Kirbytime wrote:It's been 11 pages of posts and I have yet to see any detailed critique of what I originally posted.
Really? So what was my 2000 word post here then, if not a detailed critique of Doherty's thesis?
Ultimately, I think it comes down to what you're willing to believe.
For some, maybe. For objective rationalists it comes down to which analysis explains the evidence most parsimoniously and which requires a whole cluster of "maybes", "perhapses" and other suppositions. The Myther thesis doesn't stand up to Occam's Razor because it rests on a mass of suppositions.
A lot of problems seem to occur as a result of people accusing each other of bias, ex "of course hardcore atheists are going to look at the evidence and conclude that Jesus doesn't exist, baw baw"
I'm a "hardcore atheist". And there are any number of others who are atheists, Jews and other non-Christians on the historicist side. What "bias" do we have? The biases of the Myther side, on the other hand, are plain to see.
My biggest contention is how can you be so sure either way?
"So sure"? Who is "so sure"? Like any subject in ancient history where our evidence is not completely clear, my position on this is not "sure", just a provisional assessment of what the evidence seems to indicate.
I think that was Richard Carrier's conclusion in that article.
I think you'll find that Carrier is now rather more "sure". Unsurprisingly for an anti-Christian polemicist, he's now much more "sure" Jesus didn't exist. What a shock.
The very fact that the Jesus myth concept is so heavily scorned obviously shows the problems that many historicists face today in the sense of going against conventional history.
Or it shows that it's a weak and contrived theory that busy academics don't bother to waste their time taking seriously.
The fact is, the evidence in favor of the existence of Jesus is not overwhelming,
No, just sufficient for the idea that he existed to be generally accepted, since the arguments against that evidence are weak, flawed and contrived.
and for anyone to denigrate someone who disbelieves in the existence of Jesus is simply being dishonest and closed-minded.
So if we "denigrate" a flawed, fringe theory we're being "close minded"? Is this some kind of New Ager forum all of a sudden?
Believing in the non-existence of Jesus should be on par with believing, say, what the exact numbers were in the battle of Thermopylae.
Pardon?
Anyone who thinks that there is actually enough evidence to make it fall one way or the other decisively, is a fundamentalist.
Find me someone here who says the evidence can be made to fall one way or another "decisively". I can't see anyone saying anything so absurd. "Sufficiently", however, is another matter ...