this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Religious Cringe
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Take it one step further: outside of the New Testament, all the "evidence" that Jesus ever existed at all is circumstantial at best and from a handful of religious Jewish and Roman historians with enormous confirmation bias.
Historians who specialize in that time and area are (for obvious reasons) amongst the most frequently religious academics outside of actual theologians, so most of them have enormous confirmation biases as well.
This is known as “mythicism.” The problem is that it basically requires you to believe in a vast conspiracy by historians and/or that nothing from history can be verified via textual sources. The basic argument against it is that it makes any sort of critical analysis of the past nearly impossible.
No, it's known as source skepticism.
It's not exactly tinfoil hattery not to automatically trust the objectivity of people whose deeply held but completely unscientific beliefs rely on a specific conclusion.
Especially not when those beliefs are inherently authoritarian and have been the enforced default for billions of people for over a millennium.
Mythicism takes “source skepticism” to conspiratorial levels. They effectively dismiss all experts and historical scholars views on the topic. It is not far off from being a tinfoil hat level of skepticism.
What I'm saying isn't mysticism, though. Not even close.
You're just building a strawman mystic because you don't have a counterargument to what I'm ACTUALLY saying.
It is exactly mythicism. Everything you said is a repeat of stuff said by mythicists a thousand times over.
Dude, you're talking absolute nonsense.
Speaking of repeating things, saying " it's mysticism" again and again doesn't make you any less wrong.
Again, your argument is just a copy of what other people have said a thousand times over. At least acknowledge that.
You're right about one thing: people have rightfully dismissed poorly sourced claims thousands of times over. Millions, even.
Here's something else that people have said before: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
To claim that even a non-divine version of Jesus existed is an extraordinary claim. The extraordinary proof just isn't there. On the contrary.
As for your claim that it's mysticism to doubt religious authorities, that only applies if you disagree for woo-woo spiritual reasons of thinking you "know God better" or some such bullshit.
Requiring concrete evidence like I am is about as far from the "hidden truth" claims of mysticism as anything gets.
Historical scholars are not religious authorities. It is more or less a field of scientific study. All claims are built on the basis of evidence and logical inferences from the evidence.
I will merely add that your position is not new and in fact it is many decades old. In that timeframe, it has made zero progress at convincing the historical community. And a major stumbling point appears to be the total lack of an alternative explanation and evidence for it.
As I've already explained, historical scholars who specialize in that time and that area are almost without exception followers of one Abrahamic religion or the other.
That is an inherent confirmation bias since they'd be showing themselves to be very gullible if they admitted that one of the most important figures in the scriptures that they consider capital T Truth is entirely fictional.
Add the paucity of evidence they base their "Jesus was real" claim on and there's really no rational, evidence-based reason to believe them.
History in general, yes. That specific subsection of the field has always attracted religious hacks with confirmation bias, though, always will.
Again, the specific evidence for this specific claim is ridiculously lacking. There's more reliable evidence of the sexual orientation of Alexander the Great than there's even sketchy evidrnve of Jesus existing.
As is the scientific method.
Because those specific historians are religious hacks who accept even the most spurious evidence for their preferred result and no arguments against it. Sort of like you.
First of all, no. A lack of dispositive evidence doesn't make up for a lack of positive evidence. That's not how proof works.
Second, there IS an alternative explanation. One agreed upon by everyone who doesn't believe in bronze age fairy tales:
Jesus was a fictional character based on older mythologies such as that of the Egyptian god Horus as well as other stories and the imaginations of the authors.
This is a true ad hominem fallacy. Not just personal attacks. You are really dismissing the scientific consensus entirely because you doubt the motivations of everyone involved. This is not the basis of a valid argument.
That's because Alexander was a king, and Jesus was not. The problem with this rationale has always been the same: Everyone except a handful of nobles vanishes from history because very little was written about most people. Even then, the documentation about Alexander is surprisingly scant. Almost no primary sources survive to the present day.
Again, a true ad hominem fallacy. Also, I am an atheist just like you. I just happen to not be anti-science on this topic.
That is one theory by one mythicist. In fact, it's the pet theory of Gerald Massey, someone who wrote about the subject in the 19th century. It has zero credibility among modern historians, from either the Egypt side or the Judea side. The person simply didn't know enough about either to make any sort of credible argument. This idea only survives in pop culture.
Other than that, it's been a cavalcade of one idea after another. Every mythicist has his own explanation. There has never been consensus on what the alternative explanation could even be.
You really need to be more honest with yourself. Your position is most definitely mythicism. And a very generic form of it at that.
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MYTHicism! The word he keeps using is MYTHicism! You fucking dingus!
That's just not true in this case.
If those experts and scholars are looking at the same dearth of evidence, they don't magically count as additional evidence, themselves.
... also, Viking_Hippie keeps misreading the word you're using and bickering about something else entirely.