The Jesus Myth Part III

[Res Ipsa]

Stem, if the current discussion doesn't involve those extreme cases, you're just engaging in distracting nitpicking.

Res, I think you are giving Stem too much credit. He isn't organizing his thoughts in the same way you are. I believe his concern with the pizza analogy is assuming evidence that Jesus might be a pizza is an absurdity on its face, not as a logic problem. It didn't occur to him that the problem you recognized and corrected in your description was the problem. He's just sure no one believes Jesus is a pizza, so it's stupid to argue he's more likely to be a pizza than a pepperoni pizza. When he says we're all in alignment about it being equally improbable if the probabilities of Jesus being both the set and subset are zero, he's not doing so based on an understanding of the logic but because no one actually argues for Jesus being a pizza so of course both statements have a probability of zero. It's surficial aligned but there's an entire level of discussion separating them that makes it difficult to bring into focus.

I don't know about the credit thing. We clearly have been organizing our thoughts differently, as shown by our difficulties in engaging with each other. At this point, based on his gracious willingness to give me feedback on my attempt to express his thought process, I think I understand his thinking behind the original comment. And if he's not interested in pursuing it further, that's fine with me. It's too bad that we don't have a culture where people feel free to throw even a crazy sounding idea out there, let everybody have a go at it, and learn what we can fro the process. And I wouldn't characterize Stem's idea as crazy -- ideally, an interesting exercise in evaluating analogies.

I did like his shift away from Carrier to the more general issue. I really don't know what to think about Carrier. I just don't have the chops to evaluate his arguments. I'd have to become Kishkumen, and I think that ship sailed long ago. I wonder more about something like the way Urban Legends originate. Is the Hook Handed man urban legend based on a real man with a hand for a hook? Did the equivalent of urban legends exist at the time of Jesus? I dunno. I suppose I'd still need to become Kish.

[honorentheos]

It's too bad that we don't have a culture where people feel free to throw even a crazy sounding idea out there, let everybody have a go at it, and learn what we can from the process.

It's a bit difficult to develop that kind of culture without sufficient mutual respect, and frankly it forms much of my current frustration with the board overall. It's a bit boring when the discussion is, at best, a news clipping service about the latest goings on at Dr. Peterson's board or recent events in Mormonism with light commentary. It's worse than that when it is a commentary on people that post here, acknowledging my own participation in the latter all too often.

The ability to discuss ideas, conventional or unconventional, rely on people maintaining a willingness to actually engage what is being debated. And that often requires more effort than most are going to put into a post on a message board.

Because this is already a costly venture, when a person posits an unconventional position but the engagement collapses to dismissals and tropes, there becomes a baked-in disincentive to put any effort in. This is largely my frustration with folks such as MG and currently stem on this thread. It takes two parties, at minimum, willing to engage the other's actual arguments, present their own position clearly rather than relying almost entirely on links or books, and bring up expectations that others will do the work of analyzing the external source to comprehensively synthesize the response for them. Sorry, but stem is getting zero sympathy from me here.

And I wouldn't characterize Stem's idea as crazy -- ideally, an interesting exercise in evaluating analogies.

I did like his shift away from Carrier to the more general issue. I really don't know what to think about Carrier. I just don't have the chops to evaluate his arguments. I'd have to become Kishkumen, and I think that ship sailed long ago. I wonder more about something like the way Urban Legends originate. Is the Hook Handed man urban legend based on a real man with a hand for a hook? Did the equivalent of urban legends exist at the time of Jesus? I dunno. I suppose I'd still need to become Kish.

The subject seems at some level to suffer from expectations that, perhaps, one does have to become a Kishkumen to appreciate. Is the historical Jesus a debate that requires dedication to the classics, decades studying Roman history and religion? Apparently that's not enough to resolve it given the matter is not resolved so neatly as some people expect.

That's where I think the real issue lies - expectations. Kish started that discussion in the thread on Eunus that was dumped to the Spirit Paradise forum because the clear implications the thread was leading towards didn't immediately snag onto a sufficiently Mormon theme to avoid that peculiarity of the board. So, we seem to suffer from structural problems in that regard as well.