If God is a projection of an idealised self then why do so many believers seem to have such a harsh view of God?
It’s quite likely that some of our thinking about God is intertwined with an idealization of self, but given that we live at a time that has been thoroughly saturated by religion disentangling those is quite difficult.
I used to do the 'speaking in tongues' and 'prophesying' stuff back in my full-on charismatic days. Was that God speaking to or through me? I may have got it right by accident sometimes. These things have value where they have value as it were.
These days I tend to see this sort of thing as almost exclusively learned behaviour with cues picked up from whichever group you knock around in.
If God is a projection of an idealized self, then it’s sure as hell not MYself. For one thing, he comes up with stuff that I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams. I took the latest of these … disconcerting replies?… to the counselor I’m seeing for Issues™ related to my childhood, and without prompting she too commented on the very unexpectedness of his (very rare) comments. In fact she uses that quality as a marker that it wasn’t her own mind popping up something. In my experience they’re almost always super short, absolutely in the money once you think for a bit—but totally out of left field. FWIW.
It is of course possible to critique religious belief on the grounds that the natural is all there is.
Martin54. Isn’t that just belief in another metarrative?
“Only on the foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built”. A famous quote by Bertrand Russell.
Martin54, if that’s where you’re at. good luck. I prefer hope to despair. I don’t think Russell’s metanarrative led to a safe place for him. Certainly not as he got very old.
That belief, that there is only nature, is often reactive, isn't it? I mean its a defence against uncertainty, despair, etc. Otherwise why be so assertive? Most atheists that I know don't make that claim.
That belief, that there is only nature, is often reactive, isn't it? I mean its a defence against uncertainty, despair, etc. Otherwise why be so assertive? Most atheists that I know don't make that claim.
Here’s the full quote.
“
That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic including A Free Man's Worship”.
I think Russell spells out very well why he sees unyielding despair as a rational conclusion to a belief that the natural world is all there is. In some ways it’s a rather good argument against the belief that the natural world is all there is.
It is of course possible to critique religious belief on the grounds that the natural is all there is.
Martin54. Isn’t that just belief in another metarrative?
“Only on the foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built”. A famous quote by Bertrand Russell.
Martin54, if that’s where you’re at. good luck. I prefer hope to despair. I don’t think Russell’s metanarrative led to a safe place for him. Certainly not as he got very old.
Spoken like a true postmodernist. Russell was right. That's where I'm at. And I have hope in some of those I love. In the air I breathe. Borne of insufficient gratitude. I start to get middle old in a few months. And what's Russell's and my grand story? Story about stories of historical meaning, experience, and knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea? What is our master idea?
That's because even the most stringent scientific materialist, a Paul Churchland neo-logical positivist type, allows for the existence of more things than simply nature, they just think those things are completely explicable by natural processes and that their primary significance is their material processes as described by the best scientific models.
Martin's point is different. He seems to claim that All that exists is nature, and that what exists is explicable in natural terms. The problem is that besides being quite tautological, since he doesn't define nature we can't better evaluate the insight. (Sorry if I'm misrepresenting your position Martin, but you're not giving me much to go with buddy.)
Why do you need me to define physics? Or history for that matter?
Because you use the terms in non-standard ways, so I’m trying to understand. I’m really not trying to “get” you or anything, just understand your point of view.
Hence the various run-ins and difficulties our Hosts and Admins have had with our friend @Martin54 over the years.
I hope I can say that without sounding like an unofficial host.
I enjoy discussing things with him but find he doesn't always make it easy to do so. There's a wilful obscurity at times, it seems to me, that can be as irritating as my 'both/and' mantra can also be.
I can see the point. It's a bit like these Buddhist 'koans' where they try to wrong foot you with paradox and contradictions in order to pull you up short.
Hence the various run-ins and difficulties our Hosts and Admins have had with our friend @Martin54 over the years.
I hope I can say that without sounding like an unofficial host.
I enjoy discussing things with him but find he doesn't always make it easy to do so. There's a wilful obscurity at times, it seems to me, that can be as irritating as my 'both/and' mantra can also be.
I can see the point. It's a bit like these Buddhist 'koans' where they try to wrong foot you with paradox and contradictions in order to pull you up short.
Fine.
But it can get in the way of a decent debate.
We understand each other just fine mate. And you understand exactly what is meant by history, historical event, science without having to check what my understanding is.
If you were to - rudely - demand what my understanding of history, science, religion is, which you could not to save your life, that would not be to further a decent debate. It would be to avoid it. I don't play that game.
Now I'm a man of good will toward our Jesus as you know and accept him, his mother, his adoptive father, his half brothers Jacob, Joseph, Simeon and Judah, and half sisters, his cousins including the brothers James and John, and more distant Elizabeth and her son John, his other disciples, his run in with the establishment, his death as real, natural, valid, true.
And I can critique the bizarre, primitive theology around him even positing that he were Love incarnate.
What I cannot do, and neither can anyone else with our mutual and common understanding of history, is say that his resurrection, like his incarnation, was an historical event.
@Martin54, you have posted on this thread eleven times today. Five posts have been one-liners. A post which contains a single word Attachment or two words Potty Training contributes nothing of worth to the discussion. Responding to serious questions with a series of gnomic questions contributes nothing of worth to the discussion.
@Martin54 you can do better than this. We know that you can. Please, please, in the name of all that is holy, try to post in a way that is readily comprehensible and doesn't derail the discussion.
Hence the various run-ins and difficulties our Hosts and Admins have had with our friend @Martin54 over the years.
I hope I can say that without sounding like an unofficial host.
I enjoy discussing things with him but find he doesn't always make it easy to do so. There's a wilful obscurity at times, it seems to me, that can be as irritating as my 'both/and' mantra can also be.
I can see the point. It's a bit like these Buddhist 'koans' where they try to wrong foot you with paradox and contradictions in order to pull you up short.
Fine.
But it can get in the way of a decent debate.
We understand each other just fine mate. And you understand exactly what is meant by history, historical event, science without having to check what my understanding is.
If you were to - rudely - demand what my understanding of history, science, religion is, which you could not to save your life, that would not be to further a decent debate. It would be to avoid it. I don't play that game.
Now I'm a man of good will toward our Jesus as you know and accept him, his mother, his adoptive father, his half brothers Jacob, Joseph, Simeon and Judah, and half sisters, his cousins including the brothers James and John, and more distant Elizabeth and her son John, his other disciples, his run in with the establishment, his death as real, natural, valid, true.
And I can critique the bizarre, primitive theology around him even positing that he were Love incarnate.
What I cannot do, and neither can anyone else with our mutual and common understanding of history, is say that his resurrection, like his incarnation, was an historical event.
Asking your dialogue partner what they understand a concept to mean is not rude, it's normal discussion. It's literally to make sure that we're talking about the same thing, which is done to further a discussion.
Finally, this whole discussion has been about the historical event of Jesus' death. Not his resurrection (theological concept), not his incarnation (theological concept), but his death--ordinary biological phenomenon.
Thank you, @Martin54. For the avoidance of doubt, my host post (posted 10.41) cross-posted with your acceptable post (posted 10.39) However my point regarding your previous eleven posts today stands.
Um. We do not agree. At least as you stated it.
One last time in complete sentences:
The meaning of Jesus's resurrection may be a theological concept.
The historicity of Jesus's resurrection is not a theological concept; it is a matter of history.
I think that the most historians could say with regards to the resurrection would be to say that various people thought it happened. What actually happened is beyond their remit.
At the risk of taking the tangent too far. I think the historicity argument works like this. A modern historian is unable to accept any witness testimony to the resurrection as proof that it happened. It fails to pass a normal historical test for accuracy. That is not the same as rejecting that such testimony existed. Just that it cannot be regarded as reliable about what happened.
Historicist arguments are used to tease out fact from legend. Accounts of miraculous events fail the historicist test of fact.
A large number of historians, not theologians, have I think accepted that belief that Jesus rose from the dead was a belief of Christian people from about the mid thirties AD onwards. That does not make that belief factually based. There is however massive evidence in the copies of many documents to the fact of that belief.
Now is it possible for us to accept that statement of the analysis and move on?
I think that the most historians could say with regards to the resurrection would be to say that various people thought it happened. What actually happened is beyond their remit.
Yes. As with other questions about history, answerable or not.
Did the thing that people wrote about happen or not?
A perfect tangent @Barnabas62. The fact, the truth of unwarranted belief, a majority, dominant human idiosyncrasy, a side effect of evolution, an evolutionary spandrel, is the issue.
I think that the most historians could say with regards to the resurrection would be to say that various people thought it happened. What actually happened is beyond their remit.
Not as disinterested rational human beings it isn't. History didn't miss anything. Apart from Jesus' conspiracy.
Hence the various run-ins and difficulties our Hosts and Admins have had with our friend @Martin54 over the years.
I hope I can say that without sounding like an unofficial host.
I enjoy discussing things with him but find he doesn't always make it easy to do so. There's a wilful obscurity at times, it seems to me, that can be as irritating as my 'both/and' mantra can also be.
I can see the point. It's a bit like these Buddhist 'koans' where they try to wrong foot you with paradox and contradictions in order to pull you up short.
Fine.
But it can get in the way of a decent debate.
We understand each other just fine mate. And you understand exactly what is meant by history, historical event, science without having to check what my understanding is.
If you were to - rudely - demand what my understanding of history, science, religion is, which you could not to save your life, that would not be to further a decent debate. It would be to avoid it. I don't play that game.
Now I'm a man of good will toward our Jesus as you know and accept him, his mother, his adoptive father, his half brothers Jacob, Joseph, Simeon and Judah, and half sisters, his cousins including the brothers James and John, and more distant Elizabeth and her son John, his other disciples, his run in with the establishment, his death as real, natural, valid, true.
And I can critique the bizarre, primitive theology around him even positing that he were Love incarnate.
What I cannot do, and neither can anyone else with our mutual and common understanding of history, is say that his resurrection, like his incarnation, was an historical event.
Asking your dialogue partner what they understand a concept to mean is not rude, it's normal discussion. It's literally to make sure that we're talking about the same thing, which is done to further a discussion.
Finally, this whole discussion has been about the historical event of Jesus' death. Not his resurrection (theological concept), not his incarnation (theological concept), but his death--ordinary biological phenomenon.
Jesus' death and life is not an historical event, let alone his resurrection that @Dafyd and @Barnabas62 refer to.
Do you mean that Jesus never existed? Or that the accounts of his life are all legend?
I thought that the general settled opinion was that he did exist but the accounts of his life that we have are in varying degrees a mixture of fact and legend. Some historians have indeed taken more extreme views. They appear to be based on the premise that the documents are so irredeemably tainted that nothing in them can relied on as evidence of fact or belief. The whole thing is a fraud.
I’m not sure such views need to be taken all that seriously. I’m satisfied that attempts to understand the origins of Christianity are proper endeavours for folks of all faiths and none.
Speaking for myself whilst I'm here; I think it is likely that the religious stories from the NT are based on a real person but it also isn't impossible that they are totally made up.
In my view from a distance of 2000 years, I think there's sufficient uncertainty to be unsure.
Belief in the NT stories are the stuff of religious observance rather than history, IMO.
It feels like almost all believers of different types accept religious precepts to be history in a way that almost nobody outside of that worldview does. It fairly clearly happens to believers in the Buddha, in the Founder of Islam and Christianity.
One interesting footnote about the Buddha is that there is sufficient uncertainty about historicity that I read Buddhist scholars have apparently taken the fairly rational position that debating about it is a pointless exercise.
I've never come across that; every scholar of Buddhism I've read accepts that Siddhartha Guatama lived, they usually pin his dates from the late 500s to the early 400s BCE. Wikipedia is fairly clear on the topic.
There is less consensus on the veracity of many details contained in traditional biographies, as "Buddhist scholars [...] have mostly given up trying to understand the historical person.
@Barnabas62 as I've said, again recently above, I give absolute good will to all of the realistic, naturalistic claims in the Gospels, Acts and the generation earlier seven consensual letters of Paul (his objectivity over his dream is superb). Which is an opposite pole to the extreme view on the rational axis. One - mine - intersecting with @KoF's. As a result of the extreme good will, I have to favour Jesus' globally effective till kingdom come, messianic, self martyrdom conspiracy that is still working, naturally, like all effective religions, because of the bias of human nature. The greatest blockbuster novel ever unwritten. The reality will most probably have been much more dilute than that, but something remarkable, but entirely culturally natural, happened to create the Church.
And Russell was wrong in the extended quote. It's beyond dispute, certain. There is no need to count sigmas (statistical doubt). The sun is in its late twenties (a third of its life expectancy as a human). Humanity is half way at least (statistically, two thirds of the time (one sigma), you're near half way). With nowhere to go. Our future can end in a couple of hours from now depending on Putin. Or go on for centuries, millennia, a hundred thousand years at best. With a bit of luck we'll make space elevators and terraform Mars and make O'Neil Halos. We'll never detect life elsewhere let alone make contact of course.
Star formation peaked over ten billion years ago. The last stars will die in two hundred trillion years. If we could upload to silicon 'we' (intentional, sapient life) could go on for that to the that (two hundred trillion to the power two hundred trillion years). But we can't. Because Fermi (if it could be done, it would have been, a billion years ago, and the naturally supercooled sentient craft of millions of species would have visited every habitable world in our galaxy alone many times).
That's certainly a blanket question! Well, let's see, it begins with my DNA, and my position in space-time, ....
Excellent retort. I had a T-shirt to that effect. "I'm Unique!" it declared (from a Norwegian software house), which I followed up with 'Just like everyone else'.
And just like everyone else, you make yourself up, including your God, in relation to others.
And, @Thomas Rowans, where does Paul Churchland do that?
In terms of the impact of Christianity on other faiths (and none) it seems unjust to me to apply the tools of historical criticism to other faiths but not one’s own.
This doesn’t necessarily involve any kind of syncretism. But it does seem a mark of mutual respect for the humanity of those who believe differently.
Of course if one is locked into some kind of fundamentalist exclusive and exclusion belief, the very thought may be anathema.
I’ve often reflected on the Greek word mathetes (disciple) which has dual meanings; follower and learner. For me, unquestioning following seems to rule out learning. Yet unquestioning following seems to have a lot of supporters. I really like Rowan Williams’ observation about Christianity keeping the questions alive. Personally I have much more difficulty in relating to unquestioning people. I’m not sure I understand how their thought world works.
My own theology is very much a matter of “venture, slowness and strain”. (Another indebtedness to Rowan Williams there). Rushing to answers was one of the follies of my youth. Patience, taking one’s time, are virtues I’ve leaned to appreciate.
According to John Keay in his history of India, there are four different traditions about the birth of the Buddha - two coincide, one is about fifty years earlier, one fifty years later.
He was observes that the date on which two accounts coincide has been called the first settled date in Indian history, although he thinks that the later date fits better with what we can tell of Indian society from the archaeological record.
What he doesn't suggest is that there's any support for skepticism about the Buddha's existence at some point.
If God is a projection of an idealised self then why do so many believers seem to have such a harsh view of God?
There's been a lot written about this, not so much about God as the harshness some people show and believe in. Apart from harsh parents there is also the projection of the child's rage. Why rage? Long story.
We have a very warped 'ideal' ID-ego-superego self that we project on the God superparent idea. As did the creators of God. We have, as the RCs say, disordered passions as we are rent, one way or another, from emotional attunement even with the best mothers. I don't think the Bronze Age, or any before or since, afforded much by way of optimal circumstances for secure attachment and self formation.
My second gestation and much beyond didn't. And I was ripe for a very dark God indeed. Still lighter than most's.
According to John Keay in his history of India, there are four different traditions about the birth of the Buddha - two coincide, one is about fifty years earlier, one fifty years later.
He was observes that the date on which two accounts coincide has been called the first settled date in Indian history, although he thinks that the later date fits better with what we can tell of Indian society from the archaeological record.
What he doesn't suggest is that there's any support for skepticism about the Buddha's existence at some point.
It's the wrong question. From an article in the Buddhist magazine Triangle
My purpose here is not to deny the authenticity of a man who once was known as the Buddha. Rather, I want to highlight the fact that the question itself is irrelevant, except for a historicist—that is, Western—approach. The question is certainly of little consequence for traditional Buddhists, who see the life of the Buddha above all as a model and an ideal to be followed. The imitation of this timeless paradigm is a fundamental fact of monastic life. It is not just about achieving awakening for oneself by identifying with the Buddha individually; it also involves recreating the Buddhist community ideal of the early days: bringing the Buddha back to life, not just as a detached individual but rather in close symbiosis with his disciples.
All the better. Nobody has a dog in the fight and so we can see that a "historicist - that is Western" approach still doesn't result in skepticism about Buddha's existence despite the evidence being much poorer.
Christianity I note is a historicist - that is, eastern Mediterranean - religion.
(Ironically the only people writing history in classical India were Buddhists. The tone with which the author writes "that is Western" strikes me as very Western.)
Why are you fixated with the Buddha's existence? I've not said anything about that.
Even if it is generally accepted that the Buddha existed, that's not related to whether Jesus Christ existed.
I only brought it up as an example of how events which are accepted within religions are not accepted by those outside. And I footnoted that, unlike arguments from Christians about historicity of events, Buddhist scholars say similar discussions about the Buddha are fruitless.
Reality in Buddhism is a somewhat problematic entity! Insight into the true nature of reality is seen as liberation. Illusory perceptions of reality are acknowledged in various Buddhist schools of thought but they vary about what these perceptions say.
Against that background I can see why some Buddhist teachers are not much into the historicity of the Buddha.
Why are you fixated with the Buddha's existence? I've not said anything about that.
It's an analogy.
Even if it is generally accepted that the Buddha existed, that's not related to whether Jesus Christ existed.
I only brought it up as an example of how events which are accepted within religions are not accepted by those outside.
The existence of the Buddha is however related to the standard of evidence needed for the existence of a person accepted within a religion to be accepted by those outside the religion.
The evidence for the existence of Jesus more than clears the standard of evidence needed by those outside Buddhism to accept the existence of the Buddha. (Whether Buddhists care about this is neither here or there.)
Comments
It’s quite likely that some of our thinking about God is intertwined with an idealization of self, but given that we live at a time that has been thoroughly saturated by religion disentangling those is quite difficult.
These days I tend to see this sort of thing as almost exclusively learned behaviour with cues picked up from whichever group you knock around in.
I wouldn't dismiss all of it out of hand though.
You didn't make up God in a vacuum.
Martin54. Isn’t that just belief in another metarrative?
“Only on the foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built”. A famous quote by Bertrand Russell.
Martin54, if that’s where you’re at. good luck. I prefer hope to despair. I don’t think Russell’s metanarrative led to a safe place for him. Certainly not as he got very old.
How are you different from everyone else?
Here’s the full quote.
“
That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic including A Free Man's Worship”.
I think Russell spells out very well why he sees unyielding despair as a rational conclusion to a belief that the natural world is all there is. In some ways it’s a rather good argument against the belief that the natural world is all there is.
Spoken like a true postmodernist. Russell was right. That's where I'm at. And I have hope in some of those I love. In the air I breathe. Borne of insufficient gratitude. I start to get middle old in a few months. And what's Russell's and my grand story? Story about stories of historical meaning, experience, and knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea? What is our master idea?
The natural is all there is?
I don't think so.
Martin's point is different. He seems to claim that All that exists is nature, and that what exists is explicable in natural terms. The problem is that besides being quite tautological, since he doesn't define nature we can't better evaluate the insight. (Sorry if I'm misrepresenting your position Martin, but you're not giving me much to go with buddy.)
Because you use the terms in non-standard ways, so I’m trying to understand. I’m really not trying to “get” you or anything, just understand your point of view.
I think I can see what you are getting at and it accords with the position other atheists seem to hold, if I understand it correctly.
If you can, he can.
I hope I can say that without sounding like an unofficial host.
I enjoy discussing things with him but find he doesn't always make it easy to do so. There's a wilful obscurity at times, it seems to me, that can be as irritating as my 'both/and' mantra can also be.
I can see the point. It's a bit like these Buddhist 'koans' where they try to wrong foot you with paradox and contradictions in order to pull you up short.
Fine.
But it can get in the way of a decent debate.
We understand each other just fine mate. And you understand exactly what is meant by history, historical event, science without having to check what my understanding is.
If you were to - rudely - demand what my understanding of history, science, religion is, which you could not to save your life, that would not be to further a decent debate. It would be to avoid it. I don't play that game.
Now I'm a man of good will toward our Jesus as you know and accept him, his mother, his adoptive father, his half brothers Jacob, Joseph, Simeon and Judah, and half sisters, his cousins including the brothers James and John, and more distant Elizabeth and her son John, his other disciples, his run in with the establishment, his death as real, natural, valid, true.
And I can critique the bizarre, primitive theology around him even positing that he were Love incarnate.
What I cannot do, and neither can anyone else with our mutual and common understanding of history, is say that his resurrection, like his incarnation, was an historical event.
@Martin54, you have posted on this thread eleven times today. Five posts have been one-liners. A post which contains a single word Attachment or two words Potty Training contributes nothing of worth to the discussion. Responding to serious questions with a series of gnomic questions contributes nothing of worth to the discussion.
@Martin54 you can do better than this. We know that you can. Please, please, in the name of all that is holy, try to post in a way that is readily comprehensible and doesn't derail the discussion.
North East Quine, Purgatory host
Hostly hat removed
Asking your dialogue partner what they understand a concept to mean is not rude, it's normal discussion. It's literally to make sure that we're talking about the same thing, which is done to further a discussion.
Finally, this whole discussion has been about the historical event of Jesus' death. Not his resurrection (theological concept), not his incarnation (theological concept), but his death--ordinary biological phenomenon.
Thank you, @Martin54. For the avoidance of doubt, my host post (posted 10.41) cross-posted with your acceptable post (posted 10.39) However my point regarding your previous eleven posts today stands.
North East Quine, Purgatory host
Hostly hat off
I agree! I was trying to note that the resurrection is a theological concept, not a historical one.
One last time in complete sentences:
The meaning of Jesus's resurrection may be a theological concept.
The historicity of Jesus's resurrection is not a theological concept; it is a matter of history.
ETA: But within the context of what I thought Martin was referring to, I was talking only about Jesus' death.
Historicist arguments are used to tease out fact from legend. Accounts of miraculous events fail the historicist test of fact.
A large number of historians, not theologians, have I think accepted that belief that Jesus rose from the dead was a belief of Christian people from about the mid thirties AD onwards. That does not make that belief factually based. There is however massive evidence in the copies of many documents to the fact of that belief.
Now is it possible for us to accept that statement of the analysis and move on?
Yes. As with other questions about history, answerable or not.
Did the thing that people wrote about happen or not?
@Barnabas62 ,
@Thomas Rowans and I were negotiating meaning, if that is what you are getting at.
The "argument," if there is one, is over classification, not history.
I believe we were done with the matter. But thank you for clarifying The Historicity Argument for us anyway.
Not as disinterested rational human beings it isn't. History didn't miss anything. Apart from Jesus' conspiracy.
Jesus' death and life is not an historical event, let alone his resurrection that @Dafyd and @Barnabas62 refer to.
I thought that the general settled opinion was that he did exist but the accounts of his life that we have are in varying degrees a mixture of fact and legend. Some historians have indeed taken more extreme views. They appear to be based on the premise that the documents are so irredeemably tainted that nothing in them can relied on as evidence of fact or belief. The whole thing is a fraud.
I’m not sure such views need to be taken all that seriously. I’m satisfied that attempts to understand the origins of Christianity are proper endeavours for folks of all faiths and none.
Where do you stand on those options?
In my view from a distance of 2000 years, I think there's sufficient uncertainty to be unsure.
Belief in the NT stories are the stuff of religious observance rather than history, IMO.
It feels like almost all believers of different types accept religious precepts to be history in a way that almost nobody outside of that worldview does. It fairly clearly happens to believers in the Buddha, in the Founder of Islam and Christianity.
One interesting footnote about the Buddha is that there is sufficient uncertainty about historicity that I read Buddhist scholars have apparently taken the fairly rational position that debating about it is a pointless exercise.
And Russell was wrong in the extended quote. It's beyond dispute, certain. There is no need to count sigmas (statistical doubt). The sun is in its late twenties (a third of its life expectancy as a human). Humanity is half way at least (statistically, two thirds of the time (one sigma), you're near half way). With nowhere to go. Our future can end in a couple of hours from now depending on Putin. Or go on for centuries, millennia, a hundred thousand years at best. With a bit of luck we'll make space elevators and terraform Mars and make O'Neil Halos. We'll never detect life elsewhere let alone make contact of course.
Star formation peaked over ten billion years ago. The last stars will die in two hundred trillion years. If we could upload to silicon 'we' (intentional, sapient life) could go on for that to the that (two hundred trillion to the power two hundred trillion years). But we can't. Because Fermi (if it could be done, it would have been, a billion years ago, and the naturally supercooled sentient craft of millions of species would have visited every habitable world in our galaxy alone many times).
Excellent retort. I had a T-shirt to that effect. "I'm Unique!" it declared (from a Norwegian software house), which I followed up with 'Just like everyone else'.
And just like everyone else, you make yourself up, including your God, in relation to others.
And, @Thomas Rowans, where does Paul Churchland do that?
In terms of the impact of Christianity on other faiths (and none) it seems unjust to me to apply the tools of historical criticism to other faiths but not one’s own.
This doesn’t necessarily involve any kind of syncretism. But it does seem a mark of mutual respect for the humanity of those who believe differently.
Of course if one is locked into some kind of fundamentalist exclusive and exclusion belief, the very thought may be anathema.
I’ve often reflected on the Greek word mathetes (disciple) which has dual meanings; follower and learner. For me, unquestioning following seems to rule out learning. Yet unquestioning following seems to have a lot of supporters. I really like Rowan Williams’ observation about Christianity keeping the questions alive. Personally I have much more difficulty in relating to unquestioning people. I’m not sure I understand how their thought world works.
My own theology is very much a matter of “venture, slowness and strain”. (Another indebtedness to Rowan Williams there). Rushing to answers was one of the follies of my youth. Patience, taking one’s time, are virtues I’ve leaned to appreciate.
He was observes that the date on which two accounts coincide has been called the first settled date in Indian history, although he thinks that the later date fits better with what we can tell of Indian society from the archaeological record.
What he doesn't suggest is that there's any support for skepticism about the Buddha's existence at some point.
Sorry for the telegraphic responses.
We have a very warped 'ideal' ID-ego-superego self that we project on the God superparent idea. As did the creators of God. We have, as the RCs say, disordered passions as we are rent, one way or another, from emotional attunement even with the best mothers. I don't think the Bronze Age, or any before or since, afforded much by way of optimal circumstances for secure attachment and self formation.
My second gestation and much beyond didn't. And I was ripe for a very dark God indeed. Still lighter than most's.
It's the wrong question. From an article in the Buddhist magazine Triangle
https://tricycle.org/magazine/myth-historical-buddha/
Christianity I note is a historicist - that is, eastern Mediterranean - religion.
(Ironically the only people writing history in classical India were Buddhists. The tone with which the author writes "that is Western" strikes me as very Western.)
Even if it is generally accepted that the Buddha existed, that's not related to whether Jesus Christ existed.
I only brought it up as an example of how events which are accepted within religions are not accepted by those outside. And I footnoted that, unlike arguments from Christians about historicity of events, Buddhist scholars say similar discussions about the Buddha are fruitless.
Against that background I can see why some Buddhist teachers are not much into the historicity of the Buddha.
The existence of the Buddha is however related to the standard of evidence needed for the existence of a person accepted within a religion to be accepted by those outside the religion.
The evidence for the existence of Jesus more than clears the standard of evidence needed by those outside Buddhism to accept the existence of the Buddha. (Whether Buddhists care about this is neither here or there.)