Re: Thank God for "The God Delusion."

On Jan 3, 3:20 am, "Rolf" <r...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"John McKendry" <jlastn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:5u3slhF1f6p8pU4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:16:43 +0100, Rolf wrote:

"John McKendry" <jlastn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5u026cF1f6p8pU2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[snip]
 I also share your annoyance with Jesus-deniers,
Jesus-mythers, and ill-reasoned and ill-informed
gee-whiz accounts of the rise of Christianity. But
I draw a distinction between the people who create
and purvey this stuff as fact, and the people who
unwittingly consume it. Freke and Gandy deserve
your scorn, but Rolf does not. "The Jesus
Mysteries" has all the outward appearance of
a reliable source of information, including footnotes,
an extensive bibliography, and so forth. You can't
expect the average reader to come to a book like
this with enough background in early Christian
literature to recognize it for the dishonest drivel it is.

I snipped much here to make it easier to read, since I won't
be addressing any of your arguments. I just would like to
thank you for your reply. At the same time I would like to
point out that if we apply some rational thinking such as
some people have been doing all through history, recorded
in writings from quite a long time back and well into our own
times, we may also draw the reasonable conclusion that
there have always been people suspecting that the legend
about Jesus' mysterious conception, birth, crucifixion, burial
and finally ascent to heaven was not true.

But if that is the case, it also must mean that somebody
must have created the story, the documents aimed at
presenting the story as fact.

That raises some very tough questions, doesn't it? Could
that be the reason why, no matter how much annoyance
with 'Jesus-deniers' people - fundamentalist Christians
through Agnostics - may have, the effort to uncover a
diifferent 'truth' will continue? It seems to me that TJM and
'Jesus and the Lost Goddess' are an effort in that direction.
I don't think it is wrong to have an agenda, the Gospel
authors certainly had!

I can only confess that with my limited knowledge I find it
quite interesting to learn about the dispute between the
Pagans, Gnostics, and Literalists.

I have noted with interest your annoyance with
Jesus-deniers, and am curious about your rationale
for that.

Freke and Gandy certainly are not the first to doubt the
historicity of the Jesus character. It may be easier to
relate to that hypothesis if one is indifferent to the
outcome of the issue.

What does an Agnostic believe - or not believe? The
same as the next Agnostic?

 I am not abandoning this thread, but I have a serious
deadline at work this week and a long commute and
it doesn't leave me a lot of time, and I'm a slow thinker
and writer at best, so I'm going to leave your question
about Jesus-deniers until later, except to say that they
don't do impartial historical investigation.

 I will take a shot now at your question about agnosticism -
lower-case "a", it just doesn't look right otherwise.
Etymologically it means "not knowing"; in this context,
not knowing whether there is a God. There are people who
call themselves agnostic and just mean they haven't
decided whether they believe in God; I am not that
kind of agnostic. My kind of agnostic thinks that it is not
possible to know whether there is a God.

 That's not a complete or satisfactory answer, but I'm out
of time. I'll get back to it.

So far so good. But what about scriptures? The Gospels? Jesus
a historical person? Rising from the dead? Walking on water?
Tempted by the Devil? Born of a Virgin?

John

Those things are finite; they cannot be evidence for the existence of
God, only for the finite entity referred to in the Bible as God. And
in fact even that fails, since the mere fact that Jesus believed his
supernatural powers came from God doesn't mean he was right.

If you're asking whether agnostics believe this, that would up to
them; as I have just pointed out, it doesn't really have anything to
do with agnosticism, except in that an agnostic will not identify
Jesus with God at an _inherent_ level, since it is of course easy, in
principle, to determine if Jesus existed.

.

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