Actually, NOT literally his last words. But that’s not what I’m specifying, just that he said those words as he was dying. For safety’s sake, I’m probably better off (in general in this game, not just with Jesus) INdirectly quoting rather than directly quoting, anyway. So “…to cry out to his father why he (the father) has forsaken him (Jesus).”
Don’t ask him about his last supper.
(Broiled fish snacks don’t count)
I think you could remove at least two of those criteria and still basically have an acceptable Jesus. In point of fact, the quote from Psalms on the cross is probably a literary invention, and the size of his crowds may be exaggerated as well.
Lol…so you have the ability to get Jesus and you a dinner reservation, but the main hold-up is that he can’t speak English? Thats like saying I don’t believe in Middle Earth because there is no evidence the atmosphere could support the lungs of a troll.
I don’t see that your description is much different from mine, except that you removed the part about the temple, which I don’t think that early Christians would have made up, and you put in a quote that I think is highly unlikely, and you used the vague term “large crowds”
But thanks for finally admiting that this is just another thread about the hisorical Jesus in disguise.
Is something wrong with you? I didn’t “admit” anything of the kind, much less “finally” admit anything of the kind, because this thread is what it is, an attempt to define rules for a very popular mental parlour game.
That said, I take your point (and Dio’s) about the weaknesses in my definition of Jesus. I didn’t realize that the whole “Eli, Eli” was a literary allusion (and probably bullshit), and I agree about the vagueness of large crowds, so let’s kill the one, and put a number on the other. If I specify “addressed crowds of over 100 people” would that do it? Seems to me you’d want to make clear that Jesus spoke to that many people, because that would be essential to his story, while acknowledging that speaking to 1,000 or more may be bullshit.
Again, I personally believe that there is a good chance that Jesus is too hard to pin down reliably under these parameters (as is Arthur), but I’m trying to see if I can come close and still avoid vagueness.
I think that you were being disingenuous for the first 2 pages, but I’ll keep playing along.
I believe that he was born (probably in Nazareth), preached, caused a ruckus in the temple, and was crucified.
I believe that everything else in the NT is either embellished or made out of whole cloth. But I might be forgetting something.
So, does anybody have any suggestions for other events that most likely happened? Things that the NT authors would have NO reason to make up?
So, what you are saying here is that you could get magic technology (or I guess real magic) to teleport Jesus to a dinner party (over vast distances of time and space), but then be stifled by language? 
I think that my iPad 2 has an app for that part, never fear.
Sure, it’s possible, but I doubt it. At the lease I’d guess that you might get several guests, but really for the reasons Cecil gave in his article on this subject I’d say that Jesus was a real person. Just not the Son of God. I have no idea how ideal a dinner companion he’d be, to be honest…my own preference would run to a large breasted, large bottomed and willing female between 25-50 years old with red hair (though in fact only the first three characteristics are key…I’m good with ANY sort of large breasted, large bottomed female between 25-50 years old).
What horrible punishment do they get if no one shows up? They just have to eat alone? 
-XT
Yes, you do need rules and guidelines. Absolutely. But we started off with a long stretch where you had some rules, but hadn’t bothered to let the rest of us in on what they were; then you seemingly had different rules that were operating in a paradoxical, double-duty fashion. Finally, it helps if a thought experiment has some sort of purpose or goal to determine whether the rules make sense for those goals.
Sure. But what’s the point?
I mean, it’s your thought experiment and all, but why should anyone else play?
How about the Last Brunch?
Are you seriously asking a question of a hypothetical and totally impossible situation with the caveat that a specific detail is impossible?
I’m a mathematician. Intellectual rigor matters a great deal to me. I’d rather hang around with intellectually honest atheists any day than intellectually dishonest Christians. I don’t mind the fact that a lot of people I respect happen to think that Christianity’s a crock. But I really hate and despise crap thinking, no matter who it’s coming from.
Why is a specific detail impossible? In theory, you should be able to supply a few facts that are reliable to religious and non-religious people alike. I’m trying to work out a description of Jesus that conforms to known historical facts, myself. I’m coming up a little short so far, but that doesn’t make it impossible, especially for someone more knowledgeable than I am about New Testament events. Do you have specific details about Jesus’s life that are reliably true?
My logic eludes you as yours does me.
A ‘fantasy’ dinner is a fantasy.
and you are saying you could invite Jesus to dinner and he isn’t real so he doesn’t show up.
and i am puzzled because your dinner is not real but you don’t have a problem with that but with jesus?
I will try analogy…Hypothetically speaking, I went to the bathroom today. What toilet paper did I use? But there is no such thing as toilet paper, so now answer the question.
I’m sorry but you are confusing me. i don’t think you asked the question you meant to ask. I think asking your question what proof do you have that jesus existed stands much better alone than in the context of a fantasy dinner. the fantasy bit throws your question out of whack. It’s like totally taking the fun out of fantasy and dressing it up as logic. Fantasy is not logical, am i correct? i really can’t take this hypothetical, it just doesn’t compute. A fantastical hypothetical with realistic limitations and it’s… not …fun.
You’ve heard of the game “Pick a historical figure to dine with you”? I wondered what the rules could be for defining a historical figure beyond “Oh, everyone knows what you mean by that.” I made up some rules that would increase the likeliness you’d GET a historical figure if you described accurately, and would decrease that likeliness if you described him inaccurately z(or described someone who never actually lived.) Apparently some people who have a lot of stock in Jesus’s historical existence are hell-bent on denouncing this game as unfair, or my rules as illogical or unmathematical, or as some gotcha game. But the same rules that discriminate against Jesus also apply to Moses or King Arthur or Paul Bunyan or Odysseus, unless there’s some basis for any of these figures that contains a kernel of historical truth that I don’t know about.
For example, one of the more certain bits of data that I have about Abe Lincoln is the hour and date of his death, so I’d probably include that in my description–how many guys named Abraham Lincoln died in Washington D.C. on April 14, 1865? Not many. How many guys named Jesus of Nazareth died on Good Friday in 30 AD? (I’m not sure how exactly the year is known, but it seems logical to me that the day of his death can be narrowed down pretty closely and specified according to the Jewish calender in use.) If you’re sure of the year, and the date, then go ahead and use it–all I’m adding to your guess is my own feeling that you’re taking a big chance with that piece of data, but maybe you feel much more certain of it than I do.
No, you didn’t.
And you have no basis for saying otherwise. You admit to not understanding probability.
Yes, I did.
(See how easy it is to be maddeningly vague and annoyingly assertive?)
And Yes, I do.
And I never admitted to not understanding probabilty, just your (intentionally?) cryptic formula for presenting it.
If you’re offended by the way I’ve set up this game, then don’t play it. I’m trying to be fair and reasonable here, responding to questions and requests for clarity, and you’re trying to pester me with vague nitpicks and general complaints and offenses.
I’ll tell you what, though, RT–I’ll be willing to discuss this with you further, but only in terms of King Arthur and Odysseus, so you don’t get all defensive about your poor picked-on little God, okay, and so that I may have some chance of understanding what you’re complaining about. And no math, either, just plain, simple mother English.
:headdesk:
Look, this is high-school level probability, and standard notation. This is nothing fancy or cryptic.
Your ignorance of this stuff was apparent; now you’ve only confirmed it.
No, you don’t understand probability. You’ve demonstrated that repeatedly by refusing to come to grips with the probabilistic arguments I’ve presented.
No, this is rather fundamental. You seem to refuse to come to grips with the reality that if one lists a decent number of probably-facts about anyone else, then as the number of probably-facts goes upward, the likelihood of their all being true heads towards zero. Name six out of seven probably-facts about Spartacus right? Game over, not good enough - and there’s no reason to expect any other outcome. This is because if each probably-fact has 80% chance of being true, you’ve got less than a 21% chance of their all being true - i.e. a 79% chance of being fucked, despite having described Spartacus quite well, by most people’s standards.
Meanwhile, pick fewer probably-facts, and you fail to eliminate similar persons, and down you go. So you’ve concocted a screwed-either-way game.
You have adamantly refused to deal with this.
Only if you stop getting defensive about being ignorant about basic probability.
Too late, I guess.
Sorry, but once we got past your playing a hidden-ball trick with your rules, and setting aside for the moment your failure to justify your rules in terms of any meaningful objective, your ignorance in this department is what this whole discussion has been about. You’d like to blame it on religion, but it’s got fuck-all to do with that.
So take your little game and see if you can find someone else willing to play. There are plenty of nonbelievers on this board; I don’t see any of them eager to get involved either.
Of course, given your thread title, it’s rather silly - downright pathetic, actually - for you to be whining that people wanted to use Jesus as an example.
You’re not understanding (or I’m not making clear) something I’m stipulating about these basics facts: I’m NOT claiming that more facts are better, I’m claiming that the fewer rock-solid biographical facts you offer, the better your chances are, so long as they’re sufficient to identify ONE person and that person only. So–with Lincoln, I’ve decided that to conjure him, I’d need the facts about his death (rather than his birth, which had far fewer witnesses and less documentation) and his somewhat unusual name to get the man I want to have dinner with. Give too many details, and you risk having some small point wrong; give too few, and you risk asking for multiple people who qualify. It’s a very simple game, in that regard, and instead of accepting that Jesus is a hard person to ID reliably, you go into a snit (and start throwing incomprehensible and irrelevant math at me).
How am I “blaming” anything on religion when I’m claiming we’d have the same problem conjuring Jesus as we’d have with King Arthur or Odysseus? Am I anti-British King, or anti-Greek or something? I don’t know very much about Jesus, which is why I asked those more knowledgable than I am to see if they’d be willing to stipulate a few facts about him that would ID him with certainty. I take the reluctance of people to play as a confirmation that he might not have ever lived, or that they’ve got so much invested in dining with him to take bigger risks to do so, or that they’d rather play a game whose rules they don’t really understand.
I think you might be confused by what you call my “hidden-ball trick”–I certainly don’t have a clue what you mean by that. The only thing I can think is that I’ve had to explain what I meant as we went along, and as I found out I hadn’t explained my thinking, but it was nothing as intentional or deceptive as you make it out to be.
I think let’s take this to the Pit.