If you follow Mark (the first written Gospel) the ministry only lasted about 6 months. Something to keep in mind.
No I fucking don’t do I look like a Christian. You’re the one pre-occupied with Bible interpretation, here, pre-occupied with Christian sources. You’re as obsessed with them from your (I presume) atheist POV as Christians are with them from their theist one.
So let me make one thing very clear: Acknowledging that there was some guy walking around current-day Palestine preaching and having followers doesn’t make that guy god. The existence of Jesus as a person and his supposed status as deity are two completely different questions. Be honest with yourself: Can you separate the two cleanly, or are they tangled up in some way?
Your buddy Tacticus openly wonders why the political movement still exists decades later. For a reason. They didn’t last long after the main guy was killed.
Christians still exist. The whole thing still continues – truth be told it is remarkable. The (mass-)psychology of religion generally is. spock-raising-eyebrow.jpg. The Roman Empire adopted Christianity as state religion, presumably precisely because of its resilience and staying power, and arguably the Vatican is the last remnant of the Empire in the form of its ministry of religion. All of that, of course, has nothing to do with the historicity of Jesus because in one thing you’re absolutely right: He doesn’t need to have existed for the mass movement to have occurred, a legend is sufficient. Yet, judging by historical standards of proof applied everywhere else, that itinerant preacher existed.
Over time you are supposed to make larger and larger claims, right now you are going backwards.
And generally speaking no, that’s not how the scientific method works, it’s invariant in regards to scope of hypothesis. Now it’s usually practical to start with small claims because they’re easier to prove and then build on that, but it’s by no means a prerequisite. As a counterexample, take something like materialism: That’s actually a very big claim. You can then go ahead and figure out physics, and then people are going to come along and do some woo and say that physics can’t explain consciousness, so you fill in details on how consciousness can emerge from matter, that’s going from big picture to small picture, yet would you call materialism unscientific? (Current best model we have of consciousness and all that is practopoiesis btw just as an aside).
Analogy is false and also a strawman.
That’s an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. If someone said “Steven Segal is god” and I said “God does not exist”, does it necessarily follow that I deny the existence of Steven Segal? Or could I simply be of the opinion that the man, as well as his followers, are nutjobs?
If Paul was interviewing Christians for decades and obsessed with this one key detail how come he got it wrong?
Paul was a Christian. He was a true believer, of course he got shit wrong because, well, let me be glib: Matthew 7:8 “He who searches, finds”. You’ll find that one to be backed up by psychological research. If you’re looking for your keys you’re quite a bit more likely to find them as compared to when looking for your phone. If you’re looking for proof of the non-existence of god and tangle up a random preacher up in that you’ll find evidence for the non-existence of said random preacher.
Acknowledging that there was some guy walking around current-day Palestine preaching and having followers doesn’t make that guy god. The existence of Jesus as a person and his supposed status as deity are two completely different questions. Be honest with yourself: Can you clearly separate the two, or are they tangled up in some way?
As I said. You are weakening your claim to the point you hope to sneak it in. Instead of looking at the evidence we have and drawing conclusions.
, yet would you call materialism unscientific? (Current best model we have of consciousness and all that is practopoiesis btw just as an aside).
Yes. It is philosophy not science.
Paul was a Christian. He was a true believer, of course he got shit wrong
I see. So how do you determine what he got right? What controlled studies did you perform? Was he wrong about the Eucharist, the betrayal, having 12 apostles, visiting James, the crucification?
Fair point. Yet it is a philosophical stance which has pushed many a scientific advancement. The papers people publish don’t generally start out with “To prove materialism, we provide the following nugget”, but implicitly it’s usually there. Of course there’s also religious scientists but those are generally the “god in quantum uncertainty” or something kind of people, pushing the supernatural to beyond what can be measured… that is, they’re, for all intents and purposes, materialists when it comes to their area of study. Like that Big Bang guy, random example.
I see. So how do you determine what he got right? Was he wrong about the Eucharist, the betrayal, having 12 apostles, visiting James, the crucification?
Eucharist by Eris IDGAF about any of that religious mumbo-jumbo. Why do you even assume that I would have an iota of interest. We can talk about things like withholding assent to non-kataleptic impressions if you want but I really, really, couldn’t give less of a shit about Paul’s opinion on pretty much anything. If you want to accost me with Christian theology at least have the decency to choose Meister Eckhart.
No I fucking don’t do I look like a Christian. You’re the one pre-occupied with Bible interpretation, here, pre-occupied with Christian sources. You’re as obsessed with them from your (I presume) atheist POV as Christians are with them from their theist one.
So let me make one thing very clear: Acknowledging that there was some guy walking around current-day Palestine preaching and having followers doesn’t make that guy god. The existence of Jesus as a person and his supposed status as deity are two completely different questions. Be honest with yourself: Can you separate the two cleanly, or are they tangled up in some way?
Christians still exist. The whole thing still continues – truth be told it is remarkable. The (mass-)psychology of religion generally is. spock-raising-eyebrow.jpg. The Roman Empire adopted Christianity as state religion, presumably precisely because of its resilience and staying power, and arguably the Vatican is the last remnant of the Empire in the form of its ministry of religion. All of that, of course, has nothing to do with the historicity of Jesus because in one thing you’re absolutely right: He doesn’t need to have existed for the mass movement to have occurred, a legend is sufficient. Yet, judging by historical standards of proof applied everywhere else, that itinerant preacher existed.
I never went backwards. You may have assumed that I was claiming more, but I didn’t. Different thread but have this comment of mine from before we started our exchange.
And generally speaking no, that’s not how the scientific method works, it’s invariant in regards to scope of hypothesis. Now it’s usually practical to start with small claims because they’re easier to prove and then build on that, but it’s by no means a prerequisite. As a counterexample, take something like materialism: That’s actually a very big claim. You can then go ahead and figure out physics, and then people are going to come along and do some woo and say that physics can’t explain consciousness, so you fill in details on how consciousness can emerge from matter, that’s going from big picture to small picture, yet would you call materialism unscientific? (Current best model we have of consciousness and all that is practopoiesis btw just as an aside).
That’s an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. If someone said “Steven Segal is god” and I said “God does not exist”, does it necessarily follow that I deny the existence of Steven Segal? Or could I simply be of the opinion that the man, as well as his followers, are nutjobs?
Paul was a Christian. He was a true believer, of course he got shit wrong because, well, let me be glib: Matthew 7:8 “He who searches, finds”. You’ll find that one to be backed up by psychological research. If you’re looking for your keys you’re quite a bit more likely to find them as compared to when looking for your phone. If you’re looking for proof of the non-existence of god and tangle up a random preacher up in that you’ll find evidence for the non-existence of said random preacher.
As I said. You are weakening your claim to the point you hope to sneak it in. Instead of looking at the evidence we have and drawing conclusions.
Yes. It is philosophy not science.
I see. So how do you determine what he got right? What controlled studies did you perform? Was he wrong about the Eucharist, the betrayal, having 12 apostles, visiting James, the crucification?
I already provided irrefutable proof that my claim stayed constant. That claim is precisely that claim because that’s precisely what we have evidence for, and what’s thus also accepted by historians. Not bible scholars, historians.
Fair point. Yet it is a philosophical stance which has pushed many a scientific advancement. The papers people publish don’t generally start out with “To prove materialism, we provide the following nugget”, but implicitly it’s usually there. Of course there’s also religious scientists but those are generally the “god in quantum uncertainty” or something kind of people, pushing the supernatural to beyond what can be measured… that is, they’re, for all intents and purposes, materialists when it comes to their area of study. Like that Big Bang guy, random example.
Eucharist by Eris IDGAF about any of that religious mumbo-jumbo. Why do you even assume that I would have an iota of interest. We can talk about things like withholding assent to non-kataleptic impressions if you want but I really, really, couldn’t give less of a shit about Paul’s opinion on pretty much anything. If you want to accost me with Christian theology at least have the decency to choose Meister Eckhart.