TimS comments on Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 February 2009 05:16PM

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Comment author: PhilosophyTutor 31 December 2011 05:30:14AM 2 points [-]

The preponderance of the evidence would seem to be that he really did exist.

Bible scholars have a consensus that this is the case, although whether they are doing any actual scholarship with regard to the issue is questionable. Atheists by and large do not become Bible scholars, and the mind-killing effects of religion mean that theists tend to do notably poor scholarship in this particular area.

However when a rationalist tries to drill down to the actual evidence you find that nothing is there, apart from Bible scholars reading the Bible and saying "this Paul guy seems legit, I don't think he'd have made that up".

Comment author: TimS 31 December 2011 05:38:55AM *  1 point [-]

What do you say about contemporary historians like Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger? They all seems to think that an originally uninteresting preacher named Jesus was executed (via crucifixion) by Pilate, and that this preacher was the inspiration of the religion now known as Christianity.

ETA: You asserted in your other comment that "Jesus was supposedly a very noteworthy figure who died in a noteworthy way." I'd never gotten the impression that seditious preachers were noteworthy to the Romans or that crucifixion was a noteworthy method of execution.

Comment author: PhilosophyTutor 31 December 2011 05:56:34AM 2 points [-]

Josephus's claimed writings mentioning Jesus can be divided into two groups: those universally agreed to be fraudulent interpolations by pious forgers like Eusebius, and those which look very much like such fraudulent interpolations but which people still disagree about.

Tacitus and Pliny both wrote long after Jesus' supposed life and death and are just reporting what people of their times claimed to believe.

Comment author: David_Gerard 31 December 2011 02:14:39PM *  3 points [-]

The bit in Josephus was a complete forgery, likely inserted by Eusebius (well-documented as a chronic and unapologetic liar for the Church).

Neither Pliny nor Tacitus wrote anything about Jesus - they wrote about Christians, the existence of whom is not in question. Further, it's well documented that Tacitus was tampered with.

The notability is that Jesus was claimed to be known to all, with scribes following him about.

Look, these objections really are standard, long-standing and pretty well documented. Reading up in the area is absolutely fascinating. Wikipedia is a half-decent start.