Mick wrote:[/spoiler]

angelo wrote:Try telling a xtian their precious Jesus may have not been historical, and be prepared for a bowlful of words salad. For many the thought would never even cross their mind. Everything is taken for granted, just like a flat earth was once upon a time.

When was flat earth taken for granted ?

Not long before Christopher Columbus set off for the new world most people believed the earth was flat.

angelo wrote:

Mick wrote:[/spoiler]

angelo wrote:Try telling a xtian their precious Jesus may have not been historical, and be prepared for a bowlful of words salad. For many the thought would never even cross their mind. Everything is taken for granted, just like a flat earth was once upon a time.

When was flat earth taken for granted ?

Not long before Christopher Columbus set off for the new world most people believed the earth was flat.

But among the educated classes, almost none believed it to be flat. It being round was understood by greek philosophers already (see, e.g. how Eratosthenes calculated to surprisingly good accuracy the circumference of it about 2 centuries BCE (sources of the errors in his calculation are now known, and would've been hard to measure in his days.

The opposition Columbus met was not over sailing over the edge of the world, it was the quite correct belief that Columbus believed the earth to be much smaller than it is. Had he not - by accident - stumbled over America, he would have run out of food and water before reaching east Asia, his target.

The educated classes were few and far between. It's why xtianity took off after Constatine decreed it the official Roman religion.
The sheeple followed their leaders.

angelo wrote:The educated classes were few and far between. It's why xtianity took off after Constatine decreed it the official Roman religion.
The sheeple followed their leaders.

I really love the disdain you have for people doing the best they could under their circumstances.

Zwaarddijk wrote:But among the educated classes, almost none believed it to be flat. It being round was understood by greek philosophers already (see, e.g. how Eratosthenes calculated to surprisingly good accuracy the circumference of it about 2 centuries BCE (sources of the errors in his calculation are now known, and would've been hard to measure in his days.

What percentage do you think you are referring to by "the educated classes"? 5%? Less? How many of them got past Plato? I think you are being highly wishful here.

During the crusade era lots of maps were drawn that showed the earth as a disk, the famous T-O maps, which divided the earth into three continents, if you imagine a T inscribed in a circle (the O) with the T being the watery division between these continents and the O being the surrounding sea. This can only work with a flat disk. Talking about the earth being round doesn't distinguish between a flat disk and a sphere.

There were certainly a few who made clear they saw the earth as a sphere, Bede, for example. However, the popularity of the flat earth seemed to continue for a very long time. In an article called "Sphere or Disc? Allusions to the Shape of the Earth in Some Twelfth-Century and Thirteenth-Century Vernacular French Works" (The Modern Language Review, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan., 1981), pp. 31-46), Jill Tattersall examines French vernacular literature to discern what the views expressed there were. She concludes, "Educated people, and perhaps others, may have 'known' that the world was a sphere. Even so, to judge by the passages discussed above, they found the implications of the fact confusing. But there is some evidence to suggest that, before 1300 at least, many people in France actually thought of the world as a disc."

What did it matter to most people what shape the Earth was?

If most people were unlikely to travel more than a day's walk from their place of habitual residence, their believing the Earth flat would have been wrong, but effectively meaninglessly wrong.

If there was an erroneous belief which faded away at the point where it meaningfully clashed with reality, it'd be hard to see it as a big deal in practice.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

angelo wrote:

Mick wrote:[/spoiler]

angelo wrote:Try telling a xtian their precious Jesus may have not been historical, and be prepared for a bowlful of words salad. For many the thought would never even cross their mind. Everything is taken for granted, just like a flat earth was once upon a time.

When was flat earth taken for granted ?

Not long before Christopher Columbus set off for the new world most people believed the earth was flat.

But among the educated classes, almost none believed it to be flat. It being round was understood by greek philosophers already (see, e.g. how Eratosthenes calculated to surprisingly good accuracy the circumference of it about 2 centuries BCE (sources of the errors in his calculation are now known, and would've been hard to measure in his days.

Yes, Greek philosophers understood that, and taught it.

The Christianity came along.

tolman wrote:What did it matter to most people what shape the Earth was?

If most people were unlikely to travel more than a day's walk from their place of habitual residence, their believing the Earth flat would have been wrong, but effectively meaninglessly wrong.

If there was an erroneous belief which faded away at the point where it meaningfully clashed with reality, it'd be hard to see it as a big deal in practice.

Perhaps you should read the recent part of the thread and work out what the subject is. The initial analogy regarded people taking errors for granted as reality.

The point is that the shape didn't practically matter to most people, since there were no meaningful implications for them resulting from having any particular belief.

Taking the 'obvious' though wrong position for granted was essentially cost-free. After all, from a local perspective, in most terrains, it makes more sense to treat the Earth as flat than very slightly curved.

That it is easy for people to believe something which neither clashes with their experience nor has any implication for their life isn't necessarily a great analogy for religious belief, except maybe for religions which give a bit of comfort regarding an afterlife while imposing no particular demands.

tolman wrote:The point is that the shape didn't practically matter to most people, since there were no meaningful implications for them resulting from having any particular belief.

Taking the 'obvious' though wrong position for granted was essentially cost-free. After all, from a local perspective, in most terrains, it makes more sense to treat the Earth as flat than very slightly curved.

That it is easy for people to believe something which neither clashes with their experience nor has any implication for their life isn't necessarily a great analogy for religious belief, except maybe for religions which give a bit of comfort regarding an afterlife while imposing no particular demands.

That it might be "cost-free" is beside the point. Flat earth is essentially only an analogical illustration. That it is "cost-free" doesn't change the fact that it shows lots of people can believe nonsense and arguments based on "how can so many people be wrong?" are fallacious. Reality isn't governed by democratic means.

Getting back to the restart of this part of the discussion, taking things for granted is what we usually do. We can't go around questioning everything, otherwise we wouldn't do anything, but we must be prepared to question and question seriously when the issue is not trivial. Religion is one of those non-trivial issues, given its place within our societies. We cannot treat religion with the same nonchalance that most people in the middle ages did the shape of the earth, though this is precisely what seems still to be happening. And that "Jesus may have not been historicalreal... For many the thought would never even cross their mind." Taken for granted.

spin wrote:That it might be "cost-free" is beside the point. Flat earth is essentially only an analogical illustration. That it is "cost-free" doesn't change the fact that it shows lots of people can believe nonsense and arguments based on "how can so many people be wrong?" are fallacious. Reality isn't governed by democratic means.

Why is any analogy (let alone a bad one) needed to show that people can believe incorrect things?
Who (here or anywhere else) thinks that people (in general, and even in large numbers) can't believe incorrect things?

And as for 'nonsense', that seems to relate not simply to something being wrong, but to it being obviously wrong (to 'making no sense'). I'm not sure that that is actually a great way to describe a belief which, while wrong, doesn't obviously conflict with someone's actual experience or their 'common sense'.
If a belief did cause conflicts with experienced reality, that would prevent it being cost-free.

spin wrote:Religion is one of those non-trivial issues, given its place within our societies. We cannot treat religion with the same nonchalance that most people in the middle ages did the shape of the earth, though this is precisely what seems still to be happening.

I wouldn't see someone vigorously defending one or other 'justification' for their faith as being nonchalant, whether the justification is bogus or not, and whether the defence is competent or otherwise.

spin wrote:And that "Jesus may have not been historicalreal... For many the thought would never even cross their mind." Taken for granted.

Though presumably only in the minds of the people who aren't trying to argue a case one way or another.

To try and put forward an argument which is other than a simple assertion rather requires that the alternative (and its supporting arguments, implications and costs) is at least thought about a little.

tolman wrote:

spin wrote:That it might be "cost-free" is beside the point. Flat earth is essentially only an analogical illustration. That it is "cost-free" doesn't change the fact that it shows lots of people can believe nonsense and arguments based on "how can so many people be wrong?" are fallacious. Reality isn't governed by democratic means.

Why is any analogy (let alone a bad one) needed to show that people can believe incorrect things?
Who (here or anywhere else) thinks that people (in general, and even in large numbers) can't believe incorrect things?

And as for 'nonsense', that seems to relate not simply to something being wrong, but to it being obviously wrong (to 'making no sense'). I'm not sure that that is actually a great way to describe a belief which, while wrong, doesn't obviously conflict with someone's actual experience or their 'common sense'.
If a belief did cause conflicts with experienced reality, that would prevent it being cost-free.

spin wrote:Religion is one of those non-trivial issues, given its place within our societies. We cannot treat religion with the same nonchalance that most people in the middle ages did the shape of the earth, though this is precisely what seems still to be happening.

I wouldn't see someone vigorously defending one or other 'justification' for their faith as being nonchalant, whether the justification is bogus or not, and whether the defence is competent or otherwise.

spin wrote:And that "Jesus may have not been historicalreal... For many the thought would never even cross their mind." Taken for granted.

Though presumably only in the minds of the people who aren't trying to argue a case one way or another.

To try and put forward an argument which is other than a simple assertion rather requires that the alternative (and its supporting arguments, implications and costs) is at least thought about a little.

Sorry, what? Here, I'll whack the receiver to see if that'll fix the reception. No? No. Static. Oh well.

spin wrote:That it is "cost-free" doesn't change the fact that it shows lots of people can believe nonsense and arguments based on "how can so many people be wrong?" are fallacious. Reality isn't governed by democratic means.

Are people who are arguing that there was one single real person meaningfully similar* to the biblical Jesus character, and on whom the character was based generally relying on arguments based on numbers of believers?

For that matter, the belief in a Flat Earth doesn't seem likely to have been one based principally on calculations of the number of believers and non-believers in the population, but on the idea itself seeming to make sense and square with direct personal experience to people living in a particular historical context.

(*depending on their interpretation of 'meaningfully similar')

spin wrote:
Almost everyone before Aristotle's time thought the earth was flat. Certainly the gospel writers thought the earth was flat. How else can you explain one being able to see all the kingdoms of the world from the top of a high mountain (Mt 4:8)?

The threat of Turkish military dominance over Constantinople, in the middle of the fifteenth Century CE, led to emigration of many Greeks to Italy.
They brought with them, copies of the Greek masterworks, including now lost texts by Aristarchus and Eratosthenes, two Greeks, both of whom had lived in Alexandria, and both of whom had been employed as Head Librarian in the world's greatest library of that era. Did they concoct their original ideas from preexisting manuscripts in that wonderful library? Why not?

Aristarchus lived 50 years after Aristotle, half a millenium before Matthew. Aristarchus accurately placed the planets in their proper position, and appropriate relative distance from the sun, located in the center of the solar system. His investigation, refuting both Plato and Aristotle, had been ignored by nearly everyone, not just Christians and Jews. It had not been overlooked by his successor as chief librarian in Alexandria: Eratosthenes, who computed, relatively accurately, the circumference of the earth, by means of optics, following in the footsteps of Aristarchus' similar use of geometry and optics to derive heliocentrism.

Thus, contrary to the implication of your post, spin, Greek intellectuals did know about, and explain both heliocentrism, and the distance involved, circumnavigating the planet, long before, centuries before, Matthew. In my opinion, it was the work of these two authors, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes, that inspired two other Europeans, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, both of them, studying in Italy, both encountering these Greek manuscripts, brought to Italy from Constantinople at the time of the fall of that great city, into Turkish, Muslim hands: Copernicus, ostensibly studying medicine in 1499, and Christopher Columbus, in the late 1480's.

Fearing Christian retaliation, Copernicus deleted the reference he had made to Aristarchus' accomplishments, in his revised manuscript, the one he ultimately published in Latin, and the one read by Galileo, a century later. In his defense, we ought to remember that according to Hernando Pulgar, writing a decade before Copernicus, the Inquisition had claimed more than 2000 lives, lost by burning at the stake, for commission of heresy. One of my heroes, Girolamo Savonarola, had been executed by burning at the stake, just a decade earlier. Copernicus had good reason to fear the clerical authorities,--his deletion of Aristarchus' role in elaborating heliocentrism, despite Copernicus' literal copying of Aristarchus' diagrams, acting as though he himself had conducted the investigations, was prudent under the circumstances.

I am not going to be surprised if it turns out that a large fraction of citizens here in USA, still believe in a flat earth. Something like 70% of the population believes Jesus was a real person, who had conversed with Paul, enroute to Damascus.

proudfootz wrote:
I'd always assumed there was some kind of 'false foreskin' but a few moments of contemplating that idea makes it appear impractical.

Apparently when less-judaic christian sects ran up against more-judaic sects there was a kind of 'circumcision war' with the winning sect rejecting the practice.

I thought it was like "Europa Europa" when the Protagonist uses piano wire to stretch his skin over his glans.
A Learning Channel show we'll never see: "Ancient Secrets: How they faked non-Circumcision"

I think you're right. The sect that was the first to jettison the circ requirement probably ended up growing the fastest.

Somewhat off topic, does the History Channel have any programming that isn't Ancient Aliens, Pawn Shop, or Redneck Hog/Gator huntin' related?

What a happy day! Heaven and earth rejoice, (for) thou art the great lord of Egypt.
They that had fled have come again to their towns, and they that were hidden have again come forth.
They that hungered are satisfied and happy, and they that thirsted are drunken.
They that were naked are clad in fine linen, and they that were dirty have white garments.
They that were in prison are set free, and he that was in bonds is full of joy.
They that were at strife in this land are reconciled. High Niles (beneficial floods) have come from their sources, that they may refresh the hearts of others.
Widows, their houses stand open, and they suffer travellers to enter.
Maidens rejoice and repeat their songs of gladness (?). They are arrayed in ornaments and say (?):
“_________ he createth generation on generation. Thou ruler, thou wilt endure for ever.”
The ships rejoice on the deep ____________.
They come to land with wind or oars,
They are satisfied . . . when it is said:
“King Hekmaatrë-Beloved-of-Amun again weareth the crown.
The son of [the sun-god] Re, Ramesses, bath received the office of his father.”
All lands say unto him:
“Beautiful is Horus on the throne of Amun who sendeth him forth,
(Amun) the protector of the Prince, who bringeth every land.”

http://www.historymuse.net/readings/HYMNSTOPHARAOHS.htm

Whoa, dude. Love those Near Eastern tropes, they just keep popping up all over the place.
The Beatitudes. Uh, The Hymn to the Pharaoh, circa 1100BC, Ramses IV.

Hey Ehrman, we found a fragment of a proto-Gospel

Zwaarddijk wrote:

angelo wrote:The educated classes were few and far between. It's why xtianity took off after Constatine decreed it the official Roman religion.
The sheeple followed their leaders.

I really love the disdain you have for people doing the best they could under their circumstances.

Welcome back, Zwaarddijk!

Cheers,

Stein

tolman wrote:

spin wrote:That it is "cost-free" doesn't change the fact that it shows lots of people can believe nonsense and arguments based on "how can so many people be wrong?" are fallacious. Reality isn't governed by democratic means.

Are people who are arguing that there was one single real person meaningfully similar* to the biblical Jesus character, and on whom the character was based generally relying on arguments based on numbers of believers?

Certainly, people who are arguing in this thread here on this board that there was such an historical figure have all based their arguments on something other than "numbers of believers". That is a fact, readily confirmable by reading all the HJ-ers on this board right back to the beginning. However, counter-suggestions that such arguments are merely suggestions based only on "numbers of believers" is a frequent and useful ad hominem from mythers here, regularly overlooked by the mods. So don't be surprised by it. It's an ad hominem with the express purpose of confounding the findings of secular scholarship based on -- as you say -- "the idea itself seeming to make sense and square with direct personal experience to people living in a particular historical context" with the "findings" of woo merchants instead, merely bound over and sold to the most fundie Christian orthodoxy. After all, citing numbers of believers is a snarky way of bringing up certain resonances associated psychologically with faithheads, not with secular readers like the HJ-ers on this board. Such citations are intended to mislead and distort where the HJ-ers here are really coming from.

Obviously, such ad hominems from the mythers in their deliberate misrepresentation of the HJ-ers here deliberately violate Appendix 1, 1.2.m (http://www.rationalskepticism.org/old-a ... t-t76.html) of the FUA. But since the mods here routinely ignore such flagrant imputation of many posters' secular knowledge of the latest secular scholarship with wholly woo-ridden orthodoxy instead (for reasons I still cannot fathom), mythers feel free to trot out this blatant distortion of the HJ-ers here, this blatant violation of Appendix 1, 1.2.m (http://www.rationalskepticism.org/old-a ... t-t76.html) of the FUA, again and again, with impunity.

If you're really so puzzled as to just why mods here suddenly allow mythers here to get away with this outrageous kind of distortion again and again, ask the mods. I've now brought such blatant violations of Appendix 1, 1.2.m (http://www.rationalskepticism.org/old-a ... t-t76.html) of the FUA to their attention again and again to no effect. This was not always so, BTW. In the past, such blatant distortions and malicious imputations were checked and noted by the mods. But that changed around page 900 or so.

Stein

Stein, you're like the little boy/girl who cried wolf! I cannot see any violation of any violations/rules.

angelo wrote:Stein, you're like the little boy/girl who cried wolf! I cannot see any violation of any violations/rules.

He's right and you fucking know it.