I’ll be speaking on why we know the Gospels are myths—with many amusing and entertaining examples, and a smattering of literary theory–in Melbourne, Florida, on Friday, May 13 (2016), at 6:30pm, for the Humanist Community of the Space Coast, the Brevard Area Atheists, and the Secular Student Alliance of the Florida Insitute of Technology. I’ll be selling and signing my books after. Come join us! It will be at the Florida Insitute of Technology, Room 118 (Auditorium) in the Olin Engineering Building. Mark it on your calendar!
(And remember I’ll also be speaking on ancient science and Christian fascism two days after in Orlando!)
More details on FaceBook, and on Meetup…
http://www.meetup.com/Humanist-Community-of-the-Space-Coast/events/229747991/
Travelling the world / Lots of women / A life dedicated to intellectual exploration – Must be nice !
It is. One often has to sacrifice other goals for all that, like wealth. My income is below median. I just care a lot less about money than those other things.
And it’s important that I’m also educating the public. I see that as my primary social role and general public value. And I thank those who support my work for that reason.
Shame it is not Melbourne Australia. Great conversation with Raphael by the way. We have a few Floridans who have joined the discussion on OHJ at booktalk.org.
Hi Richard
With Easter just passed – are the eggs, painting of eggs, and fondness for rabbits based on the myth of Ishtar? The 40 days of lent seems to be based off of the 40 days of mourning for Tammuz.
I don’t know. Historians haven’t been able to trace all of that so well as some people claim. The Wikipedia article covers this.
Are you going to get a chance to go look at those spaceships whilst you’re there and then perhaps, please, blog about that too? I hope so! One of the places I really wish I could visit and hope to do so sometime in my life.
I don’t know.
I’ve seen the spaceships in Houston and Huntsville.
I suppose Canaveral would be the trifecta.
But it depends on what I get occupied with.
Question about your article in Empty Tomb (ch. 5) and 2Cor. 5:4.
It says “So while we are still in this tent, we sigh under our burdens, because we do not want to put it off but to put it on, so that our dying bodies may be swallowed up by life.”
Couldn’t this be seen as meaning that the “life” that swallows the dying body is like a spacesuit, where the old body is still inside but the new body is covering it?
The grammar is vexed there, as scribes tried meddling with it, and there are numerous variants.
But no, the old body is corrupt. There is no way Paul would imagine us still wearing it in the afterlife. That would be perverse. It must decay. And we have to get out of it, because it is literally a burden upon us.
Thus it is “torn down” (2 Cor. 5:1), and we “groan” for as long as we remain inside it (v. 2), and labor under its weight (v. 4).
The original reading (the variant most likely to be original) is thus as I present in TET (p. 140): “in this [body] we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven [i.e. our new body, already waiting for us in heaven, v. 1], and if in fact we get undressed [i.e. throw off our current body], we will not be found naked,” because we will immediately be given new clothing to wear (a new body). That is why “we will not be found naked” (v. 3). Thus when he says we “groan” because we are weighed down by our current body (v. 4), “and for this reason we do not want to undress, but to put something on, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life,” he is referring to the switch: don’t be afraid, you won’t be naked when you undress, because new clothes await you.
In the last line he thus means us (who are mortal as long as we remain in the dying body): we will be swallowed up by life (the eternal body). And thus won’t be naked. That we don’t want to undress simply refers to the fact that we don’t want to be naked. He is saying we won’t be naked, because though we will undress (note that he only says we don’t want to, not that we won’t), we will instantly be clothed anew (literally in a blink of an eye, according to 1 Cor. 15).
Origen concurred that this is what Paul meant (pp. 143-44).
Even insofar as Paul meant the abandoned body by “what is mortal” that is consumed, it’s only an allusion to the consumption of the grave.
I am very excited that Dr. Carrier is exploring the Christian myths in relation to them being “pious frauds” invented in order to help create a better world!
Back in 2009, I published an essay called “The Pious Fraud” on the “Case Against Faith” website arguing that the miracles and resurrection stories of Jesus were “invented” to help bring about the goal of a more moral world. I E-mailed Dr. Carrier this essay at the time and he gave me some suggestions on it. I thought these Christian “pious fraud” stories were invented to give authority to the first Christian’s ethical teachings, in the same way, for instance, the story about Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God lent authority to the Jewish laws. I argued that these Christian “pious fraud” stories were invented for “social-ethical” or maybe “political” reasons. Later that year, on September 22, 2009, I replaced “The Pious Fraud” essay on the “Case Against Faith” website with a short story called “The Eternal Return” which essentially made the same argument in an allegorical form. Here is a short excerpt from the story I published on September 22, 2009:
“Suppose a group of people a long time ago believed adamantly in a world-view that was impossible because their world was under Roman Rule and subject to a Jewish system that they no longer believed in. Suppose that they would have done anything to bring about what they considered to be a proper way of life, but did it in such a way that they knew one day, when the world had changed and become a learned, civilized place of their design, their spiritual offspring would be able to see through what they had done and be able to continue on their way of life without needing to believe in the superstition surrounding it.”
If anyone would like to read the short story it is here at the “Case Against Faith” website: http://www.caseagainstfaith.com/the-eternal-return.html