The Jesus myther nonsense

[Rum]

Honestly, we'd be better off if the world was convinced Jebus was entirely fictional, as that would undermine at least two of the three Abrahamic religions, which together have caused far, far, far more godawful nastiness than any other philosophy I can think of.

Nobody is better off believing a lie. Remember the title of the superb documentary on Gore's work against global warming? "INCONVENIENT truth." Some truths are inconvenient, whether or not God does or doesn't exist. If you find the historicity of a Jesus or a Gotama or an Urukagina or a Pericles or an Ulpian or a Franklin or a Tolstoy or a Gandhi or a King hard to take, tough nookies.

Deal with it.

Stein

Actually lots of people are better off believing a lie. Denial, avoidance, hope in the face of impossible odds and bleakness seem to be built into us. Probably just as well or we'd all be like Scumple.

[Scott1328]

A religious preacher/teacher called Jesus definitely existed. How do I know? Because Jesus was the name of one in ten or more males at the time. And a high proportion of men became rabbis.
There were probably loads of rabbis called Jesus around that time.

Or yeshua, as it was then. Obviously these stories grew up around one of them. Most of it invented.
But why should anyone care, unless they have been indoctrinated in the crap that grew up around the original story? To claim that he never existed is trying to prove a negative, when it's odds-on that there was some nutter at the root of the original stories.

It doesn't matter if he existed or not. It doesn't make the fables any more likely.

Mistermack is correct. it is almost certainly true that there were rabbis called Yeshua in Palestine in the decades surrounding the start of the common era. What remains to be demonstrated is the contention that the stories, myths and legends that subsequently grew up around the Rabbi Yeshua uniquely identify a single individual.

[Hermit]

it is almost certainly true that there were rabbis called Yeshua in Palestine in the decades surrounding the start of the common era. What remains to be demonstrated is the contention that the stories, myths and legends that subsequently grew up around the Rabbi Yeshua uniquely identify a single individual.

Not unlike agent 007, James Bond.

[Stein]

Those "disagreements over arcane points of research" are what has made the modern world more hospitable to a secular pluralism, you jackass. If you dismiss that, you dismiss the very reason why you happen to be free to talk with strangers in a virtual environment. Human rights are also directly traceable to figures like Gotama or Yeshua

Are you trying to argue that there'd be no secularism and no human rights today were it not for Gotama or Yeshua?

No. I'm saying that there'd be no secularism nor human rights today were it not for Enmetena, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Gotama, Confucius, Socrates, Yeshua, Ulpian, Naylor, Franklin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and Mandela and their sort. Each of them stand on other shoulders, and if there isn't a healthy respect today for what they each did in moving the 8-ball of human rights a little closer to what we have today, human rights itself will backslide.

Obviously, ranged alongside each other, Mandela today seems much more advanced than Enmetena. But that's an anachronistic way of looking at it. Each era is a snapshot of humanity's journey towards greater human rights. It's also not a smooth incline. It's a saw-tooth pattern instead, but as King says, there is an ultimate arc that bends towards justice. If there weren't such an arc, humanity wouldn't even be here today. It would be extinct. There has been a precarious balance prevailing between cruelty/compassion and selfishness/selflessness for thousands of years. That balance has tilted toward the latter just barely enough to maintain some human stability in all this time. But it's still a precarious balance. It takes very little to push the balance towards the former and to ultimately destroy all humanity as a result. That hasn't happened yet only because the examples of compassion/selflessness cited in the previous paragraph have acted like "Horatio at the bridge" (look it up). They vindicate an ultimate decency in all humanity, but the counter examples of horrors like Critias and Hitler show just how easy it is for humanity to slip back into horror. If they slip back enough, we reach a critical mass of selfishness, and humanity is done for.

So keep on grinning thuggishly at the selfless efforts of those like Gotama and Yeshua and Gandhi. You'll be grinning out of the other side of your mouth if enough idiots adopt your scoffing attitude, spitting on the memories of these people to whom we owe our being here at all, until selfishness and cruelty will seem so "cool" as to "cool" ourselves into extinction.

Stein

[piscator]

...

Non-apologetics include Tacitus's Annals, in which Tacitus directly references Roman sources for everything connected with the Fire of Rome, including Nero's scapegoating of the Christians whom Tacitus explicitly names as having been founded by this same executed rabbi. Another non-apologetic is Josephus's Antiquities XX, in which Josephus, a contemporary of James living in the same city where James was stoned, describes James as this rabbi Jesus's brother.
...

Got it?

Stein

Tacitus was an 8 year-old in maybe Gaul when Rome burned, and was 12 when Nero died. "Directly referencing" some man-on-the-street story about The Big Fire 20 years previous is not going to make the evening news.
The Testimonium Flavianum suffers from a similar lack of provenance, The Antiquities of the Jews having been heavily retouched by Xian hands centuries after supposedly being written 70 years after the fact.

Yet you carry on like you're not aware of this, and that the Emperor is fully clothed. Sad.

I'm talking about ANTIQUITIES XX -- T-W-E-N-T-Y -- by Josephus, NOT Antiqs. XVIII, which is the T.F. Pay attention. I even stressed James's stoning, which is exclusively Antiqs. XX.

For crying out loud!

Stein

Oh...So you're saying that Book XX is legit, it's just those others that have been edited by generations of Christian priests?

[Brian Peacock]

I'm saying that there'd be no secularism nor human rights today were it not for Enmetena, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Gotama, Confucius, Socrates, Yeshua, Ulpian, Naylor, Franklin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and Mandela and their sort.

We can think for ourselves without knowing anything of these people. The case for human rights or Secularism isn't validated by past thinkers, they are concepts that stand on their own merits.

You're just pulling a variation on the old 'there can be no good without god' shuffle, or 'we need other people to tell us what the right thing to do is' two-step.

[Brian Peacock]

Each era is a snapshot of humanity's journey towards greater human rights. It's also not a smooth incline. It's a saw-tooth pattern instead, but as King says, there is an ultimate arc that bends towards justice. If there weren't such an arc, humanity wouldn't even be here today. It would be extinct. There has been a precarious balance prevailing between cruelty/compassion and selfishness/selflessness for thousands of years. That balance has tilted toward the latter just barely enough to maintain some human stability in all this time. But it's still a precarious balance. It takes very little to push the balance towards the former and to ultimately destroy all humanity as a result. That hasn't happened yet only because the examples of compassion/selflessness cited in the previous paragraph have acted like "Horatio at the bridge" (look it up). They vindicate an ultimate decency in all humanity, but the counter examples of horrors like Critias and Hitler show just how easy it is for humanity to slip back into horror. If they slip back enough, we reach a critical mass of selfishness, and humanity is done for.

And so, what's whether Jesus existed or not got to do with this?

[Seth]

I'm saying that there'd be no secularism nor human rights today were it not for Enmetena, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Gotama, Confucius, Socrates, Yeshua, Ulpian, Naylor, Franklin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and Mandela and their sort.

We can think for ourselves without knowing anything of these people. The case for human rights or Secularism isn't validated by past thinkers, they are concepts that stand on their own merits.

You're just pulling a variation on the old 'there can be no good without god' shuffle, or 'we need other people to tell us what the right thing to do is' two-step.

If they hadn't existed, someone else would have. Morality is an evolved behavior that enhances species survival.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I'm saying that there'd be no secularism nor human rights today were it not for Enmetena, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Gotama, Confucius, Socrates, Yeshua, Ulpian, Naylor, Franklin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and Mandela and their sort.

We can think for ourselves without knowing anything of these people. The case for human rights or Secularism isn't validated by past thinkers, they are concepts that stand on their own merits.

You're just pulling a variation on the old 'there can be no good without god' shuffle, or 'we need other people to tell us what the right thing to do is' two-step.

If they hadn't existed, someone else would have. Morality is an evolved behavior that enhances species survival.

Pretty much. Morality stems from empathy, which is evolved. Nobody needs religion (or any other kind of ethical system) to be moral, only to let their empathy for others govern their actions. What we need rigid, ethical structures for is the other stuff - like not washing your feet on a Wednesday, standing on one leg while humming and the correct ritual for sacrificing turnips - which is important too....

[hackenslash]

I agree with Seth again. I clearly need to kill myself.

[Brian Peacock]

I'd laugh, but I think he means it.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I agree with Seth again. I clearly need to kill myself.

It happens from time to time. Otherwise, you'd be a contrarian. And nobody wants that, do they?

[Brian Peacock]

"Oh yes they do!"

[laklak]

Do fucking not!!!!!!

We all could use a happy pill or two. Or better still, a bit of the old moloko plus. Who needs some starry yahoody bleeting about Bog? Tolchook the grazzy veck in the sodding yarbles real horrorshow, oh my brothers.

[Stein]

I'm saying that there'd be no secularism nor human rights today were it not for Enmetena, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Gotama, Confucius, Socrates, Yeshua, Ulpian, Naylor, Franklin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and Mandela and their sort.

We can think for ourselves without knowing anything of these people. The case for human rights or Secularism isn't validated by past thinkers, they are concepts that stand on their own merits.

You're just pulling a variation on the old 'there can be no good without god' shuffle, or 'we need other people to tell us what the right thing to do is' two-step.

If they hadn't existed, someone else would have. Morality is an evolved behavior that enhances species survival.

Absolutely correct. And aren't we lucky that some of the building blocks for that continual evolution can be studied as a social/cultural phenomenon by historians of the 21st century who value the unique history of the human animal for the precious thing it really is.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU CUM EVERY TIME YOU SEE A BOOK BURNING.



Stein