Oh dear me - not only can’t you do math, but you can’t read either.
Maybe if you stopped blaming all your failings on God, and tried to learn some shit…
I’m pretty sure that’s not why you’re being Pitted.
Speaking as an atheist here, I see no reason why anyone should conclude that the problem was with the description. You’re making an extraordinary claim about this genie’s abilities, but all you’ve got to show us is a lamp that makes a buzzing sound. The obvious explanation is that this is a hoax.
You wouldn’t be observing anything. You’ve invented this whole scenario. You’ve made up a game involving a fictional supernatural being, you’ve decided for yourself what answer this supernatural being would give a Christian who believed that Jesus was the son of God, and you’ve imagined what the Christian’s response would be. Since you’ve got your little fantasy all worked out, why do you need this thread at all?
If you were hoping this would challenge the faith of Christians then you didn’t think it through very well. This game can only confirm someone’s existing beliefs. If one believes Jesus was a real, historic figure who was the son of God then it follows that one would believe this would be sufficient description for the genie under the rules of your game. If one does not believe this, it wouldn’t be.
I wanted to see which facts a Christian might offer, and found that none could offer a one, so I’m pleased. It’s blather, and more blather, all the way down. They would prefer to offer blather, when I stipulate that facts would likely earn them a treat in the form of a long-vanished dinner guest (and that unsubstantial blather would earn them a buzzer) and given those limitations, they opt to quit the game in a petulant snit, refuse to opt for safer choices than the blather-filled options, call me childish names, assume all types of unearned intellectual superiority, denounce the rules of the game as I’ve described them, and declare themselves the victors, all of which I find unimpressive in the least.
Why I needed this thread at all is a good question–I suppose I needed it to work out the safest description of a historical Jesus, which I did in post #177, no thanks to my unhelpful Christian brethren, and I found it probably unsufficient to be worth the risk of getting BZZZTed. Another solid fact or two, and maybe I’d be willing to try it, but there just aren’t enough facts available about Jesus to substantiate his existence, so I’ve gone from considering him as a good candidate for my list of dinner of guests to a poor choice finally. Incidentally, someone foolishly asserted that it was only Christians who would even consider choosing him, but two posters at least (me and Dio) were willing to pick Jesus as a dinner guest, and now only **Dio **remains–but it was never Christians only, just people who were curious about Jesus’s life and times. I might pick Pilate, or Josephus or someone who actually lived and breathed instead.
Well then, it sounds like you’ve managed to firmly convince yourself of things you already believed. How could anyone have ever doubted that this was an intelligent and worthwhile thought experiment? If only more people had been willing to play along, they might have been rewarded with a purely imaginary treat rather than punished with a purely imaginary buzzer.
You already had a BBQ Pit thread open to express yourself. You are out of line dragging that behavior back to Great Debates.
Knock it off.
= = =
So, are you admitting to trolling, following up with insults in GD?
Despite the clear intent of the OP to play “gotcha” with a particular variety of believer, I let this thread stay in GD. (For one thing, I knew that it would attract a certain amount of witnessing.) Now that the shortcomings of the “game” have been explained by a number of posters on both sides of the belief line, and you have chosen to admit the purpose of the thread, I am tempted to close it.
For now I will let it stay open on the off chance that someone has something interesting to offer, but I do not guarantee that it will stay open if you folks cannot play nice.
= = =
EVERYONE needs to calm down. The shortcomings of the game have been pretty thoroughly explained by several posters, but since the point of the game has been noted, please choose to simply play it or not; don’t waste more bandwidth criticizing it.
[ /Moderating ]
All I know is I’m glad this dinner party is at my house, cause the guy can’t read a menu.
Let’s not forget all the dress and health code violations. And if a woman is at the table, hope she doesn’t mind the lord and savior throwing dinner rolls at her all night for wearing a short dress and speaking without being spoken to. 
Honestly, who believes this guy could actually sit in a decent chair without jumping up and down and yelling in Aramaic how the world will end in HIS lifetime?
Of course not. “The purpose of the thread” as you just quoted me was simply and sincerely to see “which facts a Christian might offer” to substantiate Jesus’s life factually. I wanted those facts to be tested here, and in my opinion two facts so far pass the sniff test: his name and his some details of his death. It still seems weak to me, and discourages me from proposing his name in my game, but I’m clearer now than I was when we started, thanks to people taking this game as seriously as they have (and no thanks to **RT’ **s attempts to turn this into the Pit-lite). Is “weak” an insult? I don’t think so. Is “blather” an insult? I’m not sure how to characterize non-responsive posts without being insulting, if “blather” or “weak” are considered insults. I’ve tried NOT being insulting here, outside of my general scorn for Christians leaning on the NT for support rather than illumination, and I’m not clear where I’ve skirted the line and would appreciate some guidance–could I get a specific so I understand what you want me to avoid? I’ll open up an ATMB thread if you’d prefer, but for now I’m just requesting more specificity in your Mod instructions here.
You’re right, that was out of line. My apologies.
Accepted. If you’d like to get off to a fresh start, RT, I’ll try being clearer and more all-inclusive, in setting forth my understanding of the rules, and you might try giving me the credit I’m asking for in not just playing a gotcha game but rather trying to set a very high standard for historical personages. I’ve already stated that I think Jesus is possibly playable, according to those standards, based on his name alone (“Jesus of Nazareth”) and on the facts, such as they are: “A preacher, crucified by the Romans during Pontius Pilate’s rule.” It’s not much, and if someone wants to substantiate that more with facts (I’m not sure of the historical Pilate’s title–proconsul, maybe?), I’ll be fine with that. The remaining question I have concerns whether Jesus actually existed (likely, but far from definitely, to my mind) and if “Jesus of Nazareth” was the only such person with that name in that time crucified for unspecified crimes under Pilate (again, likely though not definitely).
I’ve been a bit too meta in my response for GD; my response is here.
“The person commonly referred to in English as Jesus of Nazareth, or Jesus Christ, who is the central figure (or the dominant basis for the central figure) of the gospels, whose supposed teachings are considered by most Christians to be the basis of their religion.”
prr, your insistence that it is not germane to to describe Jesus in terms of what he caused or inspired others to do or think is arbitrary. Suppose I said I wanted to invite “the political figure whose assassination is understood to have been the proximate cause of the events which led directly to the first World War.” (To make it even clearer, we could even say “… whose assassination is understood by [a specific historian] to have been …” Would the genie not produce the Archduke Franz Ferdinand? If not, then I would argue the genie is either being intentionally obtuse, or is too functionally stupid to produce *anyone *reliably.
I hope you would agree, and if you do you might also agree that that is the same sort of description that I and others are suggesting for Jesus. If my description at the top yielded a “no such person” response, I would be confident that the problem was not in the question. Either there is a problem with the genie (stupidity, dickishness), or Jesus did not exist, or (possibly) Jesus was too much of a composite character to allow for any one historical person to be selected.
Another example: “The man who is commonly believed to have received a blow job from intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.”
Surely you would agree that a genie who could not use that to produce Bill Clinton is pretty worthless, yes? This is really no less specific than “William Jefferson Clinton, born on such and such date, served as the 42nd President of the United States,” etc. Both descriptions fit one and only one person.
Simply, you’re avoiding saying what this person did, said, wrote, etc. in your description–why wouldn’t you say simply that this person put his penis in the mouth of Monica Lewinsky on such-and-such a date? Plainly, you are phrasing it the way you are to hedge your bet as to whether this actually happened, or whether this particular blowjob took place in the Oval Orifice, or something similarly cagey. “This person was considered by many to be the Norse God of thunder, and was portrayed in Marvel comics as having long blonde hair” should not produce Thor for you, no matter how many devout believers in Norse Gods there have been, nor how consistent Jack Kirby was in drawing him a particular way.
The problem is, I would want to include on my list people who are alleged to have done, said, wrote, or etc. something, but I can’t know for sure that they did, so I want to get them there and ask. Your rules preclude such persons.
Exactly my point. Although I could get Bill Clinton easily, under your rules, for some historical figures I would want to ask “Did this really happen?”, something akin to “The man who is commonly believed to have received a blow job from intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.” is the best we can do from historical sources.
This is precisely correct. My rules preclude such persons. I have set up this game precisely to produce people you can identify with 100% certainty, not to produce fictional characters, and to make people whose lives or facts of those lives you’re doubtful about very risky picks. That is exactly the aim of such rules, and I thank you for recognizing that I have been very clear on these rules all along.
Right, but even if it turns out that the whole Monica Lewinsky affair didn’t happen as people think it did, Bill Clinton is not a fictional character, and no one should have any trouble identifying him from my request as worded except someone being deliberately obtuse. It’s no different with Jesus, except there is of course a higher degree of doubt about any particular biographical detail (which, I suppose, is the point you’re trying to highlight here in a frustratingly roundabout way).
Well, as enforced, your rules suck. So I’ll run a sort of informal side game here, and people can submit their requests to either or both of us. The difference will be that my genies have the power of common sense.
But you’re describing Clinton in a very circuitous and hedging way, using information that you are dubious about when you have plenty of reliable data. You are being a dick to prove a point, in other words, as much (or more) than you would like to demonstrate that I am being a dick to prove a point.
Please open your own thread if you want to play a differerent game with different rules. I don’t want this thread diverted or hijacked. Thanks.
So what? My description is nonetheless specific enough that it could only apply to one person in all of human history, and clear enough that no person or genie could fail to understand who that one person is unless he was just trying to be difficult. (Or maybe if it was an autistic genie. Is it? Because that would be cool.)
No, my offering to run a concurrent game is being a dick to prove a point (or would be if it wasn’t a joke, of course). My Clinton/Ferdinand descriptions are just typical examples of a reductio ad absurdum-type argument: if this common sense, easily understood description of Jesus fails, then these common sense, easily understood descriptions of other fail (and clearly there’s no good reason that they should). That’s not even remotely close to being a dick.
There will be no more references to posters as dicks.
[ /Moderating ]
Not even if their SDMB handle was Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe?
(I keed, I keed!)