Wake Up and Smell the Potpourri

My 16th point is a collection (Carrier says a "hodge podge") of miscellaneous minor points that were so collected because they were subsets of prior points; icing on the cake, as it were. Despite that all come from credentialed scholars who would turn Carrier on his ear, he deigns to say that some "are simply nonsense." One such he says is that being "born again' was a real shocker," and we are told (though this came precisely from scholars versed in ancient culture) that this comes from someone who "makes no effort to actually study ancient culture and check his own assertions against the evidence." I'm sure Carrier would feel free to tell the scholars who said the very thing I noted (Malina and Rohrbaugh) just how ignorant they truly are.

This would be fair of course if Carrier actually produced some answering evidence, and after a fashion, he does -- in his usual misdirected way. He tells us that "birthing was an accepted symbol in pagan mystery religion" and gives the example of the "ceremony of initiation into the cult of Isis and Osiris" which resembled a "voluntary death" after which one was "reborn." In so comparing Carrier shows how badly he has missed the point, and how little he knows of what being "born again" truly meant in the Christian paradigm. As noted, the Christian theme of being born again meant a radical change in honor status as well as a radical abandonment of current conceptions of honor and class. Is this what the cult of Isis and Osiris offered? No; Carrier merely thinks that he has found the terms "born again" is a sufficient parallel, and that critical analysis of content beyond that is unnecessary.

Called "dubious" is a point taken from N. T. Wright -- let Carrier's insult to a scholar of such erudition and prestige speak for itself -- that "for Jesus to say [the Temple] would be destroyed, and by pagans at that, would have been profoundly offensive to many Jews," since the Jews themselves "predicted that very fate in their own sacred scripture: Daniel 9:26." Carrier can't quite understand why it "would be okay" for Daniel to say this and not Jesus; he is apparently oblivious to the first-century environment which created an attitude (as Wright explains) that made this offensive, in spite of Daniel. Carrier cannot simply wave Dan. 9:26 like a magic wand and expect this matter to disappear. Obviously one would have to know how Jews of this era exegeted Dan. 9:26 as well; it may not occur to Carrier that they interpreted it in light of their presuppositions, and made some rationalization for it -- a thing Carrier, in his position as one critical of Christianity for doing the same thing, can hardly deny. Let him at any rate tell Wright that his point "makes no sense"; Carrier is not adverse to randomly insulting his scholarly betters to begin with. (If he wishes to resurrect the canard that these sayings were not authentic to the historical Jesus, then we have Wright's and others' defense of authenticity that can be presented. Let him also try to reinterpret Jesus' Olivet "no stone left on another" prediction as "having nothing to do with the actual temple anyway" as he does, more legitimately, with John 2:18-22.)

Called "circular" is the question derived from Wright (Wright's own point is left obviously unquoted) asking, "Why did the early Christians make such a bold political stand part of their established belief system?" and answering, "They must have truly believed that Jesus was the Lord of this world, and that His resurrection from the dead proved it." Carrier retorts, in an answer that must have been composed at three in the morning, "Indeed! By definition all Christians believed Jesus was Lord because he was raised from the dead. That's what it meant to be a 'Christian'" In other words, Carrier's answer is, "They must have believed it because they believed it," which is as viciously and hypocritically circular as one can indeed get. Carrier does not explain "why," he merely echoes that they did! I am not begging the question that their belief was justified; I am saying (as Carrier later thinks I may have been saying) that in order for their belief to be justified, in must have had a sufficient cause to be in context. Clearly Carrier by now was tired of the whole project and was simply trying to crank out a few more words to pad his paycheck from Johnny Skeptic.

Comically enough, Carrier says that "even Holding must admit that many Muslims really believe martyrs gain paradise, that many Hindus really believe they will be reincarnated, and so on, yet their belief is false." Apparently Carrier missed my addendum on Islam explaining why it does not qualify as an Impossible Faith (Johnny will need to shell out some more coins for that); and I did note that Hinduism evades the problem by positing purely spiritual beliefs (reincarnation, etc) that are no analogical match for historical claims (this man rose from the dead).

I am accused further --- hypocritically, in light of Carrier's repeated crimes of doing so -- of "withholding facts," with specific reference to Malina and Rohrbaugh. I note them as saying, "departure from the family was something morally impossible in a society where the kinship unit was the focal social institution," and it is wondered that the essay "curiously fails to mention that they go on to explain how Christianity offered an even better family to be loyal to and thus fulfilled the expectations of their society--proclaiming to do so, in fact, better than existing social institutions." Why Carrier finds this curious reflects only on his poor comprehension skills and his desperation to score cheap points against an insurmountable hurdle. If departure from the family is impossible, then it is of no relevance that another option might be better; just as it is ridiculous to say that there is some virtue in a 10 pound rock being available for one to lift when one is being crushed beneath a rock of 7000 pounds. Without reason to leave that family that justified a move to the "better" one --- in other words, proof that is WAS better, and had the foundation which made it better --- the impossibility remains an impossibility, a point I clearly made which Carrier's prostitution of Malina and Rohrbaugh will not change. His further retort that these scholars "say much more" is not in the least validated with specifics, but rather a vague claim that "throughout all their commentaries" they say that "Christianity found a following because its progressive moral vision was actually appealing." Let Carrier indeed search "in vain" for such a statement in their works; he will find none, which is why he produces none. There is no such statement (nor any statement indeed about evidence being an issue) simply because causation is not the subject of these works I used to begin with. These commentaries are analytical and descriptive works -- not an apologetic for any view of the origins of Christianity. However, even if they were not, this would only mean that I'd need to answer their own "why" as posited -- and if Carrier can question them as he did above, and call them mistaken on points as he did, then it is obvious that he does not consider them above reproach and unable to be critiqued. It is clear rather that Carrier is, again, frustrated by his incomprehension of the different world these scholars present (contrary to his every expectation) and is looking for a score of cheap points, by yelling, "Yeah, they don't say THIS!" while subtly evading the need to show that they say THAT instead. I will put it plainly, again: there is NOTHING on any page in the books I used where you will find them "remarking in one way or another on the attractiveness of the Christian moral message as the real key to its success," and if indeed it is on every page, let it be found curious rather that Carrier fails to quote a single example from any of those pages. The page Carrier cites:

Bruce Malina & Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed. (2003): "Surrogate Family," p. 414 (though the same point is made throughout the commentary).

...is, in my edition, a blank page; but mine is the 1992 edition, and we can find entries for "Surrogate Family" on page 335 -- where nothing at all is said to the effect that this was "why" Christianity found a following. There is absolutely no causative statement to this effect, period. The closest we get to this is a statement that for those "detached from their biological families," a surrogate family "becomes a place of refuge" but this is not said in specific reference to Christianity being able to fill this bill.

In what follows Carrier issues a series of vague platitudes about such things as "numerous different cultures and value systems intermingling and living together," as though one could use such an appeal to claim that there certainly ought to have been widespread tolerance for the likes of Aryan Nations or the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Carrier's appeal is attractive in our politically correct times, in which the uncritical find a tear-streaked plea for diversity to be the answer-all for claims of exclusivity and truth. That row will not hoe here; nor with his yet-again-repeated argument (as from Point 1 and beyond, as nauseum) about how wonderful these people would have thought Christianity to be, never mind the problems. Carrier's appeal to "the multiculturalism of antiquity" is a ribald joke -- there was a sort of insulated multiculturalism, but it was of a sort that excluded certain groups nevertheless, just as not even modern banes of tolerance have admitted NAMBLA to the family, and just as the minions of correctness today consider Christianity the exception to the rule of being tolerant to others. It is no answer to retort that "most people" don't care if Old Glory is burned -- that was not the extent that the analogy was meant to be taken in the first place; for unlike some modern Americans, there was NO such case of Jews who "didn't care" if the Temple was destroyed (or, if they wanted it destroyed, like the Essenes, they would want something else in its place representing the same values), and he will certainly find no case of Jews that would have cheered the destruction of the Temple (again, apart from that which meant it being replaced with something else, a point Carrier misses when he appeals to them as an example). So much for Carrier's deluded fantasy of ahasty generalization" and Carrier pretending everyone was exactly alike in their values and belief in terms of their tolerance and multiculturalism!

The Shameless Mercenary

In case you're wondering....

Carrier's response to my 16th point had 2162 words. From his rate sheet here we find that he charges "6 cents per word written" for this type of work. Assuming that Johnny didn't ask for a rush job, that means that Richie was paid $129.72 for his response to this section. More on why we make a note of this later.