Originally Posted by Daldolma
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My goal posts are the origins of the discussion. Alarti claimed belief in god to be irrational. Those are the goal posts. If you want to qualify that claim to better confront your bias against Judeo-Christian conceptions, then you are welcome to -- but don't try to adapt the discussion without at least acknowledging the shift. I am not discussing a Judeo-Christian god.
You doubt the historicity of Jesus. Your opinion is not well reasoned nor is it the product of considerable thought. On the contrary, it is clearly biased and borderline ignorant. There was nothing sloppy about my copy-pasta, and CERTAINLY nothing that could be described as "contradictory". I claimed that the vast majority of scholars agree re: the historicity of Jesus. One of the sources was Price. Because of that, you claim that the statement is unreliable. On the contrary, the source quotes Price as noting that he is an extreme outlier in the discussion due to his skepticism regarding Jesus' existence. As such, he is a source re: the general consensus of Jesus' historicity. I will re-post the expressed opinions from scholars that you describe as "qualified".
In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart Ehrman (who is a secular agnostic) wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees" B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged : writing in the name of God ISBN 978-0-06-207863-6. page 285
Michael Grant (a classicist) states that "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." in Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Micjhael Grant 2004 ISBN 1898799881 page 200
Richard A. Burridge states: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more." in Jesus Now and Then by Richard A. Burridge and Graham Gould (Apr 1, 2004) ISBN 0802809774 page 34
Robert E. Van Voorst Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence Eerdmans Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-8028-4368-9 page 16 states: "biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted"
James D. G. Dunn "Paul's understanding of the death of Jesus" in Sacrifice and Redemption edited by S. W. Sykes (Dec 3, 2007) Cambridge University Press ISBN 052104460X pages 35-36 states that the theories of non-existence of Jesus are "a thoroughly dead thesis"
Crossan, John Dominic (1995). Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. HarperOne. p. 145. ISBN 0-06-061662-8. "That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus...agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact."
Eddy & Boyd (2007) The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition Baker Academic, ISBN 0-8010-3114-1 page 127 states that it is now "firmly established" that there is non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus.
These are not vague references. They are not hearsay. They are the accumulated statements of nearly a variety of scholars on the subject. Your opinion, apparently based upon your own research, contradicts the vast majority of historians and scholars that have investigated the matter. Your credentials are non-existent, and thus, your opposition is largely irrelevant. I don't know why you refuse to accept the scholarly consensus regarding the historicity of Jesus, and I don't particularly care. His existence has been established well beyond the typical degrees of historical skepticism.
It would be possible to continue forward and address the rest of your post, but it seems useless. Isaac Newton, in private writings, committed heresy and yet expressed an enduring and powerful theism. Galileo was identified by the Church as a heretic for his scientific beliefs, and yet maintained his belief in a god. Your hostility to the notion of a god is unshakable. On matters of Jesus' existence, you argue against the very authority and evidence that you demand even to accept the rationality of a belief in god. I cannot produce Jesus's skeleton and I cannot produce any god's mailing address. Thus, you may continue to believe both notions are preposterous.
As an aside, your repeatedly incorrect usage of fallacies is amusing. I question your education. You seem to cite them as an attempt at establishing authority yourself, but you fail to mobilize them correctly. There is no argumentum ad ignorantiam, because again, there is no attempt to prove the validity of god. In fact, if argumentum ad ignorantiam has been committed, it was by you. The core of the fallacy is a false dichotomy: something must be either true or not true. If not true, then true. I don't claim that a god's existence is truth -- far from it. It is merely a rational possibility.
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