(February 5, 2016 at 11:00 am)robvalue Wrote: I'd much prefer "I don't know" or "the evidence is inconclusive" to a conclusion I was not even 25% confident in. I think it's misleading to say there was a HJ based on hypotheticals that aren't properly supported by evidence. Of course there were people that it definitely could have been based on, the problem is identifying a single one from the crowd.
Once the explanation is more like 60-75% likely based on evidence, then it's worth putting forward, in my estimation.
I'll stop wittering on about this. Clearly some people are impressed by the evidence, and some are not. It doesn't really matter, at the end of the day. It would only actually matter to is Christians, and they don't give two hoots about evidence anyway.
Ultimately, Rob, you have to grab jesus freaks by the lapels and ask them if they think there was a "historical" Osiris, or Odin, or Marduk, or Shiva, or whatever fucking god you want to name. That's where the special pleading is most obvious. They really do think that their boy was "different." They can't deal with the fact that if every other religion was a simple invention of the human imagination that their own might be the same.
