DEBUNKING THE CONSPIRACY THEORY

[Randy Carson]

Esq-

I'll give you this: you appear to be among the brighter members of the forum. So, you may have the ability to actually study the source material that occupies professional historians and to read their analysis of it.

So, why not use your obvious intellectual prowess to explain to everyone here why several thousand PhD's around the globe - each of whom having spent decades of their lives studying ancient languages, travelling to foreign countries, pouring over ancients parchments, scrolls and papyrii, etc - are simply WRONG in their professional judgment that Jesus was a real person and that the five minimal facts that emerge from their studies are valid?

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the existence of a historical Jesus is largely irrelevant to the claims made about him. Existence is a necessary, but not sufficient quality of Jesus-the-messiah, and given that other necessary qualities of the same narrative have not been provided (such as the sheer possibility of the supernatural) it's really little more than one small step. As such, I'm willing to take Jesus-the-man as read for the sake of argument, though I don't accept that this and the five facts you've listed can be used as evidence of the resurrection, and the reasons why are going to be the subject of a blog post once I've gotten that up and running.

I'm happy to hear that you are not a mythicist, and this is in keeping with my opinion that you are a cut above much of the crowd here. When your blog is up, I'll be happy to check it out. One bit of advice...explain your position in small chunks...you don't want to fall victim to the dreaded TL;DR syndrome.

What I don't like, though, are arguments like this one, where you attempt to rebut a position without input from the people that hold it, using talking points that may or may not actually be things that they hold to be true, without any assurances that even if they are accurate reflections of the position, that they represent the totality of that position. Apologists do this a lot, speaking for their opponents and, just coincidentally I'm sure, concluding that their arguments fall flat; in your case, your OP is so deep in your echo chamber that I can't possibly trust your conclusion that therefore, the conspiracy theory isn't viable. How could I look at an argument that consists solely of a representation of the position being refuted, from the perspective of a man who disagrees with it?

The OP is based upon the work of J. Warner Wallace, a cold-case detective with a 20+ & 0 record solving murders that no one else managed to solve. You may have seen him on television...he's been on NBC's Dateline many times after solving various cases.

Wallace WAS an atheist (his father still is, btw), and he decided to apply his skills as a detective to the evidence of an ancient death. Guess what? He was convinced by the evidence that Christianity is true.

Wallace is ANOTHER example of someone who was NOT raised in a believing household being convinced by the FACTS and apologetics arguments.

So, is Wallace speaking FOR his opponents unfairly when he lays out the five factors that he uses to this very day when dealing with conspiracies? Not only is his approach to breaking conspiracies valid, but the arguments for atheism that he challenges WERE his own at one time.

Alternatively, if you do concede that the five minimal facts cannot be denied, then would you care to propose your own theory which takes into consideration and accounts for all five of these facts with greater probability and explanatory scope than the Christian argument for a supernatural resurrection?

Because so far, I don't see that you actually have any real explanation...just a lot of empty denials.

First of all, this "you all haven't given any alternative solutions," refrain of yours is completely irrelevant, because if you're asserting that therefore your solution is correct then you're committing an argument from ignorance fallacy. Don't be that guy.

I'm not. I'm open to hearing any explanations you may have to offer. I think there are only half a dozen or so REASONABLE alternatives (I may cover them all one thread at a time), and Habermas says he has identified 14 alternative theories.

But it is reasonable for me to ask what your working hypothesis is and to examine (with you?) whether it is better than the Christian theory. Don't you agree?

I've got to head off to work, so I'll get back to the balance of your thread later.

I do appreciate that you have taken some time to address the OP rather than simply posting silly, thoughtless one-liners commonly seen from other forum members.