Eise

<NitPickerMode> Newton was basically an alchemist and theologian. Debatable, one should know how much time and effort he placed in the different disciplines (which I don't know). A difference with Newton is that Leibniz stood fully in the academic disciplines of his day, where Newton, e.g. in his theology would have been seen as a heretic (and therefore Newton decided not to publish his theological writings). In his theological studies Newton e.g. denied the Trinity, based on textual criticism. Modern New Testament scholars agree with his conclusions. </NitPickerMode>

You mother's name is Eva?

'Muddling the water'? Now it seems you are going too fast to conclude that Aristotle had reliable written sources available. I think he hadn't, because he nowhere use literally statements like "Thales wrote: 'The first principle of all being is water' ". He uses indirect speech when discussing Thales: (Made everything small because from "I suppose": obviously Aristotle doesn't really know why Thales said the first principle is water.) None of the Thales-fragments use direct citations. Further we have only this remark of Theophastrus: Such a title does not fit very well to (natural) philosophy. You do not have to be a historian to assume Jesus existed, when you meet one of his companions (Peter) and one of his brothers (James) only about 3 years after Jesus' death. I consider this much better proof than 'he left nothing written', and 200 years between his assumed life and the first traces of him in writing, in Aristotle, Theophastrus, Hippolyte, Plutarch, etc. Well, then at least I have done my task. You said the same of Jesus (50/50), so I have given you an example of the assumed existence of somebody who take historians for granted, even if the basis for that is relative small. I would rather stop the discussion: the differences between us seem to be gradual, not principal. We could go on endlessly. But of course I would like to have your opinion on Ehrman's Did Jesus exist, so if you ever read it, let us know what you think. Anyway, I will be away for a week.

Because in general you show that your thinking is not very precise. I tried to help you, and obviously I succeeded a little bit. We agree on your last statement: Obviously, with history it is much more difficult to teach you clear thinking. Oh, and physics of course ("scattering", Cooper pairs ("In order to entangle electrons you need to remove the rest mass.")).

Then that was wrong too. You had to add "through experiments/empirical evidence"' to it.

That is not the point. For Aristotle we have lots of historical references. But Aristotle himself lived 200 years after Thales. There is the problem. I don't. The sidetrack we are going here is that we compare the certainty of Jesus with another example, Thales in this case. My point is that the sources we have are 200 years after Thales, where the sources of Jesus are 'only' 3 years (what Paul describes), 30 years (when Paul wrote his letters and Mark his gospel, 60 years (Josephus), and 80 years (Tacitus) after Jesus death. He seemed to have knowledge of what Thales had claimed. But he nowhere says where his information comes from. So this breaks down. Reading Aristotle's remarks about Thales, I do not think he was referring to any primary source, or contemporary source of Thales. No. It is better.

You said: Little reworking (substitute 'they' with its reference): The laws of the universe concern what we say about the universe. Right? Then I corrected: The laws of the universe are what we say about the universe. And now you are saying: The laws of the universe are what we say about the universe through experiments/empirical evidence. But that is exactly what I said. You only added "through experiments/empirical evidence"'. And that is correct of course. Fascinating. Your instinctive reflex to disagree with me let you say that what I said was not correct, where you now repeat exactly what I said.

Of course he was lying: That is the lie. This is what God said: And this the snake: So they would only be like God in this aspect: knowing good and evil. It seems that God did not like that. On a superficial reading it is an interesting story: being able to distinguish good and evil drove us from our paradisaical lives. OTOH, as a first consequence, Adam and Eve shame themselves for their nakedness. But when God already knows about good and evil, why did he create he them naked? Why was he walking in the paradise? Did he want to peep the naked Adam and Eve, knowingly, so doing evil himself?

In writing? Hearing? Citations by other antique philosophers? Who? What was the name of this book? Who thinks so and why? I gave you the link to the fragments of Thales. Please show me why citations (or better, presentations: they are not literal citations) of 200 years after Thales was supposed to live, are more reliable than sources written about 30 years after Jesus death (earliest gospel, with recognisable traces of older sources), a report of events only a few years after the crucifixion (Paul), and a few non-christian sources (Josephus 60 years later, Tacitus 80 years later) would be worse than what we know of Thales.

I've discussed this already with physicists of the 23th century. They said it is nonsense. And I like your self referential statement: Sure you are not working on another proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorem?

Hi TheSim, This is one of the most concise and to the point postings about free will I have ever seen in a forum. Pity that is on 'The Lounge'. It should be pinned in philosophy... But empleat obviously did not understand it. It is my experience that most people who do not believe in free will 'because determinism' are still heavily stuck in out of date ideas (or better, out of date gut feelings), like that free will presupposes some centre in the brain which autonomously, without causal influences, does have causal influence on what we do. In the old days this would have been the soul. Now that we know there is no material equivalent of the soul in the brain they think that 'free will' has no meaning at all. (It would be principally impossible that such a centre exists of course; I never understood why we need neurologists to explain to us 'that we have no free will', i.e. to declare that they did not found the soul in the brain.) In the meantime, in daily life, nearly everybody lives on with this concept, perfectly knows when people are coerced to do something, or do it from free will. (Of course there are grey areas, but principally the idea is clear). Really, @empleat, the problem of free will as an intellectual problem is a pseudo problem. As a personal problem however, it can be very real. Fears for other people or for certain situations, uncertainty in questions about what you really want are serious, and should be taken seriously. It is good that you try to get help. But really, do not think that the the intellectual problem of 'free will' has anything to do with your personal experience of lack of free will. Get the intellectual problem out of the way, don't go there. Try to discover how you can improve your life independent of philosophical discussions. It does not do you any good, believe me.

Nobody says anything about a god. As you keep repeating this, where you were already corrected several times, not just by me, this amounts to trolling. I am done with you here.

So we take Thales. I looked it through, and found only this: Theophrastos lived from circa 371 BCE to 287 BCE. Thales from 624 BCE - 546 BCE. (So about 200 years before Theophrastos .) Do you think that if we had such a kind of reference to Jesus, his case would be much stronger? Still, historians treat Thales as a real person. You know what the logical implication of this is, don't you? As I just represented the view of historians, you are implying they are crackpots too. Can you show, with historical methods, that this explains the appearance of Jesus better than the historians' explanation? He does mention them, you know that. And he tells he met Peter and James, Jesus' brother. And you also know why he doesn't mention Jesus so often. Exactly as DirtyChai and CharonY said: the documents we have of Peter are letters to churches about problems that have arisen in these churches. Yes: because you ask again and again. I answered it already the first time why I think it, and later added a citation of the Wikipedia article that you linked to.

You spoiled my joke!

Only seriously insofar one must wonder why he, and Luke, make things so difficult when they could just have stated that Jesus was from Bethlehem. As pure fantasy this would have been much easier. Historians do not take it serious as a precise chronicle. But they look for conspicuous parts in the new testament. The fact that 2 gospel writers bend their birth story in unnecessary and different ways is such a conspicuous aspect. That Jesus was called 'of Nazareth' is also attested in John and Acts. But the messiah was supposed to be born in Bethlehem (see the Micah text I cited in my previous post). Another example is that obviously Mark used at least partially Aramaic sources, shows that he at least wrote down something that he had read or heard from other, Aramaic sources. No, I am not. Again, historians try to understand why the gospels were written as they were, and draw their conclusions from text analysis and from text comparisons. Then they have to filter out everything that can simply be explained by religious bias (which is nearly everything), but then they are still left with a few funny facts, in this case: why not just writing that Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Why lie about where he is born? (Yes, historians are convinced this is a lie, in both versions). And also the prophecy you cite is a partial lie, and doesn't pass the religious bias filter. Nazareth is never mentioned in the old testament. (Do a search in Biblegate, you will see). But Bethlehem is mentioned a lot, must have been an important town already in old testament times. In the end, as Luke writes, it was the city of David: In other words, it is Matthew's and Luke's religious bias, that make these passages interesting. Why were they not more consistent in their bias? Maybe because they dared not to change the well known fact that Jesus was from Nazareth? In your post you do not show that you not even understand why historians conclude that Jesus was born in Nazareth. (Just for the record: this is just one argument to assume that Jesus really existed.) I did not find anything in your link that supports your claims. But maybe that is just me. Please cite the exact texts that support your point. I cited a few fragments of Aristotle himself, and pointed you to where I found them, and where the other fragments that are related to Thales can be found. All these fragments were written hundreds of years after Thales was supposed to live.

Depends. Some space probes have a very small plutonium reactor (e.g. Voyager), but they are not based on nuclear fission, but the natural decay of plutonium. Plutonium-238 is so highly radioactive that the heat of this decay is enough to produce electricity with it. Then there are other types of fission reactors, e.g. aqueous homogeneous reactors, that are pretty small: But they also work just with highly enriched Uranium-235. In the article the KEMA Suspension Test Reactor is also mentioned ("the reactor consisted of a reactor vessel (ø310 mm, content 18.3 liter"): My father worked at KEMA (but he was not associated with the reactor laboratory). You brought back a few melancholic associations with your question... And last but not least, there are experiments in Germany with nuclear power for smart phones. Sorry, I only found a German video of its promo, but I think you can understand what it is about, just looking at the video. It is worth it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-nezImUP0w

Wrong. Very wrong. First: Again, you really seem to think that historians are stupid. Such an obvious error would go unnoticed? I repeat: at the moment you behave like a relativity theory crackpot. Second: I wrote: "Now according to the old testament, the 'Messiah' would be born in Bethlehem." Made it bold for you. Matthew is the new testament. Third: No historian would take such a passage seriously, on the simple ground that it makes the gospel of Matthew its own authority. In Matthew this prophecy is mentioned, and wow!, Jesus is actually born in Bethlehem and brought up in Nazareth! A miracle! Of course historians do not let this pass: prophesy and fulfillment in the same source, and exactly in line with what Christian would like to believe, so extremely probably highly biased. Add to it that historians do not buy into magical things like prophecies (except prophecies in hindsight ), this passage is worthless. You know that, and the historians know that. To add to it: the word 'Nazerene' and 'Nazareth' appear only in the new testament. And as addition to the addition: 'Bethlehem' has many mentionings in the old testament. Fourth: here the 'real prophesy', this time really from the old testament: Micah 5 English Standard Version (ESV): Further, I would suggest that red or green points are given based on the quality of posts, not if you agree with it or not. If somebody shows (s)he understood the posts (s)he is reacting on, builds an argument, is on topic etc, then the post is OK. If I would give a negative point e.g. to Ten oz everytime I would not agree with him, he would be deeply, deeply red! Also, in this sense, I find it telling that e.g. Itoero gets positive points for very bad arguments, and for postings in ill faith. Where CharonY writes thoughtful long posts and gets a negative point for it! If you do not agree with him/her, then give good arguments against his/hers! I personally found your posting very bad based on hubris in respect to historians, and the obvious error that your citation was not from the old testament (which you should have noticed yourself). And I apologise already in case it was not you giving these unrightful points. Then my addressee is unknown, and I hope (s)he will read this, and correct his/her behaviour.

I understand, but I do not quite agree: even if Jesus were the only one whose existence is stated on such grounds, it does not weaken the arguments in themselves. Really? Do you have sources for these claims? Take Thales as example, all citations from Aristotle: (bold by me: these should have been natural places where Aristotle could have referred to some other source. He doesn't.) There are more authors, you can look them up here. But I can assure you, nowhere can we reconstruct how this information came to the different classical authors. There is no reference to any written source or mentioning of a contemporary of Thales. This means that there is a gap of about 300 years, and we have no idea how Thales' ideas came to Aristotle & co. With Jesus we have a gap from circa 3-30 years (Events that Paul refers to, till gospel of Mark), and historians are pretty sure that there were already a few written sources around when 'Marc' wrote his gospel (based on a few Aramaic phrases, or some literal translations of Aramaic). Citation please. That is not relevant at all. Nobody denies that Sai Baba, or Adi Da existed. But there are many magical stories woven around them. So such imagined stories have no relevance at all for the question if they really existed. The only thing a naturalist can do is ignore the magic. Edit: here are fragments of Anaximander. And here of Anaximenes.

Here goes a little nitpicking... No. This might be metaphoric speech (as used also by many real physicists), and then this would be nitpicking. But I think often there is more behind it. So: no, the so called 'laws of nature' are descriptions of how nature factually behaves. And descriptions do not 'govern' anything, they can't. Small correction. Think about it. Beside the point about 'govern' I made above, you are mixing different categories. Of course our descriptions are not 'governed' by forces. The right way to say it would be that the objects in nature are 'governed' by the forces in nature. This can be disputed on basis of QM, but at least it is not a category error anymore. Litewave's answer is very precise. I especially like his last remarks: My tutor in my study of philosophy wrote his dissertation about what you are suggesting with your 'ineffable (unanalyzable) and simultaneously obvious': The Antinomy Of Thought: Maimonian skepticism and the relation between thoughts and objects. Pity enough it is a highly technical argument, but the cover of his original dissertation may give some clue... The essence of what he is proposing is that we principally cannot give an intelligible account of the relation between thought and objects. So we cannot stop the haunting...

Before I give you a trial of an answer, I would like to reflect for a moment on your question. First: it smells a bit of a reversed 'what-aboutism'. If there are other persons from which we only have references in documents that are assumed to be written after the death of that person, then it is obviously normal praxis in historical science. But does it have any relevance for the question at hand? Would the arguments pro/contra Jesus' existence change when there was no other (assumed) historical person that is accepted on later sources alone? Second: I am not a historian. If I remember correctly, I got interested in the question when I learned in another forum of Ehrman's books, and that he presented quite another Jesus-picture than I was used to. As a philosopher, of course I have some knowledge of ancient philosophers, but that's it. No special historical expertise. Third: Why are we repeating the same discussion as in the old Jesus-thread? And fourth, and I will think I will repeat it in every new posting of me in this thread: it makes no sense to discuss a caricature of my viewpoint. I do not say "Jesus existed!". I say: the most probable reconstruction of the sources we have about Jesus, its historical context and the development of early Christianity, leads to the conclusion that he very probably existed. And, sorry, the only way to oppose this view is to give a better reconstruction. Just saying 'the gospels are unreliable' does not suffice: you must know how historians treat such highly biased texts (in their context of other documents we also have). If you think historians do it wrong, then you are in fact saying that they are a bunch of gullible amateurs: you know better! As if they have no idea that the gospels are not simple historical chronicles, that they do not know that the gospels were written after Jesus death, and what all. Of all the arguments you bring, the historians are fully aware, and still they say: it is very probable that Jesus existed. But to understand that, you must read their works. If you refuse, well, you are entitled to every opinion, but it is 100% not an opinion supported by science. If you say that there are minorities with other views, like the mythicists, then you also must dive into their arguments, and see how they do compared to that of other historians. And, last but not least, in the light of possible new sources, the historians' viewpoint might change. But that is normal scientific praxis. So and now my answer: nearly all pre-socratic philosophers: they are supposed to have lived from 600 - 500 BCE, the earliest sources we have are from about 300 BCE. Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides. And yes, dimreepr's example is also valid: most historians accept that a historical person, (later?) called 'Buddha' really existed. But again, similar as Jesus, the modern historical picture is quite different from what traditional Buddhists hold. The earliest written Buddhist texts are even later written than those of Jesus: about 200 years after Buddha's death.

I cannot follow you. Yes, Jesus is called 'of Nazareth'. But why would Matthew and Luke go into such a trouble to explain that he grew up in Nazareth, but was born in Bethlehem? And they do it in different ways: Matthew: Joseph and Maria lived in Bethlehem, when Jesus was born. They had to fly to Egypt for Herod, and after Herod's death, they went to Nazareth. So that is the place where Jesus grew up. Luke: Joseph and Maria lived in Nazareth, but had to to go to Bethlehem for a Roman census, where Jesus was born. Afterwards they just went back to Nazareth. John and Marc say nothing about Jesus' birth. Now according to the old testament, the 'Messiah' would be born in Bethlehem. For their theological agenda, obviously Matthew and Luke fantasized a story to explain an unwelcome fact: that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem at all (Romans never did a empire-wide census, and the dates that can be reconstructed from Luke are also wrong; further there is no historical record of the murder of so many babies in Nazareth. We don't know if such a thing happened, but it seems not very likely), but in Nazareth. If the gospels are fantasy only, why not just let Jesus be born in Bethlehem? I gave this argument already, but it seems to me that you stopped really reading this thread ("Christian historians"), and just react from your own opinion. Yep, more or less: But: I cite myself, sou you can reread (read slowly and carefully...): Of course, when new evidence would be found, maybe these ideas must be revised (or hardened!). But that is normal scientific practice. What the fuzz? I mentioned three scientific results, from not so certain (Jesus), very certain (Napoleon) to rocksolid (relativity).

I agree that one should take care. But you do as if early Christian historians are all Christians. I said this already (felt) a dozen times, they are not all Christians, but you keep repeating this. Further you haven't looked in the methods and how they are applied, sou cannot even know if their potential biases stands in the way of their work. I gave the grounds why I think it is a majority. You do not discuss these grounds at all. Yup. We are not so certain about Jesus' existence as Napoleon's, and surely not as certain as that special relativity is correct. But that is not the question I am answering to. You know what this question is, I repeated it several times, but you go back again to looking for certainty, for a "high quality guess" and not for the best possible. Like this? For the rest you haven't read my argument on which you react. Why would one of the stories be correct as a whole? You have no idea about how historians treat such highly biased texts. Look at the second post of this thread. Of all the sources we have, that is what most early Christianity historians more or less agree on. Not much, is it? OK, I repeat my first post in this thread here. (In the end, Itoero never follows links provided (often not even when linked by himself).) You can all decide for yourself if my viewpoint is so unscientific. Be sure you argue against this, and nothing else. I italicized a few key phrases.

Of course I am not aware of any statistics. But I am aware that Ehrman is only criticised by fundamentalist Christians and by mythicists (and the latter possibly only because he says that Jesus very probably existed; not because of his other books). I am sure that you all agree that the critique of fundamentalist Christians is worth nothing. Then I have cited from the Wikipedia article that Ten oz linked himself: that most scholars consider mythicism as a fringe theory. And then (ok, I am sure that nobody of you will accept this), Ehrman states it himself. I have read quite a few of his books (which funny enough did not arise any criticism of mythicists; only of course of fundamentalist Christians), and he seems very honest and upright, calmly exposing the arguments in favour of Jesus' existence. Again, if this would not be true, he would be criticised by fellow early Christian historians. Also consider this: if his very critical books on Christianity as 'the religion of Jesus' on one side, and his Did Jesus Exist didn't let him loose his job, then obviously his Alma Mater has no problem with him. You can also add Studiot's observation about what a university course looks like. Would such a course look like this if it was not the generally accepted view in Academia? If you can come up with an academical text book that 'teaches the divide', please do so. I did not. Repeating a falsity doesn't make it true. CharonY pointed you already to it, and I did too. I wrote: This time I made it bold as well. I can add brackets, to show the correct reading: Richard Carrier has a degree in ancient history, but (does no research or is teaching) at any university (not even in ancient history) "At any university" applies to "does no research" and to "is teaching". Obviously, you read it as: Richard Carrier has a degree in ancient history, but does no research or (is teaching at any university) (not even in ancient history) So you applied it to "is teaching" only, and assumed I said he did not do research on his own. That is not what I said. If you had followed the link you could have clearly seen that I meant that. But you often do not even look in your own links... ("proof" <-> "proof of concept") Yes, most of what is in the gospels is probably fantasy. But given that they are, there are a few puzzles that could have easily ironed out if they were just fantasies. (e.g Jesus of Nazareth had just as good been Jesus of Bethlehem). I will come to Belgium and crucify you... For me it is only a 6 hours car drive! Behold! The day is near!

So first you give the argument that the fact that Ehrman presents the majority view is meaningless, and then you say that what the consensus under historians is. And thereby it is flatout wrong. Where do you get that 'bible historians' believe this rubbish? You mean 'theologians'. Then you might be right, but I do not know. In modern liberal protestantism the bible stories are not taken literally. (Just to add again: I am a naturalist, and in most practical meanings of the word, an atheist.) Compare a theory that is clearly impossible (storks create babies), with "the most rational explanation of the existent sources we have, their contents, their language and appearance, and their fitting in the rest we know about ancient Palestine". Where is the impossibility? Again, you do not recognise the different methods that must be used between different sciences. And I just want to repeat again: Ehrman gets the heaviest attacks from fundamentalist theologians. There is even a website devoted to 'Ehrman criticism' (the Ehrman-project). Pity enough mostly videos, only a few annotated articles. Even Carrier has written that he thinks Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted and Forged are great books. Why? I assume because Ehrman leaves next to nothing from traditional Christian theology, based on textual criticism of the New Testament, and on what we know about how it was decided in the period 75-400 BCE which texts are 'inspired', true (so no falsifications) and belong in the new testament. And one thing (again): you (and Mistermack even more) seem to think that historians applying the critical-historical method, are not aware of any of your arguments: that nobody knows who wrote the gospels, that all authors had a theological agenda, that a lot of documents are forged, changed, etc. Same holds for vaccination, 9/11, climate deniers...

You got a positive point for quoting in ill faith??? Just as small addition: CharonY did not put the italics himself. I already did that. And you missed exactly that phrase??? And then you say what I said is a lie? Wow.