IgnorantiaNescia wrote:

Corky wrote:It just might be that there are more answers to MJ and HJ than there are questions, for example:

Mark 11:
28 "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked. "And who gave you authority to do this?"
29 Jesus replied, "I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 30 John's baptism—was it from heaven, or from men? Tell me!"
31 They discussed it among themselves and said, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will ask, 'Then why didn't you believe him?' 32But if we say, 'From men'...." (They feared the people, for everyone held that John really was a prophet.)

Jesus only gives them two choices when there might be a third. They could have said that they didn't believe John had any authority instead of the lame answer they did give, that they couldn't tell. And, It would have been the correct answer. But then, they were stupid and Jesus was smarrrrrt.

What do you think "getting authority from men" means for a prophet, somebody supposed to speak for God?

Ehrman’s Dubious Replies (Round One)

April 27, 2012 at 2:28 pm Richard Carrier

Bart Ehrman has finally composed an extensive response to my critical review of his book. But before that came out, he composed two briefer responses, one to my review of his Huffington Post article and another to my subsequent review of his book. He also briefly punted to another blogger, R.J. Hoffman. In this post I’ll address those latter items. Next I’ll reply to the longer piece...

The strangest thing about those latter items is not the alarming-enough fact that they ignore nearly every substantive point in what they are responding to, and focus each on only a single issue, and that one of the least importance (the Hoffman piece likewise doesn’t address anything I actually said). That is strange. But stranger still is that they do not look entirely honest to me. But I’ll just present the evidence and you can decide.

...

Ehrman does appear to want to hide the substantive errors and mistakes and fallacies I document, and one strategy he uses to do that is to deflect it all by reframing the debate as being about personal attacks and my being mean to him (when he was so nice to me). This of course has nothing to do with what really matters and just serves the purpose of trying to convince people that all my substantive points about his scholarship are really just personal attacks...

As Dan Finke (Camels with Hammers) observes in “Ehrman Evades Carrier’s Criticisms,” “Ehrman is misrepresenting Carrier’s criticisms as merely personal in nature,” when in fact they were all professional in nature. I pointed out failures of wording, failures of fact, and failures of logic, and showed why these all entail his book cannot be trusted, that his research and writing of it was sloppy and careless, that it fails at its every professed aim, and that he (professionally) doesn’t know what he’s doing here–ironically, considering how much hay he tries to make over the point that the rest of us can’t know what we’re doing because we have the wrong degrees...

...

In “Richard Carrier on The Huffington Post Article (1)” (I can no longer find an active link) Ehrman accuses me of being outraged by his daring to defend historicity, which is silly (it’s not like I was surprised he was going to, or that I haven’t read such defenses before from scholars no less prestigious; to the contrary I was, as I said, happily anticipating a really good defense of historicity). This I suppose cures his cognitive dissonance by allowing him to pretend I wasn’t outraged by what I actually said I was outraged by, which was his factual errors and gross misstatements, and how these ensure his article can only seriously misinform the public, the one thing a scholar should aim never to do and should care most about correcting. That he won’t even own up to his errors says more than my article did about our ability to trust him on this issue.

...

<full article at the link below>

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1117

Byron wrote:
Nowhere does he say, "JM is morally equivalent to Holocaust denial." He uses Holocaust denial as one among several examples of conspira-woo: which it is. I'd leave the Holocaust example out for precisely the reason we're seeing: it's read as drawing moral equivalence. But I don't disagree with Ehrman's point, and you don't get what you want from what he said. So business as usual.

archibald wrote:I mean what is the point of coming on a discussion forum and not seeing that both sides have plusses and minuses?

spin wrote:I tell yall, this book and its crappings on are just sooooo boring. Even Ehrman knows that. He tells yall that he's not covering new ground and that's certainly true. All the howlers come out of the woodwork and just bitch, bitch, bitch,... bitch forward, bitch back, and on and on. It's soooo boring.

dogsgod wrote:Yes, it is boring, circular reasoning is boring, reading out of context that Paul met the brother of Jesus is boring, denying mythology is boring, so what can we expect from an author that assumes his conclusions?

dogsgod wrote:

spin wrote:I tell yall, this book and its crappings on are just sooooo boring. Even Ehrman knows that. He tells yall that he's not covering new ground and that's certainly true. All the howlers come out of the woodwork and just bitch, bitch, bitch,... bitch forward, bitch back, and on and on. It's soooo boring.

But it's no wonder, Ehrman made the mistake of lowering himself to the level of comparing holocaust denial which is so incredibly senseless and something which one would have only expected to come across on the internet. I don't know if "holocaust denial" is in the book but he does use that to promote his book.

The funny thing is is that a dying and rising Son of God to redeem mankind is of a purely mythological and theological basis, so to try and discount a mythical Christ and story is pointless, it's there, it can't be ignored and it won't go away no matter how much the likes of Ehrman tries to discount a mythical Christ. If an historical Jesus of Nazareth existed and was the founder of Christianity and the religion spread by the result of his direct followers in spite of how the gospels came about, then those that claim certainty for that must prove that on its own merits and come to grips with the fact that that idea is shrouded in mythology and difficult to extract, that theological scholars can not agree from the information that we have on who and what he was proves that. Denying Christianity's mythlogy is to deny that people create mythical gods and mythological stories. Ehrman is so confidant that a certain Jesus was the founding father at the heart of Christianity yet calls himself an agnostic as it pertains to the topic, a contradiction in itself, so it is no wonder that the bullshit meter is running high and the howlers are crying foul. Yes, it is boring, circular reasoning is boring, reading out of context that Paul met the brother of Jesus is boring, denying mythology is boring, so what can we expect from an author that assumes his conclusions? Intelligent debate? I don't think so. The third quest for an historical Jesus by Christian theologians pretending to be historians is failing fast, all that is left is the bitching.

I have declared myself a mythicist (maybe not in those exact words, but clearly enough), so he is right to assume that. The error is not that, but in conflating me with all other mythicists (as if I, like them, didn’t take seriously a respect for sound methods and careful attention to documentable facts), or projecting his irrational certainty onto me. I am not certain I am correct. I think there is a realistic possibility some actual Jesus existed, I just consider it improbable on present evidence (which is enough to make me a mythicist; I’m just not “absolutely certain” the way McGrath and Ehrman seem to be).

proudfootz wrote:
Ehrman's pretty thick if...

archibald wrote:

Byron wrote:
Nowhere does he say, "JM is morally equivalent to Holocaust denial." He uses Holocaust denial as one among several examples of conspira-woo: which it is. I'd leave the Holocaust example out for precisely the reason we're seeing: it's read as drawing moral equivalence. But I don't disagree with Ehrman's point, and you don't get what you want from what he said. So business as usual.

One of the lamest and most embarrassing pieces of apologetics I think I've ever seen. Seriously, catch yourself on Byron, you're better than that. I hope. Can't you just admit it was a dubious and inaccurate comparison, and just let it go? Do you see anyone else in here apologizing for it? Do you have to pretty much defend Ehrman nearly all the time and criticize Carrier nearly all the time (and stay silent on equally questionable tactics from Hoffman into the bargain)? I mean what is the point of coming on a discussion forum and not seeing that both sides have plusses and minuses? You might as well just sit at home in bed rubbing photos of your favourite scholars against yourself.

Now, what about these other comparitive figures about whom it is inconsistent to accept historicity?

Byron wrote:
Sorry, did you somehow show that I was wrong?

Cito di Pense wrote:

Byron wrote:
Sorry, did you somehow show that I was wrong?

What would be the point of 'showing' that you were wrong? You'd ignore it. You never say what it would take to show you that you're wrong. It's all for 'show'. Such is bible scholarship. Not falsifiable. Falsifiable is not in the cards, and that is quite what you love about bible scholarship.

The spoons. The spoons. What do they show? Inventing your own criteria is not a way to admit falsifiability.

Corky wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Byron wrote:
Sorry, did you somehow show that I was wrong?

What would be the point of 'showing' that you were wrong? You'd ignore it. You never say what it would take to show you that you're wrong. It's all for 'show'. Such is bible scholarship. Not falsifiable. Falsifiable is not in the cards, and that is quite what you love about bible scholarship.

The spoons. The spoons. What do they show? Inventing your own criteria is not a way to admit falsifiability.

You know... that is the wonderful thing about biblical scholarship - not falsifiable. Then you add to that people who repeat hearsay from "not falsifiable" sources and suddenly you have historic Jesus.

proudfootz wrote:

Corky wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Byron wrote:
Sorry, did you somehow show that I was wrong?

What would be the point of 'showing' that you were wrong? You'd ignore it. You never say what it would take to show you that you're wrong. It's all for 'show'. Such is bible scholarship. Not falsifiable. Falsifiable is not in the cards, and that is quite what you love about bible scholarship.

The spoons. The spoons. What do they show? Inventing your own criteria is not a way to admit falsifiability.

You know... that is the wonderful thing about biblical scholarship - not falsifiable. Then you add to that people who repeat hearsay from "not falsifiable" sources and suddenly you have historic Jesus.

When one is bound to accept as evidence letters written by a religious fanatic between trips to Heaven & personal visits from ghosts and a handful of badly forged lines jammed into a couple of old history books... let's just say 'falsifiable' don't enter into it.

Yet this is what Ehrman et al think comparable in quantity and quality as the evidence we have for NASA's lunar missions...

Through the Galatians Darkly

I have long held that if the genuine Pauline epistles were all had to go by in assessing the early Christianity, some amazing things would probably be easily agreed to by most students of the first Jesus movements. For example, it seems clear not only that Paul was the only apostolic figure who preached the crucified Christ, but also that he believed Jesus to be Christ precisely because he was crucified. In other words, it seems that the Nazarene missions of James initially did not think of Jesus as Messiah at all, precisely because Christ crucified would have been an obstacle (σκανδαλον) to them, just as he was to the other Jews.'

Galatians is a case in point. Paul claimed that his was the only true gospel, and cursed those who preached to his flock something other than he did (Gal 1:7-8). That he meant specifically missions from Jerusalem in which Cephas figured prominently, of that there is little doubt...

<full blog at link below>
http://ecs1.blogspot.ca/2010/08/through ... arkly.html

I do not see this as a competition between us as to who is the better scholar, but as simply a matter of who to trust: someone who presents carefully researched, carefully worded, carefully reasoned work on this subject, with a minimum of mistakes (because as I’ve said, I make them, too), or someone who doesn’t.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1117

proudfootz wrote:

Corky wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Byron wrote:
Sorry, did you somehow show that I was wrong?

What would be the point of 'showing' that you were wrong? You'd ignore it. You never say what it would take to show you that you're wrong. It's all for 'show'. Such is bible scholarship. Not falsifiable. Falsifiable is not in the cards, and that is quite what you love about bible scholarship.

The spoons. The spoons. What do they show? Inventing your own criteria is not a way to admit falsifiability.

You know... that is the wonderful thing about biblical scholarship - not falsifiable. Then you add to that people who repeat hearsay from "not falsifiable" sources and suddenly you have historic Jesus.

When one is bound to accept as evidence letters written by a religious fanatic between trips to Heaven & personal visits from ghosts and a handful of badly forged lines jammed into a couple of old history books... let's just say 'falsifiable' don't enter into it.