread:

He's been "e"vading me as well all the while accusing me of "e"vading him. The bottom line here is that there's nothing for me to "e"vade. Murdock hasn't quoted anyone out of context in the first place. All of the posting comments from Rook Hawkins and using the CRUDE acronym only serve to "e"vade the initial challenge set forward by Interbane on the first page. One of the main points of the e-book we're discussing is that everything from the TF forward isn't contemporary source evidence, neither are the anonymously written Gospels which date to long after the fact no matter which way we look at them.


http://www.ffrf.org/legacy/about/bybarker/rise.php[/quote]
The e-book we're discussing here is indeed about evidence and the lack thereof for the historical life of Jesus and Stahrwe would have known that if he actually read the short e-book that we're discussing, instead of trying to claim otherwise, to the person who posted the link and started the thread and knows good and well what it's about. Christian apologetics is a very twisted game of shifty deceptive work. He keeps proving that as he goes along.

I refer you to my prior post regarding research standards and the use of fragmentary quotes. I suggest that you purchase a copy of the Bruce book to read the rest of the story and his conclusion. I quote a portion as follows:

“…the name of Christ (as the gentiles called him) and his followers became familiar at the heart of the Roman Empire. …And, Christ did come to be mentioned in Roman historical ‘literature’.”
Bruce, NTH, page 164

I forwarded the following quote to Dr. John Ankerberg for comment.

“If His words were not accurately recorded in the Gospels, how can anyone know what He really taught? The truth is, we couldn’t know. Further, if the remainder of the New Testament cannot be established to be historically reliable, then little, if anything can be known about what true Christianity really is, teaches, or means.”
Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon
The Historical Reliability of the New Testament Text
This quote is on Page 4, of D.M. Murdock's Who Was Jesus, The Fingerprints of the Christ.
2007

Here is the reply:
Dear XXX

We are somewhat familiar with the author you mention. In terms of comments, much of our recent information on this topic is found in our book Taking a Stand for the Bible. Even apart from the Bible itself, much can be discovered concerning the historical Jesus. In this book, we quote from our interviews with Dr. Gary Habermas, who points out 129 facts about the life of Christ from 45 ancient sources outside of the Bible that confirm the birth, activities, death, empty tomb, and appearances of Christ. Based on these facts, he concludes, the only conclusion that fits the details is that Jesus really returned to life, proving himself as God’s Son.

Jesus as a legend is not a historically accurate option. As C.S. Lewis put it, Jesus is either a liar, lunatic, or Lord. In other words, he lied when he claimed to be God’s Son, he was delusional and simply believed he was God’s Son, or he really was and is God’s Son, the Messiah Jesus Christ. Though this is a decision ultimately dealing with faith, it is not a blind faith. The facts for the truth of the Gospel message are significant and far superior to those of any other religious system.

Feel free to send us any other questions or comments you have. Myself or one of our staff will be glad to assist in any way possible. You can also see some of our video clips with Dr. Habermas and other scholars on this issue at http://www.youtube.com/johnankerberg.

Sincerely,
Dillon Burroughs
Staff Writer, The John Ankerberg Show



“Tat tvam asi is the Mahāvākya (Grand Pronouncement) from Chandogya Upanishad. The Advaita school of Shankara assigns a fundamental importance to this Mahāvākya and three others of the same kind from three other Upanishads. This is actually a statement meted out by Sage Aruni to Shvetaketu, his son. It says literally 'That thou are'. In other words that Brahman which is the common Reality behind everything in the cosmos is the same as the essential Divinity, namely the Atman, within you. It is this identity which is the grand finale of Upanishadic teaching, according to Advaita. The realisation of this arises only by an intuitive experience and is totally different from any objective experience. It cannot be inferred from some other bit of knowledge. To comprehend the meaning an analysis of the three words in the pronouncement is needed.”

Who is this 'Thou'?
'Thou' stands for the inherent substratum in each one of us without which our very existence is out of question. Certainly it is not the body, mind, the senses, or anything that we call ours. It is the innermost Self, stripped of all egoic tendencies. It is Ātman.
The entity indicated by the word 'That' according to the notation used in the Vedas, is Brahman, the transcendent Reality which is beyond everything that is finite, everything that is conceived or thought about. You cannot give a full analogy to it and that is why the Vedas say words cannot describe it. It cannot even be imagined because when there is nothing else other than Brahman it has to be beyond space and time. We can imagine space without earth,water, fire and air. But it is next to impossible to imagine something outside space. Space is the most subtle of the five elemental fundamentals. As we proceed from the grossest to the subtle, that is, from earth to water, to fire, to air, and to space the negation of each grosser matter is possible to be imagined within the framework of the more subtle one. But once we reach the fifth one, namely space or Ākāsha, the negation of that and the conception of something beyond, where even the space is merged into something more subtle, is not for the finite mind. The Vedas therefore declare the existence of this entity and call it 'sat' (existence), also known as Brahman.

That and This
The Ātman or the innermost core of our self seems to have an individuality of its own. So, in saying that it is the same as the unqualified Brahman in the Infinite Cosmos, we seem to be identifying two things: one that is unlimited and unconditioned, and one that is limited and conditioned. Whenever someone says, for instance, that the person B whom you are meeting just now is the same as the person A whom you saw twenty years ago at such and such a place, what is actually meant is not the identity of the dresses of the two personalities of A and B, nor of the features (those of B may be totally different from A), but of the essential person behind the names. So whenever such an identity is talked about we have to throw away certain aspects which are temporarily distinctive or indicative in both and cling on only to those essentials without which they are not what they are. B and A may have distinct professions, may have different names, may have different attitudes towards you or towards a certain issue, or may have an additional identity, exemplified by, say, having different passports -- but still they are the same, is what is being asserted by the statement 'B is the same as A'.

[edit] Brahman minus its Māyā and Ātman minus its avidyā are identical
In the same way, when Brahman and Atman are identified by this Mahāvākya, we have to discard those inessential qualities that are only indicative and therefore extraneous and to explore what commonality or essentialness there is in them that is being identified. Brahman is the Cause of this Universe. But this is a predication of Brahman and so is extraneous to the identity we are talking about. The Self or the Ātman, appears to be limited by an individuality which keeps it under the spell of ignorance; this is extraneous to the essentiality of the Ātman. So what is being identified is Brahman, minus its feature of being the Cause of this Universe and Ātman minus its limitations of ignorance-cum-delusion. That these two are the same is the content of the statement 'Tat tvam asi'. The cosmic Māyā is what makes Brahman the cause of this Universe. The individual avidyā (ignorance) is what makes the Ātman circumscribed and delimited. So the Mahāvākya says that Brahman minus its Māyā and Atman minus its avidyā are identical.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tat_Tvam_Asi




There is no fish eating tradition in Christianity, certainly not one base on this scripture.



No, this discussion is not about Jesus, Chriatianity or religion, it is about The Christ Myth Antology, by D. M. Murdock. My point is that she is not credible because of her research methods. We live in a society where information is thrown at us at an unbelievable rate. We don’t have time to check everything so we have to trust our sources to be accurate and honest. When we find our trust violated we understandably question whether the source can be trusted. This morning I was listening to a report on NPR about law suits by first responders at 9/11 who are suffering health problems. During the report, the reporter said that one of the plaintiffs had been pursuing his case since 1994. What, 1994, 9/11 happened in the year 2001. This was obviously an error in the report, but it is hard to understand how it made it through editing to air. When I hear an error like that I have to ask myself, if someone can make such a simple mistake, how trustworthy is the remainder of the information being reported. Now, in the case of Murdock, I believe I have made the case that her research is sloppy at best. I give her the benefit of the doubt because the alternative is deliberate deception. You continue to focus on the substance of her writings, my point is that I can’t trust them to be accurate until I can assess her reliability.

I have addressed all of the issues raised in this discussion in hundreds of other posts since August of last year. I suggest that you read them. This discussion is not about Jesus, his historicity or apologetics it is about a composition by D. M. Murdock, see the title of the discussion.

The e-book we're discussing here is indeed about evidence and the lack thereof for the historical life of Jesus and Stahrwe would have known that if he actually read the short e-book that we're discussing, instead of trying to claim otherwise, to the person who posted the link and started the thread and knows good and well what it's about. Christian apologetics is a very twisted game of shifty deceptive work. He keeps proving that as he goes along.[/quote]


One of you Free Thnkers include a pithy little statement in your standard signature at the end of your posts something to the effect: "If evolution is true, why are there no books from 1,000,000 years ago." as an example of faulty logic on the part of Creationists. I suppose the point is that the lack of such books proves nothing except that there aren't any. Well, if that logic holds for evoltion it must also hold for Jesus. If there are no contemporary accounts outside of the NT (and I don't admit that is true), there lack proves nothing except that there are not any. Someone needs to take a logic class. You can't prove a premise by citing lack of evidence.

That's just it Stahrwe. You simply looked at the title and didn't bother reading the e-book in the first place. If you had read the e-book then you would have discovered that "The Christ Myth Anthology" starts off by outlining that the most enduring debate is not whether or not Jesus was God or a Man, but whether Jesus even existed in the first place. Read the book please before making even more of an ass of yourself. It's exactly about Jesus, his historicity, and the apologetics that have been going on since the beginning with Justin Martyr's first apology and so on. Are you ready to confess the truth here or are you going to try and dig yourself deeper? You never even read it did you?

“If His words were not accurately recorded in the Gospels, how can anyone know what He really taught? The truth is, we couldn’t know. Further, if the remainder of the New Testament cannot be established to be historically reliable, then little, if anything can be known about what true Christianity really is, teaches, or means.”
Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon
The Historical Reliability of the New Testament Text
This quote is on Page 4, of D.M. Murdock's Who Was Jesus, The Fingerprints of the Christ.
2007


Ok, so you provided information from a different book altogether and not the book that is quoted in WWJ. How does that make Murdocks quoting "The Historical Reliability of The New Testament Text" a misquote because they wrote about something different in another book entitled "Taking a Stand For The Bible"?

In anycase, I'm familiar with Habermas who very much needs to provide these 129 facts about the life of Christ that come from contemporary sources. Based on these so-called "facts", Habermas concludes that Jesus really returned to life, proving himself as Gods's Son. Nice try, but he hasn't yet made it to first base which is providing the contemporary sources who cited Jesus' life, let alone hit a home run by proving that an historical Jesus not only lived, but rose from the grave as well. If this is the great evidence that follows behind the quote Murdock provided then there is no evidence and this false claim for evidence comes an entirely different book at that!

Why would she include this nonsense from Gary Habermas which never meets the burden of proof to begin with? He's referring to 129 points from non-contemporary sources which he used to try and piece together the life of Christ. The quote she provided is very much in context - if the Gospels are unreliable, then how can people know what this supposed person really taught? Obviously we can't. Habermas hasn't changed that fact in any way aside from a misleading claim that doesn't include any contemporary source material in first place. He relies on the non-contemporary source material we've already discussed and exposed such as Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and other non-contemporary source material. Murdock hasn't misled anyone from what I can see. Not until you or Habermas or anyone else in the world can provide society with the contemporary source material instead of constantly "e"vading it. It's still a matter of "scanty and problematic" sources which render nothing concrete when all is said and done.

Habermas is a fine example. Let's see his contemporary source evidence shall we...

I'm not reading any of your past posts. I have seen enough of your posts from this year to last a lifetime. What I am asking does not require a read of every discussion you have ever had, but a simple answer from you now. If you cannot give me this, I can only assume it means you have no real answer and will continue to evade any question anyone ever poses you, as I have witnessed you do in every response in this thread.

As for this:


One editing mistake does not mean that the whole of the report is wrong. The people at NPR are as human as anyone else and even the best coordination of humans can make mistakes, and one mistake out of thousands of other accurate reports is not enough evidence of shoddy research to doubt the credibility of anything that group reports on.

The bolded last part is my doing, to show you that that is all anyone has been saying about the Bible and the works surrounding it, in this thread and several others. No one here has found the sources you and other Christian scholars rely on to be accurate, and therefore do not accept the Bible as the word of God or the writings following the Bible anything more than Christians trying to rationalize their position to other Christians who question them. This works within the Christian circle, but when you venture out into the world of thinkers who do not take the Bible as literal truth and cannot trust in the rationalizing documents of Christian scholars who cannot provide any evidence outside of their circle of scholars, you will not be able to say your piece and run and expect no criticism of your position or your methods. Your only choice then, in order to not run away from the conversation and prove yourself wrong by absentia, is to try to find fault in your opponent's position and change the topic from "is Jesus a man or a myth" to an attack on the writer's citation methods. Why not just answer the question? If you can't, then you can't, but trying to tear down the opposition's methods and not even their position, only proves you to be even less rational or capable of answering any questions honestly. You truly do evade every question by either asking another comepletely irrelevent question, suggesting someone read something else you have written in a different thread, or attacking the way in which the opposition is presented.

You aren't going to win anything here. This debate goes on in circles because you refuse to answer anyone's questions and then become defensive and insulting when you are called out on your refusal to face the facts.

I will ask one final question, and your answer (or lack thereof) will determine how I proceed in this discussion.

My question is this: What do you hope to gain here, Starhwe? You aren't going to convert anyone, and you clearly don't respect or like any of the people who debate with you, so what do you want? Maybe if I had a clearer picture of what your goal is I would be better able to understand your position and why you continue to debate in what I can only see as a repetetive vicious circle and waste of your own time.

What do you hope to accomplish here?

Is this a joke, first off?

There's a wealth of fossil and geological evidence for evolution. There's no lack of evidence. When it comes to the life of Jesus, unlike evolution, there is no evidence aside from after the fact hear-say. If people were writing in that region, at that time, then how could they have missed a virgin born miracle working man whose death darkened the Sun and resurrection brought back multitudes of people from the grave who wandered around Jerusalem? Books were written during this time period by Jews! Yet no one mentions any of this until decades later.

Are you an ESL person? You seem to constantly miss the point of the content of posts. The premise had nothing to do with fossis, it references books, pages or text written by human beings, the stringing together of letters for form words and sentences to express thoughts. Fossils are irrelevant. Please reread my comment.

Kindly provide us with the contemporary source evidence and stop trying to shift the attention elsewhere! Where is it?

Stop "e"vading the issue.


The mention of "Christ" in the Roman historical literature is the "scanty and promblematic" material that he mentioned in the quote Murdock provided! It's the non-contemporary source material of Pliny, Tacitus, and the rest, which is scanty (not much) and problematic (questioned as geniune). You haven't shown anything even remotely close to Murdock misleading anyone by using the quote from FF Bruce.

Nice attempt at a dodge, the email from The John Akerberg Show disputes your statement.

BTW,
I found the quote I was lookin for. It is from Johnsol1010

"If evolution is correct then why is there not one book, I mean just one book with one author (with a full name) from "millions" of years ago?"
-Stand back, behold the knowledge

So, if the lack of books from a million years ago is not proof that evolution is false, the alleged lack of evidence of Jesus, outside The Gospels, cannot be assertered as evidence that Jesus never existed. QED

Are you D. M. Murdock?

Like I said, a lack of books from a million years ago doesn't prove evolution is false because of the abundance of geological and fossil evidence from a million years ago that proves otherwise. One can not make a case for evolution as false over a lack of written books a million years ago. It's a dead end argument.

In terms of Jesus, we're not showing that a lack of evidence outside the gospels proves he didn't exist as I've already outlined that neither side has an absolute position, and you of course have "e"vaded that. It doesn't prove that he did or didn't exist. Both sides are speculating as to whether Jesus did or did not exist historically. We have no solid proof to put it rest. So trying to make an analogy between evolution and an historical Jesus doesn't even work out.

What dodge?

You can't say that she misquoted them because in a different book, a different book from where the quote was taken, they said something else. WWJ was published in 2007 and Taking A Stand For the Bible was published in 2009! How could she have foreseen what they would later write about two years into the future and attach it to the quote in WWJ?

Besides all of that, what they provide as evidence in the other 2009 book by quoting Habermas is not contemporary source evidence, rather the usual non-contemporary source evidence of Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and the like which Habermas as well as the whole of New Testament scholarship relies on. They don't turn it all around in 09 and come up with any real absolute evidence to present, just the usual hear-say that has already been addressed here many times over. You can't actually discover much about the historical Jesus from these non-contemporary sources, it's wishful thinking at best and so the first quote stands true. There's no need for a revision.

I'm a moderator on Murdocks forum Stahrwe, why don't you pay us a visit and ask her what she thinks of your critique of her hard time consuming scholarship: http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/index.php

So where's the contemporary source evidence that you have to show us for the historical life of Jesus Christ?

We're still waiting and you're still "e"vading the issue.

That always makes me laugh.



Actually, you're wrong. Ask Johnson yourself. The posts shows a lack of understanding of what evidence actually is. Rather than familiarizing himself with the undeniable mountains of evidence all around us, this person would actually rather have a book. Such stupidity is inexcusable, and branches from the reliance of some people on the Bible as a source of evidence.



No one is 100% reliable. If she is 99% reliable, you'll hold onto that other 1% for dear life and rationalize away the rest, so you can hold onto your precious myth.



Never argue with an idiot, he'll bring you down to his level and beat you with experience. Stahrwe most likely doesn't think he's evading. The problem is, he's unable to make some of the connections you'd expect from a well reasoned person. For example, in Johnson's funny signature. He didn't make the connection between a person's reliance on books as evidence, and the fact that we need not rely on them because there is other evidence, such as fossils. When you mentioned fossils, he didn't make the connection and thought you were evading. Most of the acronym he'll accuse you of is his inability to keep up with the conversation, and he'll start throwing accusations.

Words of wisdom Interbane.

Murdock is under constant ridicule for speaking out about this issue. People like Stahrwe are desperate for something, anything, to try and get the attention away from the utter lack of contemporary source evidence for the life of Jesus. I often enjoy watching Gary Habermas lay out his "evidence":

And there you have it folks, Pliny, Tacitus, Josephus, etc. That's Habermas's "good historical evidence". Habermas feels that these "scanty and problematic" non-contemporary sources put to rest the question of Jesus' historical existence. Habermas seems to think that he has an absolute position based on all of this hear-say.

Typical.

Actually, you missed the context of my statement that "fossils are irrelevant." It was not intended, for this discussion to be a refutation of science, only, when viewed from the perspective of Johnson's signature, that since he is sarcastically making fun of is the idea that humans should have become literate long before we did if evolution is true. Since there are no books from 100,000 years ago, evolution cannot be true. Johnson correctly frames the answer by making the reader realize that the lack of evidence of a kind is nothing more than the lack of that evidence, it proves nothing.





It's more like looking for 1% where she is correct or even properly quotes someone who has credibility. Additionally, her writing style is clearly not objective and frequently resorts to hyperbolic gushing.



Sorry Interbane, but you completely missed the point of my citing of Johnson's signature. I explained it again above. As for arguing with idiots bringing one down to their level, I appreciate the warning, but I'll continue to take my chances.

Geez, another forum. I'll have to think about it.

Not sure if is in this post or another where you or someone chided me for not reading Acharya S.' (evidently she is still calling herself that though I thought I read somewhere that she wasn't) Christ Myth Anthology online. Actually, I did read it but it is so difficult to follow and confused in its reasoning that I wish, well. She hits the early Christian writer's pretty hard, so I am addressing them as stand alone posts. The fist one will deal with Eusebius