Where did the Jesus myth come from?

[Lion IRC]

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Jesus mythers and holocaust deniers and fake moon landing folk are interesting and quaint.

None of which are wrong because they disagree with majority opinion! They would be wrong because of bad arguments, bad evidence and bad interpretation. It's a very basic logical fallacy that isn't hard to understand that you two are gleefully committing here. If greater than 50 percent of scholars are agree on x, it does not follow at all that they are right about x!

Whats the point of having peer review if it doesnt matter how many of your peers agree with your findings?
There's no logical fallacy in observing that most scholars agree.
There's no logical fallacy in using statisics to demonstrate that smoking is almost certainly harmful to your unborn baby.

Imagine someone telling media executives that television ratings statistics were a logical fallacy in deciding when to book an advertisement.

In fact, if 99% of experts on a given subject agreed, then ignoring that fact would make YOU the person acting illogically for rejecting their expertise.

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

None of which are wrong because they disagree with majority opinion! They would be wrong because of bad arguments, bad evidence and bad interpretation. It's a very basic logical fallacy that isn't hard to understand that you two are gleefully committing here. If greater than 50 percent of scholars are agree on x, it does not follow at all that they are right about x!

Whats the point of having peer review if it doesnt matter how many of your peers agree with your findings?
There's no logical fallacy in observing that most scholars agree.
There's no logical fallacy in using statisics to demonstrate that smoking is almost certainly harmful to your unborn baby.

Imagine someone telling media executives that television ratings statistics were a logical fallacy in deciding when to book an advertisement.

False analogy. Statistics such as smoking statistics are empirical findings. They're not opinions.

Television ratings aren't used to determine whether a show is truly "good" but whether show is getting enough viewers to make profit.

Peer review is great. It helps keep bad research out of journals but that by itself does not mean the research and its conclusions is correct. You can read many widely respected peer-reviewed journals (which I do every week but in a different historical field) and find articles say a decade or two ago that passed peer review but were ultimately wrong. Or maybe their findings were good but their conclusions were bad.

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In fact, if 99% of experts on a given subject agreed, then ignoring that fact would make YOU the person acting illogically for rejecting their expertise.

I don't ignore consensus. More often than not, in rigorous fields, large consensus do seem to be right. But ultimately the reason I may side with a consensus is not because the consensus is a consensus but because they make much better arguments than the minority. However, in a field I'm not trained in rare cases I'll side with the minority if (1) minority is made up of scholars who are trained in those fields, and (2) if the minority makes better arguments than the majority.

[DeistPaladin]

There's no logical fallacy in observing that most scholars agree.

The fallacy is when a resume is used to substitute for evidence.

"Shut up, I'm the expert and I say so" is not a valid reason to believe something. Even experts are required to provide evidence for what they believe.

I don't believe in evolution because Dawkins says so. I believe it because of the mountain of evidence.

Clear?

[Lion IRC]

Whats the point of having peer review if it doesnt matter how many of your peers agree with your findings?
There's no logical fallacy in observing that most scholars agree.
There's no logical fallacy in using statisics to demonstrate that smoking is almost certainly harmful to your unborn baby.

Imagine someone telling media executives that television ratings statistics were a logical fallacy in deciding when to book an advertisement.

False analogy. Statistics such as smoking statistics are empirical findings. They're not opinions....

It is not a false analogy. Epidemiology is the analysis of such statistics. They are most certainly opinions. Even well-informed, professional, expert opinions are nonetheless - opinions.

...Television ratings aren't used to determine whether a show is truly "good" but whether show is getting enough viewers to make profit.

Yes they are. Thats exactly what they are used for.
Ratings = profit = good.
Poor ratings = less profit (no advertiser demand) = bad.
Good ratings confer a Darwinian survival advantage. That's how you determine what a good show is.

...Peer review is great. It helps keep bad research out of journals but that by itself does not mean the research and its conclusions is correct.

Hang on. A few seconds ago you said ..."False analogy. Statistics such as smoking statistics are empirical findings. They're not opinions...."

Smoking statistics ARE the result of research. Epidemiology seeks tentative expert conclusions. Expert peers can form a consensus and there is no logical fallacy in appealing to majority expert consensus.

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In fact, if 99% of experts on a given subject agreed, then ignoring that fact would make YOU the person acting illogically for rejecting their expertise.

...But ultimately the reason I may side with a consensus is not because the consensus is a consensus but because they make much better arguments than the minority....

Thats exactly what Atom was doing in relation to the majority of bible scholars including Mr Ehrman.

[Cyberman]

With regard to TV ratings, I don't know how it works in America but here in England-land we have - or at least had, if we still don't - two methods for judging a programme's success. There's the ratings (which we called "viewing figures"), of course, which tells the people concerned how many people were tuning in. Then there's the Audience Appreciation figures, which gives the percentage of those viewers who actually enjoyed the programme. So a programme might attract, say, two million viewers but maybe only 20% of those viewers thought it was any good. Back in the seventies and early-to-mid-eighties, the pre-digital age, a programme was considered a failure if it attracted less than about five million viewers. Doctor Who - proper Doctor Who - regularly had figures of between eight and twenty million viewers; viewing figures undreamed of nowadays.

How this relates to the topic at hand I have no idea, I just thought I'd throw it out there.

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

False analogy. Statistics such as smoking statistics are empirical findings. They're not opinions....

It is not a false analogy. Epidemiology is the analysis of such statistics. They are most certainly opinions. Even well-informed, professional, expert opinions are nonetheless - opinions.

I misread what you wrote. I thought you were saying that the raw data collected on smoking is equivalent to a collection of opinions of scholars in the field of historical investigation.

There's no fallacy in using such statistics in that way if it's agreed that the findings, research, and conclusion are reliable. It would be fallacious though to say that smoking is bad for the fetus because researches said so. That's again an appeal to authority or majority. And it would be equally fallacious to counter somebody who is arguing that smoking isn't bad for the fetus with the argument that "well, that's not majority thinks therefore you're wrong."

...Television ratings aren't used to determine whether a show is truly "good" but whether show is getting enough viewers to make profit.

Yes they are. Thats exactly what they are used for.
Ratings = profit = good.
Poor ratings = less profit (no advertiser demand) = bad.
Good ratings confer a Darwinian survival advantage. That's how you determine what a good show is.

You're equivocating. You're using "good" in an situation where it means "makes more money" and then concluding that this means that the show is "good" in the sense that it fulfills artistic values.

...Peer review is great. It helps keep bad research out of journals but that by itself does not mean the research and its conclusions is correct.

Hang on. A few seconds ago you said ..."False analogy. Statistics such as smoking statistics are empirical findings. They're not opinions...."

Smoking statistics ARE the result of research. Epidemiology seeks tentative expert conclusions. Expert peers can form a consensus and there is no logical fallacy in appealing to majority expert consensus.

The research and/or conclusions from the research could possibly be flawed and the consensus may not have realized yet. They're not infallible. So you can still can't say "x is true" because "90 percent of scholars agree."

...But ultimately the reason I may side with a consensus is not because the consensus is a consensus but because they make much better arguments than the minority....

Thats exactly what Atom was doing in relation to the majority of bible scholars including Mr Ehrman.

Yeah, and then he started using appeal to consensus and authority.

[Minimalist]

Jesus mythers and holocaust deniers and fake moon landing folk.

One of these things is not like the others.

Yeah, but Lyin' IRC is like all the rest of them!

[Atom]

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Jesus mythers and holocaust deniers and fake moon landing folk are interesting and quaint.

None of which are wrong because they disagree with majority opinion! They would be wrong because of bad arguments, bad evidence and bad interpretation. It's a very basic logical fallacy that isn't hard to understand that you two are gleefully committing here. If greater than 50 percent of scholars are agree on x, it does not follow at all that they are right about x!

Appealing to the majority opinion is a fallacy from the perspective of a philosophical proof. I didn't claim to be offering a proof, that would be impossible. I'm offered the testimony of a known hostile expert witness. Here is another:

“That he [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”
- Skeptical scholar John Dominic Crossan, “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography” pg.145; to read, type in "crucified" in search box at http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/00606166...0060616628

I haven't heard any argument against the proposition I offered: Jesus was a real person. It is definitely a fallacy to argue that a majority opinion is wrong on the basis that it is a majority opinion. Two names were dropped as supposedly having opposition opinions, but I've heard no rebuttal and minority opinions are available to argue just about anything about Jesus a person could want believe.

Here are some extra biblical references by ancient non-christian historians and the locations where you can read what they said about Jesus:

Josephus, Jewish Historian Antiquities 18, chapter 3 http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-18.htm

Tacitus, Roman Historian Annals 15.44 http://www.chieftainsys.freeserve.co.uk/...nals15.htm

Lucian of Samsota, Greek Satirist The Works of Lucian, Vol. IV "The Death of Peregrin" http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/wl4/wl420.htm (scroll down to 11)

Mara Bar-Serapion, Syrian prisoner A Letter of Mara, Son of Serapion (scroll down to just after footnote 19) http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/mara.html

[Cyberman]

Oh this is going to be so painful...

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

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I haven't heard any argument against the proposition I offered: Jesus was a real person. It is definitely a fallacy to argue that a majority opinion is wrong on the basis that it is a majority opinion. Two names were dropped as supposedly having opposition opinions, but I've heard no rebuttal and minority opinions are available to argue just about anything about Jesus a person could want believe.

Here are some extra biblical references by ancient non-christian historians and the locations where you can read what they said about Jesus:

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I never argued that a majority opinion is wrong because it's a majority.

The two names were Richard Carrier, and Robert M. Price. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Price

Richard Carrier has lengthy review of Erhman's book on Jesus: http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1026/

Robert M. Price has many books written such as The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man or The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems.

You can find their articles on infidels.org

The quotes you listed post-date the life time of Christ. The first two can be shown to be partial or full interpolations.

Others here can argue better than I can for mythicism. I'm just in this thread to combat fallacies and clear up misrepresentations of the position.