Another Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Serenity

Onesicritus, the guy who invented the story about Alexander and Thalestris (queen of the amazons) getting it on, accompanied Alexander on his campaigns in Asia.

That doesn't make him reputable, or a historian for that matter. If I had to guess, it seems more like he was a hype man to Alexander, which is a totally different thing.

[russianreversal]

Originally Posted by Archbio

As for citing the Glorious Life Church website to "back up" anything, I don't think that's very prudent at all. Historically, there's no consensus that the Bible (and by that I mean the Old Testament) should be assumed to be accurate, even in parts that aren't blatantly mythological or miraculous narratives, and this website seems overenthusiastic over minor things (a figurine of a calf from antiquity? wow!) as well as outright inflating others. All in all, I was under the impression that the accuracy of the Bible, as a source, wasn't held by most historians as particularly faultless. I get the curious impression from the GLC website that the authors are imagining a conflict between "the historical narrative of the Bible is made out of whole cloth" and "the bible is the absolute truth, hurray!", which isn't a very balanced way of looking at this.

Fine, I could go find you a non-church created website, it'd just take longer.

My main problems with the argument are that 1: he uses a negative proof fallacy to prove his point : "there is unlikely any actual Jesus because there is no mention of him besides Jewish authors, the Bible and two roman passages." 2: His statement, already flawed because of its structure, is also wrong in the fact that there are other outside sources that confirm Jesus.

Furthermore, it make some pretty self convicting statements:

in this mass of... literature... aside from two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ

Hmmm, well, I'm not very convinced, particularly because of the two Roman passages. While these are disputed, so are plenty of historical documents. There was dissent over the status of Troy for the longest time, even though we had documents telling us of it.

Hugh Fogelman & John Stone, come back when you have a refined argument not reeking of assumptions, omitions and generalities, and we'll chat.

[Fifthfiend]

This thread is over!