I’m reading that historical Jesus book my dad gave me for Christmas. He’s talking to a psychologist now.
“Many times people who are healed psychologically have their symptoms return a few days later, but we don’t see any evidence of this. And Jesus healed conditions like lifelong blindness and leprosy, for which a psychosomatic explanation isn’t likely.”
(cont)
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“On top of that, he brought people back from the dead - and death is not a psychologically induced state! Plus you have all of his nature miracles - the calming of the sea, turning water into wine. They defy naturalistic answers”
My wife is a psychologist, and she is agog that an academic psychologist can even begin to suggest all this based on zero direct contact with the patient.
I respect my dad’s faith, but it troubles me he thinks this is definitive & will cure me of my atheism.
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“We don’t see any evidence for that”
It’s hilarious that these people lack the self-awareness to see any irony whatsoever in their use of the word “evidence”.
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“It’s just amazing to me,” Collins replied, “how people will grasp at anything to try and disprove Jesus’ miracles”.
Fuck me. Nothing like healthy scholarly scepticism, eh?
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“People who deny the existence of the supernatural will find some way, no matter how far-fetched, to explain a situation apart from the demonic. They’ll keep giving medication, keep drugging the person, but he or she doesn’t get better. There are cases that don’t respond to medical or psychiatric treatment”
An actual doctor, ladies and gentlemen. I prescribe demons. Burn her!
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(I’m going to stop in a moment, but one more):
“What about the man who was possessed and Jesus sent the demons into the pigs and the pigs ran off a cliff? What’s going on if that was a psychosomatic situation? I think Jesus really did drive out demons, and I think some people do that today”.
Wow. QED, eh? Far-fetched explanations that try and explain away the obvious demon-based solution. No YOU’RE delusional.
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@swisslet it's so weird isn't it that people think these books will make us "realise the error of our ways". When we just see more poor epistemology.
My dad is very CoE Christian so not really aware of any theology, but just has a deep sense that "Christianity is just what good people do"...and he's a good person.
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@Shobeck I tried having the, “but isn’t the whole point faith? Why do you need more?” conversation, but he wasn’t having it.
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@swisslet have you ever seen the street epistemology conversations by Anthony Magnabosco? I found them refreshing from other Atheist content and liked how the conversations uncovered the underlying motivations people of faith often have, rather than the "reasons" they think people want to hear.
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@swisslet What's the book?
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@Black_Flag The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. An apparently forensic investigation by a journalist into the evidence for Jesus. My dad gave me and my brothers copies of this for Xmas with a letter earnestly detailing how he wants us to read this before he dies as he finds it compelling. He’s a doctor, and although religious, he’s not prone generally to irrationality. I’m finding this mesmerisingly awful.
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@swisslet Oh dear. That's not a historical Jesus book. Its apologetic for evangelical Christianity.
I did a PhD in the historical Jesus at university. I could rip holes in that book.
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@Black_Flag I bet you could. Every « expert » he’s talking to is a professor at a US evangelical university. Frustratingly, there’s an interesting book to be written on this subject. I think what bothers me the most is that my dad is a man of science; a doctor. He’s a man of faith, and that’s fine, but how can he see this book as providing the answers?
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@Black_Flag I’d be very interested in hearing more about your phd sometime though.
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@swisslet Strobel is just one entry in an endless stream of Christian-funded books aimed to capture people interested in Jesus. They thrive on capturing the unquestioning by telling a story. One obvious problem with Strobel's method (which you may have noticed) is that he takes the gospels as journalistic evidence. They aren't. A minimum of two of them were supposedly written by people who never even met Jesus. Numerous scholars would suggest none were. They also appear to be fiction.
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@Black_Flag as a historian by training, lots of this makes me feel itchy. All these biblical scholars who have no expertise in the source languages and draw their conclusions from English translations (often translations of translations of translations). Ugh. Danger! Danger!
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@swisslet I can't speak for every scholar, but most can do work in either the Greek of the New Testament or Hebrew if they study the Hebrew Bible (which Christian's call the Old Testament). Some can do both. But very few can do Aramaic which is the modification of Hebrew that Jesus almost certainly spoke. So, as some scholars complain, how can they then construct the possible Aramaic words Jesus may have actually said? There are a few Aramaic phrases in the gospels.
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@swisslet The quote I use at the top of that chapter is science. Maybe you could run it by your dad? 😋
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@Black_Flag I love this. A very interesting read, btw. Thanks so much for sharing. I am very interested in this topic and am annoyed by Strobel and by my dad for suggesting it is the text. Still, it’s made me think and have some great conversations, so all is not lost. Thanks again.
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@swisslet Feel free to ask me anything. If I don't know the answer chances are I know of someone who might.
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@swisslet Strobel, like all evangelicals, creates a fairy tale of a man who could not have existed in his time and place. Genuine historical studies don't do that. Modern evangelicals aren't interested in it because they are usually white American men on a convert hunt.
A properly historical Jesus should sound weird and foreign - because he was a 2000 year old man from Palestine. Chapter 6of this book presents my case for Jesus as a kind of Jewish Cynic (like Diogenes).
https://archive.org/details/black-dog_202403
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