Richard Carrier - The Hero Savior Analogy

[Mudhammam]

If pagan roman criticisms of crucifixion are a proper application of the criteria of embarassment.. then so, too, are atheist criticisms of id'ers creation claims.

It wasn't my claim that the "pagan roman criticisms of crucifixion are a proper application of the criteria of embarassment"; in fact, your awkward phrasing of that point, which, of course, was simply that Roman crucifixion was a humiliating punishment, particularly so for the Jews (per the 'Old Law'), and as Paul and pagan critics explicitly affirm, makes me wonder if it sailed over your head.  But I need wonder no more, as your subsequent non-sequitur all but makes it clear:

The fact of the matter, ofc, in both cases is that it isn't a proper use of the criterion of embarrassment.  That pagan romans or jews would be embarassed by x (as atheists would be embarrassed by y) does not suggest that christians would be embarrassed.  The only crucifixion narratives the criterion of embarrassment would apply to are christian narratives (the gospels).  Christians, however, unlike roman pagans or jews might have been....do not seem to be embarrassed to worship their god as they see it. 

*face palm*
The audience whom any newborn proselytizing religion seeks to convert does not consist of those very religious members (duh).  What motivation would Jewish and Greco-Roman authors have to make their human 'god' publicly humiliated by crucifixion when his entire ministry involved Messianic promises of a kingdom established on earth, and everyone knew that to "preach Christ crucified" was "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles"?  Well, believe what you want to believe, but as for myself, I'll go with the solution that more or less all fair-minded, educated minds have settled upon, namely, the simplest, most evident explanation.

It's not mine, it's yours.  You've misunderstood and misapplied the criterion of embarrassment.  

Sorry, I can't claim your brilliant "argument."

What is it you think cannot be doubted...specifically?

Cannot be doubted?  Who said that?  Please do try to pay closer attention to the posts you decide to comment on.

That isn't the mythicist position..why would it persuade you to it? Why do you think that there's any onus to provide an alternative in the first place?  

There are many mythicist positions, all of which come to the same thing:  Some Jewish or Greek writers highly influenced by a syncrenism of mostly Jewish and some pagan theological beliefs created an Aramaic-speaking Messiah, born in a town no one had heard of, had him walk around proclaiming a coming kingdom, performing miracles, and gathering a moderate following (claims that are consistent with the general character of ancient and modern charlatans), and then had him killed by the Romans.  Why did this happen?  What was the motivation and the context?  Insert your favorite conspiracy here: __________________

Perhaps you should elaborate.  So far we've seen that you don't understand the only criteria which you've referred to...and I don't have confidence that you actually know the mythicist position in the first place.  It's not, for example..as you opined upon above...the idea that people conspired to create a dude.  There was no christianity to conspire upon until there were a body of stories to choose from.  The people who "made the religion" did not write these stories or invent the beliefs.  They chose, from amongst what was available, what best suited their own beliefs.

Which beliefs included that he would be one of the sons of a certain Joseph and Mary, would hail from a town called Nazareth, and subsequently die on a cross at the hands of a historical Pontius Pilate?  Where were/are these ideas laid out for "the people" who "chose from what was available," so that I can examine them myself?   What evidence have you that this is what occurred?  In fact, if you had understood the mythicist position or the arguments used in its favor at all, you'd have realized that you have nothing in the way of reason and evidence to support your uninteresting assertions.  Hence, the red herrings that you love to throw out, including your failure (or what comes to the same thing, inability) to provide any coherent framework for your theory that is consistent with the evidence, and by evidence I don't mean your loony imagination or that of those whose views you've been spoon-fed.