It Is Now Legitimate To Question Jesus's Historicity

[Colt]

Apparently you have your motorcycle helmet on too tight?

Truly blessed

 

[Augustus]

The human default state appears to be cooperation tempered by opportunist self interest. Do you disagree?

The default state is small group cooperation tempered by self-interest and the threat of violence from both within and outwith the group

Ah, the usual straw men of the apologist.

I argued our default state is division into small groups unless we can find things that unite us into larger groups and the extent to which these groups can be enlarged is limited.

You said this was wrong and our default state was unity despite all the scientific and historical evidence to the contrary.

Correct.

So if we evolved in small groups like other primates, why do you think our default state is unity until things like religion divide us?

Wrong. Evolution has no aims or goals.

Pointless pedantry based on a strawman to avoid responding to a simple point that shows you to be wrong.

The evolutionary process does have results, which is what I said.

I take it you accept we have cognitive functions that work to unite us with in groups and against out groups and that this is the consequence of the environment we evolved in.

Wht? Primate communities absolutely show signs of unity and cooperation.
Please, if you are going to use my time, use it wisely.

Yes, limited cooperation within small groups tempered by needs for status, reproduction, resources, etc. which is what I said was the default state for humans and you disagreed with

One reason for cooperation is to increase power versus external threats, including others from their species.

Seeing as other primates have similar need for resources, reproduction, etc. but don't have the ability to create "divisive" artificial constructs like ideologies and religions, it's funny that they are unable to sustain groups beyond the level of direct personal interaction.

What is it that you think actually aided us in forming ever larger groups beyond the personal?

My argument is that this was done by creating bonds of fictive kinship such as religions and ideologies which in turn allowed us to develop better technologies and excess productions and ultimately the complex societies we now live in.

You are arguing this didn't happen as religions are divisive.

One of us here is in tune with generally accepted scientific facts and it certainly isn't you with your "our default state is unity" schtick.

So feel free to provide scientific evidence that our default state is not division into small groups and that it is fact large scale unity unless we have things like religion to divide us.

Unless you have realised your mistake and are now admitting our default state is indeed division into small groups rather than large-scale unity, and that things like religions and ideologies played a major role in uniting us into ever larger groups.

 

[KWED]

The default state is small group cooperation tempered by self-interest and the threat of violence from both within and outwith the group



I argued our default state is division into small groups unless we can find things that unite us into larger groups and the extent to which these groups can be enlarged is limited.

You said this was wrong and our default state was unity despite all the scientific and historical evidence to the contrary.



So if we evolved in small groups like other primates, why do you think our default state is unity until things like religion divide us?



Pointless pedantry based on a strawman to avoid responding to a simple point that shows you to be wrong.

The evolutionary process does have results, which is what I said.

I take it you accept we have cognitive functions that work to unite us with in groups and against out groups and that this is the consequence of the environment we evolved in.




Yes, limited cooperation within small groups tempered by needs for status, reproduction, resources, etc. which is what I said was the default state for humans and you disagreed with

One reason for cooperation is to increase power versus external threats, including others from their species.

Seeing as other primates have similar need for resources, reproduction, etc. but don't have the ability to create "divisive" artificial constructs like ideologies and religions, it's funny that they are unable to sustain groups beyond the level of direct personal interaction.

What is it that you think actually aided us in forming ever larger groups beyond the personal?

My argument is that this was done by creating bonds of fictive kinship such as religions and ideologies which in turn allowed us to develop better technologies and excess productions and ultimately the complex societies we now live in.

You are arguing this didn't happen as religions are divisive.



One of us here is in tune with generally accepted scientific facts and it certainly isn't you with your "our default state is unity" schtick.

So feel free to provide scientific evidence that our default state is not division into small groups and that it is fact large scale unity unless we have things like religion to divide us.

Unless you have realised your mistake and are now admitting our default state is indeed division into small groups rather than large-scale unity, and that things like religions and ideologies played a major role in uniting us into ever larger groups.

Your opinions have been duly noted.
However, the fact remains that a society's default state is peace, tolerance and cooperation, not violence intolerance and disruption. If you are in any doubt, just take a walk around your local village or town or area and watch all the people not oppressing and killing each other from dawn 'til dusk and through the night.
Even somewhere like Syria or Mali or Myanmar you will see more people helping each other or avoiding conflict than killing each other. Why do you think refugee camps are so much bigger than barracks?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Your opinions have been duly noted.
However, the fact remains that a society's default state is peace, tolerance and cooperation, not violence intolerance and disruption. If you are in any doubt, just take a walk around your local village or town or area and watch all the people not oppressing and killing each other from dawn 'til dusk and through the night.
Even somewhere like Syria or Mali or Myanmar you will see more people helping each other or avoiding conflict than killing each other. Why do you think refugee camps are so much bigger than barracks?

You really don't understand that any society is not totally fair as equal and different people have different power, access to resources and social capital.
You have to start reading some sociology and stop treating all harm as direct physical violence. Or that all intolerance and disruption is only what you take for granted.

 

[KWED]

You really don't understand that any society is not totally fair as equal and different people have different power, access to resources and social capital.

I have never claimed that every society is fair, equal or equitable, so not sure what you point is.

You have to start reading some sociology and stop treating all harm as direct physical violence. Or that all intolerance and disruption is only what you take for granted.

Although I have never claimed that all societies have the same values, it is beyond debate that practically every individual values not being killed over being killed, not being tortured over being tortured, not starving to death over starving to death, etc. Maybe the sociology books you've read forgot to mention that? And when occasionally people may see sacrificing themselves as a good thing, it is usually in order to save others in some way - thus further demonstrating my point.

 

[Augustus]

However, the fact remains that a society's default state is peace, tolerance and cooperation, not violence intolerance and disruption. If you are in any doubt, just take a walk around your local village or town or area and watch all the people not oppressing and killing each other from dawn 'til dusk and through the night.

That's very naive.

There is no "default" state of peace. When we lived in small groups, the threat of violence was always there. Outsiders want our territory, our women, our forced labour? It was often simply a cost/benefit decision. Violence was a means to an end, just as cooperation was. We didn't need religion to divide us and make us violent, we were always divided and always capable of using violence to better our situation.

You are talking about advanced societies, governed by systems of was and ultimately underpinned by the threat of violence from the state. You are also talking about people who exist in the same fictive 'in-group'.

This is the end result of hundreds of thousands of years of societal formation and cultural evolution.

The question is, how did humans get from living in small groups like other primates, to the kind of complex societies we live in today?

In a dog eat dog world, you can't simply opt out and live in peace. You needed to be stronger and better at violence if you wanted to survive. So people needed to expand the size of their tribes.

This is where religion came in. One example would be via the creation of an origin myth whereby unrelated people who don't personally know each other share a mythical common ancestor. In the place of direct personal relationships, the undertaking of shared rituals helps to strengthen this bond and encourages prosocial behaviour within the group.

The tribes most successful at this ensured their and their culture's survival and their religions grew uniting more and more people under the same umbrella.

Religions have been among the greatest unifying forces in history and they helped build the modern world we live in. Your argument they are primarily divisive starts from the fallacious view unity is the norm, which history shows is obviously not true.

 

[John D. Brey]

However, I doubt it will have any effect on Christianity.
Or, do you think it will?

It's now legitimate for a man to get cut, dawn a wig, and set new records for women's athletics.

It's a brave new world. Embrace it and say goodbye to it. It's on its way out.



John

 

[joelr]

You have no proof that the aspects of religious history are complete myth, what atheist have is a "hope" that there is no God else you may have to surrender dead end loyalties. There was a basis of truth to Mesopotamian stories used by the Israelites in their story of origins. Stories would be carried by oral tradition over ages of time. Not perfect by any means but that's what they did.

Atheists do not "hope" there is no God. This is a misleading apologetic to make religious people less inclined to question their beliefs. Atheists I know go to work, work out, are good to people, help the community, are in one committed relationship, donate time to community, raise family and so on. They do not disbelieve a God story so they can run around and "sin" freely.

Yes the OT is full of Mesopotamian tales and Genesis was written using older myths, it was not historical. During the 2nd Temple Period all of the main doctrines of Judaism and Christianity were already in Persian myths and Hellenism. Both cultures occupied Israel.
Hellenism spread through most religions in that area and went through similar changes:

-Each (religion) persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)
- the rise of Wisdom literature (the teachings of a sage concerning the hidden purposes of the deity) and apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)
-This led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human.
-The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.
-The first (or inner circle) was composed of devout, full-time adherents of the cult for whom the deity retained a separate and decisive identity (e.g., those of Yahweh, Zeus Serapis, and Isis).
-Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius
-They strove to regain their place in the world beyond this world where they truly belonged, to encounter the god beyond the god of this world who was the true god, and to awaken that part of themselves (their souls or spirits) that had descended from the heavenly realm by stripping off their bodies, which belonged to this world.
-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme deities whose
-The temples and cult institutions of the various Hellenistic religions were repositories of the knowledge and techniques necessary for salvation and were the agents of the public worship of a particular deity.
-the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.
Hellenistic religion - Religious organization


Heaven as a home for souls is also from Hellenism, as are teaching through parables
During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire.[47] Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them.[47] Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.[48][49] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[49] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology.[49] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[49] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[47] The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC).[40] Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.[

Mark is written using mythic literary techniques only used in fiction like ring structure, triadic inversions and others. Jesus scores 18 out of 22 on the Rank Ragalin mythotype scale. We also see where Mark was getting his ideas from. There are verbatim lines from Psalms in the crucifiction narrative and earthly re-tellings of messages from Pauls letters. We don't know if it's all complete myth but it certainly looks to be.

Perhaps Jesus patterned his entire life so as to "appeal" to preexistent beliefs outside of Judaism considering he knew his original gospel of the Kingdom would be rejected by Judaism??? When people within a culture switch to new beliefs they tend to modify their new belief with their old belief system. The Roman Mysteries married Paul's version of Jesus; the result is Christ-ianity.

Paul knew nothing about any earthly Jesus. Just visions of an already resurrected Jesus in his spirit form. The life of Jesus doesn't follow other myths (except common miracles ) but dying/rising savior demigods who undergo a passion and get followers into an afterlife is a common myth before Jesus in only that region. Modern apologetics denies this by being sneaky and focusing on the demigods who are not dying/rising saviors like Mithras and Horus. But 1st century apologist Justin Maryter did admit Jesus was like the others.

The other mystery religions are like Judaism, they were Hellenized and some had savior figures and there are many similarities in the religious practices and beliefs.

 

[joelr]

Why do you think that book will have any meaningful effect?

Because it's an excellent book and well researched. Carrier has debated several apologists and actual historians and his ideas have not been challenged. But it already is having an impact because several historians have moved over to his side and others have admitted it's very plausible.

 

[joelr]

I think it is having an effect on scholarship but the Apostles Creed will continue to be recited and believed unchecked.

Yes but those people will grow old and younger generations who see this information and haven't gotten emotionally attached to a belief and are able to look at evidence rationally will grow up and realize it's just a myth like all others.

 

[joelr]

Well, based on his Wikipedia article he seems biased.

Yes he's biased towards what is true.
First he read the entire Bible with an open mind -
"and his deeper study of religion, Christianity, and Western philosophy, which eventually led to his embrace of naturalism."

which he states in interviews. He has since gotten a PhD in ancient Roman science then went on a 7 year study of the historicity of the NT, reading all source material including historians of the time and all aprocraphal material and so on. He can speak on any single verse in the entire Bible and understands vastly more information about this topic than most humans. He's scoured over all available evidence and peer-reviewed books on anything close to the subject. Yeah he very biased towards facts (all possible known facts) and prepared to make an 700 pg assessment on the topic of Jesus historicity.

 

[Hermit Philosopher]

However, I doubt it will have any effect on Christianity.
Or, do you think it will?

As far as I know, it has never not been “legitimate” to question things; including this.

Surely, one ought to be most wary of anything that is not “legitimate” to question…


Humbly
Hermit

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes he's biased towards what is true.
First he read the entire Bible with an open mind -
"and his deeper study of religion, Christianity, and Western philosophy, which eventually led to his embrace of naturalism."

which he states in interviews. He has since gotten a PhD in ancient Roman science then went on a 7 year study of the historicity of the NT, reading all source material including historians of the time and all aprocraphal material and so on. He can speak on any single verse in the entire Bible and understands vastly more information about this topic than most humans. He's scoured over all available evidence and peer-reviewed books on anything close to the subject. Yeah he very biased towards facts (all possible known facts) and prepared to make an 700 pg assessment on the topic of Jesus historicity.

Yeah, philosophical naturalism is a bias. I also have a bias. I just acknowledge that I have a bias.

 

[joelr]

Yeah, philosophical naturalism is a bias. I also have a bias. I just acknowledge that I have a bias.

Ok.

 

[KWED]

That's very naive.

There is no "default" state of peace. When we lived in small groups, the threat of violence was always there. Outsiders want our territory, our women, our forced labour? It was often simply a cost/benefit decision. Violence was a means to an end, just as cooperation was. We didn't need religion to divide us and make us violent, we were always divided and always capable of using violence to better our situation.

You are talking about advanced societies, governed by systems of was and ultimately underpinned by the threat of violence from the state. You are also talking about people who exist in the same fictive 'in-group'.

This is the end result of hundreds of thousands of years of societal formation and cultural evolution.

The question is, how did humans get from living in small groups like other primates, to the kind of complex societies we live in today?

In a dog eat dog world, you can't simply opt out and live in peace. You needed to be stronger and better at violence if you wanted to survive. So people needed to expand the size of their tribes.

This is where religion came in. One example would be via the creation of an origin myth whereby unrelated people who don't personally know each other share a mythical common ancestor. In the place of direct personal relationships, the undertaking of shared rituals helps to strengthen this bond and encourages prosocial behaviour within the group.

The tribes most successful at this ensured their and their culture's survival and their religions grew uniting more and more people under the same umbrella.

Religions have been among the greatest unifying forces in history and they helped build the modern world we live in. Your argument they are primarily divisive starts from the fallacious view unity is the norm, which history shows is obviously not true.

History, as well as the modern world, shows that people generally want to get on with their lives in peace. Your claim that we are all at each others throats until religion unites us is obvious nonsense.
Religion is a means of justifying intolerant, violent, expansionist behaviour to ordinary people to get them to go along with it - to paraphrase Weinberg.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

History, as well as the modern world, shows that people generally want to get on with their lives in peace. Your claim that we are all at each others throats until religion unites us is obvious nonsense.
Religion is a means of justifying intolerant, violent, expansionist behaviour to ordinary people to get them to go along with it - to paraphrase Weinberg.

If Weinberg is Steven Weinberg, then how does he have an authoritative view as a scientist on religion. I will treat it as a subjective opinion.

 

[Colt]

Atheists do not "hope" there is no God. This is a misleading apologetic to make religious people less inclined to question their beliefs. Atheists I know go to work, work out, are good to people, help the community, are in one committed relationship, donate time to community, raise family and so on. They do not disbelieve a God story so they can run around and "sin" freely.

Yes the OT is full of Mesopotamian tales and Genesis was written using older myths, it was not historical. During the 2nd Temple Period all of the main doctrines of Judaism and Christianity were already in Persian myths and Hellenism. Both cultures occupied Israel.
Hellenism spread through most religions in that area and went through similar changes:

-Each (religion) persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)
- the rise of Wisdom literature (the teachings of a sage concerning the hidden purposes of the deity) and apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)
-This led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human.
-The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.
-The first (or inner circle) was composed of devout, full-time adherents of the cult for whom the deity retained a separate and decisive identity (e.g., those of Yahweh, Zeus Serapis, and Isis).
-Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius
-They strove to regain their place in the world beyond this world where they truly belonged, to encounter the god beyond the god of this world who was the true god, and to awaken that part of themselves (their souls or spirits) that had descended from the heavenly realm by stripping off their bodies, which belonged to this world.
-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme deities whose
-The temples and cult institutions of the various Hellenistic religions were repositories of the knowledge and techniques necessary for salvation and were the agents of the public worship of a particular deity.
-the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.
Hellenistic religion - Religious organization


Heaven as a home for souls is also from Hellenism, as are teaching through parables
During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire.[47] Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them.[47] Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.[48][49] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[49] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology.[49] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[49] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[47] The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC).[40] Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.[

Mark is written using mythic literary techniques only used in fiction like ring structure, triadic inversions and others. Jesus scores 18 out of 22 on the Rank Ragalin mythotype scale. We also see where Mark was getting his ideas from. There are verbatim lines from Psalms in the crucifiction narrative and earthly re-tellings of messages from Pauls letters. We don't know if it's all complete myth but it certainly looks to be.






Paul knew nothing about any earthly Jesus. Just visions of an already resurrected Jesus in his spirit form. The life of Jesus doesn't follow other myths (except common miracles ) but dying/rising savior demigods who undergo a passion and get followers into an afterlife is a common myth before Jesus in only that region. Modern apologetics denies this by being sneaky and focusing on the demigods who are not dying/rising saviors like Mithras and Horus. But 1st century apologist Justin Maryter did admit Jesus was like the others.

The other mystery religions are like Judaism, they were Hellenized and some had savior figures and there are many similarities in the religious practices and beliefs.

Your theory is an attempt to remove Jesus from history. I don't agree with it.

 

[Kfox]

Professors in seminary schools have lost tenure for letting their thoughts be known, that may be finally lessening somewhat, so no, it has not been legit for the likes of those that have been expelled.

Just because it isn't allowed everywhere does not mean it has not been allowed since the 18th century

 

[Augustus]

Because it's an excellent book and well researched. Carrier has debated several apologists and actual historians and his ideas have not been challenged. But it already is having an impact because several historians have moved over to his side and others have admitted it's very plausible.

I found it almost unreadable, although him being a terrible writer obviously doesn't refute his ideas.

Can't say anything about apologists, but I've certainly seen scientists challenge his knowledge of Bayes' Theorem and his knowledge of probability theory (I personally don't have the knowledge to judge, but they are certainly backing up what they say and have better pedigrees to know what they are talking about than carrier does).

But ultimately I think the book is disingenuous. It doesn’t read as a mathematical treatment of the subject, and I can’t help but think that Carrier is using Bayes’s Theorem in much the same way that apologists such as William Lane Craig use it: to give their arguments a veneer of scientific rigour that they hope cannot be challenged by their generally more math-phobic peers. To enter an argument against the overwhelming scholarly consensus with “but I have math on my side, math that has been proven, proven!” seems transparent to me, more so when the quality of the math provided in no way matches the bombast.

I suspect this book was always designed to preach to the choir, and will not make much impact in scholarly circles. I hope it doesn’t become a blueprint for other similar scholarship, despite agreeing with many of its conclusions.

archive.ph

Further examples:

Final Word on Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier: Proving history or idiocy?

Carrier’s Historiography: Why we may have reason to doubt it’s utilitity (Part II)

A further critique of his methodology: THE REVEREND BAYES VS. JESUS CHRIST

Ultimately, his argument is dependent on him assigning subjective probabilities that coincide with his own opinions while subjectively choosing what subjective probabilities to include (while being emotionally and financially invested in disproving Jesus).

It's just a rehashing of traditional mythicism, this time with (bad) maths to say he subjectively assigns a 0-33% chance of Jesus existing.

Even if you like the book and find the arguments persuasive, I can't see how it's a game changer unless folk are impressed with his smoke and mirrors. It's just the standard preaching to the choir.

 

[Augustus]

History, as well as the modern world, shows that people generally want to get on with their lives in peace. Your claim that we are all at each others throats until religion unites us is obvious nonsense.
Religion is a means of justifying intolerant, violent, expansionist behaviour to ordinary people to get them to go along with it - to paraphrase Weinberg.

How many successful pre-modern societies can you name that weren't overtly violent and militaristic? I'll wait.

History of the pre-modern world shows violence has always been employed as a means to an end to get what people wanted when they judged they could get away with it. If it is easier to steal than work, some people will always steal. When resources are scarce, some people will always use violence to get what they want. The best form of defence was to be strong, and being strong required using violence to increase your strength.

Do you still deny our default state is similar to other primates, small groups, and that conflict between groups was an inescapable part of our reality btw?

Both cooperation and violence are integral to the human condition as we evolved in environments with limited resources, limited access to mates, etc. that necessitate conflict to optimise survival and reproduction.

Who do you think is in the best position to optimise their chances at survival and reproduction: someone who is purely cooperative and avoids conflict or someone who is reasonably cooperative, yet self-centred and capable of the controlled use of violence to get what they want?

You also completely miss the point, religion is what bound people together in lager and larger groups. This just increased the size of the in group, but didn't make us less hostile towards the out group. You cannot unite without also dividing.

How do you think we got from small family groups to advanced societies though? We just recognised each others common humanity and decide to live in a spirit of mutual trust, tolerance and harmony without any ideological foundations?