Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus

[Sparhafoc]

I think I am the only person with a spine on this entire fucking forum.

You say potato, I say cretin.

/shrug

Incidentally, did I tell you how fucking awesome I am? I am sure you want to hear all about how I think I am the greatest fucking thing since sliced bread?

Or perhaps you need to join LEROY in the leg-humping corner?

 

[Sparhafoc]

To save myself the time of writing when it may just be ignored.

If I miss one of your replies, please bring it to my attention.

Well, you don't miss one of my replies, you just don't respond to 90% of it, then repeat something I spent time addressing in that 90%.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Well people enjoy stories and movies where good triumphs over evil. But people on this forum are not really able to define what good and evil is.

1) Says who? You? And your awareness of your own bias is what?

2) So what? Who cares whether anyone can define good or evil - to define them both properly, one would need to be an expert at both of them which seems philosophically contradictory.

3) Most egregiously, the hero's journey/monomyth has absolutely nothing to do with 'good over evil'. It's a mistaken assumption on your part, underscoring a significant amount about your preconceptions, especially as you have asserted it as fact. No, the fact is that the monomyth is about injustice rectified.

Someone like Dragan Glas would say "Something is good if it benefits mankind". Fine. But He has no standard which he can apply to his own metric to. He himself does not know how to benefit mankind. He might me able to name things like medicine or the internet, cars ect. But he is completely unable to quantify the effects of his own acts let alone the effects of any social policy, whichever ones he decides to fight against or support. He does not know if they are really good or bad, it's just his opinion.

Someone like you might say and actually posited that it does not matter who is right or wrong as long as we try or best to do what is right. Again, without a standard, this is a ludicrous idea and would make it impossible for us to have any sort of civiliazation if we were to implement this as social or judicial policy.

And despite all of this, the Matrix trilogy did quite well at the box office. How did so many people know who the good guy was in the story?

It's a shame you've tried to smuggle in your prejudice against non-believers into this response, or else you might have achieved more with it.

You are completely mistaken about the hero's journey, the monomyth. It is not about good versus evil, and if it was then there'd be a huge problem given that different cultures hold different notions of what is socially acceptable and what's taboo.

Instead, the universality and primal nature of the monomyth is concerned with injustice in the world, and the underdog going up against the system to rectify that wrong. That's how this story transcends all cultures and all times.

Your rendition is simplistic, ideologically provincial, and fails even at explaining the Matrix.

Amusingly, your notion fails at explaining how society operates, but injustice-justice is at the core of any social agreement - a Dukheimian contract where we agree to limit our freedoms in order to be protected from greater injustice. We give a bigger stick to the biggest local warlord, allowing him to tax our labours, so that he can protect us from being robbed and raped by some foreign warlord.

Next time, perhaps try fucking asking what I think rather than pretending you are so competent as to subsume and predict all possible responses?

 

[Sparhafoc]

Except for the time it does of course. In case you haven't noticed, the bible isn't a very consistent book.

Thank you for explaining this to me, Great Master of the Internet. Now I know everything.

Funny how want to be taken seriously when you act like this, but respond only with scorn when others engage in it.

How are you to be taken seriously when you are making claims as if you were the one valid source of Christianity when your claims are directly contradictory both to all the other Christians and to the Bible itself?

Honestly, TNTD - have you read the Bible cover to cover?

In my experience, essentially no one has read the Bible cover to cover - they've just read the bits their pastor told them to read.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Well people enjoy stories and movies where good triumphs over evil. But people on this forum are not really able to define what good and evil is. Someone like Dragan Glas would say "Something is good if it benefits mankind". Fine. But He has no standard which he can apply to his own metric to. He himself does not know how to benefit mankind. He might me able to name things like medicine or the internet, cars ect. But he is completely unable to quantify the effects of his own acts let alone the effects of any social policy, whichever ones he decides to fight against or support. He does not know if they are really good or bad, it's just his opinion.

You're judging me based on your opinion as to what's "good" or "bad".

I take issue with your implication that I'm somehow immoral because I'm not a theist.

There was a thread that dealt with this - a few of my contributions are here, here, and particularly here. You would do well to read the whole topic to get a better idea of the discussion.

Codes of ethics and morality are intrinsic to philosophical systems.

As I've explained elsewhere, if you consider philosophy as a set, it is divided into two subsets: theistic philosophy, or philosophies of life based on deities, and atheistic philosophy, or philosophies of life not based on deities.

Regardless, they both have codes of ethics and morality.

To imply or claim that atheistic philosophies do not is simply wrong.

We are social animals - we've evolved to co-operate with other humans. This means that, as a result of evolution, we have an innate ability to empathize with others feelings - such as pleasure and pain.

The various versions of the dictum across the world that declares that we should "do unto others as you would be done by" are the result of this evolved empathy. And, in case you think otherwise, it didn't originate with Christianity.

Social policies are judged on whether they help or harm people - that's the criterion by which I, and everyone else, judges them. We may disagree on the details but the basic metric is help/harm. There are even approaches based on what's called "harm-reduction", and they are judged on this criterion. It comes from Hume's "harm principle".

I, and others here, are perfectly capable of judging whether something is good or bad based on nothing more than our ability to empathize with others' suffering. That's why Krauss disagreed with Craig with regard to the murder of the Canaanite children.

Craig is positing a absolute morality based on nothing more than his "feeling" that a deity - and, specifically, the Christian one - exists, despite the lack of any actual evidence of either.

Someone like you might say and actually posited that it does not matter who is right or wrong as long as we try or best to do what is right. Again, without a standard, this is a ludicrous idea and would make it impossible for us to have any sort of civiliazation if we were to implement this as social or judicial policy.

As my linked posts show, there are standards - just that people adhere to different ones.

And despite all of this, the Matrix trilogy did quite well at the box office. How did so many people know who the good guy was in the story?

Because it was about humans versus machines. The "hero" is obviously the human.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[thenexttodie]

Well, you don't miss one of my replies, you just don't respond to 90% of it, then repeat something I spent time addressing in that 90%.

Sparhafoc, I just recently responded to a couple of your posts. I actually actively seek out your posts when I come to this forum because they are interesting to me and I think you put some thought into them and I often find them refreshing. None of us have enough time to be able to respond to posts as much as fully as we would like to have.

You have a very destructive world view which will hurt yourself and others very much.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Sparhafoc, I just recently responded to a couple of your posts. I actually actively seek out your posts when I come to this forum because they are interesting to me and I think you put some thought into them and I often find them refreshing. None of us have enough time to be able to respond to posts as much as fully as we would like to have.

Fair enough, my apologies if I am in error but it's what it appears to be.

For example, my post about my religious experience was basically boiled down by you to a comment on JW's.

But you're right that you have no obligation to respond to anything that you don't choose to.

You have a very destructive world view which will hurt yourself and others very much.

Please go into detail.

What is my 'world view'?

How is it 'destructive'?

How can it hurt either me or others?

 

[thenexttodie]

You have a very destructive world view which will hurt yourself and others very much.

Please go into detail.

No.

If what I say is true, it will eventually manifest itself to you in your life and you will know it. Hopefully then you will remember a few things your ol' buddy TNTD told you. There is not much else I can do.

 

[Sparhafoc]

No.

If what I say is true, it will eventually manifest itself to you in your life and you will know it. Hopefully then you will remember a few things your ol' buddy TNTD told you. There is not much else I can do.

Well, it can't be true as it contains nothing, being just a series of words you stacked together.

There's nothing to be wrong or right about - it's content free.

As for the rest - unjustified hubris. If you want to pretend you've done something for me, show what it is that you think you've done.

Also, turn your crystal ball over, and note how it says 'Made in China'.

 

[Sparhafoc]

You have a very destructive world view which will hurt yourself and others very much.

As you can't justify this wibble, I will demolish it.

Fuck off you rude wanker. You know fuck all about me, so stop slapping your wrinkly cock on the table of honest discourse.

Treat people like cunts, and you will get treated back the same way.

In reality if you knew me, you'd know that I possess no 'destructive' world view - or in fact, a world view of any kind.

Further, you'd know I devote considerable time and energy to helping people, sacrificing my efforts to aid others.

So pop the vacuous prejudice back up your rectum and we'll go back to being civil. Clear?

 

[Visaki]

You have a very destructive world view which will hurt yourself and others very much.

As you can't justify this wibble, I will demolish it.

Fuck off you rude wanker. You know fuck all about me, so stop slapping your wrinkly cock on the table of honest discourse.

Treat people like cunts, and you will get treated back the same way.

In reality if you knew me, you'd know that I possess no 'destructive' world view - or in fact, a world view of any kind.

Further, you'd know I devote considerable time and energy to helping people, sacrificing my efforts to aid others.

So pop the vacuous prejudice back up your rectum and we'll go back to being civil. Clear?

I have a shorter answer for that.

No, you do.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

 

[WarK]

I've mixed feelings about this one. It was too chaotic and the moderator interrupted them a lot.

 

[WarK]

I found another one, this is longer and both are allowed to finish their sentences

 

[Sparhafoc]

Kind of puts it in context when the next lecture's entitled 'Is there evidence for miracles?'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

I much prefer to see secular historians argue the case for an historical Jesus, otherwise it looks like a showcase of motivated reasoning.

 

[Collecemall]

I actually attended the Evans debate. I was disappointed. Dude wasn't even remotely aware of what Richard's stance was. Damned kids running in and out the whole time didn't help either. Probably hard to tell on the vid but sitting in the back you couldn't hear well. Too many people in the lobby running their traps. I imagine the kids had to get their name on the sign in sheet or something. They didn't seem to give two shits about what was being said anyway.