Ehrman surveys the arguments “mythicists” have made against the existence of Jesus since the idea was first mooted at the end of the 18th century. To the objection that there are no contemporary Roman records of Jesus’ existence, Ehrman points out that such records exist for almost no one and there are mentions of Christ in several Roman works of history from decades later.[1][3] The author states that the authentic letters of the apostle Paul in the New Testament were written within a few years of Jesus’ death and that Paul personally knew James, the brother of Jesus.[2] Although the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life may be biased and unreliable in many respects, they and the sources behind them which scholars have discerned still contain some accurate historical information.[1][3] So many independent attestations of Jesus’ existence, Ehrman says, are actually "astounding for an ancient figure of any kind ".[2] Ehrman dismisses the idea that the story of Jesus is an invention based on pagan myths of dying-and-rising gods, maintaining that the early Christians were influenced by Jewish ideas, not Greek or Roman ones,[1][2] and repeatedly insists that the idea that there was never such a person as Jesus is not seriously considered by historians or experts in the field at all.[1]
None of that is proof. There is no proof Paul knew Jesus. There is no proof Paul even knew James. Paul could of said he knew James, but, that is not proof. People claim to know other people all of the time that they don’t really know, in hopes of adding false validity to a story. Even if Paul really did know James, do we have actual proof that he did? Furthermore, if the Jesus epidemic was a hoax, then there could be a dude named James who was part of the hoax… who told Paul and other people about his “brother”.
For clarities sake, I do think there was a preacher named Jesus. But, that is because it seems likely given how popular a cult early christianity was. It is not impossible, however, to invent a figure to form a cult around. There is certainly no proof, it is plausible he was an invented figure. Just as it is plausible he was a real preacher.
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It doesn’t matter. The human mind is boundless in its capacity for irrationality. Doesn’t matter if there is tangible incentive for lying.
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Doesn’t this kind of cut against your other point, though?
The premise of this thread is that some people claim to believe in God, and maybe even believe they believe in God, but can’t admit to themselves that way deep down they of course don’t actually believe in God despite the anonymous poll results or the words coming out of their mouths. Not sure I buy it, but I can imagine that.
It’s been mentioned that some folks disparage atheists with a ‘no, you say you don’t believe in God, but way deep down you do believe in God, even if you’re having a hard time admitting it to yourself’ schtick – and you find that risible, because you understand why folks would do the former but not the latter.
But if you genuinely figure that the human mind is “boundless” in both its capacity for self-delusion and sheer damn irrationality, then that kinda sorta goes away, right?
(It’s like the story of the defendant who pleads insanity, explaining that he thought he was Batman and so had superpowers – at which point the prosecutor points out that Batman doesn’t have superpowers – at which point the defendant says yeah, maybe you didn’t hear me; it’s an insanity defense; the whole point is, I was deluded and irrational! What, were you expecting a sane insanity? Expecting me to be rational about my irrationality, and sensibly deluded? Why, that’d be crazy!)
Yes, I understand. However, over generalization is a very poor practice. The classic example is comparing things to Nazi Germany. “Obamacare is just like Nazi Germany!!” sigh Even if you might find a very narrow point of intersection, this is not an acceptable comparison, because of all of the baggage that you bring along.
In other words, if you carefully lay out a proposition, something like: “an Ideal Communist state would do a much better job of caring for the poor and exploited than is currently being done by Western Countries. Jesus would be pleased by the attention shown by an Ideal Communist state to the poor and exploited.”
Fine. Good. Narrowly defined, leaving baggage at the station. But, just generically saying that “Communism is a lot like Jesus-ism”. Well, that’s a very poor statement. I think it’s equally likely to offend proponents of either philosophy.
Well, I disagree, I think people mean the “philosophical” version of Marxism/Communism. I also think most people know that is what is implied. But, it is not worth getting into a big debate over…
Frankly, I don’t get the compulsion to see equivalence between “Deep down *you * really believe in God; you don’t want to admit it” and a generalized skepticism about self-reported belief in a *population *. Two different reasoning processes are at work here, don’t you agree? I don’t know how many more examples I can give you to make this clearer.
Self-delusion is a big part of the human psyche, but that doesn’t mean it strikes indiscriminately. Lying to ourselves and each other is more likely to occur when conformity and/or status is in the line. If 86% of the pop professes belief in God, it’s obvious what direction the pressure to conform points to; its like being the one doubting Thomas in an ocean full of Pauls and Peters.
I don’t see the parallel between this and what I’m arguing at all. My point about irrationality was in response to Malthus saying that there is little to gain from lying on an anonymous survey. And it’s true, that would be an irrational thing to do. Humans act irrational all the time, though. I guarrantee if you ask card-carrying white supremacists whether they were racist, many would say no because “I don’t hate anyone”. But I guess because they profess that, we have to take them at their word, right? This is where some of the logic espoused in this thread takes us, and I’m not seeing anyone address these examples head on.
You don’t get why folks would see a parallel between “Deep down, you really believe in God; you don’t want to admit it” and “Deep down, you don’t really believe in God; you don’t want to admit it”, huh? Fair enough.
They’re both predicated on irrational people being so delusional that they manage to fool themselves into, uh, thinking they think something they don’t think – and to the extent that I buy that, the reasoning process in either case is pretty much just boils down to “Be An Irrational Person Who Tricks Himself Into Believing Delusions.”
But, again, you’re talking about people who are so irrational and deluded that they can’t be expected to have rational and non-deluded thoughts. You’re postulating folks who answer anonymous surveys wrong because they believe they believe stuff they don’t believe; why expect them to be rational about their irrational delusions?
Why expect anyone to be rational about their irrational delusions?
If you start a sentence with “Once upon a time, there was an irrational and deluded person,” you can end that sentence in a whole bunch of different ways and still get me to reply, oh, right, because of the irrational delusions.
How do you so easily dismiss the point that there is societal and family pressure on one side and not on the other(for he most part)? How many times does this have to be brought up before you quit ignoring this very real factor?
Waldo, if I say you are crazy, then I am insulting you, personally.
If I say 86% of the population is crazy, I am not singling you or any other individual out. Rather, I’m insulting a group that I may or may not be a member of. You can argue with me that I’m wrong based on your own stats and figures. But it doesn’t work for you to say “How would you like it if someone called you crazy?” Because that’s kind of…crazy.
I question people all the time about the bullshit that comes out of their mouth. I may not rejoice when someone does the same thing to me, but I still think they are perfectly entitled to do so. No one is entitled to go through life without ever being questioned about what they stand for.
The author, Douglas Adams, once wrote about how society invents machines to do unwanted work. We have dish washers to wash our dishes, VCRs to watch our televisions, and so forth. For him, it was a short logical extension to have an Electronic Monk to do our believing for us.
The monk will believe whatever needs to be believed, so the rest of us can carry on with the things that are actually important in life.
It is my opinion that people form beliefs/opinions on Larger Issues and then just leave them alone unless some really compelling event forces them to have another look.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Well, I’ll bet that many people have an opinion about ghosts, but that relatively few people have actually bothered to do any serious thinking about ghosts.
If you poll people about ghosts, my guess is that they’ll answer yes or no. They probably will not say, “Well, I was raised to believe in ghosts by my parents but I haven’t given the subject any serious consideration myself.”
People have a “stock answer” to the ghosts question. It’s not much, but it’s enough to allow them to move on to the more pressing issues of the day.
They’ll tell you that they believe in the end of the world, but they certainly are not about to sell their house. (No, I’m not bitter… just disappointed.)
I think thinking you are religious if you aren’t may be a rational delusion. The societal default is theism. Breaking free of that default might take some effort. It’s perfectly rational, to me, to assume you believe until you discover you don’t.
Because I’m being told that these people are delusional and irrational. Boundlessly delusional and irrational, in fact. So why would I expect them to respond rationally to pressure? If you tell me they’re irrational, their irrationality ceases to amaze me; tell me they’re delusional, their delusions follow.
Of course, if I’m talking with someone who seems rational and non-delusional and he eventually mentions whether he believes in God, and I take him seriously – well, look, then I don’t have to postulate delusions and irrationality, and I don’t have to carve out a special “he’s delusional and irrational, but I assume he’s done that to himself for rational reasons and not because he was deluded” exception.
But if I’m gonna figure he’s crazy, why not just figure he’s crazy all the way down?
Well, one reason is that it would be oversimplification of an astonishingly complex issue.
Another reason is that you probably - at least possibly - are conflating terms. Terms like delusional, crazy, irrational. … They must be used in ways that are entirely clear both to the speaker and the audience. Else, we risk confusion or insult.
Do you not understand the difference between psychosis and simply being self-contradictory?
My mother. She calls herself a Communist. But she ain’t no Communist, and her credit card bill is proof of this. Her wardrobe looks like Macy’s outlet store and her house looks like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. But in her mind, she’s a Commie Pinko. My mother isn’t insane. She just drives everyone else there.
Even psychotic people are governed by social rules, by the way. They aren’t “crazy all the way down.” For instance, the kinds of hallucinations and delusions folks experience are heavily influenced by their social/cultural milieu. The “I’m JESUS!” delusion isn’t found in societies where Jesus isn’t worshipped and adored. Many so-called “crazy” people can indeed function like “normal” people when the pressure to conform is great enough. Very few people knew James Holmes was crazy, for instance.
I didn’t introduce the terms. Another poster, when making his case, referred to the boundless capacity of the human mind for irrationality and the boundless capacity for self-delusion – and I copy-and-pasted those quotes when asking him why folks with a boundless capacity for irrationality and self-delusion would be expected to act in a manner that’s neither predicated on irrationality or, y’know, delusion.
I may have been the first to introduce the word “crazy”, but I think that’s more a synonym for “irrational” and “delusional” than a conflation.
But if you think it’s a matter of conflation rather than, well, definition, then, please, spell it out for me: some folks in this thread refer to people as irrational and delusional because they think they think a thing they don’t really think. If I were to meet such a person, and such a person genuinely but irrationally and delusionally believed they believed stuff they didn’t actually believe, am I engaging in “conflation” by asking what other irrational delusions govern them? Am I thereby introducing a new insult? What, exactly, would be the confusion?
With this statement, you show that you still don’t get my position. So I feel like I’ve probably wasted my time. It is not just about irrational people being irrational.
Social desirability bias is a recognized phenomenon in survey design. Ever heard of it? Any researcher who sets out to ask people about touchy, stigma-heavy subjects will need to factor in this bias when interpreting survey results. Religious beliefs are right up there with sex, crime, and racism as subjects fraught with this kind of bias.
Right now, we’ve been arguing about something that, in my view, is inarguable. To believe that social desirability bias wouldn’t inflate the number of people reporting belief in God is a bit like thinking that no one ever lies to make themselves look good on a message board. In other words, extremely naive.
Because I understand how biases work and don’t work. Not only as someone who acknowledges being self-deluded about her own beliefs in the past (and presently too, if I’m really going to be honest), but also as someone who has designed and administered surveys to irrational human beings in the pursuit of science.
My beliefs are fairly fluid, going back and forth between “that’s ridiculous” and “I cant deny a difference in my life when I pray.” I suppose I am agnostic; perhaps it’s that I wholly believe in the divine, but not necessarily a particular, definable, divine being.
I do think the idea that anyone thinks they “know” what an omniscient, omnipotent, and incorporate being “wants” from them is ludicrous. Those who rail at others demanding that their own definition and interpretation be followed can make me literally nauseous with their fervent claims. It is especially bad when they threaten an eternity of torture if their will isn’t followed. (Or the will of the person whom they believe knows what “God” wants, and told them to spread it around.) The whole thing is just appalling to me, and I have trouble fathoming how it has enslaved vast generations of human beings.
I think the vast majority of people who propound these ideas accept them due to a desire for either control or absolution. Some want to make society work for them, or their families’ benefit. Others want to hand over control of their lives to someone else, so that they can be absolved of responsibility for outcomes or solutions.
But yes, they do “believe” inasmuch as they have been taught this from childhood, and get what they need from living within a large group who accept the same rules and limitations. There has to be some very unpleasant side effect to prod them out of acceptance. (i.e. I’m gay, and can never have sex if I accept this set of definitions - or - I’m brilliant, but will never be educated or useful outside the kitchen and birthing room. . .)
No, I get that. If you tell me a James-Holmes-type is crazy on the inside, but can do an okay enough job of conforming to often pass as “normal” outside, I can follow you. But this thread is apparently based on the idea of people becoming deluded and irrational on the inside because they reacted in a rational and non-deluded way to stuff on the outside, and that’s a whole 'nother thing.
That’s not a crazy person acting sane while still being crazy; that’s a sane person sanely going crazy. An irrational person cultivating an irrational delusion makes sense; a rational person rationally cultivating an irrational delusion, less so.
You’re talking about people who actually believe they believe something they don’t believe; they aren’t intentionally putting on an act for the world, like James Holmes; they’re irrationally deluding themselves, and irrationally deluding themselves into thinking they aren’t irrationally deluding themselves. And if someone can do that, I have “boundless” faith in their ability to be governed by irrational delusions.
You are absolutely correct. I didn’t say that you did.
I merely suggest that if you want to have a conversation that rises above a bar room brawl, you may need to take a moment and compose a reply that is better than the post to which you respond.
It’s possible that you were trying to be sarcastic in your reply to the other fellow. I understand. But, you are capable of more.