ant wrote:How have I "abused" people here?
Ant, you have steadily ratcheted up your rhetoric. You started on page 1 by accusing Lady of Shallot of 'poisoning the well' simply for observing there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. LoS was quite right to take offense at your comment, which falsely implies there is evidence for an assertion that is untrue.
Next you moved on to accuse "Mysticists" (a conveniently abusive typo) of being odd like creationists. This is a highly offensive statement, slandering people who rely on reason and evidence by comparing them to primitive ignoramuses. And then, when I pointed out that the Synoptic Gospels are not evidence for Jesus, in the absence of independent testimony, you said my comments were perfunctory, nonchalant and laughable.
When Lady of Shallot rightly pointed out there is almost no public debate in the USA of the existence of Jesus except on the internet, you accused her of relying on 'junkyard sources' while you conspicuously failed to provide any evidence of such debate.
And then you suggested that anyone who has made up their mind about the unreliability of the Bible is wearing "horseblinders". The only people with tunnel vision in this debate are the apologists for a nonexistent historical Jesus.
I called into question the credentials of your source, and along with that, questioned your understanding of the criteria I set forth.
Credentialism in this debate is a weak tactic, simply because the new scholarship is systematically excluded from discussion in all venues where traditional Christianity has any power. I understand your criteria perfecty well, I have simply observed that you are wrong in claiming there is independent testimony for Jesus.
You blasted everything as being nothing more than claims from biased Christian apologists.
Yes, because the assertion that there is independent testimony for Jesus is Christian apologetics pure and simple. There is no other possible motive for saying there is evidence when in fact there is no evidence. Any objective person can understand the difference between hearsay and eyewitness acoounts, except it seems Christian apologists.
In addition to that, when I brought to your attention Socrates as a counter example, what you essentially said was that the evidence we have for his existence can be trusted because the sources did not lie (speculation), they were written in real time (no evidence presented for that), there were no religious motives for the story that would call them into question (you ignored the political/social motives by saying "they wouldn't lie about it" - more guess work, and totally ignored Plato's divine conception origin that if you scrutinized in the same manner as Christ, would cast doubts of his existence.
Best not to use quotation marks when you are not quoting. It is not the virgin birth story that puts the existence of Jesus into question, it is the absence of evidence for his existence coupled with the means, motive and opportunity for the church to invent him. There is an air of desperation when people start talking about doubting the existence of real historical figures like Plato. Shades of Descartes' demon.
You also refused to admit that it was not uncommon for men to be mythologized in both Jesus and Socrates time.
Sorry Ant, you will have to provide a reference here, as I fear you are starting to make things up.
And now you feel abused because of it??
My feelings are neither here nor there, what is at issue is what people actually say. I am happy to admit that I have made abusive comments about Christian apologists, but that is because they deserve it for spreading lies. If I behaved in a similarly unethical way I would deserve criticism, but I have not and do not.
You are now ready to debate all of creation, along with ethics, which you feel you have evidence for (whatever that means).
Ethics is what this is really all about. Do we subscribe to a scientific world view or not? Science is at the core of legitimate ethics. As Voltaire said, believing absurdities permits atrocities. Lies and fantasy are the foundation of evil. It is completely unethical to assert that something you know to be false is true. Evidence is at the core of ethics.
We should debate cosmology, because a religion that is based on an untrue cosmology is like a house built on sand. We have a true cosmology available to us (science) and it is not compatible with the folk myths of traditional Christianity.
You have lost total control all because I placed information that is acknowledged by mainstream scholarship alongside a pulp history author like Doherty.
Aw shucks ant, it might be helpful if this so-called "information" that you have supposedly provided were anything more than a tissue of appeals to authority. Your description of Earl Doherty as "a pulp history author" is defamatory and false. Earl is used to such abuse from fundamentalist Christians, but it demeans you to stoop to such insults.
Seriously.., you feel abused for it? I've held my ground. It apparently got a bit heated between you and I. You weren't exactly short of snide remarks on your end. Puhlease
My snide remarks are simply observing that people often believe things that are untrue, such as your assertion that there is actual evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ. Despite all your rhetoric, which is starting to remind me of a tub-thumping preacher, your arguments in this thread have been extremely weak. It all goes to show that the paradigm of historical Jesus belief is at the point of collapse.
