Most of the people I know who are looking to move back to the Bay Area or Portland/Seattle are doing to because of the political climate, not the weather. A lot of people were pushed to move by their jobs, or elected to move because they saw a cost of living benefit. They figured they could do the blue city in a red state thing. With people like Abbott in charge, that’s no longer going to be a viable option.
With people like Abbott in charge, that’s no longer going to be a viable option.
How so? Isn’t the average tech worker’s salary sufficient to pay for personal remedies to most statewide conservative laws? For example, someone earning six figures would have no trouble quickly and quietly traveling to another state for an abortion.
I don’t know anyone in Austin but I do have liberal tech worker friends in DeSantis’s Florida and while they’re opposed to his policies, they aren’t personally affected by those policies in any serious way.
tell me you don't understand, at the fundamental level, what it means to be a liberal and care for others, which makes you a liberal in the first place
By leaving Texas, you make sure your tax money isn’t going to their government. Leaving also prevents them from being able to prop up their image with stats about GDP per capita. Better to live somewhere that your taxes will help others rather than paying for the things Texas wants to spend money on. Operation lone star costs Texas 2 billion per year. That’s the equivalent of k-12 schooling for 200,000 students. Operation lone star uses national guard troops under state control, who legally cannot enforce immigration law, which is federal. It’s all just a colossal waste of money for a political show. I’d rather the money go to schools or healthcare
I think we care for others because it is rational to do so. If you are nice to person x, they are more likely to be nice to you. By making this into a pattern, you can maintain a healthy and productive inner circle that helps you achieve your goals in life, whatever those goals are. This is how healthy communities are grown, and why certain people don’t even realize they can exist.
So, we’re not liberal because we care. We care because we’re liberal. We’re liberal because that’s actually the most beneficial way to be, for us personally. It benefits us personally, in a way that is consistent with cold, hard, logic, analyzed after we have killed the input of our feelings and emotions.
Otherwise liberalism wouldn’t even exist, because it’s difficult. Why do the difficult thing, if it’s not any better?
This is similar to a situation I’m in. Does it affect me personally? No. You’re right I can find ways around it easily enough, I have the money. But I hate the fact I’m seeing it happen to those around me. I’ve lived my whole life in Texas and was hoping this wave could help tip the scales to have the government start providing better for its people, but sadly things are way too rigged to make an impact.
I make decent money and live in Texas. My wife is currently pregnant and the state’s policies on maternal care during pregnancy scares the shit out of me. In the case of a medical emergency money doesn’t buy time.
The education policies being pushed by the state government are also terrible and private schools are not really any better in that regard. We could homeschool but I am not interested in that for my child.
The general rhetoric demonizing and taking the basic human rights of immigrants, LGBT, and other marginalized communities is also really hard to hear.
Several mass shootings as schools and public places with no interest in taking any kind of preventative actions is disgusting.
The property taxes have become a significant burden on our housing price with no sign of that changing anytime soon.
The state government is opernly corrupt and hostile to anyone who is not a Republican and quietly hostile to the Republicans who aren’t high income, powerful, or political donors. Look at our power grid and the states actions after the freeze.
Money can’t buy your way out if any of these. We stay because our families live nearby and we want our kids to grow up around them. If I could convince them to move with us, I would leave in a second despite living here for the last 30 years.
Those are good points. I suppose issues involving children are the biggest concerns. I tend not to think about them much because I don’t have children, but my friends in Florida do. They seem content with the quality of their local schools but I can see how school quality could vary wildly.
A couple years back, an old undergrad buddy was bragging about how he and his wife were moving to Florida because their teachers paid well. Obviously we had a lot of “what the fuck?” conversations behind their back, and a buddy’s wife put it best:
Anyone living in one of the hellhole states (mostly Texas and Florida) and saying “oh, its fine, this doesn’t affect me” is a republican or actively does not give a shit about their partner and family.
And if people somehow don’t have a single non-cisgender white male in their life? Well… what was that old jeff foxworthy joke again?
We had considered moving from our high cost of living area to a cheaper state but ultimately didn’t because of our young kids. We’re squeezed pretty hard here and we could all live very comfortably on my salary in another state. But I couldn’t find a place with remotely acceptable schools. And who would our kids friends be? Very worried about the influence of their peers, raised by racist homophonic garbage.
And beyond maternal care, healthcare in most “affordable” states is just bad. We have the best healthcare system in the country where we’re at. What if we move to a state in the bottom third of the country and one of us got sick? The healthcare stories from rural America are very chilling.
And then once the kids grow up, what do they do then? No jobs, no decent higher education, lots of heroin, etc. Their options will likely be leave or fail unless something dramatically changes in the next decade. This might not really apply to Texas or the southwest but I’m on the east coast.
I’ve spent a total of 45 years in Midwest suburbs and 5 years in NoVa. I did not like healthcare in the big city. You have to go in and pretty well know what is wrong and what you want them to do about it. If you’re just feeling off with a bunch of random symptoms, they don’t have time to listen to all of that bullshit in the city.
I’m honestly much happier with healthcare here. I’ve never felt my doctor rushing me out the door the way I did on the East Coast. I had to go into the hospital in Orlando with the worst headache and sweating I’ve ever had (and that’s saying something because I suffer from constant migraines) and I sat in the waiting room for about 8 hours before I left to go suffer and/or die in peace and quiet.
All I’m really saying is healthcare is a lot more nuanced than rural vs. urban.
Jobs? I don’t know. The pay is less here but so is the standard of living. Other than being a tech worker in silicon valley, I’m not really sure what is missing here. I guess maybe the jobs skew more toward blue collar than banking and legal and stuff, but I’ve been a white collar working almost my whole life here in the Midwest (as a programmer working with banks and courts as well as industry and retail) - there is certainly no shortage of such jobs I can see. I suppose there are fewer employers, so it’s harder here to tell your employer to get fucked and you’ll go work for someone else, but just look for the job first and then tell them to get fucked and you’re fine.
MSU and UofM are both pretty good schools, though I’ll concede they aren’t ivy league.
I can’t speak to heroin here because I’m pretty far removed from the drug scene - that seemed a much bigger problem in NoVA than here, but I’m sure there is plenty of meth in the rural areas, but from what I can tell the suburbs are mostly legal pot and probably cocaine (just judging from the billboards I see).
I’m not trying to argue with you, just offer a different perspective. I couldn’t handle the crush of people and ultimately that’s why I left, but I also learned how much I missed from where I grew up.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep female, LGBTQ+, or those with children who fall into those categories, in state. I own a tech company with headquarters in Austin and a presence in Florida, California, Virginia and Wyoming. Time and again our candidates ask if they’d have to move to Texas or Florida. They bring up their concern about the political climate, accessibility to healthcare (subtext being gender reassigning care or reproductive care). We are 100% work from home if you choose but have workspaces in certain locations accessible to our staff.
It used to be that most candidates couldn’t wait to move to Austin or Orlando, now many e concerned if they’d have to leave their blue state. Austin is an amazing city and I highly recommend it, especially if you are young and are looking to build a close network that’ll last you a lifetime. The Austin tech industry is smaller but it also maintains a small town vibe. After a while, you won’t only know people across multiple companies, you’ll actually properly know those people beyond casual acquaintance.
PS: I know a lot of tech C level execs in Austin. If you’re a young woman considering Austin but concerned about access to abortion, bring it up during the interview process. A lot of companies are offering benefits like discreet transportation and lodging with a suspiciously large per diem to cities in blue states. Some extend those benefits to “significant others” and your children. Don’t expect these benefits to be advertised, just ask.
PPS: If you live in Texas or Florida, vote Democrat regardless of whether or not you agree with all of their policies. The Republican agenda is going to destroy the economies of those states.
Also, tangentially related to politics, infrastructure in Texas seems precarious. There are no politicians holding the private companies that run the power grid responsible. People have died because of the cold and the heat in Texas due to infrastructure issues and no politicians and pushing for a solution. It looks like things will simple become worse. This affects everyone in Texas.
Isn’t the average tech worker’s salary sufficient to pay for personal remedies to most statewide conservative laws?
Ah yeah a extremely hostile red state that pulls back LGBT laws, passes racist laws, and cops run amuck? Watch my taxes go to build a police militia to stop some invisible enemy, while some poor families live in a van and are harassed? Walking by places that treat my family like criminals because we are brown.
You do realize they want to stop people at the border now to prevent them from traveling for abortions right? We're probably like 6 months away from sitting up some Road checkpoint on harassing people. Plus you've also got transgender healthcare that is becoming increasingly illegal even for adults, never trust this protect the kids bullshit it's never true. So that means you'd have to fly out to California not just for a possibly once in a lifetime abortion but for a monthly prescription refill, and on and on and on. Also the power grid isn't even reliable in Texas
Escape from Sobibor has brief nudity. We watched it in my middle school. Like the whole ‘bloc’ (they divided the grade into four of them) watched it, so bordering on 90-100 kids. Somehow, we’re not all depraved lunatics. A few of us are, but I’m guessing that has more to do with those violent video games I keep hearing about.
I remember in 7th grade watching a video which included real photos of the corpses from the Holocaust. Some were naked. I can remember the disclaimer that my teacher sarcastically provided, clearly annoyed that he had to, saying “Look, there are some truly disturbing images in this, but it is important to see them and understand what happened. You’re going to see naked bodies, and if that’s the part you can’t handle, well… I don’t even know what to say to you.”
I had a coworker who needed to resign because of severe anxiety. It was, “I live in Texas” induced anxiety. (I’m sure there was more to it but this was the jist)This is where she was born and raised. Texas is not a fun place to live.
I’m guessing Texas is an at-will state, but just going to a show of any kind in your private time should not be a firing offense no matter where you work. I don’t care if you work for the Southern Poverty Law Center and go see a minstrel show on Saturday. You’re doing it on your private time.
Religious institutions have a little more freedom in certain areas regarding who they can hire and fire depending on their job duties.
For instance, a preacher for a Baptist church can be required to be Christian as a condition of their employment. But they can’t fire a janitor for religious reasons because their faith has no impact on the work they perform.
For teachers, they probably have a policy regarding public support of the church and its doctrines that was violated when the teacher posted about attending a drag show.
It’s stupid, but it’s legal.
I have similar restrictions at my job in municipal government. I’m not allowed to get involved in local politics or advocate for or against candidates openly. As a public official, I’m always at least somewhat on duty.
Hell, I have to be careful about what I text, because my personal phone is subject to Open Records requests.
I think it’s much simpler than that. Texas has been an at-will employment state since the 1800s. As long as it doesn’t violate civil rights, you can be fired for pretty much any reason in Texas. They can fire you because they don’t like your face.
Absolutely, but for religious institutions they can even ignore civil rights in some instances. You can be fired for religious reasons, which is usually a big no-no.
And at-will isn’t just a Texas thing. All 50 states and DC are at-will employment.
As long as the thing they don’t like about your face isn’t it’s color. But seriously American employment laws (in most states) allow for companies to fire people for any non-protected reason (protected reason = gender, race, age, etc). If a co.pany does illegally fire a person it can be a real up hill battle to prove it because at-will is so permissive.
I can’t say a firing like this one sits super well with me personally but it’s almost certainly legal.
Yeah but in your position it kinda makes sense. I don’t think career civil servants should be out there with even the hint of their office support endorsing candidates.
Kinda interesting however that you are following strong ethical rules than all these powerful people above you.
Most civil employees stick hard and fast to their rules regarding politicization with a giant exception for police who get away with (sometimes literal) murder.
Politicians are expressly political. The difference is that politicians can be voted out of office by the public. I cannot be directly voted away. Even City Council or the mayor cannot directly fire me - the only staff members they have direct hire/fire authority over are the City Manager and the Municipal Judge.
Seriously, though, are people still pretending Christian organizations are filled with decent human beings? You can just point to the majority of western history as an example of the kind of people running these orgs.
Am not defending this law at all, but the thinking behind it is twofold:
you might be handing out tainted or expired food
the bigger issue: you are creating a “nuisance” on the property where you’re doing it, as large groups of homeless people gather there. Some would say it’s a safety concern, for example handing out free food at the corner of a primary school.
Again, I’m not agreeing with either point, but these are arguments I have heard from people who back such laws.
To the second point though, I’ve seen it firsthand. Salt Lake City tried to do a good thing by making the public library a homeless-friendly zone by handing out free food and allowing access to WiFi. This caused a large amount of homeless to hang out there all the time, and some of them would harass and attack non-homeless patrons of the library to the point that pretty much all of them stopped coming to the library entirely, and the area became a no-go zone.
The real issue is that a large amount of homeless people have severe mental illnesses (since public sanitariums all closed in the 70s). So where there are big congregations of homeless, there will inevitably be harassment and possible violence. Cities don’t want people feeding the homeless at any old public building to avoid these situations, hence the laws, which allow you to do it only at certain places the city allows.
The real issue is that too many Americans have bought into the bootstrap theory and couldn't give a shit about their neighbours who don't have a place to live or food to eat.
Take care of those 2 things first and there won't be an issue of people hanging out where it's warm/cool and food is being supplied.
I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s not just an America problem. Have you been to Paris lately and seen the homelessness situation there, especially on the Metro?
Or in Oslo, where homeless Roma people attack people in broad daylight at Nationalteatret station and steal their luggage?
It’s a big problem everywhere, and attitudes like the type you describe aren’t relegated solely to Americans.
I’d love to mate, but I honestly don’t know how. One thing I have to come to realise is that simply throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. Norway, London, NYC, and California both spends billions each year on homelessness and the problem is only getting worse every year in all those places.
Maybe a good place to start would be opening up free sanitariums again where homeless people with mental issues could be housed, as sadly the streets have become the new dumping ground for people with severe mental illness.
Beyond that, am not sure, besides a total dismantling of capitalism.
No one would be happier than me with this solution, but it will never realistically happen in our lifetimes. And even if it somehow came to happen eventually, given the entrenchment of current elites, it would only happen with an immense cost in human lives and violence, and a massive drop in living standards in the immediate aftermath before some utopia is created.
Current day -> neo Soviet revolution -> Mad Max -> the last of us? -> ??? -> Bernie Sanders Utopia
All those things are basically guaranteed anyway thanks to climate change. I just hope the survivors aren’t stupid enough to try to go back to how things are now.
The sanitoriums were closed for good reason. Bad as homelessness is, it is better than the abuse of sanitoriums.
Not a sanitorium, but i know someone who was in an orphanage, they beat kids with a metal chimney brush if they put their head on the pillow when they slept. This earned them lots of awards for how nice all the kids beds were. Sanitoriums were reportable just as bad, but I don't have such close accounts.
The sanatoriums were horrendous and closed by both Canadian and American gov'ts in the late 60's - early 70's for good reason. The problem was the gov'ts didn't put programs in place to help those people live outside the walls ... essentially the same thing they do with prisoners now.
Guaranteed incomes, stable housing and support networks would clear up many of the "issues", but too many whine about their tax dollars being spent on people in need.
Stop spending billions on a “war on drugs” and make sure people have houses and healthcare (including mental health) unconditionally with no ridiculous hoops or welfare traps 10 years before they become a street junkie.
Just because some places misused a bunch of money doing very stupid things with it doesn’t validate ignoring the solution.
It’s not nearly so trivial. Having lived in Norway for many years, a country which does have unconditional free healthcare (including mental health), and free access to housing, they still have a large homeless population and plenty of street crime.
Maybe, but even Norway has hardly stamped out homelessness completely. Far from it actually, there are some parts of Oslo which have immensely high levels of homelessness. Not as bad Skid Row in LA, but not far behind either.
Hahaha! Doing that thing you said (but still with some hoops for mental healthcare and housing) only makes it way better! Check-mate! Let’s double down on spending ten times as much pujishing the homeless for being homeless!
I said I’m all for free mental healthcare and housing, but even these don’t seem to solve the problem. Nor does just throwing money at the problem. So I have no ideas for how to solve the issue, besides maybe just dismantling capitalism entirely, but this also comes with problems.
A solution requires more than just providing food and shelter. We have a class of people who are marginally mentally ill or barely literate. They do not function well enough to hold down a job or fill out a welfare form, but they function too well to require that they be locked up. These people need a semi-monitored place with enough oversight to keep them safe. The street can’t do that, but they have no other place to go.
“Poisoned or tainted food” is just a sensationalist term for “not FDA approved” or “not handled by a certified food professional”. It’s kinda over the top in this regard but remember when people put borax in their milk to make it taste better or lime and plaster into bread to stretch the flour? It was unregulated food. Just like you can’t open an unregistered and unlicensed restaurant without certfied cooks, you can’t just hand out foods without someone knowing (i.e. licensed) how the food is supposed to be handled.
I witnessed a security guard taking a loaf of bread from a homeless kid all the while preaching the word of Christ. Christians are nothing like their Christ.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that a historical human Jesus existed. Historian Michael Grant asserts that if conventional standards of historical textual criticism are applied to the New Testament, “we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.”
Virtually all scholars of antiquity dismiss theories of Jesus’s non-existence or regard them as refuted. In modern scholarship, the Christ myth theory is a fringe theory and finds virtually no support from scholars.
He didn’t exist. The reason why the James-Peter fraud stuck was because Paul was a preaching machine and they lucked out with getting at least two good writers. Proto-Mark and M. If Paul had died on that shipwreck or Syrian scribe had found a better job there would be no Christianity today.
It does matter. Because it is near impossible to find a Christian who is fine with the Jesus story being a complete myth. Some of them will admit that not all of the contradiction-filled stories are correct but doubting he existed at all? Paul, the real founder, was at least honest about this and said all of their faith would be in vain if the resurrection had not happened.
The evidence points to a con that got out of control.
Michael Grant doesn’t know that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Saying that we know that there was some king in a certain place and time isn’t a big claim. Most places had kings. Saying that if even a quarter of the claims of the Gospels were true is a massive claim. Also whataboutism is kinda boring. I really don’t feel giving “historians” slack because they cut themselves slack.
In modern scholarship, the Christ myth theory is a fringe theory and finds virtually no support from scholars
Not going to have a job selling book and teaching the story of some old con. You sell books by advancing dozens of different contradictory models of the events all of them equally impossible to test.
Regardless, most historians agree that there was a human historical Jesus. Whether you think it’s all a conspiracy or scam or whatever is another matter I don’t care to get into.
And you repeat your argument from authority. Maybe if you do it another time it will convince me? Why not just address the total lack of evidence for this massive claim instead?
Claiming that Jesus of Nazareth existed is not extraordinary at all though. It’s hardly far-fetched to claim that he was real. Claiming that he was the son of God and could perform miracles however, is - as someone else pointed out.
Right so you are trying to make the claim so small it can be snuck in. Theists try this trick with God all the time.
Does making a claim small make it true or is that a rhetorical device to try to manipulate the argument? If I told you I was Obama and you called me out on it so I said well really I did met him once in a bar when he was in Congress, would my altered claim become true by virtue of being ordinary?
Jesus existence has nothing to do with the religion in and of itself. He can be reall without Christianity being true. You’re getting so caught up in wanting to argue against the theists that you’re focusing on something completely irrelevant just to chalk up a victory.
I have no evidence one way or another for our against his existence, the point is that it doesn’t matter. Jesus’ potential existence has nothing to do with the truthiness of religion unless you believe that his existence can only be a validation of the new testament - which would be akin to your Obama comparison and would be patently ridiculous.
I have no proof that billions of specific people existed, doesn’t change that they did.
Jesus existence has nothing to do with the religion in and of itself. He can be reall without Christianity being true. You’re getting so caught up in wanting to argue against the theists that you’re focusing on something completely irrelevant just to chalk up a victory.
We got a mind reader over here.
I have no evidence one way or another for our against his existence, the point is that it doesn’t matter. Jesus’ potential existence has nothing to do with the truthiness of religion unless you believe that his existence can only be a validation of the new testament - which would be akin to your Obama comparison and would be patently ridiculous.
First off you do have evidence of his non-existentence. Which I gave you. No one can keep their story straight about him. Secondly even if you didn’t have that you can say the same thing about unicorns.
I have no proof that billions of specific people existed, doesn’t change that they did.
First off you do have evidence of his non-existentence. Which I gave you. No one can keep their story straight about him. Secondly even if you didn’t have that you can say the same thing about unicorns.
You’ve given no such thing. You have made a statement that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but you fail to grasp that the existence of Jeaus would not be extraordinary. Billions of people have existed and will exist. The extraordinary part is the sin of God thing, which we don’t disagree on. Unicorns , much like “The Messiah”, are certainly extraordinary claims that would require proof. We have seen nothing to support the existence of anything even resembling unicorns. We have forever seen plenty to prove that humans exist. A specific human some thousands of years ago, is not unlikely.
And? And so, the claim that he exists is hardly extraordinary.
Yeah no surprise. You think you can read my mind and except super low standards of evidence.
You’ve given no such thing. You have made a statement that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but you fail to grasp that the existence of Jeaus would not be extraordinary.
Yes it would be. Even the people who try this game of finding the man behind the myth have to make so many assumptions to make this work. And I have repeatedly stated that the narratives contradict.
If you look at the actual evidence you have you find
Details are missing from Paul that should be there.
Every part of the Gospels shows signs of being borrowed from older stories and ideas. Almost as if two people were just writing a fanfic.
Nothing is unique. They had versions of messiah prophecy that including him dying. They had a popular story of a leader dying and his young follower continuing (Peter). Everything he said was cribbed from the OT or later thinkers. They had matry stories. They had stories of betrayal. They had stories of demagogues claiming to speak for God raising armies. Stories of raising the dead. The magic tricks were all known in the area at the time.
Not a single thing you can point to and say “ok this isn’t clearly a borrowing from earlier Jewish culture”. The Jesus con was a combination of Jeremiah, the first leader of the Maccabees, and Hillel. Which the scholars you seem to love so much are constantly pointing out. Except they need to keep selling books and you don’t do that by just admitting that it is all con.
But hey go ahead and shut me up. Show me a single piece of evidence that he existed.
You’re trying to argue against the veracity of the bible by using the bible as your source of truth. Your argument hinges on Jesus mere existence equating to him being the son of God. That is not a given… at all! Vlad Tepes was a real person - that doesn’t mean that vampires are real though.
As for “the scholars you seem to love so much” you may want to reread the thread - I think you’re getting your discussions mixed up - I haven’t referenced any scholars at this point. My argument is that your logic framework is referenced flawed. I have taken no stance on the existence of Jesus - purely on whether him being a real person is particularly extraordinary.
Vlad Tepes was a real person - that doesn’t mean that vampires are real though.
I am sorry. Do we have multiple separate narratives of that man that contradict each other? Do we have the main source of his existence totally unaware of all the details of his life and details of his death? Do we find that in every single story about him almost the exact same story about another king that was well known to the people of the area?
Your argument hinges on Jesus mere existence
My argument is very simple. We can not find any evidence that he existed. The evidence that we do have is better explained by a con man’s grift. Every single time someone tries those “let’s make him real by taking away the magic and assuming that Mark is 100% right otherwise” they have to make up this insane story to fit the narrative. Meanwhile they know the narrative was borrowed and they know that their version is equally as untestable as all the other contradictionary ones.
purely on whether him being a real person is particularly extraordinary.
I think it is. An ordinary person doesn’t have a cult that outlives their life. Even a minimum Jesus requires so much. Could you do it? Like right now. Could you get a few people to follow you around because they think you will be king and have them talk about how amazing you are for decades after you die? Our hypothetical minimum Jesus pulls this feat off with no money, no political power, and nothing to offer people except parlor tricks and stories. Think of every modern cult that outlived it’s founder. All of them were big billion dollar operations, not a few illiterates in the backwater of a backwater.
If Paul is to be believed this “ordinary person” cult was growing, thriving against opposition, totally unorganized, at least 20 years before he meet it with a dead leader, and almost no one having seen any of the big events.
Wouldn’t it make so much more sense that two conman just cobbled together these stories about their imaginary friend and preyed on the local superstitious? That Paul didn’t know (excluding the betrayal and euchrist) about the ministry because there was nothing to know. That he didn’t know about the Tomb because the current version of the con had Jesus buried normally. That when the narratives came out there stories didn’t match up because like all liars they couldn’t keep the story straight?
Again your assuming that Jesus existence means that anything in the bible is correct. My point is that the two can be entirely disconnected. I am making no coatings about Mark, Luke or Paul in this line of argumentation. I am starting that the extraordinary part of the claim is his godliness, not his existence.
Wouldn’t it make so much more sense that two conman just cobbled together these stories about their imaginary friend and preyed on the local superstitious?
So we’re back to realm of speculation. If you’re going to frame it there, would it not make even more sense then if these two conmen, in order to lend their support credibility, went through the local scrolls and found a local dude that died a little while back and coopted his name for their narrative?
For all of your arguments against his existence you keep coming back to the bible as your source. You tie yourself in an oddly circular loop here, again arguing that Jesus either isn’t real and so the bible is wrong, or he is and the bible becomes the word of God. There’s a lot of room to move in between the two - including a dude from the area, name Jesus once existed.
Gotcha. You think if you continue to weaken the claim it will become true or at least can’t be disproven. You know the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do. We gather evidence and develop theories. You are taking an existing theory and lowering its explanatory power. We see the sales people of fake medicine do this all the time. At first it is a cure-all, within a generation or two the claims have shrunken to the point where no one can really say they aren’t true.
Again your assuming that Jesus existence means that anything in the bible is correct. My point is that the two can be entirely disconnected. I am making no coatings about Mark, Luke or Paul in this line of argumentation. I am starting that the extraordinary part of the claim is his godliness, not his existence.
Which still doesn’t match with the evidence because again Paul met a community that was widespread. Just a regular guy wouldn’t have a cult survive his death. You overshot.
So we’re back to realm of speculation. If you’re going to frame it there,
Not really speculation. The evidence points to a con.
would it not make even more sense then if these two conmen, in order to lend their support credibility, went through the local scrolls and found a local dude that died a little while back and coopted his name for their narrative?
Given the overwhelming odds that both men were illiterates I wouldn’t bet on that.
For all of your arguments against his existence you keep coming back to the bible as your source.
Because that is the only source. All we have after that is another generation later a guy saying what he heard from someone else about what this new cult believed. Hearsay.
You tie yourself in an oddly circular loop here, again arguing that Jesus either isn’t real and so the bible is wrong, or he is and the bible becomes the word of God.
Not at all. The only source we have shows evidence of a con. So I accept it as a con. Also can you show me where in the Bible that it says this book is the word of God? Exact passage please.
There’s a lot of room to move in between the two - including a dude from the area, name Jesus once existed.
Again you try to tactic of lowering the claim hoping to sneak it in. Me personally I like developing models that have more power to explain facts, not less. In your desire to keep your childhood Jesus friend you have now reduced him to one guy one time named Jesus somewhere in that area.
This is a strange interpretation of how theories and generally science works in practice. If the aforementioned poster is doing their best to discredit an existing theory the information from that is implicitly involved in any subsequent theory with greater explanatory power or predictive ability.
It was known a bit after Newton’s theories and prior to Einstein’s Relativity that Newtonian Mechanics could not account for the perihelion precession of mercury. These serve as baselines for new theories to predict or explain. Popperian Falsification is one school of thought in philosophy of science more or less predicated on the idea you cannot ever prove a theory, only disprove them. An important criteria then is to allow for testable hypothesis with clear fail states. There have been other developments and more fruitful ways of looking at how science works in practice but if we stick with this then no theory can be proven, we only work with whatever theory is most amenable according to some criteria.
Theories already exist, it’s inevitable that they will be used to explain phenomena, someone engaged in introducing auxiliary hypotheses and theories to explain away or contend with the core of their theory is not ‘doing the opposite’. Rather it might be useful to think that a lack of evidence of something means it is not worthy of consideration among the litany of hypotheses, only certain evidence of something not occurring would be good enough to completely abandon a hypothesis. As that is significantly more difficult and the extent of evidence required great, one can avoid all this by accepting that all theories are wrong and some are seemingly wronger than others and it isn’t necessary to completely abandon them. Instead they can be kept in a provisional space with other theories which are less productive or fruitful until they may be called upon.
And what’s more is the very closest written account we have shows problems. Paul never mentions the tomb and thinks Jesus was buried in the ground. Besides for the Eucharist he doesn’t seem to know much of anything about the ministry. Which is really freaken odd because by his own admission he was hunting and interrogating Christians before his conversion.
I haven’t dug into this what-so-ever, but how would it even be possible to identify whether a specific person with that name existed 2000 years ago? It’s not like you could just Google the guys Facebook profile or social security number back in 200AD
Why is it whenever this brought up an appeal to authority is invoked to people who weren’t there? Why not just use evidence to prove your position instead of telling me what some random priest in the 2nd century thought about zombie-skydaddy?
There is no evidence he existed and the narratives disagree with each other. Easily could have been a fraud by James and Peter.
Tell that to the scholars of antiquity. I’m just reporting what the prevailing thought is by people who study such matters because it was falsely claimed that most of them believe that Jesus was a myth.
Sure. Hey guys hate to be a buzzkill and I know you have a sweet gig inventing one crazy way after another to make this myth be true but there really isn’t anything here. It is a superstructure with no substructure. Until someone digs up some old letter or something you got nothing.
because it was falsely claimed that most of them believe that Jesus was a myth.
I don’t think anyone in this thread did that. I know what they believe, I just don’t care. Again
There is no evidence Jesus was a historical person
A fraud by the leading apostles could easily fit the data that we have.
Humans lie.
The narratives disagree with each other to an extent that it sounds very much like liars trying to remember their stories
There are things missing in the narratives that should be there.
In a way I sorta get it. There are like these Sherlock Holmes appreciation groups that have spent all this effort trying to find the historical 221B baker street. It is fun to pretend that a fictional character exists in the real world.
If you ask Mormon historians whether the particular figures in the Book of Mormon exist, they mostly all agree too. Perhaps a better metric is the number of secular historians who consider Jesus to be a historical figure. Or suppose that he is a historical figure, how many things can you say about him that are definitely true?
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
And that’s what makes this whole book ban thing the stupidest idea the movement has come up with. The information is already there (on the internet), dumbass…
Cops protect the rich. The rich are only rich because they’re psychopaths. Our economic system rewards psychopathy and punishes empathy. Eat. The. Rich
I live in CA and I’m from Texas. I tell these people I’ve never been more overworked and taken advantage of than when i was working in Texas. Combine that with the unregulated utilities and unlimited property tax, there’s no upside to moving to Texas.
Don’t forget the stupid deregulation, monstrous GOP politicians, and the complete and utter psychopathic ghoul they have in the Governor’s office. That guy’s tied with Pudding Ron for the 2nd place award for “worst human being in 21st century America.”
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