LegionOnomaMoi vs AmbiguousGuy: The (non)Historical Jesus

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Paul seems to have thought of Jesus as mystical or incorporeal rather than as a physical man

Where? I gave you specifics, you said they weren't enough, and offered nothing in return.

No one has given me evidence

History is not about demonstrating whether X is true, but what, given the evidence we have, is the best explanation. You don't have much of an explanation at all for Christianity before Mark. Simply by not having much of an explanation at all as to why this Christ-Cult you postulate came to be, you have already (probably unknowingly) removed some of the strongest evidence there is for Paul as having known of an earthly Jesus. Your starting point is one of contradiction: it posits a group so completely defined around this messianic figure Jesus, that the first name given to the group by outsiders is "Christians". They did not call themselves this and it is hard if not impossible to determine at what point the Jesus movement (or Christ cult in your view) was not just another Jewish group/sect. They did not have a name for their group but rather a language which centered around the Christ Jesus.

However, this makes no sense without a Jesus to somehow fit the Christ mold. By the time messiah (the word) existed among Greek speaking Jews, it had already evolved from more simple roots stemming from the religious act of anointing one chosen by YHWH (prototypically a king) to become linked to eschatological hopes of a restored Israel. Even if one posits an embodied spirit view of messianic expectation around the time of Paul, the outcome is the same: no restored Israel, no messiah. The only way for their to be a messianic figure who didn't fit any of the molds (Davidic King, Davidic-like king, priest, prophet, and in general a chosen agent of YHWH), was for this "Christianity" group Paul joined to result from reinterpretation of messianic hopes along with the what these entailed (restoration of Israel, kingdom of God, etc.).

We can do that with a historical Jesus. You haven't shown how we can without.

I see life as non-magical, even mundane.

It isn't your or my worldviews that matter when it comes to understanding the origins of Christianity. If you are going to base how life worked 2,000 years ago upon your own experience, then there is no point in any discussion because you are equating what are worlds apart.

If there's a simple answer or opinion, I usually go for that.

You haven't. You've avoided for the most part the entirety of Christian origins and ended up with a Christianity before Mark that has more in common with Christianities 200+ years later than it does with anything we know of. But you don't explain how this came to be, and thus your simple answer is assumes a fundamental contradiction that you don't explain.

So here's what I see:

1) If Paul was a Christ fanatic, then he believed in a historical person. Because that's what believing in a messiah/Christ entails. Your simple answer ignores not only the term but every Jewish concept associated with it so that you can start in a position where this "Christianity" doesn't require an explanation despite foundational inconsistencies.
2) This was an oral world. Paul travelled all over the place instead of simply sending letters. Why? Well, to rant about something "Christ" related, as he tells us this. That's how he established groups of Christians in different places: by telling the "good news". So he ranted plenty, but like everybody else at that time, writing was a last resort. And he wrote to those he had already ranted to.
3) Those who copied Paul's letters (or had them copied) had plenty of bias. But they had specific biases, and you have not demonstrated any evidence for any particular bias that is in anyway relevant or supportive of your theory.

One man alone, .

"If these shows are any indication, they demonstrate that Americans are totally bent on understanding the self, on solving individual problems individualistically, on realizing individual potential. The stories we share and which rivet our attention invariably point to the individual self pursuing its self-fulfillment in an unfriendly, often hostile social world...first-century Mediterranean persons never thought psychologically in the way we do. Even speaking of those human beings as “persons” is somewhat of an anachronism since there is no word for “person” in Hebrew, Greek or Latin."
Malina, B. J. (2002). The social world of Jesus and the Gospels. Routledge.


"Anything is possible" is not a historical argument. It's antithetical to one.

He has no obligation to follow standard theology

He did. Everyone did. The Greeks, like most cultures of antiquity, freely adopted and adapted gods and cultic practices. But they took them deadly seriously. Socrates' execution was part of a religious crisis at the time where the community was worried about impiety.

All that dependence upon community for identity was present among Jews, but with it came an additional level: religion. Not cultic practices, not this set of gods vs. that, but a system of practice and belief in one god who was so central to Jewish identity that someone who lived in Alexandria knew only Greek could be identified with Judea (what being a Jew meant) even if she or he had never seen it.

Give me 60 seconds and I'll concoct a new one here on the spot.

It's pretty easy for someone who lives in the modern Western world of individuality and who doesn't believe but thinks of religions others die for as stories to concoct another story and think it equivalent.

Really, your outlook here doesn't make sense to me

Perhaps that's because you are using a modern conception of identity and individuality and applying it where it does not fit at all.

That certainly isn't my experience with godthinkers.

You don't live in a place where community is everything and personhood is how one fits in to social & communal structure, not one's idea of self.

Human nature.

Human thought is culture-specific

there were thousands of individuals

There's that word again: individual.
"In the Mediterranean world, both ancient and modern…[, w]hat one trusts, relies upon, and contributes to willingly is one’s extended family, the primary safety net in peasant society. Ancient Mediterranean society was largely a society of “dyadic personality,” where one’s identity was formed and maintained in relation to other individuals in one’s social unit—the usual unit being the extended family." (source)

just like each and every other Jewish messiah has done.

They haven't.

Why couldn't he just be relaying Christ's teachings which he'd learned from other Christians?

Where did they get these?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

that's the main reason we don't worship them today.

No, Selassie was an actual guy

Selassie was, yet is worshipped. Allah wasn't, yet is worshipped. Your causal model doesn't hold

If Mark looked more like fiction, then my theory might fall apart. Mark's point was for people to see it as biography, not fiction.

Here are the (simplified) issues with Markan genre

Today, biographies would be a kind of historiography, but rather than telling what happened during some historical period or describing how some event occurred, it is the "history" of a person. In antiquity, neither history nor biography were defined as they are today.

Plutarch's Life of Alexanderprovides a concise example:

"It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives." That's from the first paragraph, and for brevity I have left out the rest of the paragraph but it is worth looking at carefully. For Greek and Roman historians, history was about events. Which meant you told (ideally) how something happened and usually a war. Such narratives were still stories (that almost always contained at least references to the supernatural), but they had specific properties like chronological order. The idea was that an event started at time A, ended at time B, and so the historians job was to tell the captivating story of what happened starting and ending at A & B, respectively.

Lives were different. Again, they were stories that attempted to tell what happened. But as the people who do (in)famous deeds do not do them continuously from birth. So for biographers of antiquity, telling the story of someone's life meant highlighting key events that brought out the character of the person. This is what Plutarch does in the link I provided and why he says he isn't telling history. He mentions wars because that was (again) what most histories concerned, but the point is that he is recounting a story of a historical event but a story of a historical person. Therefore, like "portrait-painters" he "must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men".

One last thing before explaining the relevance: how he begins the story (after the preface): "It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus". Yes, that Hercules is the strong guy who killed the hydra in myth. Yet here is a biographer starting out by saying a historical person is descended from a mythic hero.

Plutarch tells us of the well-known story that Zeus was Alexander's real father, but he gives us 2 sides:
"Philip, after this vision, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, by which he was commanded to perform sacrifice, and henceforth pay particular honour, above all other gods, to Ammon; and was told he should one day lose that eye with which he presumed to peep through that chink of the door, when he saw the god, under the form of a serpent, in the company of his wife. Eratosthenes says that Olympias, when she attended Alexander on his way to the army in his first expedition, told him the secret of his birth, and bade him behave himself with courage suitable to his divine extraction. Others again affirm that she wholly disclaimed any pretensions of the kind, and was wont to say, "When will Alexander leave off slandering me to Juno?"

Other authors (Trogus, Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, & Arrian) are not all so balanced.

The important take-away is that we have two types of authors writing histories/biographies. The difference is not that we get different stories, as the more skeptical historians/biographers give us the same stories the credulous do. The difference is that the skeptical ones try to come up with a rational explanation for the myth/legend. In other words, the better the historian, the less interesting the story. But either way, both are fiction.

Livy's story that the legendary founders of Rome weren't actually raised by wolves is just as fictional as if they were. Instead of saying wolves, he says that they were found and raised by foster parents and the wife's name sounded like "wolf", hence the mistake. He doesn't doubt these legends from the past existed, just like Plutarch doesn't doubt that Alexander was descended from Hercules through the legendary Caranus.

So biography, like all ancient historiography, ranged from the more accurate to the completely unbelievable. Mark could have written just about anything about a legendary person of recent or ancient past, because historiography and myth were always tied together in at least a few ways.

If I could show that gMark looks more like ancient fiction than like ancient history, then my theory would fall apart

Your theory falls apart by dividing these. Period.

Why would Mark make his work look like a piece of fiction rather than pretend biography?

Of all the gospels, his is the least like a biography. It's almost a beefed up sayings "gospel", as the accounts, sayings, and teachings of Jesus in it are poorly connected as if Mark was simply trying to put into writing an extensive amount of disparate Jesus tradition material.

have no good idea why you have mentioned

Because I wrote 2 pages on the cognition and language before realizing that it was way too much for such a tangential manner, and I cut out virtually all of it. The remainder made sense to me because I had the context in my head.

That's all theology is to you?

Not at all. There's a reason for the word Christology. You assert that they "wanted in" on theology without having a god for them to get theological about. You've merely asserted Christ Jesus was considered a godman.

In fact, as this is central you your entire thesis, some evidence for this idea of a godman that Mark made historical would be nice.

Aren't you aware that people often write political and religious works anonymously?

Aren't you aware that this doesn't always protect them?

You just told me that the Talmud is from 700CE

That makes it extremely difficult and usually impossible to determine what is historical and also dating what happened or was said if it ever was. This is a concept, however, that had been around long before. The Talmud simply shows us that it was around long after. What nothing shows is that there is any basis for this godman messiah theory, which takes a Jewish notion and mashes it with a contradictory one. Your explanation for the origins of the Christians Paul ended up joining is basically absent, but vitally important for your theory.

You have Paul's letters infused with Jewish notions and built upon a Jewish foundation. Yet you have no living messiah who failed in order for his followers to have to reinterpret the concept of messiah. Instead, you have a group built on two contradicting frameworks: the Jewish matrix (scriptures, notions like messiah, monotheism, etc.) and a godman (about as far from Judaism of the day as is possible).

So nobody considered Jesus to be the messiah?

They absolutely did. But they did so when he was alive, unless you can explain how something that isn't a messiah explains a group that were so oriented around a particular this notion that they their name comes from it.

Only new ideas are heretical?

I'm talking about antiquity.

Then why on earth do you keep arguing that the early adherents of the Jesus Story would not have died for their beliefs? I'm utterly confused as to what your actual position might be.

It's one where people don't die because someone passed them a story they liked.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Once again I had to cut out so much from those responses. And while that's mainly my fault (and if I appear irritated in those posts know that this is primarily frustration with myself), it is not entirely. I have had only one conversation of any type with a person who did not think there was enough evidence for the historical Jesus that was productive. I have no idea whether that individual decided we have enough evidence, but that individual wanted to learn and was more than willing to read sources and acknowledge that those already read were inadequate.

I am used to dealing with people who are specialists in the areas I talk to them about, which has perhaps made me coddled. I can leave out so much because it is known by all. This is not the case here, and it is difficult to for me to handle so many issues with your theory that have to do with things that require a certain amount of background information. For example, the idea of stories, individuality, and how much your experience is and is not adequate as an analogy requires significant context. I cannot provide that and though I have tried it has made things worse, so much so that I have made it difficult for you to understand my position. That is because I am simultaneously trying to show what follows from your theory while advancing evidence for another, all within ideally one post but often I've gone 10x over that limit and cut out too much.

So I would ask that, if you are going to advance your experiences as evidence, you support these by noting how ancient sources reflect them. I cannot really spend the posts needed to talk about community and identity in antiquity even if this thread were dedicated to this, as I have already written/published a paper on this and I know how much I left out then.

It is impossible to argue against claims that have no basis when any argument against them can be countered with an equally baseless argument. I haven't finished responding to what you wrote, because I could sense myself becoming overly frustrated and I know where that leads (petty remarks and worse). But I thought this needed to be said. I can produce all the evidence in the world, from history and science and more, that your experiences as described here and elsewhere are not applicable. However, if you don't care about evidence (or perhaps it is better to say that you do care, but that you regard your experience as superior evidence to any that might be offered), then I cannot do anything.

As I said, I'm not done responding and may end up changing what I wrote because I had to cut both posts down on the fly and I wrote them in reverse order to that posted, but feel free to respond to this post if you wish.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

It is impossible to argue against claims that have no basis when any argument against them can be countered with an equally baseless argument. I haven't finished responding to what you wrote, because I could sense myself becoming overly frustrated and I know where that leads (petty remarks and worse). But I thought this needed to be said. I can produce all the evidence in the world, from history and science and more, that your experiences as described here and elsewhere are not applicable. However, if you don't care about evidence (or perhaps it is better to say that you do care, but that you regard your experience as superior evidence to any that might be offered), then I cannot do anything.

As I said, I'm not done responding and may end up changing what I wrote because I had to cut both posts down on the fly and I wrote them in reverse order to that posted, but feel free to respond to this post if you wish.

I'm willing to say a few words about what I see as the problems with out debate, but only if you insist. It would require me to discuss the tools with which we are contending (our minds), and in my experience most people prefer not to be analyzed by me.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I'm willing to say a few words about what I see as the problems with out debate, but only if you insist. It would require me to discuss the tools with which we are contending (our minds), and in my experience most people prefer not to be analyzed by me.

Historical methods exists independently of both of us. You can take your pick: either use some of these, or feel free to "analyze" me. If you do, I have no problem with it. Just know that I will fully and completely go through every opinion you have expressed and demonstrate how thoroughly your analogies of personal experience fail at every imaginable level: they are completely inconsistent with the evidence you consistently fail to address from antiquity, because you the only authority you have offered is 20th and 21st century subjective experiences you project to the cultures utterly alien to you (if they are not, feel free to show this). Then I will go over the ways in which your analogies fail not only in history but in every single relevant field there is, from ancient history to clinical psychology. I assure you that the mind and brain are my areas of expertise and so whatever you think you know about "human experience" or what is common to humans is not only wrong, but we have decades of research for people like you who are incapable of understanding their own biases and the frameworks they implicitly concern.

That will end this debate. Because you will offer up some subjective opinions that I will counter with dozens and dozens of research to show just that the idea that your subjective analyses are subject to the same biases that plague the human mind. That's my field. Human though, mind, consciousness, and cognition. I just happen to also have a degree in classical languages and have studied history. But my real field is human psychology.

So you pick: do you want to get into how your experience is demonstrably false given both ancient and modern evidence, or do you want to avoid this and deal with evidence from antiquity.

It's easier for me if you choose the former. But it is not productive. So I leave it to you.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

But my real field is human psychology.

Hey, you know what they say about psychology majors.

So you pick: do you want to get into how your experience is demonstrably false given both ancient and modern evidence, or do you want to avoid this and deal with evidence from antiquity.

You gave me permission above to analyze you, so I choose that option. I don't do it to hurt you nor to win the argument. Neither of those interest me. I do it because i think that we can't go out and examine the universe unless we first work on the tool with which we pursue that examination. A faulty microscope is a poor way to begin a career in microbiology, yes?

To me, you seem like a person who has been seduced by knowledge. You and I were probably much alike as young men. Highly intelligent, passionate to know the world, driven. But you chose academia while I rejected that in favor of studying the world holistically, you might say.

You seem to think that you can understand the world if only you learn enough facts. I don't. I think I can never understand the world, but the only way to approach it is to focus with fierce intensity on the integrity of my own thought. And the only way I can keep my thought honest is to accept my own necessary ignorance. Unattached to truth.

I think it's why you speak so nastily to people, while I don't. Maybe it's just our characters, but maybe it's because you're frustrated that others oppose your certainty, while I have no certainty to defend. So sure that you have chased the truth to ground by learning every available fact, you become angry when others disagree with you. Or you sure seem so to me. You say ugly things to others which I hope you would never say to your own child or to your parent. Things I doubt I'd say to my worst enemy (although I sure might think them!).

And I see you as deeply confused about language. You believe that you can look in a 2,000 year old book and understand the writer's meaning if only you can memorize the dictionary from that time. I don't believe that. I think it's delusion. I think you can't even understand me, with whom you share the same culture and language and with whom you've exchanged thousands of words. You can't even understand the meaning of the things I say or why I say them. How could you possibly understand what some 2,000-year-old guy was trying to mean in a dead language, a foreign culture, and never having exchanged a single word with him.

Anyway, that's how it seems to me. The problem lies not in my ignorance of historical details. It lies in your belief that you own the truth. Your knowledge is the problem.

For whatever that may be worth to you.

Let me know if or how you'd like to proceed with our dialogue. If you want to just post a last word, tell me it's your last word and I won't respond.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

you know what they say about psychology majors.

No. But as I wasn't a psychology major I don't see how that would matter.

But you chose academia.

I didn't. I had intended on the military and in particular whatever elite unit, if any, I was capable of joining. I didn't join because I chose my future wife who, at the last minute, said she couldn't deal with me doing this. So I tried to make a career out of high-end security, but the cost of being trained enough to be hired (not just learning skills, but things one could put on a resume) turned out to be too great. So I decided to go into clinical psychology and be a therapist. I didn't follow through with this because my entire world was ripped apart when my wife left. I had nothing to offer after that.

As for graduate studies, I played a pretty passive role in that process.

To me, you seem like a person who has been seduced by knowledge. You and I were probably much alike as young men. Highly intelligent, passionate to know the world, driven.

I realize my signature isn't clever, well-written, or anything other than a bad rhyme, but I wrote it. Yet you think the above describes me?

(all translations mine)

"There is only the one truly important philosophical problem: there is suicide. To decide that life is worthwhile, or is not worth the trouble of living, is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy. The rest (whether the earth has three dimensions, whether the "mind" has nine or twelve categories) follow after."
-Camus

"I have seen all the product of everything done under the sun, and Behold! It is all emptiness and suffering." Eccl. 1:14

one who has learned to hate life does not fear death - Dionysius Cato

...
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
...
Shakespeare's MacBethMy
My thoughts? Bibamus moriendum est

Passionate. Driven. How thorough your misconception is. "my life closed twice before its close.."

And the only way I can keep my thought honest is to accept my own necessary ignorance.

The details of all of this really don't interest me much.

So wouldn't this point to a copyist adding that bit into one of Paul's letters?

Unless Paul didn't actually write that bit. Wouldn't that make better sense?

So the details don't interest you, but single lines from one of Paul's letters do. But that's hardly all you've said about Paul:

I don't think anyone could have stopped Paul from endlessly mentioning the details of Jesus' life, no matter what he was writing.

Are we given evidence for such certainty? No.

How could I possibly tell you what gMark is?

Mark's point was for people to see it as biography, not fiction.

Sure. Mark couldn't make him a physical success. The news was already in. So he had to make him a spiritual success.

How could you possibly tell us what Mark is? Well, you did.

When I ask for evidence or challenge your view, I get things like this:

Human nature. We always talk about what is important to us, especially us fanatics

This doesn't stop you from pointing out what others can't know:

You don't know if Matthew and Luke risked death.

It just enables you to dismiss evidence.

I think it's why you speak so nastily to people, while I don't.

You do. Constantly. You are just more condescending when you are nasty.

It's hard for me to understand why you so fiercely crave to win, at whatever the cost.

That is really so curious to me... your intensity to proclaim victory.

If you feel in need of a short lecture on the proper understanding of language and how it works, you only have to ask. It has been my life's work, and I am happy to share my deep linguistic wisdom with those who have not been able to work their way through some of the rudimentary aspects of it. Just ask.

(Faux victory dance. Fake arrogance and certainty. Do you recognize it yet, or do you still confuse it with my serious responses? Either way, you just got served!)

Even when you claim your condescension is fake or to make a point, you include more condescension.

Nor is his tit-for-tat thing based on anything:

I also can't provide evidence that teenaged boys tend to masturbate or that wolves feel an intense craving for meat.

You can provide such evidence.

You present yourself as ambiguous (even choose a member name that reflects this), and maybe you really think you are:

Yeah. But that doesn't bother me. It's because I've long since given up the belief that we can know the truth, while I'm not so sure that you have yet accepted that.

Here you get a two-for-one: condescension coupled with the veneer of an objective, unbiased rational persona you find necessary.

And again:

I listen with extreme attentiveness to the integrity of their minds, judging the degree and direction of their bias. From all of that, I draw my most likely conclusions about what is true.

How godlike.
Your personal experience seems sufficient to you to understand cultures 2,000 years ago, but somehow fails when it comes to me:

You really don't think such a story could catch hold in the hearts of those who heard it, Legion -- especially back in those days? If not, we just understand humans in radically different ways.

I have to say that I find your claims to be quite strange at times.]

As is often the case, I have no idea why you are writing such stuff. It's almost as if you consider 'godman' to be a proper noun.

This was is interesting as it was a proper noun in multiple language. There were no god-men, just the god-man. This was true in Greek as it was in English.


What's so very interesting here is that you have so much trouble understanding my mentality, especially how I don't agree with your observationally-based understanding of human nature applied to 1st century Galilee, yet are so assured of your views on human nature that this becomes the reason Paul is supposed to mention Jesus (and therefore subjective experience becomes the basis for an argument from silence). It's the reason this godman caught on. Mark's genius in creating a historical figure out of a godman. Of course, you don't give any reason other than things like references to human nature to show that there was ever any godman Christ before Jesus was said to have lived. You just assume it.

Maybe it's just our characters, but maybe it's because you're frustrated that others oppose your certainty

No. I have no problem with people who oppose certainty. I have a problem with people who use this, despite it being false, as a way to negate any arguments against your theory, only to abandon it a moment later when you declare Mark's motivations or what Paul should have written given what you know about human nature.

So sure that you have chased the truth to ground by learning every available fact, you become angry when others disagree with you.

And you think it is because they disagree with me? I chase facts to the ground because of how unsure I am of everything. It's dogma, like yours, which upsets me. Assertions without evidence or logic yet claims of both.

You say ugly things to others which I hope you would never say to your own child or to your parent.

I'm not as adept as you dishing out insults under the façade of diplomacy.

And I see you as deeply confused about language.

I'm sure you do. A writer would not have the same understanding of language as someone who studies language.

You believe that you can look in a 2,000 year old book and understand the writer's meaning if only you can memorize the dictionary from that time.

No. I believe that to have some idea of its context requires more than this:

1) The Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. I write a little fiction, so I know what a pile of revisions looks like.

Instead, I learned multiple language to be able to read not just the NT but the texts, from personal letters to histories to Jewish literature around that time (and all the relevant topics in fields like anthropology or cognitive psychology) because these texts come from a world that is alien to us. I try to understand it through reading and seeing (art, statues, etc.) actual products from the cultural context of the NT.

I don't believe that.

No. For you all it takes to understand Mark is the fact that you wrote stuff.

How could you possibly understand what some 2,000-year-old guy was trying to mean in a dead language, a foreign culture, and never having exchanged a single word with him.

Certainly not by assuming a universal human nature based on cognitive dissonance and subjective experience.

If you want to just post a last word, tell me it's your last word and I won't respond.

I really don't care.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I really don't care.

OK. Let me know if there's anything you want me to address. Otherwise I'll figure we're finished. Thanks for the dialogue.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

There is one other thing I'd like to say. While I've certainly sensed your despondency and a possible reluctance to see yourself positively, I still see you as passionate and curious. One couldn't learn what you've learned without that.

I can't give you any advice, of course. Generally speaking, I wish we would all approach each other with gentleness, respect, maybe even a little love. Most everyone else is hurting too, somehow.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I still see you as passionate and curious. One couldn't learn what you've learned without that.

I've learned nothing, know nothing, and couldn't care less about anything. There was a time when I was passionate. Now those passions are distractions I need to get out of my own head. I hate knowing things. I hate the fact that people think I'm intelligent and either react to this as something to be praised, something to be intimidated by, or as arrogance. I hate looking at books and having read all the citations and references. I can't stand the obsessive need to constantly question everything. And most of all, I have worked for years (long before college) to understand the world, and the only reason I found that makes life worth it is gone. Unfortunately, I'm cursed with an incredibly accurate memory for all the wrong things (I tutored someone once for an entire semester and did not recognize them the next). I quote literature a lot here. I'm probably a bit off because I don't look it up. I can remember a poem from my high school SAT test and I can't remember the names or faces of most of those I meet.

Passion? Hardly.
If it chance your eye offend you
Pluck it out lad and be sound.
’Twill hurt but here are salves to friend you
And many a balsam grows on ground

And if your hand or foot offend you
Cut it off lad and be whole.
But play the man, stand up and end you
When your sickness is your soul

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I've learned nothing, know nothing, and couldn't care less about anything.

You don't care whether Jesus is seen as historical or whether mythical? To me it seems that you do care. I don't know why else you'd speak as you do to those who oppose you.

If you don't care, why do you come here and engage the HJ debate with such ferocity?

I hate the fact that people think I'm intelligent and either react to this as something to be praised, something to be intimidated by, or as arrogance.

Yeah, but we are intelligent. If they didn't notice that, something would be wrong with them. But I agree with you about the rest. Intelligence is like beauty. It's just an accident of birth. Sometimes it's a curse.

I can't stand the obsessive need to constantly question everything.

Nothing to be done about that, not until we master brain transplants.

And most of all, I have worked for years (long before college) to understand the world, and the only reason I found that makes life worth it is gone.

I've never found a reason that makes life worth it except that I'm here, and I'll be gone one day, so why not experience it while I can. There'll be time enough to sleep by and by.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

If you don't care, why do you come here and engage the HJ debate with such ferocity?

Young men late in the night
Toss on their beds
Their pillows do not comfort
Their uneasy heads
-Auden

For the same reason I debate anything or research anything now. It's a distraction.

Yeah, but we are intelligent.

Speak for yourself.

I've never found a reason that makes life worth it except that I'm here

I gave you a link to my reason. It doesn't exist anymore. A paper I wrote in my freshmen seminar in my 2nd semester (technically, because I overloaded courses, I was a junior). Existing just to exist is pointless as far as I'm concerned. And I couldn't care less if this is a reason for the vast majority throughout time. You think I'm an ******* because I think I know things. You couldn't possibly be more wrong. I'm an ******* because I have tried to know things using everything from religion, various Eastern practices, academia, and most of all my marriage, and when this yielded so few answers I find the people who adamantly insist that poor logic, evidence, and experience has led them to the particular certainties all the more infuriating. It's a mark of total rejection of epistemology. It replaces any and all evidence through subjective claims that cannot, by definition, be countered by objectivist arguments. I don't care if it is religious fundamentalism, ideological dogma, or feigned objectivity used to promote what is so clearly statements of certainty. It's all the same. People with less knowledge than specialists claiming to know more, and it can't even be addressed through critical reasoning because the foundation of such arguments are personal experience (and, even were I to share the same experiences, there is absolutely nothing at all to support the idea that I or anyone else would interpret some information or experience the same way).

and I'll be gone one day, so why not experience it while I can.

Vous n'avez pas fini de m'empoisonner avec vos histoires de temps ? C'est insensé ! Quand ! Quand ! Un jour, ça ne vous suffit pas, un jour pareil aux autres il est devenu muet, un jour je suis devenu aveugle, un jour nous deviendrons sourds, un jour nous sommes nés, un jour nous mourrons, le même jour, le même instant, ça ne vous suffit pas ?
[When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he [Lucky] went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die: the same day, the same moment, is that not enough for you?]

It is not enough for me..

by and by.

"by and by is easily said".

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Existing just to exist is pointless as far as I'm concerned.

We all have our way of looking at things. Some need a reason to exist, often named 'God.' Others just continue on from inertia.

You think I'm an ******* because I think I know things.

I don't know what an ******** is, but I doubt that I think you're one of them. I just see you as having a need for certainty, for knowledge. But it's just my personal opinion of you.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong. I'm an ******* because I have tried to know things using everything from religion, various Eastern practices, academia, and most of all my marriage, and when this yielded so few answers I find the people who adamantly insist that poor logic, evidence, and experience has led them to the particular certainties all the more infuriating.

OK. I've never seen anyone insist that poor logic, evidence, and experience has led them to certainties. Most people seem to think that their logic is sound, their evidence is of the best sort, and their experiences are informative.

It's a mark of total rejection of epistemology. It replaces any and all evidence through subjective claims that cannot, by definition, be countered by objectivist arguments.

Really, I'm not at all sure what you're talking about. But I will guess at it and answer that if you are looking for truth which can be somehow proven through objectivist arguments, ancient history may not be the best arena for that.

I don't care if it is religious fundamentalism, ideological dogma, or feigned objectivity used to promote what is so clearly statements of certainty.

OK, but you haven't heard me make statements of certainty about the historical Jesus, so I'm still unsure what you're trying to say.

People with less knowledge than specialists claiming to know more...

I really don't know what you mean. You'd have to provide an example if you'd like me to address it.

But people with less knowledge than specialists very often know more than those specialists. Have you ever argued with an engineer? They can be so set in their ways that they lose any semblance of common-sense in their planning. Sure they know more math and technical stuff than I do, but I have often been able to plan a project more simply, more economically, and more aesthetically than them, and my projects have never failed. So clearly I knew more than the specialists knew.

Same with biblical specialists, of course. I can't conjugate ancient Greek verbs, but I can make better conclusions than some of them about the historical Jesus. By definition I can, since I agree with some of them and disagree with others. It means that I definitly know more about Jesus' existence than some of them do.

...and it can't even be addressed through critical reasoning because the foundation of such arguments are personal experience (and, even were I to share the same experiences, there is absolutely nothing at all to support the idea that I or anyone else would interpret some information or experience the same way).

Yeah. You seem to believe that things can be proven in some objective way. It's what I was saying earlier. But I don't think that way, so I don't get frustrated much. I would welcome you to set your personal experience against mine. Argue that in your experience, people would not be excited by the idea of a flesh-and-blood godman living on earth. That's fine. I'd like to hear it.

After you've presented your experience, then we can argue about it and then we can sigh and say, "OK, well I guess we differ in our opinions."

That's always the best way to end a debate, I think.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

OK. I've never seen anyone insist that poor logic, evidence, and experience has led them to certainties.

Have you looked in a mirror? You'll see that which you think you have not.

Most people seem to think that their logic is sound, their evidence is of the best sort, and their experiences are informative.

Probably. But then most people have never actually studied logic, never studied the predictable ways in which human cognition is subject to failure, or basically anything relevant here. But I really don't care if you want to play god and claim omniscient bias. I'm so sick of people making claims like yours and too tired to of life and lies to deal with the ******** of some fiction author analyzing human experience to understand 1st century Galilee. So go ahead and just proclaim victory again.

if you are looking for truth which can be somehow proven

Scientists don't deal with proofs unless they are delving into a computational/mathematical/statistical component in their field. Proofs require a constructed world/space (e.g., Hilbert., Euclidian, Minkowski, RW symbolic logic, etc.) in which the complete universe (the rules of discourse) are agreed upon in advance.

I've posted the equivalent about history and sciences over and over again. You have got to be the most pathetically inept armchair analyist I've ever come across. Proofs. Right. I've repeated again and again that apart from mathematics they don't exist.

OK, but you haven't heard me make statements of certainty about the historical Jesus, so I'm still unsure what you're trying to say.

Right. One minute you can't possibly know about Mark, the next you are telling us not only his motivations but those who followed him creating a religion out of a Christ Myth you can't explain because details are not important enough. I truly don't give a **** what your view is. You can analyze me as poorly as you do history and continue to spout on about history all you wish to. I'm so sick of dealing with delusions of omniscience in a world of uncertainty, especially those hypocrites who claim uncertainty when they use ignorance as a shield to apply what they call logic to things they've never studied. You think I get upset because I chase down fact. I get upset by people who think they understand things because they haven't studied logic, much less how to use it, so they think experience with fiction is an adequate guide for understanding cultures 2,000 years before they existed.

Just go on declaring yourself the victor of a debate you win out of ignorance or whatever you want to call it. If it makes you happy to be ignorant, the better for you. I envy you. Truly. If I could have just a tiny percent of your certainty with 100 times the evidence, I might almost be happy.