On "Scholarly Consensus"

[max-greece]

This thread is getting too confused.

The fact that Santorini exploded is well researched and documented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption) with research continuing to this day.

No-one is arguing that, for example, this caused the Red Sea to dry up at exactly the time Moses and the Israelites were crossing the thing.

It is possible, however, that the Red Sea did empty and that this was observed. That event was then later combined into the miraculous story of Moses and the Israelites fleeing Pharoah's army the latter getting drowned as the sea returned.

In a similar manner all sorts of other strange events may have been observed that might relate to the stories, later created. So it may well have rained frogs, somewhere, for example.

This does not mean that a single eruption was responsible for all the miracles described in the Bible. I am sure plagues of locusts occur from time to time without volcanic assistance. There may have been another cause for water to turn red and blood-like - or it may have been the volcano. Note again: Not so as to appear as a plague at just the right time - to be later incorporated into that story.

There are many examples of natural phenomena that occurred during human existence that probably did get picked up into legend.

The formation of the Black sea (from its origins as a fresh water lake http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Black_Sea) may have spawned all the flood myths, including Noah's.

[Faith No More]

FALSE. The bible documents the oral history evidence for Abraham and Terah. If you dont like the oral tradition or oral history as evidence/testimony bad luck. The bible documents oral history.

An appeal to oral history is as fallacious as "he told me so."

I never ceased to be amazed by a religion that is constantly denigrating humanity but consistently appeals to its ability to keep a story straight for thousands of years.

[Minimalist]

Someone seems flustered.

Flustered? By a fucking moron who believes in fairy tales?

Grow up, asshole. The only ones still clinging to the stupidity of the OT are the extreme nut fundies who really think there was an Adam and Eve and shit like that. Real archaeologists already know better.

In the last quarter century or so, archaeologists have seen one settled assumption after another concerning who the ancient Israelites were and where they came from proved false. Rather than a band of invaders who fought their way into the Holy Land, the Israelites are now thought to have been an 'indigenous culture that developed west of the Jordan River around 1200 B.C. Abraham, Isaac, and the other patriarchs appear to have been spliced together out of various pieces of local lore.

http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth/false_testament

While bible-thumping fools prattle on about "Abraham" and other silly shit, real archaeology is moving the front lines of the battle down to the Persian period.

You may as well worship Zeus. It is just as real.

[gall]

FALSE. The bible documents the oral history evidence for Abraham and Terah. If you dont like the oral tradition or oral history as evidence/testimony bad luck. The bible documents oral history.

An appeal to oral history is as fallacious as "he told me so."

I never ceased to be amazed by a religion that is constantly denigrating humanity but consistently appeals to its ability to keep a story straight for thousands of years.

Humans cannot even keep a story straight across a phone call or a room LOLOLOLOLOL

[Minimalist]

Cue "special pleading" in 5...4...3...2...1


"Oh, but the bible is DIFFERENT!"

You are dealing with a total asswipe, Gall.

[Lemonvariable72]

...There is neither evidence for any Abraham..

FALSE. The bible documents the oral history evidence for Abraham and Terah. If you dont like the oral tradition or oral history as evidence/testimony bad luck. The bible documents oral history.

...nor for any monotheistic god whatsoever before 13th century BC.

FALSE. The monotheistic concept of a Sky God predates pagan polytheism. (See Karen Armstrongs book - A History of God.)
You need one first single primitive notion of a divine being before you can go on to develop ideas of there perhaps being MORE THAN ONE.

Monotheism is perhaps best summed up by the first half of the Muslim profession of faith: "There is no god but God." Simply put, monotheism is the belief that there is one and only one Supreme Being in the universe; typically, such a belief entails the worship of this God. Many people regard the Abrahamic tradition, which gave rise to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as the first notable instance of monotheism in human history. It is true that Judaism is probably the oldest monotheistic religion that still has a significant number of followers today. However, history tells us of a monotheistic revolution in Egypt that probably predates the authorship of Jewish holy scriptures and definitely predates the unified Kingdom of Israel (circa 1000 B.C.), which allowed Judaism to cultivate its teachings and dogma.

This Egyptian monotheistic revolution arrived under the 18th-dyansty pharaoh named Akhnaton, also known as Amenhotep IV, and his wife, Nefertiti, also known as Nefreteti or Nofretete. Akhnaton and Nefertiti ruled during the 14th century B.C. Nefertiti is well-known to modern scholars because an intriguing, beautiful and well-preserved limestone bust of her was uncovered at Tell el Amarna in 1913. The bust is now part of the Berlin Museum's collection. Yet despite her famous visage, little is known about Nefertiti. One of the most salient facts about her existence is that Nefertiti and her husband promoted a monotheistic belief in an Egyptian god known as Aton.

Aton, or Aten, was a sun god of the Egyptian pantheon, usually depicted in artistic renderings as a solar disc reaching out toward the earth and its inhabitants with many-fingered rays of light. Though the Egyptian religion had traditionally been polytheistic, during his reign, Akhnaton promoted Aton to the lofty position of humankind's only god. According to the pharaoh, Aton was not only the most exalted god among many -- he was the only god that was to be worshipped. Thus, Atonism was one of the first truly monotheistic religions. Akhnaton attempted to impose Atonism on his subjects by using state power to forbid all other forms of worship. However, after Akhnaton's death, Atonism was gradually abandoned by the Egyptian people and mostly forgotten.

http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/atonism-article
That predates the earliest mention of abraham by atleast 1000 years

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Cue "special pleading" in 5...4...3...2...1


"Oh, but the bible is DIFFERENT!"

You are dealing with a total asswipe, Gall.

You remind me of listening to bertrand russels 1927 broadcast of why I am not a christian. Nearly a hundred years old and Christian arguments had hardly changed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdDYvvevLZk
Well worth watching.

[Minimalist]

They don't do "change" very well.

[Statler Waldorf]

On the one hand, "appeal to authority" is a recognized logical fallacy and for good reason. Even experts are required to provide reasons for what they believe and why.

This is actually a common misconception. An appeal to authority is only fallacious if the authority is not an appropriate authority on the subject matter, is an outlier, or is unreasonably biased. Ehrman is therefore an appropriate authority to appeal to.

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We must often rely upon expert opinion when drawing conclusions about technical matters where we lack the time or expertise to form an informed opinion. For instance, those of us who are not physicians usually rely upon those who are when making medical decisions, and we are not wrong to do so. There are, however, four major ways in which such arguments can go wrong:

1.An appeal to authority may be inappropriate in a couple of ways:
◦It is unnecessary. If a question can be answered by observation or calculation, an argument from authority is not needed. Since arguments from authority are weaker than more direct evidence, go look or figure it out for yourself.
…
2.The "authority" cited is not an expert on the issue, that is, the person who supplies the opinion is not an expert at all, or is one, but in an unrelated area. The now-classic example is the old television commercial which began: "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV...." The actor then proceeded to recommend a brand of medicine.
3.The authority is an expert, but is not disinterested. That is, the expert is biased towards one side of the issue, and his opinion is thereby untrustworthy.
….
4.While the authority is an expert, his opinion is unrepresentative of expert opinion on the subject. The fact is that if one looks hard enough, it is possible to find an expert who supports virtually any position that one wishes to take. "Such is human perversity", to quote Lewis Carroll. This is a great boon for debaters, who can easily find expert opinion on their side of a question, whatever that side is, but it is confusing for those of us listening to debates and trying to form an opinion. [Examples removed by SW to reduce length of quote]

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-http://www.fallacyfiles.org

Generally, when there is a consensus, I tend to accept it unless I find reasons to have doubts.

Except when it comes to the existence of Jesus, then you simply have doubts for no good reason.

Instead he offered, "I can prove it to you, and then I can prove it again, and then I can prove it some more."

I wonder how he did that when science doesn’t deal with proof.

By contrast, when I first started studying Christianity and reading the Bible, I wondered what the "real story" was. I was expecting to find, as most people would expect, that Jesus was a regular religious leader who was deified by his followers after his death

So you began with the assumption that Jesus was not who he claimed to be. Figured as much.

When I did my digging, I found surprisingly little for a man who had led such a large, popular and revolutionary ministry.

Little in comparison to what?

Given the controversy he generated, I was expecting commentary by historians who lived in that century with some details about the ministry from a 3rd party perspective.

Why would you expect that? Historians did not expect that. What first century historians are you even referring to?

I'd heard Philo commented on him but found nothing. The scraps, even those cited by apologists, were late (post 1st century) and oblique. Tacitus is the strongest evidence that there was any man behind the legends at all and his 2nd century reference is so oblique that it doesn't even mention Jesus by name.

In order to discredit Tacitus you’d have to prove there were other supposed Messiah’s sentenced to death by Pontius Pilot whose followers were known as Christians and who were blamed for the fire in Rome by Nero. Tacitus’ mention of Jesus is exactly what I would expect from a Roman historian.

Then I ran across the Jesus myth hypothesis. Intrigued, I started asking questions and found that, when confronted, scholars can't offer much reason for believing in some historical core aside from the assumption that there must be some man behind the legends.

Which historians?

So yes, scholarly consensus does mean something to me but whenever questioned, even scholars need to provide rational reasons why they believe what they do.

And they have.

I am going to read Ehrman's Book, "Did Jesus Exist". Who knows, I may be convinced but I'll need to read more than "the Bible says..."

Why? Do you reject what Roman historians say about ancient Rome? More special pleading.

[Doubting Thomas]

And yet, Tacitus tells us that during Tiberius' reign all was quiet in Judaea.

Both stories cannot be true.

Ah, I was not aware. I'll have to look that up sometime. Everything I'd heard up until now was that Pilate ran things with an iron fist and crucified many Jewish leaders.

Or perhaps the reason all was quiet is everyone was scared shitless?

Or maybe they were all afraid of the Judean People's Front.

[max-greece]

Ah, I was not aware. I'll have to look that up sometime. Everything I'd heard up until now was that Pilate ran things with an iron fist and crucified many Jewish leaders.

Or perhaps the reason all was quiet is everyone was scared shitless?

Or maybe they were all afraid of the Judean People's Front.

Are you the Popular front of Judea?

Fuck off - we are the Judean People's Front - he's the popular front of Judea - SPLITTER!

LoB - best movie ever made.