How to tell a real freethinker

[radorth]

Well, for one thing, there's nothing terribly compelling about Durant's objections here; it doesn't matter how compelling the Jesus personality is, or how glitteringly bright his ethics (some argument there from me, both to the actual ethical nature of Jesus' teachings and their originality besides) nor the supposed flaws that any inventor would have kept from their fiction. Why would any of that matter? Why would any of that testify to the reality of the man, let alone his divinity? Fictional characters can be compelling and ethical too, even if they've got some negative traits or events in their stories. This is merely an appeal to emotion, a desperate attempt to conflate happy feelings with evidence and facts.

Not at all. It's an appeal to simple reason which juries use in fact finding all the time. In fact it is essential that they use the same logic to arrive at a just verdict.

Besides, even if it were all true, everything Durant says about the history of Jesus and his wonderful ethics and personality, that doesn't say one damn jot about his divinity, which is the only part of this worth talking about.

Sorry, this fallacious argument has a name: "Moving the goal posts."

Also, you're misunderstanding me anyway; when I say things in the bible are demonstrably wrong, I'm talking about a whole host of other things that the bible claims,

Do those include a contiuous rejection of God's commands, his prophets, his Son and his Son's teachings by all but a few people?

not to mention and yet are contradicted by scads of real world, scientifically verifiable evidence: there was no great flood, the earth was not formed in six days, nor where all the animals therein created in their current forms. The earth and the universe it inhabits are far older than the bible would indicate, and there's a good possibility that we are not the only life in the universe. A supposedly inerrant and divinely inspired book should not have so many errors, yes?

That is a major logical error too, called "False in one part, therefore false in all." If half of one single book is true, your faulty "logic" would never permit you to know which part is true. May you never sit on a jury either.