Does Jesus Mythicism give atheism a bad name?

[Pat Mustard]

The fucking bible is not evidence.  Find some evidence that anyone resembling jesus ever walked around and I'll examine it.

Moses. Mohammed.  Zeus. Shiva. And Quetzlcoatl do not get a pass.  Neither does the xtians godboy.

The best evidence is probably the Q document:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source#S...ature_of_Q

And you've put your finger on the problem right there. Our "best evidence" for Jesus is a document which is pure speculation, as there is no actual evidence of its existence.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

The best evidence is probably the Q document:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source#S...ature_of_Q

And you've put your finger on the problem right there. Our "best evidence" for Jesus is a document which is pure speculation, as there is no actual evidence of its existence.

While I agree with your overall assessment (speculation), I don't think that's a fair representation of why they think there was a Q Document.

In genetics, they perform similar comparisons of common inherited elements, in order to draw conclusions about the ancestral population's gene pool. The stuff in the alleged Q Document doesn't describe any of the miracles or divinity found in the Gospels, but is simply a collection of sayings. That's backed up a bit by the description in the book of James (one of the oldest-written) of the Sermon on the Mount, etc., in which a very human rabbi was teaching people how to be kind to one another, preaching an early type of Reform Judaism.

To me, the Q Document is evidence that Jesus was not any sort of god, nor claimed to be, and that the increasing claims of magic and divinity in the Gospels are later add-on layers. However, since we're discussing the possibility that Jesus was a real human (as opposed to entirely made out of whole cloth), I think the similarities that caused scholars to speculate about a Q Document provide some evidence that there really was such a teacher, out of whom the later followers crafted a mythology that we see today. Besides, it's a bit of an Occam's Razor situation: it's a simpler explanation than trying to claim Paul and Peter made up Jesus ex nihilo.

[Aractus]

As very few scholars are Jesus mythicists, does that POV give atheism a bad name?

Yes of course it does, because it displays a clear lack of critical thinking, as well as a lack of appreciation for proper evaluation of historical materials and events (i.e. the peer-review process, and evidence published by experts). Now I did note in another thread that "Expert Opinion" in health is considered to be blow the level of Case Studies (Level IV NHMRC), but if that's all you have then it is still evidence. And when it comes to history and its related disciplines, that's how evidence is evaluated - against expert opinion, scholarly thought, and of course published findings. Because this evidence is really weak, there is usually a large amount of disagreement about any one subject by the experts. So the fact that there are some Mythicits should not at all be unexpected, but the fact there are almost none who are qualified to be called experts (people who are involved in active research and who publish evidence) should clue us into the fact that the position is as weak as supporting something like YEC which also has a small number of "dubious" expert proponents.

Let's put this into another context: the MMR vaccine. There's a small number of experts who think (despite the lack of any published evidence since the 1998 Wakefield paper was retracted) that it can trigger Autism. It's nearly unthinkable to back this position, it is akin to denying the Holocaust or believing in a 6,000 year old Earth. But with that said; the MMR should still be open to criticism without risk of stigmatisation. If you look at the vaccination rates in Australia (or for that matter the USA or some European countries) it has the lowest of all the childhood vaccination rates, and IMHO the best way to fix that is to get rid of it altogether. It's not liked by parents - including those who vaccinate, why not get rid of the damn thing and administer it as two separate vaccines that healthcare consumers are happy with? Why is this not an option: it seems it has the same issue as Jesus Mythicism - sensible discussion around redesigning the distribution methods is tainted by stigmatisation due to the small and insignificant anti-vaccine movement.

[Aractus]

I find there are far too many versions of a historical Jesus to even make it worthy of anything other than dismissal. I find it analogous somewhat to theological non-cognativism/ignostism.

-Hammy

Abraham Lincoln is characterised in several different ways by contemporary writers as well as historians, so is Adolf Hitler. So for that matter are many other historical people. How is your argument even remotely valid, when we have one writing in particular that makes extensive use of one of the teachings of Jesus (the sermon on the mount) before it was even written down in any of the gospels? How did the author (James the Just) come to know about the teachings of the sermon up to 30 years before the Gospel of Mark was published? Where did he learn it from?

The best evidence is probably the Q document:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source#S...ature_of_Q

I disagree, the best evidence is Acts from chapter 13 on, the early writings of Paul, the Epistle of James, and the Gospel according to Mark. Mark's gospel has no resurrection - the cornerstone of today's Christianity, neither does James, or any of Paul's writings. The author of Mark simply believed that Jesus ascended to the celestial realm after death, and that's also what Paul believed. Whereas Matthew, Luke, and John teach that he ascended to the celestial realm in his physical body, then returned to Earth in a Resurrected body and appeared to people (i.e. the 'Resurrection'), and after he was finished doing that he ascended again to the celestial realm.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes..mythicism, YEC, and anti-vaxxing are so similar...you've convinced me, Jesus was really real. That's what most people say, which adds to it's truthiness.

[ignoramus]

If you take out all the woo Jesus did, not even Christians would be interested in the man behind the myth.

[GrandizerII]

If you take out all the woo Jesus did, not even Christians would be interested in the man behind the myth.

Come to think of it, that is generally true.

[Angrboda]

The mythicist position is demonized because it is threatening to their beliefs. It's just a hypothesis, like any other hypothesis about folklore, yet it attracts an intense amount of ire. Why? Because if it's true, then all of Christianity is false. That's enough to give it a bad name, regardless of the merits of the hypothesis. Anti-mythicism is about the politics of religion. It's not about the position itself.

[vorlon13]

By spawning a movement that schismed 78,000+ times, Jesus gave Christianity a bad name.

'Atheism' isn't indicted by its then asking WTF.

[Minimalist]

Because he wrote his own...for a different audience.  A Greco-Roman audience who didn't give a flying fuck about Herod or Moses but who might relate to real Roman figures like Augustus and Sulpicius Quirinius.

The most important thing you can do to begin to understand this shit is to utterly dismiss the fiction that the church has put out.

Then why didn't he do that with the rest of what he supposedly copied from "Matthew" and made such copied content appeal more to the Greco-Roman audience?

There are several other obvious incidents where he did exactly that.  As for why?  If you can figure out who he was, why don't you ask him?  Good luck with that.

P.S. - "Luke" first appears as Marcion's "Gospel of the Lord,"   c 140 AD if Tertullian and Irenaeus can be trusted ( big if there.)  The earliest extant fragment we have of "Luke" dates to the late 2d/early 3d century (175-225).  The church mucky-mucks claimed that Marcion "edited" an existing version of Luke but there is no evidence that there was a version of "Luke" prior to Marcion and, let's face it, the church fathers were generally full of shit.

My guess is that while they thought Marcion had to go they liked the idea he came up with of a written "canon" and edited his to make it conform to the particular bullshit story they were putting out at the time....which includes the alleged epistles of fucking 'paul.'