Now you probably know I'm a dyed in the wool myther so you know im preaching to the choir but ...

Carrier isn't "proving" anything. I've discussed it with him via email. He's made a strong case but you simply can't use Bayes' theorem that way. That is, you can use it in support of an argument but it's not proof in the mathematical sense. And after all, Bayes' Theorem is nothing but mathematics, within which field "proof" is very rigidly defined.

Thing is, I've gotten fed up to here with it all. We don't need to disprove Jesus, you fucking muddled thinkers need to establish your claim that any of that shit actually happened. Onus probandi and all that, y'know?

We now know for a fucking fact that a huge portion of the OT, which was history for quite a few centuries, is in fact an old wives tale. Only within the last maybe fifty years have the scholars actually gone about doing proper historical investigation, discarding all prior assumptions of historical veracity. Lo and behold, it's a lot of bullshit.

If I hear "most scholars agree" vis a vis NT historicity one more time I'm fucking going postal. To my knowledge Carrier is the only one of the scholars that has addressed the question using the accepted practices of historical investigation. The rest of them, especially Ehrman, make pronouncements of historical veracity without the least qualification to do so. (See also Reza Aslan's latest steaming pile wherein he makes pronouncements of history without doing the history first, indeed seemingly without even recognizing that he is conflating historiography with history)

Ehrman, et al. are ethnographers, historiographers, literary critics at best. The accepted practices and standards in historical investigation are well known and easily summed up. The most reliable indicator is an artifact; The most reliable testimony is least removed from the events; multiple independent attestations increase the reliability of an account; biases should be minimized; and so on. If anyone tried to make a case for historicity while adhering to the accepted practices the case would be laughed out of the academy.

And don't even get me started on that absurd criterion of embarrassment - they should be embarrassed to be even dragging that out still.

So I say fuck off with wanting me to disprove your nonsense - you say there was this guy then fucking prove it. Hey Bart! There was a John Frum whether we like it or not. How 'bout that, fucker!

/rant okay, I feel better for now...