I’ve had some requests to tone down the expletives, so, I’ll be more restrained this time around.
Holding: "There were a lot of different views back then and the one with the most guns won."
It’s a fact. Can’t deal with it now can you?
Holding: “Sorry, but that doesn't fit the model which Miller and I explain, one in which audiences even correct deviations.”
I can concede that audience participation has the potential to correct errors. It can also increase them, however. Somebody thinks this, somebody thinks that, and you wind up with A+B+C etc. At any rate, where is your evidence any of this audience correction took place? You ain’t got none.
Holding: “PJ also recommends a book by Elizabeth Loftus that Miller has already shown has no bearing on New Testament studies”
I’ll confess, I was surprised an apologist even attempted to tackle Loftus’ work. I suppose some kudos for even trying is in order. I suspect however that Loftus would not be terribly impressed by the effort. I have a few comments about the article. For one, it makes the same mistake Holding does, handing out possibilities of ways the stories might have been reinforced and corrected, without actually providing any evidence that these things actually did happen.
The article also notes that Loftus herself doesn’t think her work should be reason to preclude the inclusion of eyewitness testimony; it should be used to help judge the reliability of such testimony. I agree entirely. The problem for you is, despite protestations, her work gives good reason to be suspicious of the reliability of the Gospels.
Here is one example of the nonsense of the article:
Retention: the time between the perceiving of an event and the time of retrieval of the memory of that event… Many of the events in Christ's life, in training the disciples, however, are essentially cases of 'immediate retrieval'. The disciples discuss the parables, or he teaches them to the disciples again in private.
This is so disingenuous as to be laughable. The retention time in question is the time between the event and the time it is recorded, not between two events within the narrative! Now, sure, I know the implication is that based on the assumption that there was this action of immediate retrieval and subsequent repetitions. In other words, there is the assumption that the events happened the way the Bible says they happened, and then using that assumption to support the alleged immediate retrieval and repetition. But all of these things, including the alleged immediate retrieval and repetition are in question! You can’t assume they happened and then use them as evidence they did happen!
Again, simply, the retention time in question is the time between the event and the time it is recorded, not between two events within the narrative. This absurd counter-argument from Miller I think is sufficient to prove the utter desperation of the author.
Holding: “Does anyone see a list of sources for these events by Tacitus? How about a quote of a named source (since presumably, this doesn't mean free-floating quotes of a person, which we do have in the Gospels)?”
Actually, you have some point here. It is indeed true that Tacitus doesn’t list all his sources. He lists them where he feels the subject at hand warrants it. And, as it so happens, Tacitus is considered more reliable on some subjects as opposed to others. Indeed partially due to how well documented and researched various claims are.
Holding: “We still don't have that for the majority of what historians like Tacitus report, and I still don't see secular historians throwing out their work wholesale.”
Correct. As per my article, I noted that histories are not treated as monoliths, defining a work as either wholly factual or totally thrown out. Each fact set forth is evaluated on its own. See my quotation of Gottschalk. In the case of the Gospels, some facts are supported better than others. King Herod is mentioned, and there are references to King Herod outside of the Gospels. So, one can conclude that Gospel references to Herod have some basis in fact. The problem is you don’t get to say, “Hey, the Gospels mention Herod and he really existed, therefore Jesus really was resurrected.” If the Gospel of Peter mentioned Herod, would that mean its all true? Again, each fact must be evaluated on its own.
Holding: “We do have people claiming Tacitus tells specific truths without error, and there's still no one saying that it needs to be contemporary to him to be accepted. When will PJ answer this? How about 2076?”
How about, “I already have several times.” Once again for the slow-witted, each fact is evaluated on its own, based on a number of factors including independent corroboration, and initial probability. For each fact Tacitus reports, some we have high confidence of accuracy, others less so. I’m perfectly willing to accept that some events documented in the Gospels may well have happened. Herod being king, for example.
Further, I fully concede that how much of the other events to accept as factual is debatable. Even many skeptical scholars accept that a fair amount of the stories are indeed factual. And they could be right. This is just like Tacitus, where some scholars will accept some of the things he says that others don’t. There is no exact formula to plug in and say, “Based on the evidence herein, there is a 78.656% chance of it being factual.” History is a subjective enterprise, and not everybody is going to come to the same conclusion.
That, by the way, is why we have 12 jurors on a jury. If there was an exact way to decide factualness of testimony, you’d only need one. The idea of having 12 is to endeavor to minimize error. It doesn’t pretend to eliminate error. Nor does it mean if one person of the jury disagrees with the other eleven that the lone juror has done anything wrong or is being unreasonable. It just means that the lone juror’s subjective judgment differs from the other eleven. And that is to be expected to happen some times.
In the case of Tacitus, if I accept something he says but he was in error, or if I doubt something he says which is actually correct, the impact on me is negligible. And I’ve committed no crime even if I disagree with most scholars. But, with Christianity, I’m supposed to be a perfect judge of testimony (eyewitness and otherwise) and if I don’t come to the same conclusion as a Christian, I’ve committed a crime. It’s nonsense.
Holding: “Oh? ‘Whenever possible’? That sure does equal, ‘has to be contemporary to be accepted.’ Maybe one of these days, again, PJ will actually understand what is being argued, but he will have to learn to read all of what his sources say and not just the parts he likes first.”
And I quoted further from Gottschalk, where if you can’t have it, you only use secondary sources that you can reliably trace to first hand sources. Maybe one of these days, Holding will actually understand what is being argued, but he will have to learn to read all of what exerts say and not just the parts he likes.
Holding: “Um, no, he doesn't say JUST that; he says it was "handed down" FROM eyewitnesses. That tells you that it was just ONE hand.”
Actually, no, it doesn’t tell you that at all. It only tells you that he believes the endpoint of the chain *of undetermined length* is an eyewitness. Further, even if he did mean to say only one step removed, he still gives us no detail, who the eyewitness was for what event, etc. Who he talked to, how he separated what accounts to accept and what accounts to not accept. And, as Carrier notes, he clearly had to know of differing accounts given that his account contradicts the other Synoptics. Go back and read Carrier on these issues, and don’t just read the parts you like.
Holding: “Yep. That was a solid, detailed answer to Miller's pages-long arguments citing reputable, credentialed scholars. I'm impressed. Aren't you?”
As I said, Miller already admits he doesn’t answer “manifold objections” to his view. Why is it incumbent upon me to make it manifold+1 objections? For that matter, why is it incumbent upon me to answer every one of every elephant you may hurl, but you don’t hold Miller to that same standard? Let Miller answer the manifold objections he already has and then get back to me. I shall not play hurl the elephant with you.
Holding: “Curious? Not at all, unless one is ignorant, as PJ certainly is. 90-95% of these people could not read or write and would leave no "mark" of any sort other than what the scribes of the day (like Luke and Mark, etc) would record.”
While it is true that most people were illiterate, there were sufficient number of literate people in the year 30 that if there were all these thousands of people impacted, somebody would have noticed.
Some of the literate people that should have noticed include the following:
Philo (~20 BCE - ~40 CE) was a Hellenized Jew who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. He visited the Temple in Jerusalem, and corresponded with family there. He wrote a great many books on religion and philosophy which survive to this day, and mentioned many of his contemporaries. His main theological contribution was the development of the Logos, the "Word" that opens the Gospel of John. Yet Philo not once mentions Jesus, anybody who could be mistaken for Jesus, or any of the events of the New Testament. His last writings come from 40 CE, only a few years after the end of Pontius Pilate's reign, when he was part of an embassy sent by the Alexandrian Jews to the Roman Emperor Caligula.
Philo wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ's miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre (which also has no independent corroboration) supposedly occurred. He was personally very interested in the concept of resurrection. He was there when Christ supposedly would have made his triumphal entry in Jerusalem. He was there when the Crucifixion with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness, and resurrection of the dead would have taken place--when Christ himself supposedly would have rose from the dead. Yet, none of these events are ever mentioned by him.
Pliny the Elder (~23 CE - 79 CE) wrote a Natural History that mentions hundreds of people, major and minor; he even writes about the Essenes in Natural History, section V, 15 . Yet nowhere in his works is any mention of the Jesus phenomena described in Mark. The typical apologist response is that Pliny would not have taken interest in a backwater preacher, but given the claims given in the Gospels concerning the purported life of Jesus, it is glaringly obvious that Pliny would have either seen, heard of, or at least investigated events as incredible as those reported in the book of Mark; yet not a word of these putative events is alluded to in his work.
Pliny also provides us with a direct refutation of the Gospel claims of earthquakes and eclipses (i.e. such as those found in Matthew). Pliny collected data on all manner of natural and astronomical phenomena, even those which were legendary - which he himself did not necessarily regard as factual, yet he records no prodigies associated with the beliefs of Christians, such as an earthquake or darkening of the skies at a crucifixion, or any star of Bethlehem.
Seneca the Younger (ca. 4 BCE–AD 65) Seneca was a philosopher and statesman, who wrote both philosophical works and papers on morality. He lived during the purported time of Jesus, in the general area of Jesus, and would have had contact with Roman authorities who in turn would have had contacts with Jesus. More importantly, he was interested in matters of morality and religion very similar to the concerns of later Christians. Yet, he does not take note of any of the miraculous events reported in the gospels.
The life of Seneca, like that of Philo, was contemporaneous with the "Jesus" of legend. Yet though Seneca wrote extensively on many subjects and people, nothing relating to "Jesus" ever caught his attention, nor does he show any awareness of a "vast multitude" of Christians, supposedly, punished for the fire that ravaged Rome in 64 AD.
The lack of any reference to Jesus Christ or Christians by Seneca was an embarrassment to the early Church fathers. There was a futile attempt to rectify this during the 4th century by a forger familiar with Seneca's letters to his life-long friend Lucilius.
I really appreciate your responses to me, Holding. They just give me more rope to hang you with. You really want to keep this up and dig yourself deeper and deeper?
Holding: “What I said above is not answered at all, and mystery religions involved inaccessible beliefs that had no connection to history, as Christian belief did with its historically crucified and resurrected man.”
For one, you are making a circular argument, attempting to use Jesus’ alleged historicity to confirm that the original Christians had some basis to work from in their alleged in-group discussions. And then you use the original Christians as evidence we are talking about real history! Bottom line is, as per my quotes from “A Silence that Screams”, we really haven’t determined we are dealing with historical events. And even if I were to grant for sake of argument that we were talking about something that had some historical basis, you haven’t shown any of these alleged in-group discussions actually happened. Or that 1st century Christian in-groups would be any better at ferreting out truth from fiction than any other in-group at any other time in history. And in-group discussions have never shown at any time anywhere to be a particularly good methodology to do so.
Holding: “…befuddled PJ has personal problems with (aside from failing to argue, much less prove, that the "holy books" ARE merely propaganda”
Where does Gottschalk state that a work has to be “merely” propaganda to be suspect? Propagandists are well known for cherry-picking genuine facts for their agenda. For that reason, I have no reason to doubt that there are genuine facts within the Gospels; it’s just a matter of being without any way to know what is what.
Holding: “Any demagogue with a bone in his nose can call any work reporting something they dislike or disagree with as ‘propaganda’”
This is true. This is among the reasons (among many others) that there is no exact formula to discern whether a work is fact or fiction. Parts of Josephus and parts of Tacitus are considered suspect for being possibly slanted by bias, i.e., being propaganda. I’d even go so far as to concede that some people might have lesser degree of suspicion of “holy books” than other people. THERE IS NO MAGIC FORMULA. But, as a simple exercise to illustrate my point, answer this: Name one non Judeo-Christian holy book that you consider to also be an accurate history of significant historical events recorded in the book and are recorded nowhere else. The Koran? The Book of Mormon? Name one.
Holding: “He defines a ‘manuscript’ as nothing less than a whole copy of a book, but not fragments.”
I did no such thing. I leave it up to readers who can actually read English to discern who is right.
Holding: “Apparently PJ thinks that being ‘possessed’ means you're like the girl in The Exorcist and that you have no freedom to make choices. While this may have arguably been the case for a person like the Gadarene demoniac,”
In other words, at least in some cases, I’m correct. That is sufficient to prove my point. But, in other cases, I guess Satan just hangs with your homies and checks out the ball game with you. If you happen to see Satan, tell him he can watch the Super-bowl at my place.
I suspect that Christians who believe in demonic possession probably think it isn’t totally 100% control. In other words, the possessed have at least some limited ability to fight their being possessed. Haven’t done any surveys on demonic possession, but I figure this is probably true. At any rate, how much control the possessed is left with is never addressed. 90%? 5%? Nobody speculates. But, it stands to reason that Satan must have at least a sizable portion of control or we wouldn’t be calling it POSESSION. No proverbial rocket science here. And if Satan has a sizeable portion of control, than the possessed person has lost a sizeable portion of their free will. This would mean they have lost a sizeable portion of their ability to accept Christ. All straightforward logic.
Holding: “Sorry, but if you think it was done to make legends grow, that was evil intent”
I’m saying that I suspect the motivations were probably the opposite, in order to prevent false legends, endeavoring to “clarify” what is said. But a scribe making a change in order to “clarify” something, whether he realizes it or not, then sets himself up as judge of what “really” happened. Thereby providing a methodology of growing a legend while intending to do the opposite. At any rate, whether you wish to term this as “evil” intent or not, be my guest. It is unimportant to me. The main point is that Ehrman provides good evidence these kinds of things happened. “Evil” or not, I don’t care.
Holding: “We're still wondering how people at the door of the house have any relevance to ritual purity”
The “we” you refer to surely doesn’t include people of average intelligence or better. But I suppose that does put you in the “we” you refer to. At any rate, your argument was that Jesus was annoyed about curing the man with leprosy due to some imagined issue with ritual purity. But that issue mysteriously doesn’t apply when Jesus is doing healings at the door of Simon and Andrew’s house.
Holding: “I don't need any evidence that Jacobsen walked to the store because I don't care if he did or not. But I might need more if I did care: Such as someone else seeing him get there.”
Despite himself, Holding is actually broaching a valid issue. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. And that is, the degree of certainty of a proposition required for the situation changes the amount of evidence one would look for to support the proposition. If somebody merely asked you if I walked to the store today, without imparting any urgency to the accuracy of the report, and I had reported to you that I walked to the store, you’d probably find that sufficient evidence.
On the other hand, if I was on trial for murder, and my alibi was that I was walking to the store at the time of the murder, you’d probably want some corroboration of my story. I might say, “Hey, how was I to know I was going to be falsely accused of murder? I didn’t line up witnesses because I didn’t know I needed to.” My claim my well be true, but, you’d still probably want better evidence for my alibi.
Now, for something in-between, say I was involved in a mere civil dispute, and I said I was walking to the store at the time of some alleged damage to property. Here, the amount of supporting evidence you’d want to see should be in-between the two previous examples, for a civil case is based on preponderance of evidence rather than beyond reasonable doubt.
And of course a related topic is counter-evidence. Regardless of whether you had a small interest in my having walked to the store or a large interest, if you had some counter-evidence, you would then want higher degree of evidence to support the proposition. For example, if you had knowledge of my having been in the hospital in traction for the last week and suffering from delusions, you’d likely disbelieve me regardless of whether you had a small or large interest in the proposition.
With these factors in mind, I have legitimate reasons for placing different levels of demand for evidence on the works of Tacitus versus the Gospels. The impact on me if Tacitus is right or wrong is negligible. Therefore I have a low need for accuracy. Christians (and even some non-Christian theists) tell me that my (alleged) immortal soul is at stake based upon whether I accurately deduce whether the Gospels are accurate or not. So I have a virtually infinitely greater need for accuracy.
So now, if you were to ask me if any specific event in the Gospels was true, say the crucifixion for example, if I didn’t have any dog in the race so to speak, and if I wasn’t aware of any counter-evidence, I’d probably say, sure, it probably happened. But given that I allegedly have my eternal soul as my dog in the race, and that I’m aware of some counter-evidence, I have a different evidence requirement. Very simple actually. Thank you for bring up the point so I had further opportunity to bury you deeper.
Holding: “It seems far more likely that the writings about the years 29-31 were lost long before the monasteries got hold of them”
Once again, we get a double-standard from Holding, where he can just suppose that the writings of those two years were lost purely coincidentally and accidentally, without a shred of evidence. But if I suggest the possibility it wasn’t such an accident, oh, well, then I gotta prove it to the n’th degree. Holding’s speculations are pure gold, but any guesswork that doesn’t support Holdings position is condemned. The fact of the matter is that the coincidence of the missing years just happens to be the years that would be where you would expect to find references to Jesus IS suspicious. Not even you could be buying your own nonsense, can you?
Holding: “that Scholarship has a grip on the social setting of the NT but PJ didn't feel like answering (or even quoting) that.”
Okay, I quoted you on that. Can you die happy now? Having a “grip on the social setting” doesn’t give you mind reading powers. One would think that someone of even Holding’s limited faculties could grasp that. I have a fair grasp on today’s social setting, but I don’t have mind reading capabilities of anybody.
PJ: If you were given the choice between swoon theory and the resurrection was faked by an evil alien cloned twin of Jesus, you'd go with the swoon theory, right?
Holding: I'd go with neither, because both are monumentally stupid,
What you did was to simply dodge the question. The question wasn’t if either one of them are true, neither of us believe either one is true. The question was which of the two is more likely. And of those two, obviously the swoon theory is more likely. I go further and say that between the choice of the swoon theory and the Resurrection was genuine, the swoon theory is still more likely. This is still true even though I don’t consider the swoon theory very likely.
Just as an interesting side note, I read in one of Robert Price’s books the actual origin of the swoon theory. Most Christians think it came from some atheists just trying to find some reason to deny the Resurrection. As it so happens, it was originated from a now-dead branch of Christianity, the Protestant Rationalists. They were a cross between Christians and deists, and their beliefs seem strange to us today. But, in their view, the Bible is true, but, there were no miracles. They saw miracles as a mid-course correction by a bumbling deity. A perfect God would make things right the first time and would have no need for miracles. With this in mind, they asserted that the events in the Bible really happened, but they were all explainable naturalistically. And therefore they invented the swoon theory. The main point here is that the idea didn’t come from atheists, it came from Christian theists—albeit unconventional ones.
Holding: “He wants to be able to insinuate that someone is a liar for the advantage.”
And Holding wants to call people liars with no hesitation or qualification. More Holding hypocrisy and double standards. Please Holding, bury yourself some more. Go ahead.
Holding: “PJ wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to create parallels with vague, general language and out of timeless elements; you can point these out all you want, but they mean nothing in terms of dependence.”
In your previous rebuttal to me, you made use of the parallels between Lincoln and Kennedy. Derrick Bennett sent me a more detailed response to this, which I shall use:
What we are essentially talking about here is the critical difference between matters of superficial COINCIDENCE and matters of genuine INFLUENCE.
For instance, you cannot possibly pin Lincoln's presidential election in the year 1860 as having influenced JFK's being elected in 1960. Lincoln's assassinator didn't influence JFK's assassinator to do the same on a Friday. These are purely matters of coincidence -- NOT influence.
Religion, on the other hand, is like any other manmade phenomena. It is highly subject to influence. Language is a perfect analogy. There are commonalities between English, Spanish, German, French and Italian because they are all linguistically rooted in Greek, Latin and other ancient languages. Listening to a French speaker and an English speaker, they may sound a world apart, but there is a definite, traceable link between the languages being spoken. The two languages may be distinct from one another, but they are nonetheless related through the intricate web of history, sociology and anthropology that gave way to them.
With that in mind, consider Martin A. Larson's brilliant summary of the historical development of Christianity:
"And so we see that Egypt gave the world the god-man savior, Osiris, who was several times reconstituted in the Greek and barbarian mysteries. Persia filled the void with fears of hell, with hopes of paradise, and with the concept of the Last Judgment, and with the expectation of a renovated universe. The Jews and the Brahmanas gave us the priest-state. The Buddhists gave us renunciation, which made sex, family, wealth, labor and comfort into crimes and which made of idle communism and parasitism the saintly way of life. The Greeks gave us democracy and private property, which Pythagoras attempted to replace with a celibate but self-reliant communism. He also popularized the Zoroastrian metaphysics, the Brahmanic-Buddhist eschatology, and the Egyptian-Dionysiac soteriology in the Graeco-Roman world. Plato absorbed the communism, anthropology, and eschatology of Pythagoras, but rejected his celibacy and his soteriology, as well as his concept of religion as a mystery-cult. Aristotle rejected the features of Pythagoreanism which Plato accepted and embraced the concepts of private property and the secular life, in this respect returning to the ideology of Hesiod. The Essenes were Pythagoreans who encased their pagan religious synthesis, which Jesus absorbed, in a Jewish entegument, which he rejected, although He considered Himself one of the prophets of Yahweh; but he incorporated a definitely Buddhist element, not found among the Essenes. In the Gospel, therefore, we find a synthesis of Osirian-Dionysiac soteriology, Zoroastrian eschatology, Buddhist ethics and renunciation, Pythagorean communism, and the Essenic Parousia."
(The Story of Christian Origins, pages 416-17)
As this illustrates, there are traceable elements of influence at hand in the development of the Judeo-Christian religion. Furthermore, there are far too many factors involved to dismiss influence -- multiple philosophies and a plethora of religious ideas influx throughout the ancient Mediterranean world.
Earl Doherty makes some fine points on this issue as well:
"One major factor is the nature of the data being paralleled. There is a great difference between the data in the JFK/Lincoln case and the data in the Jesus/savior gods case. Each of the features attributed to Jesus and the other deities we can identify as serving a purpose, and they all form part of a coherent whole within the framework of mythical expression. The same is not true of the data in regard to JFK and Lincoln. None of the elements show any purpose at all, neither for elevating status nor casting some significance on the lives of the figures. They are purely random, and unrelated to each other. There is a big difference between being born in a given year and being born miraculously. The latter has theological significance whereas the former does not. In the case of Lincoln and JFK, one year would be as good as another.
Parallels between Lincoln and JFK are obvious coincidences. That's the whole point of making this comparison, and the assumption that they are coincidences is necessary to make the exercise meaningful. When we turn to Jesus it is not obvious that these are coincidences; they would need to be argued as such, and that is a difficult thing to do. To simply declare that they are, in order to make the parallel legitimate between the two cases, is to beg the question. In fact, it would be almost impossible to make the case that the parallels between Jesus and the savior gods can be put down to coincidence. That a set of multiple circumstances relating to birth, events surrounding that birth, upbringing, career, death and resurrection, would happen solely by chance to coincide with sets of themes and even some minute features found in savior god mythology, Hellenistic romance novels, and scriptural passages, and yet nonetheless be historical -- even if some of those features in regard to the mystery deities are set aside as overenthusiastic -- strains the bounds of credibility."
Ultimately, the question we must ask is this: Why should we readily accept the reality of syncretism in other religions -- both modern and ancient -- yet reject it in the case of Christianity?
It is simply special pleading to say that Christianity is exempt from the nature of influence -- to suggest, especially in face of the evidence, that it is the exception to the rule.
And when I say evidence, I'm not talking strictly about the parallels between Jesus and other Near Eastern deities. I'm also referring to the various pathways by which such influences likely made their way. We know that the ancient Babylonian dying-and-rising god, Tammuz, was known to the Jews as indicated by the passage in Ezekiel 8:14. Ezekiel may have found such ritual mourning to be heretical and pagan, but much later, Hellenized Jews, God-Fearers and Gentiles did not. The Jews were SURELY familiar with the resurrection of Osiris after having lived among the Egyptians for a considerable period of time. Worship of Osiris dates back to at least 2350 B.C. according to the Pyramid texts, and the Exodus took place roughly around 1200 B.C.
As Professor Lloyd Geering thoroughly demonstrates, the dying and rising god motif runs rampant throughout the Old Testament itself, symbolizing the tumultuous history of the nation of Israel:
http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2734&C=2446
And after Alexander the Great conquered half the known world in the 4th century B.C., spreading Hellenistic influence throughout the lands, Hellenized Jews such as Paul and God-Fearers (Gentiles attracted to Judaism) would surely have been familiar with the archetypes of resurrection and salvation inherent in the Greco-Roman mystery cults.
In the face of Jesus' martyrdom -- the death of a Messianic hopeful for the heir of David's throne -- it only makes sense that such ideas about resurrection would readily provide reconciliation for his followers and for those in their wake. The archetypes for resurrection and salvation were ubiquitous at this critical point in history. If Jesus was indeed a mortal man deified, there is no doubt in my mind that such theological expressions would weave their way into his story. Not a result of random chance or coincidence -- a result of religious piety and influence.
I asserted that my prophesy validation qualifications are reasonable.
Holding: Because he says so, and that's enough?
No, not because I say so. I said in my original paper that there is room for debate about exactly what criteria to use for validating a prophesy. But Holding didn’t debate or offer anything constructive, he just naysayed. Give us some alternate validation procedure and show us why yours is better. I can say that the criteria I gave are at least roughly what anybody would want when trying to ascertain whether a prophesy is valid or not—unless said person has some agenda in wanting to believe a prophesy is valid. Do you have something better to offer or just naysay?
Holding: Apparently he doesn't think moral absolutes have different weights,
As a matter of fact, no, I don’t think moral absolutes have different weights. That’s kinda why they are called absolutes, Einstein. At any rate, how come you only bring up alleged moral weights about things like “thou shalt not commit murder” when it happens to be ordered by God? If it’s ordered by Stalin, it’s a violation of a MORAL ABSOLUTE. If it’s from God, hey, you gotta get out the scale and measure its moral weight. Once again, thank you for proving my point. You’re my best asset, Holding. Keep up the fine work.
Holding: PJ whines (after blaming another non-expert, Tobin, for his error): …
I wasn’t blaming Tobin for anything; I was correcting your error, Einstein. You attributed to me things that that I didn’t say directly, I specifically attributed them to Tobin.
Holding: “Um, no, unless PJ thinks there was just a crowd of two people offering cloaks, one per animal, which would be pretty stupid on his part.”
You could plausibly claim the “them” being referred to by Matthew are the cloaks of the animals. But the cloaks referred to *in that sentence* are the cloaks on the two animals. Whether there are other animals or cloaks or god-men or unicorns or evil alien clones hanging around at the same time isn’t the topic of the sentence in question. So you still don’t get anywhere with your foolishness.
Holding: I wonder also what happened to the common Skeptical claim that the burden is on he who asserts.
Correct. Christians are the ones that assert that had the Romans pulled out a corpse of Jesus, that would have left the movement demoralized and quashed. I provided evidence that isn’t necessarily what happens in similar situations so it is up to you to show that your situation deserves special pleading.
Though it is fun to repeatedly show you to be the dishonest hack you are, I do have better things to do with my life, so I’ll probably waste less time on your ramblings in the future. Further, I won’t have time to deal with any more of your lunatic ramblings for some time, as my next project is to write a second edition of my Case for the Real Jesus paper. I got some actual constructive criticism from Richard Carrier. (And no, I didn’t pay for it if it is any of your business.) And the Secular Web will not publish the paper with expletives and invectives. So I will have to tone down and bulk up the second edition. Until that’s done, play your games if you like.
