(September 6, 2015 at 1:28 pm)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:

(September 6, 2015 at 1:19 pm)Irrational Wrote: You demonstrate my point. What you are doing is relying on ad hoc rather than on more parsimonious interpretations. Nevermind the fact that you 're also relying on strawman as well. When did I ever appeal to authority?

If you think "brother of the Lord" or "in the flesh" or "descendant of David" or "born of a woman" and so on do not indicate earthly life, that's fine. But you'll need to demonstrate that this is what Paul really meant by looking to the other stuff he may have said that elaborates on those meanings. Otherwise, all this is telling me is that such mythicist interpretations are not falsifiable.

Ah yes, thank you for reminding me. That was the other thing.

The word "born" there is likely a poor translation. The word used isn't the one usually used when they were talking about childbirth; the word there is more accurately translated as "made." "Made of the sperm of David" and "Made from a woman" are more accurate translations, again lending credence to the idea that this messiah was constructed in the heavenly realms rather than having been born on Earth. Later church scholars, working from the presupposition of a human Jesus, might have translated that as "born" rather than "made" because it made more sense for the story they knew and were trying to promote.

You're doing exactly what I've been suggesting about most mythicists. Do you not see it?

OK, we are supposed to be more intelligent than ancient goat ropers.  So get out a map of the eastern Mediterranean area that shows Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Israel.  

The Paul character supposedly wrote letters to widely scattered places in Greece, Turkey, and Italy in the First Century.  Now that could have happened.  But what's extremely doubtful is that the recipients would have kept those letters intact and secure and made countless copies of them and collected all of them in one location.  Remember, the vast geographical distances as well as the elapsed time.  Throw in countless wars, natural disasters, pirates, thieves and so forth.  Based on that the conclusion must be that the story is pure BS because it's simply not reasonable.  

What we do know is that there was a new religion based upon a Jewish zombie who was supposedly the son of God that swept through the area.  How that religion came to be is unclear but it did happen since there is historical evidence.  But the idea that all of those alleged Pauline letters ended up in one collection is asinine.  It's more likely that BS'ers wrote down some of the oral stories to give the religion a documented foundation.  That's what the Islamic hadith writers did.  They simply made up a lot of BS and put words in imaginary characters' mouths to legitimize the story.  

So time passes and then the English story tellers decide to write all of the stories down in a single book around the year 700.  And we ended up with what's called the Bible.

(September 6, 2015 at 11:31 am)Mr.wizard Wrote:

(September 4, 2015 at 7:27 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I'd probably stop believing in God altogether. But I'd also be very confused and, due to past personal experiences, would start to question my own sanity.

So you would start to question your sanity after you found out that a all powerful, all knowing, deity in human form did not exist?

Because of past experiences, yes.

(September 6, 2015 at 12:20 pm)Drich Wrote:

(September 4, 2015 at 3:49 pm)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: We're talking hypothetical here, Drich. It's a hypothetical situation with a hypothetical piece of smoking-gun evidence. We've asked you to play pretend long enough to answer a question, and your answer is basically, "I don't have enough imagination to pretend that, so I can't answer the question." Nice one.

---

To answer the OP, I used to be a Christian (yes, a True Christian, fuck you people), and I encountered evidence that convinced me Jesus of Nazareth most likely did not exist as a historical person, and when I did I immediately de-converted to atheism. While a lot of Christians are prone to sticking their fingers in their ears, they're not all beyond hope. I wasn't.

That's the thing I'm pointing out. Even in a hypotheitical I'm not willing to surrender my reasoning ability to some unnamed expert. I would like to see the evidence and decide from there. Which again I point to the impossibility of said evidence.

I did a thread like this some time ago:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-11941.html

If you want to know what I think read the OP

So, you would keep ASKing in spite of evidence that God does not exist?

(September 6, 2015 at 1:46 pm)Irrational Wrote:

(September 6, 2015 at 1:28 pm)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: Ah yes, thank you for reminding me. That was the other thing.

The word "born" there is likely a poor translation. The word used isn't the one usually used when they were talking about childbirth; the word there is more accurately translated as "made." "Made of the sperm of David" and "Made from a woman" are more accurate translations, again lending credence to the idea that this messiah was constructed in the heavenly realms rather than having been born on Earth. Later church scholars, working from the presupposition of a human Jesus, might have translated that as "born" rather than "made" because it made more sense for the story they knew and were trying to promote.

You're doing exactly what I've been suggesting about most mythicists. Do you not see it?

Suggesting that there have been various errors, both deliberate and otherwise, in the copying and translating of texts thousands of years old into various different languages is not an ad hoc argument. Suggesting that there is evidence that religious people can and do twist/fabricate the facts to support their story is also not an ad hoc argument. Suggesting that a religion started one way and developed into something else before splitting into literally thousands of squabbling factions is also not an ad hoc argument. Where is the ad hoc in what I'm saying?

(September 7, 2015 at 9:59 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:

(September 6, 2015 at 1:46 pm)Irrational Wrote: You're doing exactly what I've been suggesting about most mythicists. Do you not see it?

Suggesting that there have been various errors, both deliberate and otherwise, in the copying and translating of texts thousands of years old into various different languages is not an ad hoc argument. Suggesting that there is evidence that religious people can and do twist/fabricate the facts to support their story is also not an ad hoc argument. Suggesting that a religion started one way and developed into something else before splitting into literally thousands of squabbling factions is also not an ad hoc argument. Where is the ad hoc in what I'm saying?

It sure as hell is ad hoc especially without evidence to back your assertions. And please don't derail to other more general points. Let's stick to what the authentic Pauline Epistles say about Jesus first. Provide evidence that the words I provided are meant to be understood in the fashion you argue for, and not literally.

Christianity is up to 40,000 takes on Christ as it is, might be prudent for all of the Christians to ponder the low odds they are worshiping the correct version of Christ. This thread would be a good place to start actually, clean the slate so to speak. Then they can review the different versions of the Bible, consider all the holes atheists have blown in all of them. Then they can take a good hard look at the 40,000 schisms individually and see if any one of them can overcome all the problems the atheists have noted with the Christ concept.

This is a discussion about a hypothetical situation not proof of the existence. Right?
Okay so I want to try and understand the logic of the responces of the Christians.
With the exception of CL no Christian would EVER doubt the existence and divinity of Christ. Why? Because if they did they would go straight to hell. There is verse in Hebrews. Im not going to look it up but remember listening to a bible study that basicly says that once you take jesus as your savior then renounce him you CANNOT go back.

This is the iron clad way to keep followers since they want to cheat death by having an after life but they dont want to end up in a bad after life. Also since you cannot be sure of an after life it's better to be safe than sorry.

Fear is why they wont even entertain the idea and why you cannot use reason to change them from a religion.

That said using ones imagination that suddenly real proof of nonproof would make this a very dangerous world for a short time.

1/3rd (ish) of the world's population is of the opinion that they could go to heaven because they believe. They have a hope of something beyond death.
Take that away and things might get ugly for a while. They say that we have no reason to be moral so what would happen to them if suddenly their reason was gone?

Once that generation passed however then we as humans would move on and find some other reason or philosophy to hold on to give hope back to go beyond death.

Entire books have been written about the various interpolations which have been written into "paul."  Here, Robert Price reviews one such work

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/r...ations.htm

Quote:We may hope that Walker's lucid and convincing work will hasten the day when most scholars will see that the Pauline Corpus presents a challenge exactly analogous to that of the historical Jesus: to understand the relevant texts, we have to perform diachronic analysis, deconstructing the Pauline tradition as we have learned to do with the Gospel tradition. We need to learn to chart the flow of the history of the Pauline tradition as Bultmann traced that of the Synoptic tradition. Only then will Pauline scholars escape their current entrapment in the mire of debates over "the center of Pauline theology" and drop the futile scholastic quest to harmonize the disparate texts of the Pauline epistles.

And before the xristards start shrieking about Price remember the book he is reviewing was written by one of you fuckers.

Quote:William  O.  Walker, Jr. , Ph.D.
Jennie Farris Railey King Professor Emeritus of Religion
Education
 

B.A. Austin College (1953)
Major in Religion; minors in English and Greek
 
B.D. (changed to M.Div. 1971), The Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (1957)
Concentration in New Testament
 
M.A. The University of Texas (1958)
Major in Classics
 
Ph.D. Duke University (1962)
Major in Religion/Biblical Studies; minor in Ancient Languages and Literatures

(September 7, 2015 at 10:15 am)Irrational Wrote:

(September 7, 2015 at 9:59 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: Suggesting that there have been various errors, both deliberate and otherwise, in the copying and translating of texts thousands of years old into various different languages is not an ad hoc argument. Suggesting that there is evidence that religious people can and do twist/fabricate the facts to support their story is also not an ad hoc argument. Suggesting that a religion started one way and developed into something else before splitting into literally thousands of squabbling factions is also not an ad hoc argument. Where is the ad hoc in what I'm saying?

It sure as hell is ad hoc especially without evidence to back your assertions. And please don't derail to other more general points. Let's stick to what the authentic Pauline Epistles say about Jesus first. Provide evidence that the words I provided are meant to be understood in the fashion you argue for, and not literally.

Those translations are literal. I'm not claiming those passages are metaphorical, I'm claiming they're about a story with different details than the Euhemerized version with all the vaguely historical places and people in it. At no point did I claim Paul was not speaking literally, only that he is understood and translated incorrectly and also probably redacted (intentionally and/or otherwise) to support the Jesus of Nazareth story.