Richard Carrier = Questionable
Offline Rook, you rely a lot on Carrier to make some of your points. This is funny to me because he rejects your "Jesus Myth" theory.
I would like to point out some very questionable arguements he made in a link that you provided. 1) He tried to show the probability that Jesus survived the crucifixion. However, he used the timeline in Mark to prove 75% odds that Jesus survived the crucifixion (since most people took more than 1 day to die on the cross). I can't believe that he made such a poor arguement. The timeline in Mark for the crucifixion is based on Passover. Thus, you cannot treat the short crucifixion in Mark as the actually time that it took for Jesus to die. 2) Carrier treats Acts like actually history. He used the conversion of Paul in Acts to show how it could have been an individual hallucination (Paul was blind while others were not). Carrier is insane to even think that the author of Acts lived in Paul's lifetime, or even knew Paul. For instance, the author of Acts portrays Paul as a confident speaker. Paul himself admits that he is a poor public speaker (I'm sure you've read the verses). By you own admission Rook, Luke-Acts wasn't written until the mid 2nd Century. I can't believe Carrier used Acts as actual history to judge Paul's conversion.
I got this from only reading part of Carrier's work. I'm sure I could find some more questionable points if I looked harder and took a break from smoking the refer.
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." (CS Lewis)
"A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading." (CS Lewis)
- Login to post comments
No response Rook?
No response Rook?
Which work? Link us to the piece. If you're being honest, I believe you are reading positions of Carrier from quite a few years ago. Rook and Carrier have almost identical views today on the myth of Jesus. Carrier is in fact a Jesus mythicist today, and wasn't in the past. We all grow and learn, just as Carrier did.
Please become a Patron of Brian Sapient
Support our activism efforts by making your Amazon purchases via this link.
Quote from Rook on the "Jesus Myth" thread: "Note that Carrier holds your position in his debate with Licona on UCLA. I'm not sure if you're aware, but he's not a mythicist."
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/rook_hawkins/the_jesus_mythicist_campaign/7791
Heres the link to Carriers arguement against the resurrection where he brings up some questionable points. (This article is from 2006):
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." (CS Lewis)
"A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading." (CS Lewis)
I heard R Carrier in Jan in Faith and Free Thought with R Spencer. He said he's a mythicist now.