"It is legitimate to appeal to an expert opinion, provided room for contradiction is left." Posted by AndrewFinden, Sunday, 19 December 2010 10:41:44 PM

No, if the appeal to the authority is made without due reference to the subject and argument at hand.

Reference to scholars of religion having confirmation bias is not ad hominem. - it is very relevant.

It is not the consensus view of classical historians as well that Jesus existed (eg Bart Ehrman, Robert Price, etc). Besides, a "classical historian' is a a straw-man.

"They should otherwise be treated as the independent sources that they are" - they are not an independent source given the context they were written decades later, and likely re-written, and then collated by vested interests.

None of contemporary literature of the times accepts "the death and honourable burial of Jesus." all contemporary references are just to vague terms like Christus, Chrestos, and the early Christian cult, which was intermingled with othes like Docetism, etc.

Occams Razor (parsimony) says the claims and the stories that make the claims are without foundation.

L.B.Loveday;
'You may as well question whether Pontius Pilate or King Herod was "an actual person".'

Yes! Or rather, No. Remember Helen Demidenko who won the Miles Franklin Award - http://bit.ly/hldvm1 ?

To "modernise" your misconception: You may as well question whether Hitler was an actual person if you question that Demidenko's father was an "illiterate Ukrainian". But such a person never existed, her account of her powerful encounters were all fake and her story was fiction woven into actual events and around actual identities. As is your Messiah.

It's virtually certain no such person as "Jesus" existed and the first hint is biblical contradictions. Historically, anthropologically and archaeologically the Jesus myth falls short. This is why it lends itself to so many splinter groups and so many reinventions - unlike Islam - irrefutably documented, and Judaism - irrefutably documented.

The greatest "story" ever told is today more than ever, The Great Lie.

Rhian,

Most of what McReal has said just about sums it up for me. In regards to Dawkins though, I’m aware of his position on this, but of all the times I can recall him commenting on the existence of an historical Jesus, he’s included qualifiers such as “probably” or “it’s likely that [Jesus existed]”.

AndrewFinden (and Rhian),

I don’t “reject” the existence of an historical Jesus (or possibly several historical figures whom the story of Jesus was based on), I just don’t think there’s any good reason to believe with any degree of certainty that he did exist, because there is insufficient evidence to support it.

<<Unfortunately, the evidence says otherwise.>>

Well, it certainly wouldn’t affect me either way if Jesus did exist as some sort of historical figure, and if he did, I think we’re all in agreement that it would say nothing about the truth of the Bibles claims of miracles. So if you have any evidence that I’m not aware of, then I’m all ears.

Unfortunately, in the dying days of my faith, I went searching for what evidence there was for Jesus and found it wanting.

We have no contemporary accounts of Jesus from an eye-witness; there is not a single event from his life that we can accurately date or provide any evidence for; we have no writings from him; no carpentry works. All we have are hearsay accounts, written by people who weren’t eye-witnesses, decades after the fact, and most of the accounts would be impossible to verify anyway as they were of a supernatural nature to begin with.

There probably was some Jewish rabbi named Jesus or Yeshua who developed a bit of a following and got up the noses of authorities (or perhaps there were several) who is the core of what the story was based on.

Continued...

...Continued

But given the fact that most of the accounts of Jesus were of a supernatural nature, it’s a bit of a stretch to think that you can just ignore the miraculous claims and then point to some vague hints of a person who may have (or even most likely) existed and say: “Look, there, that’s him, that was the Jesus of the Bible”.

On another note, to claim that those who reject the existence of an historical Jesus are on par with young-Earth creationists is absurd. The evidence of an ancient Earth and evolution is demonstrable measurable and verifiable; there is there is nothing demonstrable, measureable or verifiable about the existence of Jesus.

But if we had no way to measure or verify the age of the Earth or evolution, and all we could go by were some scribblings from ancient people in superstitious times, then you may have had a point there.

McReal:
1 << An appeal to authority is fallacious if the appeal is to the authority rather than evidence or verifiable information about the subject at hand - a decision to remove an operable tumour is based on imaging information, tumour type and typical tumour behaviour not the authority of the oncologist. >>
You rely on the expertise of the oncologist to interpret the evidence, to weigh it, and then to decide which course of action is appropriate on the basis of that evidence. You assign the “authority” to the oncologist. The same occurs in the case of appeal to expert historians and other scholars: in the process of making a judgement, you rely on the skills and knowledge that they have and that you do not.

2 << No, if the appeal to the authority is made without due reference to the subject and argument at hand. >>
What on earth does that mean?

3 <<Reference to scholars of religion having confirmation bias is not ad hominem. - it is very relevant.>>
You are saying that anyone who studies religions must necessarily be unreliable. That is nothing but “ad hominem” – an insult based on personal prejudice against anyone who deems religions worthy of study.

4 <<Besides, a "classical historian' is a straw-man.>>
You are saying classical historians do not exist? Are you kidding? There are many historians who specialise in study of the classical Greek, Roman and other civilisations.

crabsy
1. arguing about a poor analogy is unnecessary

2. If the appeal to the authority is made without due reference to the subject and argument at hand (see below), it is just that - an appeal to authority.

3. I was not saying, and do not say, that anyone who studies religions must necessarily be unreliable. I say reference to them as a whole, without reference to the subject matter - that there is scant reference to Jesus in classical non-biblical texts - is a side issue as they have confirmation bias (eg NT Wright).

4. "You are saying classical historians do not exist?" No, I am saying reference to so-called "classical" historians is the strawman.

AndrewFinden, Rhian and crabsy - Address the issue !! - that there is scant corroborating reference to Jesus in classical non-biblical texts

see here

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcno.htm