Paul Exposed as Space Alien
A poster named Rex said something I thought was very funny: to the effect "you quote Paul as though he's some kind of saint or something." I was amused by this and, giving vent to my urge to be jsut a bit mean but mosly just teasing I put it under "stupid atheist tricks." It really wasn't "stupid" and I know what he means. He made an answer this is very telling. I will discuss this:
Yes, I am guilty as charged. I am guilty of not assigning any more significance to Paul than I would to any other minor fictional character in a badly written piece of fiction. I am also guilty of not sharing your delusion of invisible gods and saints and apostles, not because I am uneducated about them, quite the opposite actually, but because it is a work of fiction written by men.
"Worship me and me only, or I will burn you forever" Not exactly a loving forgiving chap eh?
If these concepts make me a "stupid atheist", then I accept that label, but at least I am not living every day in fear of homosexuals or atheists corrupting society, or in fear that I might not worshiping in the exact right way to get me into "heaven".
The first thing that strikes me about this is the ignorance and the sense of arrogant expectation that his view is so overwhelmingly right that everyone should just assume it without even having to prove it. Why would anyone think there's a problem with quoting Paul in a religious context? He was an Apostle, he was the single most influential Biblical writer next to Moses, and New Testament figure next to Jesus; and yes, he was a Saint actually, still is too. It's absurd to expect scholars to give credence to or make the assumptions of the Jesus myth movement. There is no reason not accept Paul's authority of face value, and no atheist or myther has ever produce any kind of hard evidence that would shake it.
Let's take his statements apart:
I am guilty as charged. I am guilty of not assigning any more significance to Paul than I would to any other minor fictional character in a badly written piece of fiction.
He asserts Paul is fictional. why do they assert this? It's not even the majority of mythers it's a faction within the Jesus myth cult. Why? Because the vast majority f real scholarship (degrees, teach at universities, present papers at conferences, publish in journals) accept Paul as basic primary evidence for early Christianity and as the best secondary evidence for Jesus. But the Jesus myth cult is anit-intellectual and anti-scholarship. We can see this clearly in their last ditch straw-clutching effort to label Paul "fictional." The Pauline corpus is one of the best sources against Doherty's lies. Paul says specifically that Jesus was flesh and blood that he had a genetic line that made of flesh and blood (Romans 1:3). They tried to argue the Greek but their Greek was so bad it could not past muster with real scholars. So now they resort to undermining the basic sources of evidence, of which Paul is one.
The Jesus myth theory has always been crack pot, anti-intellectual and at odds with real Scholarship. The nineteenth century version was disproved by Albert Schweitzer, and the twentieth century version has been so disproved and smashed and broken up that now they mythers are the end of line trying in this last ditch effort to undermine the basic sources of all NT scholarship in a vain effort to save a lie that has for the second time been totally disproved and defeated. One of the first things they did was to resurrect the crock pots of the nineteenth century and try to put them over as major scholars. There are no serous scholars who maintain that Paul was fictional. There is no data that would prove this. The only hard data they have is doubt about Pauline authorship of the Pastoral epistles, then they find "problems" (subjective imaginings) with the accepted Pauline books copied after the pattern of problems with the Pastorals.
Then he evokes his general incredulity as expects us to accept that as some sort of base line assumption as he does:
I am also guilty of not sharing your delusion of invisible gods and saints and apostles,
Its' circular reasoning and guilt by association. Circular because he expects his incredulity o function as proof, I doubt God exits, therefore he doesn't, then because saints and Apostles are associated with a belief he doesn't accept they are suspect too. But you can't use your opinion to validate your opinion. Your premise rests upon your conclusion. There is no proof that saints and Apostles were fictional and there's good solid proof they existed. We know that Paul existed becuase Clement of Rome says he know people who saw him die (and may be implying that he himself was one of them). But the mythers of course deny that it's the same Paul. This is one of the major escape hatches of a lie that has solid data to back it, is based upon a vendetta to opposes good scholarship, and based upon the premise of incredulity as the lionization of its own view point. No form of evidence ever counts against the Jesus myth lie, and if it does, it mysteriously becomes fictional itself no matter how many scholars think it's real.
The incredulity reaches psychodrama proportions:
"Worship me and me only, or I will burn you forever" Not exactly a loving forgiving chap eh?
This is noting more than his own subjective opinion about the message of Christianity. Of cos rue it's contrary to all expositors and interpreters, Even the most extreme fundies would try to mediate these aspects. But never mind that, what do they matter? The mythers hate Christianity, they hate God they are fuming with hatred, they hate scholarship and real academics, they are not willing to consider anything as ever counting against their view, now you are supposed to accept their reading of God's intentions regardless of deeply they are contradicted by the experiences of religious people. One can only speculate about the conflict going on inside someone who has to interpret the most loving and generous attempt to reach out as some evil blackmail scheme form the sky. As if this wasn't telling enough:
If these concepts make me a "stupid atheist", then I accept that label, but at least I am not living every day in fear of homosexuals or atheists corrupting society, or in fear that I might not worshiping in the exact right way to get me into "heaven".
O you are not hu? why would you even think about that? Apparently this guy doesn't understand the psychology concept of "projection." When one decides that he understands a deep seated hidden psychological motive of a whole group of people who can't see it themselves, one must suspect perhaps he's projecting his own fears upon the group. It probably does make him feel better about his feelings of inferiority that led him to mock and ridicule Christians to think believe that they are all afraid of gays. Why gays? Hmmmm. Not that there's anything wrong with that (as Seinfeld tells us).
Some of my best friends are gay. I'm sure some Christians are afraid of them, but it's a silly stereotype. Look at how it's tied in with the over all warp and woof of his arguments. His founding premise is "I hate Christians becuase they don't accept gays" (?). then all the business about God's evil black mail scheme it's just so transparent that that's the premise for the myther theory. Because I hate Christianity I will assert that Jesus didn't exist. Then Because I can't admit there's no basis for that I have to deny that Paul existed.
So we have a bunch of guys running around in the first century named "Paul" and "Peter" and they were all confused with the Paul and Peter who thought to be Apostles, after their cults got going and tired their myths in with the myths of Jesus. No telling how many Mary's there were. So they could have had four or five Peter, Paul, and Mary groups. Maybe that's how folk music started.
The truth of it is Paul was really a space alien, that's proved by those iconic pictures like he one above that show him in a space helmet. the Jesus myth ting is on a par with Bigfoot and UFOs. It's not real academically included and is actually the enemy of real scholarship. In fact I actaully have a lot of respect for Grvoer Krantz and Jeff Maldrum. The Jesus mythers are like the Tom Biscardi end of sasquatchery.
2 comments:
Dude! Wow!
Housekeeping first: They have this really cool new thing now called spell check. You should really look into it because your sentence fragments and chronic misspellings really undercut the image of esteemed scholar that you are trying to project. Although I did not make it clear, I am not the original poster under the "Stupid Atheist" entry. I was just taking the generic atheist position.
My main objection to your response is that I seem to be taken to task for asserting something. The statement I made was that I did not share your delusions. I reject your superstitious, and frankly, childish and divisive and destructive belief in a higher power. I do not assert that there is no God, I merely reject your belief in a God. You assert the existence of God, and as such, the burden of proof rests with the person who makes the assertion.
You are evidently a scholar that has a high level of edumacation (sic) on the holy word. As such, it should not be difficult for you to prove God's existence. Go ahead smart guy, prove it, but please do it in a way that us simple minded non believers can understand, without all of that false, hateful, complicated, contradicting and circular scripture. Perhaps something simple like E=mc^2.
I like the Atheist Rex tag that you have given me, but I think I would prefer Atheist Maximus Rex!
Housekeeping first: They have this really cool new thing now called spell check. You should really look into it because your sentence fragments and chronic misspellings really undercut the image of esteemed scholar that you are trying to project.
I spell check everything because I use fire fox. If you weren't so stupid you might think about maybe I can't see good? Maybe can't see the order of the words cause dyslexia makes jump around hu? you think? Well dogies uncle jed
Although I did not make it clear, I am not the original poster under the "Stupid Atheist" entry. I was just taking the generic atheist position.
how can there be a "generic atheist position" if there is standard atheist view point? If it' s just an absence of belief?
My main objection to your response is that I seem to be taken to task for asserting something. The statement I made was that I did not share your delusions.
Orwellian use of the term "delusion." Delusion means mental illness it does not merely mean to disagree. It does not mean just to be wrong about something. To label anyone who disagrees with you are "delusional" is a sign that you are in a cult and you are brain washed by an ideology.
I reject your superstitious, and frankly, childish and divisive and destructive belief in a higher power.
you do not know anything about my beliefs. Like most atheists you are far too stupid to understand them and I doubt that you read enough of my stuff to even know that I have a liberal form of theology. You probably wouldn't know what it means anyway.
I do not assert that there is no God, I merely reject your belief in a God.
You don't know anything about my belief. you are merely assuming I'm a fundie because I'm against stupid little brown shirt atheists. I doubt very seriously that you are not an atheist.
why would you want to support a group of bullies who spend their days mocking and ridiculing things they don't understand?
You assert the existence of God, and as such, the burden of proof rests with the person who makes the assertion.
Fundamental misunderstanding. Obviously you are not very advanced in the philosophy of religion or in augmentation. I have 42 God argument, of course you have not gone to any trouble to find out what I think.. You just assert the typical crap.
my 42 meet the prima facie burden and prove the rational nature of belief. so it's your burden now.
Besides you must justify the belligerent attack minded attitude of the atheist brown shirts who are looking to mock and ridicule people for not cow towing to the their bankrupt philosophy.
You do not have the right to assert a lionized position on the basis of burden of proof when not in a debate about God arguments. You do not get to make that assumption about other people's beliefs. That only works when one asserts positively "you must accept my belief." It doesn't even work when one asserts one's own feelings "I believe in God." Saying that I believe does not give me the burden of proof, not unless I try to impose my belief on others. But this blog is about and for people who believe in God. So I assert my belief and that does not give me any burden of proof.
You are evidently a scholar that has a high level of edumacation (sic) on the holy word. As such, it should not be difficult for you to prove God's existence.
It's not. that doesn't mean I'm obligated to do so everything time I speak of my view point.
Go ahead smart guy, prove it, but please do it in a way that us simple minded non believers can understand, without all of that false, hateful, complicated, contradicting and circular scripture. Perhaps something simple like E=mc^2.
go look up my 42 arguemnts on Doxa, google Metacorck.
I like the Atheist Rex tag that you have given me, but I think I would prefer Atheist Maximus Rex!
I don't give you any tags. That's what the blog does automatically I don't know anything about it.
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