Hamblin and his crew get what they deserve?

[_huckelberry]

Reading the first post I thought, an odd confusing reversal. I can see at least a remote possiblity of Jesus being first a myth. I think quite remote. I remember sitting through a utube presentaton by Ehrlman which contained some pretty sharp criticism of Jesus myth theories. In fact some of those books of his about altering texts contain good material showing why dating the gospels after the first century flies in the face of basic evidence.

I cannot count the time I have read on this board, and previously at ZLMB that Jesus myth is hot scholarly conclusions and that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus.

[_Gadianton]

Thanks Fence Sitter. I checked out the thread specifically to see how Ralph Man fared after debunking Hamblin, and while he wasn't banned, he got a warning from a moderator. He will need to be careful about winning debates with Bill in the future lest he lose his right to post over there.

[_sock puppet]

Thanks Fence Sitter. I checked out the thread specifically to see how Ralph Man fared after debunking Hamblin, and while he wasn't banned, he got a warning from a moderator. He will need to be careful about winning debates with Bill in the future lest he lose his right to post over there.

Ain't that the truth?

[_Gadianton]

Well, Sock Puppet, somewhat to Hamblin's credit, he's realized Ralph Man had him cornered and is derailing his own thread now to answer the criticism. I'm sure the Mods won't warn him about staying on topic.

I think it is worth noting that denying the existence of Jesus, for whom there is ample historical evidence by ancient standards, entails the rejection of known facts, universally accepted by the biblical studies scholars on both sides of the secular-religious divide.

On the other hand, acceptance of the historicity of the Book of Mormon does not require the rejection of any known historical fact.

That he admits Ralph Man's criticism demands a response is telling. At least he gives the matter some thought and offers an answer. It's not a good answer, unfortunately. But he seems to understand that the core work of the MI is a fringe effort, and that justification is needed when arguing from the authority of the establishment to score easy points.

Anyway, who is to say what the facts of history are? The apologists certainly aren't tipping their hat to Kuhn in this thread. I doubt we'll see them mention Mendel either. The Jesus Myth theory is bunk, it's pseudoscience, the academy says so. No lessons from Stephen Jay Gould on the corruptions within academia will be relevant for this particular point.

[_moksha]

However, I think the "current consensus" of scholars re: dating the Gospels is a house of straw and is essentially Tübingen-lite.

Excellent point, since the contents of these Gospels were known in 600 BCE, why insist on any sort of later date at all.

[_MrStakhanovite]

On the other hand, acceptance of the historicity of the Book of Mormon does not require the rejection of any known historical fact.

lol

[_MrStakhanovite]

Instead, it supplements know historical data. It requires the affirmation of the existence of something for which their may be insufficient historical evidence, strictly speaking, to affirm on the basis of historical methodologies alone.

This is just plain bad philosophy of history, but I’m sure Bill is not alone in this thinking.

The Book of Mormon doesn’t supplement any understanding of Central or South American history, all it does is complicate issues by forcing Apologists like Bill into complicated and/or inane explanations of known facts.

What Bill has set up in the quote above is a just-so story, that makes use of problems like the under determination of evidence to make his idea about how to understand the Book of Mormon indefeasible. Bill exploit’s the limits of archeology to keep his religion safe guarded.

In reality though, that is a really foolish route to go. Any number of posters here can come up with a hair brain story about Mesoamerica that is completely indefeasible to evidence. My guess is Bill is still stuck in some kind of simplistic understanding that if something isn’t proven to be false, it’s still a viable option or some other kind of crap reading of Karl Popper that Log and kolipoki09 have.

[_Kishkumen]

By the standards of my discipline--ancient history--the evidence for Jesus is relatively poor. It comes nowhere close to Cicero or Caesar, and even compares rather poorly with Alexander the Great, a man whose life, as most acknowledge, is thoroughly intermingled with legend.

[_EAllusion]

His understanding of what constitutes "fact" is naïve anyway. It's grounded in an ultimately artificial and unhelpful distinction between positive and negative assertions. But that's a rabbit hole to chase when the main problem is that Hamblin is trying to leverage the scholarly consensus that dismisses arguments he disagrees with in one case while trying to deny the importance of the scholarly consensus when arguments he likes are dismissed by it. In doing so, he employs arguments that try to upend confidence in the scholarly consensus by attacking the process and pointing to examples where it was wrong, arguing competing views are on equal footing depending on perfectly valid differences in presuppositions, and appealing to naïve falsificationism. But that goes out the window once he thinks he can score some points against a few critics of Mormonism he encountered.

[_Gadianton]

My guess is Bill is still stuck in some kind of simplistic understanding that if something isn’t proven to be false

I think you hit the nail on the head. He has a decision procedure for determining what kind of fringe science is OK and what is rightfully dismissed, and he has discovered a connection here to his previous attempts to render the Book of Mormon unfalsifiable. At any rate, it appears his first pass at solving this demarcation problem is to be accepted as true without challenge. Two posters have responded to him on the matter, and he has ruled that both of them are off topic.