jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 15, 2017 0:43:46 GMT
My colleague "gakuseidon" has offered to discuss with me Richard Carrier's controversial stance that Jesus probably didn't exist. Although I enjoy and admire Carrier's work, I'm really not an apologist for him. I'm sure he has made some mistakes as we all do. That said, it does seem to me that Carrier makes some persuasive arguments that cast doubt on Jesus' existence. Anyway, you can read gakuseidon's critique of Carrier here. As recommended, I think it's best to start with Section 4 of gakuseidon's document. Section 4: Death in space? 4.1 Ascension of Isaiah 4.2 Book of Hebrews 4.3 Plutarch's Osiris 4.4 Paul's 'Rulers of this Age'
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Post by gakuseidon on Nov 15, 2017 7:35:29 GMT
Thanks jagella! I'm looking forward to what you find. I'll leave it up to you how you want to proceed, but my suggestion is to start with Plutarch's Osiris, since Dr Carrier uses Osiris as "proof-of-concept" elsewhere, and there is only the one text, Plutarch's 'Isis and Osiris' (albeit spread over 5 webpages) that you'll need to read. Dr Carrier writes (my bolding): [/b] about the cosmic version of the Osiris myth: he says Osiris actually incarnates and actually dies ( albeit in outer space... [/ul] But is Plutarch explicit that Osiris "actually incarnates" in outer space? There is no incarnation that I could find in the text. Nor does Carrier reference this in OHJ that I could find. I'd also suggest leaving "Ascension of Isaiah" to last, since there are a number of versions of the texts involved. But these are my suggestions only. Looking forward to your analysis!
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 15, 2017 22:10:31 GMT
Thanks jagella! I'm looking forward to what you find. And thank you. Please understand that it may take me a while to read all the material you wish me to check for possible misrepresentation or misinterpretation by Richard Carrier. OK, like I said you are asking me to do a LOT of reading. It will be difficult for me to find the time to read that material considering that I'm busy reading other things right now. I will try to get to it, though. [/b] about the cosmic version of the Osiris myth: he says Osiris actually incarnates and actually dies ( albeit in outer space... [/ul] But is Plutarch explicit that Osiris "actually incarnates" in outer space? There is no incarnation that I could find in the text. Nor does Carrier reference this in OHJ that I could find.[/quote][/quote] Well, if only Richard Carrier was here to explain what he wrote about Plutarch's: Isis and Osiris. I just sent him a friend request on FaceBook. Maybe I can message him and ask him some questions. Thanks for your inquiry. What has piqued your interest about this issue? Did you by chance notice something fishy about Richard Carrier's use of sources? Or were you prompted by his unorthodox views to try to falsify what he has written? I need to ask such questions because if you answer yes to the last question, then it won't do me any good to side with Carrier. In any event, you probably know more about Carrier than I do. I've never read through any of his books although I'm on page 146 of On the Historicity of Jesus. I've seen him on YouTube a lot. Years ago I corresponded with him via email, and he was gracious enough to answer my questions then. He is perhaps the "flagship of mythicists." His arguments make good sense to me, and I find most of them to be persuasive. He seems fair and objective in that he can see strengths and weaknesses in his own position. I am watching a really good debate he had with Craig Evens on YouTube entitled Did Jesus Exist? I think Carrier did really well in the debate. He was especially good in correcting Evans on the existence dying and rising gods in in mythology, something Evans denied.
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Post by gakuseidon on Nov 16, 2017 0:33:05 GMT
Well, if only Richard Carrier was here to explain what he wrote about Plutarch's: Isis and Osiris. I just sent him a friend request on FaceBook. Maybe I can message him and ask him some questions. Sure, no problems following up with Dr Carrier on your findings. From my perspective: Checking how he uses Plutarch is a good example of what I mean when I say to be very, very careful of how Dr Carrier uses his sources. Does the following approach make sense? It is: 1. Carrier says that Plutarch is "explicit" that there is a version of of the Osiris myth where Osiris "actually incarnates" in 'outer space'. Would that be a fair reading of his comment? 2. Go through his references to Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris" in OHJ to find his reference to Plutarch being explicit on incarnation in 'outer space'. (By 'outer space', Carrier means the air, the firmament or the heavens above, so any such phrases are suitable) 3. Check the Plutarch text at the link I provided (or check elsewhere to confirm the accuracy of translation) and see if Plutarch actually states that. That shouldn't take you too long, and it would give you an indication of how Carrier uses his sources. Let me know how it goes. Then it gives you something to take to Carrier to ask about. What has piqued your interest about this issue? Did you by chance notice something fishy about Richard Carrier's use of sources? Or were you prompted by his unorthodox views to try to falsify what he has written? I need to ask such questions because if you answer yes to the last question, then it won't do me any good to side with Carrier. It's a long story. I'm time-short at the moment, but I'll add a separate post later today. Not really "yes" or "no" to your question. As I wrote before, I'm a theist, but if there was no historical Jesus, it wouldn't matter to me. I've debated against Young Earth Creationists and anti-evolutionists. I've debated against atheists who claim there are contradictory passages in the Bible which are not in fact contradictory. A short answer to my motivation is best summed up by this meme:
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Post by gakuseidon on Nov 16, 2017 4:19:49 GMT
I'll update my 'challenge', to include further details to help you check. It should take less than an hour to determine if I may have a point or not on Dr Carrier's use of sources, at least for this example. My suggestion is to check Carrier's use of Plutarch, in saying that Plutarch supports an incarnating and dying god in 'outer space'. (By 'outer space', Carrier means the air, the firmament or the heavens above, so any such phrases are suitable for support of Carrier's position). This is important, because it is the only example that matches Carrier's theory that Jesus was perceived to have incarnated (i.e. taken on flesh) and died in the heavenly realms. My 'challenge': 1. Confirm that I am reading Carrier fairly, where Carrier says that Plutarch is "explicit" that there is a version of of the Osiris myth where Osiris "actually incarnates" in 'outer space'. This is on page 172 of OHJ (at least in my copy of OHJ) 2. On page 172, Carrier references '35.364f' for support in the footnote [43]. You can find the Plutarch passage on the webpage at this link. Follow the numbers on the left to get to '364' and 'F'. It's about a quarter of a page down. 3. Read the passage to see if Plutarch does 'explicitly' talk about how Osiris "actually incarnates" in the heavens. That should really only take 15 mins. Sure, perhaps Carrier gave a wrong reference, or perhaps he discusses more convincing evidence on an incarnating Osiris in the heavens elsewhere in his book. He lists all his references to Osiris in the Index. To check the other references should take about 45 mins. Let me know how it goes, so at least you can see that my criticism has some plausibility, at least on the surface. Then, while we look at other examples, you could email Carrier for whether he has further information about an incarnating Osiris in Plutarch or elsewhere.
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Post by gakuseidon on Nov 16, 2017 11:08:10 GMT
What has piqued your interest about this issue? Did you by chance notice something fishy about Richard Carrier's use of sources? Or were you prompted by his unorthodox views to try to falsify what he has written? I need to ask such questions because if you answer yes to the last question, then it won't do me any good to side with Carrier. Yikes! That's patronising at best, insulting at worst! The implication is that if you present data to show that Dr Carrier is right, I won't change my view? Still, maybe that's so. The best way to test this is the "Plutarch explicit statement of an actually incarnating Osiris" challenge above. You should be able to confirm within 15 mins whether my criticism on that particular point has at least superficial plausibility. Where you take it after that is up to you. I've been arguing these points for a long time, and I've found that a lot of people simply disappear shortly after finding they can't back up their points. Those that stick around tend to become more cynical of mythicism, and less likely to take mythicist claims on face value. I'm hoping you do do the latter! You don't have to agree or disagree, just examine them for yourself before repeating them, e.g. like the Philo quote. And I've been found wrong before, a victim of my own biases, as much as I try not to. So I'm happy when people actually start to question my conclusions. So what piqued by interest in Dr Carrier's theories? It's a long story. I was always interested in ancient mythology as a youngster. I was an atheist/agnostic for my first 30 years. Then I converted to theism. There was no conversion experience, just a line of thought that became compelling (I don't want to go into this, because it is personal). For a while I called myself a liberal Christian, but I no longer do. Not because I've changed my ideas, but it seems unfair to not believe that Jesus was virgin-born or the Son of God and still call myself a Christian. (Though some early Christians seemed to have had similar ideas about Jesus) I was still interested in ancient myths at this time. And then I came across Freke and Gandy's "Jesus Mysteries" and Acharya S's "The Christ Conspiracy", which made claims about pagan gods, and I went "Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right!" And that opened up the whole rabbit hole, which led me to read everything I could by early Christian writers and early pagan writers. It was a fascinating topic! Note that I have no abilities in the original languages, so I was only reading English translations. I am nothing more than an amateur who has read a lot of pagan and early Christian literature of the first few centuries in English translation plus a lot of secondary literature. I'm not interested in theology or apologetics for its own sake. I don't care whether someone is an atheist, a theist or anything else. Work out your own salvation! With a little fear and trembling, if required. And then along came Earl Doherty! I probably swapped a thousand posts (literally) or more with him on the old Internet Infidels board over about 8 years, going over his ideas. He addresses a number of pages to me on his website. The main one I had a problem with is his idea that Jesus took on flesh and died in the lower heavens. It didn't match anything with what I'd read in ancient pagan or Christian thinking. In fact, it disagreed with what ancient thinking I knew. (He complained my imagination wasn't good enough! I complained that I shouldn't have to use my imagination! The ancients either said it or they didn't!) Richard Carrier then picked up Doherty's ideas and much of his (to me at least) erroneous thinking on this idea of a heavenly incarnated being, and that led to my review. That was a few years ago, and was going to be my last thoughts on the matter, since I wanted to move onto other topics. I still can't pull myself away though! I'm not really an anti-mythicist. There are a lot of different mythicist theories out there, and I haven't looked at most of them. The commonality of the ones I have looked at are when they involve ideas about ancient gods and ancient thinking about the gods. To twist their ideas around is to me to dishonor our ancestors. I'm serious about that. To me the Bible is just another book of myths, no more important than Plutarch's work or Origin's. But I think it is fantastic! It is a time-capsule of beliefs stretching back thousands of years, to a time where you would look UP and see where the gods dwelled. Imagine the mindset of that, the claustrophobia of thought: the gods were LITERALLY looking down on you, day and night. The God of modern Christianity is an unavoidable peeping Tom. But in ancient times you could get under a roof and away from their sight! (Not quite true of course, the ancient gods had their ways) Anyway, that's my motivation in all this. That isn't to say I haven't learned a lot from arguing with them over the last 15 years or so. I love the ones that push me, make me learn more. And I have to agree that the case for historicism is more assumed than people think. I think there are good reasons for those assumptions, but we really need a scholar to lay out the best case for historicism, just as Dr Carrier did for mythicism. Dr Ehrman's book "Did Jesus Exist?" was a disappointment. I think a strong mythicist case could easily overturn historicism. It just hasn't been presented. I've emailed Carrier a couple of times over the years on certain points, and he has always responded quickly and kindly. More recently he seems to have become rather eccentric. In fact, he seems to have become a horrible person. But that doesn't really matter, and shouldn't detract from his ideas. He's either wrong or right. He debates okay, but the devil is in the details. So I hope you can start on your own path of "Carrier skepticism" by taking my 15 min "Osiris" challenge. Does the source support Dr Carrier, or not? I hope you can take the 15 mins to give my criticism of Carrier prima facie validity. We can discuss and take it from there.
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Post by timoneill on Nov 17, 2017 17:21:34 GMT
What has piqued your interest about this issue? Did you by chance notice something fishy about Richard Carrier's use of sources? Or were you prompted by his unorthodox views to try to falsify what he has written? I need to ask such questions because if you answer yes to the last question, then it won't do me any good to side with Carrier. Yikes! That's patronising at best, insulting at worst! The implication is that if you present data to show that Dr Carrier is right, I won't change my view? Still, maybe that's so. The best way to test this is the "Plutarch explicit statement of an actually incarnating Osiris" challenge above. You should be able to confirm within 15 mins whether my criticism on that particular point has at least superficial plausibility. Where you take it after that is up to you. I've been arguing these points for a long time, and I've found that a lot of people simply disappear shortly after finding they can't back up their points. Those that stick around tend to become more cynical of mythicism, and less likely to take mythicist claims on face value. I'm hoping you do do the latter! You don't have to agree or disagree, just examine them for yourself before repeating them, e.g. like the Philo quote. And I've been found wrong before, a victim of my own biases, as much as I try not to. So I'm happy when people actually start to question my conclusions. So what piqued by interest in Dr Carrier's theories? It's a long story. I was always interested in ancient mythology as a youngster. I was an atheist/agnostic for my first 30 years. Then I converted to theism. There was no conversion experience, just a line of thought that became compelling (I don't want to go into this, because it is personal). For a while I called myself a liberal Christian, but I no longer do. Not because I've changed my ideas, but it seems unfair to not believe that Jesus was virgin-born or the Son of God and still call myself a Christian. (Though some early Christians seemed to have had similar ideas about Jesus) I was still interested in ancient myths at this time. And then I came across Freke and Gandy's "Jesus Mysteries" and Acharya S's "The Christ Conspiracy", which made claims about pagan gods, and I went "Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right!" And that opened up the whole rabbit hole, which led me to read everything I could by early Christian writers and early pagan writers. It was a fascinating topic! Note that I have no abilities in the original languages, so I was only reading English translations. I am nothing more than an amateur who has read a lot of pagan and early Christian literature of the first few centuries in English translation plus a lot of secondary literature. I'm not interested in theology or apologetics for its own sake. I don't care whether someone is an atheist, a theist or anything else. Work out your own salvation! With a little fear and trembling, if required. And then along came Earl Doherty! I probably swapped a thousand posts (literally) or more with him on the old Internet Infidels board over about 8 years, going over his ideas. He addresses a number of pages to me on his website. The main one I had a problem with is his idea that Jesus took on flesh and died in the lower heavens. It didn't match anything with what I'd read in ancient pagan or Christian thinking. In fact, it disagreed with what ancient thinking I knew. (He complained my imagination wasn't good enough! I complained that I shouldn't have to use my imagination! The ancients either said it or they didn't!) Richard Carrier then picked up Doherty's ideas and much of his (to me at least) erroneous thinking on this idea of a heavenly incarnated being, and that led to my review. That was a few years ago, and was going to be my last thoughts on the matter, since I wanted to move onto other topics. I still can't pull myself away though! I'm not really an anti-mythicist. There are a lot of different mythicist theories out there, and I haven't looked at most of them. The commonality of the ones I have looked at are when they involve ideas about ancient gods and ancient thinking about the gods. To twist their ideas around is to me to dishonor our ancestors. I'm serious about that. To me the Bible is just another book of myths, no more important than Plutarch's work or Origin's. But I think it is fantastic! It is a time-capsule of beliefs stretching back thousands of years, to a time where you would look UP and see where the gods dwelled. Imagine the mindset of that, the claustrophobia of thought: the gods were LITERALLY looking down on you, day and night. The God of modern Christianity is an unavoidable peeping Tom. But in ancient times you could get under a roof and away from their sight! (Not quite true of course, the ancient gods had their ways) Anyway, that's my motivation in all this. That isn't to say I haven't learned a lot from arguing with them over the last 15 years or so. I love the ones that push me, make me learn more. And I have to agree that the case for historicism is more assumed than people think. I think there are good reasons for those assumptions, but we really need a scholar to lay out the best case for historicism, just as Dr Carrier did for mythicism. Dr Ehrman's book "Did Jesus Exist?" was a disappointment. I think a strong mythicist case could easily overturn historicism. It just hasn't been presented. I've emailed Carrier a couple of times over the years on certain points, and he has always responded quickly and kindly. More recently he seems to have become rather eccentric. In fact, he seems to have become a horrible person. But that doesn't really matter, and shouldn't detract from his ideas. He's either wrong or right. He debates okay, but the devil is in the details. So I hope you can start on your own path of "Carrier skepticism" by taking my 15 min "Osiris" challenge. Does the source support Dr Carrier, or not? I hope you can take the 15 mins to give my criticism of Carrier prima facie validity. We can discuss and take it from there. Interesting stuff Don. Given my characteristically sharp criticisms of Carrier over the years, some people seem to get the impression I disagree with him because I have some kind of personal beef with him. This is not actually true. My story parallels yours in many ways. I was raised in a liberal Christian and fairly intellectual family by a scientist who taught sceptical rigour in thinking. I was a generally lax semi-Christian as a teen, but soon got interested in the historical origins of Christianity and began reading everyone from Schweitzer to Vermes in my late teens and was an atheist by the time I entered university. There I studied history formally and became interested in historiography and spent a lot of time exploring fringe pseudo historical theories (Holocaust denial, Holy Blood Holy Grail, ancient astronauts etc.) and when I first got onto the internet back in the pre-web days of the early 1990s I found a few proponents of these ideas and also found a wealth of material to use to debunk them. I was already aware of the early Mythicism of some writers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Bauer, Graves, Drews) and why they were rejected back then. So I was interested when, in around 1996-7, I began to see forms of Mythicism emerging again on internet discussion groups. At first it was the so-called " Piso theory" that tended to get peddled online, though it was hard to tell if this was genuine or an online joke - Poe's Law applied on the net even back then. Eventually some of the forms of the Mythicism we know today began popping up - at first on Usenet groups like alt.conspiracy and some of the crackpot fringe groups, but then on sci.skeptic and alt.atheism. These early forms of internet Mythicism were pretty unsophisticated and rarely went beyond obviously bad arguments like "there are no contemporary references to Jesus so he didn't exist". Then I noticed people linking to Earl Doherty's "Jesus Puzzle" website, which eventually evolved into his 1999 self-published book of the same name. Around the same time Freke and Gandy's The Jesus Mysteries was published and it was becoming clear that this latest wave of non-scholarly Mythicism was a new trend in pseudo history. But what gave it its impetus was the rise of New Atheism with the publication of popular books on atheism by Harris (2004), Dawkins (2006), Dennett (2006) and Hitchens (2007). Even though none of these "Four Horsemen" expressed more than a mild degree of scepticism about a historical Jesus, the loose "movement" their books engendered soon seized on the idea with enthusiasm; initially it seems because of the crackpot conspiracy theory movie Zeitgeist (2007), which drew heavily on the New Age meanderings of "Achayra S" and on Freke and Gandy. By the time New Atheists belatedly worked out that Zeitgeist was woolly-brained crap, Carrier was boosting Doherty's thesis and that became the flavour of Mythicism preferred by online atheists. I first became aware of Carrier via articles on the Secular Web and Internet Infidels in the late 1990s. He seemed to be a rarity in atheist circles - someone with actual training in history who wrote about history, as opposed to people from the sciences dabbling in history with varying degrees of competence. And back then his stuff was pretty useful, though even then he tended to emphatically state his opinions as though they were facts. I still refer occasionally to his 1999 article on the problems with trying to reconcile the infancy narratives in gLuke with those in gMatt ( "The Date of the Nativity in Luke"). But Carrier seemed to drink the Mythicist Kool Aid in his 2002 review of Doherty's revised 2000 edition of The Jesus Puzzle. In that review Carrier actually notes most of the key critical flaws in Doherty's thesis, but instead of therefore concluding that Doherty's book is unconvincing, as most other well-informed readers have, Carrier instead seemed to decide that Doherty was right, but just needed to "improve his case". Since then Carrier has been working to do just that and has become the leading evangelist of Dohertyite Mythicism. Throughout the 2000s it was clear Carrier was working on finding ways to prop up the weaker points of Doherty's thesis though he seems to have devoted more time to this, understandably, once he had completed his doctorate in 2008. In the meantime his blog became a central point of apologism for a range of dubious historical ideas, from defending a form of the Conflict Thesis, to arguing that Hitler was in fact a Christian, to the defence of the distorted history in Alejandro Amenabar's 2009 movie Agora. That was where I first encountered him directly, since I disagreed with several key points in his discussion of Hypatia and the history of the Great Library Alexandria. Carrier does not respond well to criticism and by this stage was well into his cultivation of an online cult of personality centred on himself, whereby critics had to be smacked down hard in case his audience of New Atheist fanboys began to doubt him. So this was when Carrier cooked up a bizarre claim that he had caught me lying - a claim he makes about several of his critics. Since then I've cemented my place in the Pantheon of "People Richard Carrier has Accused of Lying or Insanity", along with Bart Ehrman, the late Maurice Casey and a few other esteemed figures. I'm perversely proud of this. Carrier's own "career" however had not exactly gone from strength to strength. He wasted the crucial years directly after graduation, spending his time being an internet atheist celebrity, giving talks to atheist and sceptics groups and writing self-published books on topics far from his expertise. As a result, his publishing record in his own field was paltry and, in a tough post-GFC job market, he failed to secure an academic position and his academic career crashed and burned. He turned to writing what was meant to be his great opus as an "independent scholar" - On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt - which he seemed to think would make a huge impact on the field when it was released in 2014. It didn't. It has received two lonely academic review notices in the three years since its publication: one positive one by his fan Raphael Lataster and one very negative one. The book, along with his few peer reviewed papers, is uncited and generally ignored and his work has no impact whatsoever. Carrier's reputation among his fellow atheists is also on the wane. Where once he was held up as one of the bright intellectual lights of "the movement", mention of his name these days gets a much more mixed reaction. His narcissism and his tendency to make enemies has earned him a reputation as "a bit of a jerk" and his attempt at championing the socially progressive atheism offshoot "Atheism+" fell apart when the guy who loudly proclaimed his feminism and declared that women who accuse men in the atheist movement of sexual harassment should be supported and believed was then accused of sexual harassment himself. His blog was kicked off the Freethought Blogs platform, he was disinvited to some atheist venues and his reputation in many atheist circles is that of a rather repugnant sleazeball, particularly after he claimed his accusers had mental health problems and then stuck them with a two million dollar (!!!) SLAPP lawsuit. These days terms like "megalomaniacal crackpot" and "narcissistic douchebag" can be found replacing the praise of his vast wonderfulness we used to see on atheist blogs and fora. His dubious lifestyle choices and unpleasant personality aside though, the real problem here is his consistent championing of fringe historical ideas. Scholarship advances by people challenging the status quo, questioning consensus and finding new angles or fresh ideas on old topics. And occasionally someone will come along who will go against the consensus on a given point and argue coherently and - sometimes - will single-handedly change the general view successfully (Galileo usually gets invoked here, incorrectly, or more correctly Alfred Wegener). But Carrier promulgates so many counter-consensus ideas that he is either the greatest scholar who was ever bestrode the earth like a mighty colossus or he's ... a self-deluded unemployed blogger and reflex contrarian. He dismisses Josephus’ references to Jesus. He reads Paul’s Jesus as exclusively celestial. He denies that Jesus had a brother named James. He dismisses the Gospels as historically useless. He denies the existence of Q. He dismisses the criteria of authenticity as completely invalid. And he claims to have found evidence for a pre-Christian Jewish celestial Dying Messiah tradition. On top of all this, he claims Christianity stultified ancient learning rather preserving it, that there was minimal technological progress in the Middle Ages and that Hitler was a devout Christian - all views rejected by the vast majority of historians in the relevant areas of the discipline. That's a remarkable list of things that virtually every other relevant scholar is wrong about and that this lone blogger is, allegedly, right about. The odds seem stacked against Carrier being the greatest scholar who has ever lived. They seem much more inclined toward him being a contrarian whose over-healthy self-esteem and clear biases warp his judgement.
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Post by unkleE on Nov 18, 2017 0:43:53 GMT
Hi Tim, I am not as well read on many of these topics as others here, so I haven't commented, but I found your outline of personal history and your assessment most interesting, thanks.
I am also not a great reader of Richard Carrier, but it is worth noting two other areas where he has in a sense exposed himself and been found wanting. He has written on both cosmological fine-tuning, and probability in relation to both fine-tuning and historical analysis. In both cases he has been criticised by scholars expert in those fields as having got more wrong than right. For example cosmologist Luke Barnes and he had a strong disagreement which Carrier's Infidels friend JJ Lowder judged to have led to Carrier being devastatingly demolished. If Carrier just offered opinions, he might get away with all this, but when he persistently, in several totally different fields, contradicts the consensus of experts and claims such certainty and authority, then it is hard to take anything he says seriously.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 18, 2017 16:02:52 GMT
I'll update my 'challenge', to include further details to help you check. It should take less than an hour to determine if I may have a point or not on Dr Carrier's use of sources, at least for this example. My suggestion is to check Carrier's use of Plutarch, in saying that Plutarch supports an incarnating and dying god in 'outer space'. (By 'outer space', Carrier means the air, the firmament or the heavens above, so any such phrases are suitable for support of Carrier's position). This is important, because it is the only example that matches Carrier's theory that Jesus was perceived to have incarnated (i.e. taken on flesh) and died in the heavenly realms. My 'challenge': 1. Confirm that I am reading Carrier fairly, where Carrier says that Plutarch is "explicit" that there is a version of of the Osiris myth where Osiris "actually incarnates" in 'outer space'. This is on page 172 of OHJ (at least in my copy of OHJ) 2. On page 172, Carrier references '35.364f' for support in the footnote [43]. You can find the Plutarch passage on the webpage at this link. Follow the numbers on the left to get to '364' and 'F'. It's about a quarter of a page down. 3. Read the passage to see if Plutarch does 'explicitly' talk about how Osiris "actually incarnates" in the heavens. That should really only take 15 mins. Sure, perhaps Carrier gave a wrong reference, or perhaps he discusses more convincing evidence on an incarnating Osiris in the heavens elsewhere in his book. He lists all his references to Osiris in the Index. To check the other references should take about 45 mins. Let me know how it goes, so at least you can see that my criticism has some plausibility, at least on the surface. Then, while we look at other examples, you could email Carrier for whether he has further information about an incarnating Osiris in Plutarch or elsewhere. OK. First, let's quote Carrier on page 172 of On the History of Jesus: (Emphasis in the Original) Carrier places a 43 immediately after this passage to link it to Footnote 43 at the bottom of page 172 which reads in part: Now, Plutarch says: So far it is established that Plutarch did indeed write of Osiris dying and rising back to life which is Carrier's main point. Carrier is right in drawing a parallel between the death and resurrection of Osiris and the death and resurrection of Jesus. Carrier wrote that Plutarch is "explicit about the Cosmic version of the Osiris myth," but Carrier does not say that Plutarch is explicit about this incarnation and death taking place in outer space. Carrier places the "albeit in outer space" in parenthesis which is Carrier's way of supplying a clarification for the location of the Osiris myth. So gak, it looks like at least in this instance you're wrong about Carrier misusing his sources. What you did was to read something into Carrier's work that was not there. In any event, thanks for pointing out this issue to me. Now we all know that there was indeed at least one pagan god who died and rose from the dead in a myth that long predates the Jesus story. You need to remember this example to judge the credibility of those "scholars" who deny myths of dying and rising pagan gods. They do so out of either ignorance or deliberate deception. Oh, and O'Neill, please do not post any more obnoxious and mean-spirited replies to what I've posted. I'm running out of troll pictures to depict you with!
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 18, 2017 18:58:22 GMT
...Carrier does not say that Plutarch is explicit about this incarnation and death taking place in outer space. You are misreading Carrier. He does say Plutarch states explicitly that this incarnation and death takes place in outer space. As if it wasn't obvious from that statement alone, elsewhere he is very clear about this. This is important to Carrier's argument, because he claims that the early Christians believed that Jesus was likewise killed and resurrected in "outer space".
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Post by ignorantianescia on Nov 18, 2017 20:40:15 GMT
Two things jump out (boldface is mine): OK. First, let's quote Carrier on page 172 of On the History of Jesus: (Emphasis in the Original) Carrier places a 43 immediately after this passage to link it to Footnote 43 at the bottom of page 172 which reads in part: Now, Plutarch says: So far it is established that Plutarch did indeed write of Osiris dying and rising back to life which is Carrier's main point. Carrier is right in drawing a parallel between the death and resurrection of Osiris and the death and resurrection of Jesus. Carrier wrote that Plutarch is "explicit about the Cosmic version of the Osiris myth," but Carrier does not say that Plutarch is explicit about this incarnation and death taking place in outer space. Carrier places the "albeit in outer space" in parenthesis which is Carrier's way of supplying a clarification for the location of the Osiris myth.So gak, it looks like at least in this instance you're wrong about Carrier misusing his sources. What you did was to read something into Carrier's work that was not there. If Carrier, while discussing Plutarch, supplies a clarification that the Osiris myth was located "in outer space" and doesn't offer a different clarification for where Osiris "incarnates and actually dies" in Plutarch's version, then it is at a bare minimum reasonable to suppose that at least one of these thing happened "in outer space" according to his view and it is more reasonable to read this as a claim that both happened "in outer space" - unless he contradicts this elsewhere. Where else would he get this information other than from Plutarch? So, even apart from the parts Fortigurn quoted, how can you conclude from the above that Don read something into Carrier's text? In any event, thanks for pointing out this issue to me. Now we all know that there was indeed at least one pagan god who died and rose from the dead in a myth that long predates the Jesus story. You need to remember this example to judge the credibility of those "scholars" who deny myths of dying and rising pagan gods. They do so out of either ignorance or deliberate deception. You quoted Carrier writing something that you claimed he didn't write. On the other hand you refer to scholars' views on dying and rising pagan gods, which you misunderstood, and immediately conclude that "[t]hey do so out of either ignorance or deliberate deception". So you are much more charitable to Carrier than to the experts. From where this discrepancy?
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Post by gakuseidon on Nov 18, 2017 21:57:38 GMT
Carrier is right in drawing a parallel between the death and resurrection of Osiris and the death and resurrection of Jesus. Carrier wrote that Plutarch is "explicit about the Cosmic version of the Osiris myth," but Carrier does not say that Plutarch is explicit about this incarnation and death taking place in outer space. Carrier places the "albeit in outer space" in parenthesis which is Carrier's way of supplying a clarification for the location of the Osiris myth. So gak, it looks like at least in this instance you're wrong about Carrier misusing his sources. What you did was to read something into Carrier's work that was not there. OK, so you are saying that Carrier is NOT proposing that Plutarch wrote that Osiris incarnated and died in 'outer space', at least in the section of Plutarch he referenced. Am I reading you correct there? Of course, Carrier may have the evidence elsewhere in his book (I know you haven't finished it yet), but it is not at the place in Plutarch in the reference given by Carrier. I'm only expecting it there because I am reading something into Carrier's words at that point. Agreed? I'm happy with that. We can move onto the next one if you like. In any event, thanks for pointing out this issue to me. Now we all know that there was indeed at least one pagan god who died and rose from the dead in a myth that long predates the Jesus story. Well, I'm glad I've been able to help, but my criticism has nothing to do with the category of dying and rising pagan gods, and everything to do with gods incarnating and dying in 'outer space' (i.e. the air, firmament or the heavens). If Carrier does indeed have no evidence for the latter, then his theory is essentially refuted.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 19, 2017 0:30:20 GMT
OK, so you are saying that Carrier is NOT proposing that Plutarch wrote that Osiris incarnated and died in 'outer space', at least in the section of Plutarch he referenced. Am I reading you correct there? What Carrier wrote is a bit unclear. The "outer space" part seems ambiguous. I think Carrier is not saying that Plutarch used the exact words, "outer space." Carrier said that Plutarch is explicit about "the cosmic version of the Osiris myth." It seems that Carrier is substituting "outer space" for "cosmic." Like I tried to explain in my last reply to you, Carrier put the words "outer space" in parentheses. He was inserting additional, explanatory material into what Plutarch said. I might quote Lincoln: "Four score and seven (87) years ago..." Did Lincoln actually say "87"? No. I added that to clarify what Lincoln was saying. I think Carrier used the same approach to clarify that the Osiris myth happened in "outer space." Again, I think you misunderstood his use of parentheses. I will say this, though; Carrier's writing style does seem hard to follow at times. Sure. You seem like a guy I can reason with. Osiris is a dying and rising god, and that's what Carrier is talking about in these passages that you've cited. By the way, I just found Carrier's definition of "outer space" on page 63: Are you assuming that Plutarch used the exact words "outer space"? He didn't. "Outer space" is the term Carrier uses as defined above.
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Post by gakuseidon on Nov 19, 2017 0:50:02 GMT
Like I tried to explain in my last reply to you, Carrier put the words "outer space" in parentheses. He was inserting additional, explanatory material into what Plutarch said. I might quote Lincoln: "Four score and seven (87) years ago..." Did Lincoln actually say "87"? No. I added that to clarify what Lincoln was saying. I think Carrier used the same approach to clarify that the Osiris myth happened in "outer space." So, Dr Carrier is placing the myth in 'outer space', whereas Plutarch is NOT placing the myth there, at least in the text referenced by Carrier? Is that what you believe Carrier is saying? It's a bit confusing what you think Carrier is claiming would be found in the Plutarch text at that point. Could I ask you to state clearly what you think Carrier is saying would be found in the text, and then compare that with the actual text to show that Carrier's claim is consistent with the text, please? By the way, I just found Carrier's definition of "outer space" on page 63: Are you assuming that Plutarch used the exact words "outer space"? He didn't. "Outer space" is the term Carrier uses as defined above. No, I'm using his definition. As I wrote above, 'outer space'= 'the air, firmament or the heavens'. Any usage by Plutarch of those terms, or anything similar, would have been consistent with Dr Carrier's point (or at least, the point I thought he was making.)
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 19, 2017 2:15:07 GMT
So, Dr Carrier is placing the myth in 'outer space', whereas Plutarch is NOT placing the myth there, at least in the text referenced by Carrier? Is that what you believe Carrier is saying? No. I'm saying that Carrier uses the term "outer space" to describe the location of the Osiris myth. Plutarch does not use those words, only Carrier does. It appears you mistakenly believed that Carrier was saying that Plutarch uses the words "outer space." Carrier did not write that Plutarch uses the words "outer space." Do you understand that people can use different words to describe the same thing? In this case Carrier is saying "outer space" to describe "everything above the atmosphere as presently known." Plutarch no doubt used different words to describe everything above the atmosphere as presently known. So there is no discrepancy between Carrier and Plutarch regarding the location of the Osiris myth. Carrier's own words seem clear enough. Plutarch's version of the myth is stating that Osiris dies and rises again to life. It's possible that Carrier is assuming that Plutarch places the myth in "the heavens." Did Plutarch locate the myth somewhere else? Attachments:
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