However, people do memetically-wise genetically-foolish things (i.e. die for their beliefs) all the time and for lots of reasons. So the Christian martyrs are not strong evidence that biblical Jesus is true (whatever one means by “biblical Jesus is true”).
My experience with Homo Sapiens (from reading about repressive regimes) is that they will say anything to keep from being killed.
If somebody holds a gun to your head and says, “all you have to say is ‘I just made up this little story about my invisible friend, Joe Bob’, and I will set you free”, what are you gonna say? If you’d made it up, why not admit it, and go free?
This was the situation the apostles and other 1st century martyrs faced during the persecutions. Yet they all went to their deaths. That doesn’t impress you?
The apostles choosing death over renouncing Jesus is a popular meme, but we don’t actually have a historical basis for supposing that it happened.
As Richard Carrier notes, of the little evidence we have for early Christian martyrdom, none of it was as a choice between recanting a belief in Jesus and dying. They were simply killed on trumped up legal charges from which recanting would not have saved them.
Certainly there have been people who have chosen to die rather than recant their beliefs, in plenty of different religions. It wouldn’t even be particularly strange if early Christians did so, and it’s certainly possible that it happened, although it would not be significant as evidence for Christianity, for reasons that others have already addressed. But it appears that all our stories of this actually happening to any of the apostles were simply made up somewhere along the line by people who were in no position to know.
That may be what the majority does, but history is filled with people willing to die for their beliefs. From the Maccabees against Assyrian Greeks to Falun Gong against modern China, martyrdom is not all that historically unusual. And the beliefs supporting martyrdom are so blatantly contradictory that they can’t all be right.
Moreover, martyrdom is not particularly Christian. For example, Rabbi Akiva was a great Jewish martyr.
This argument is fallacious and does not address historicity in any way. People throughout history have, in fact, died for beliefs which turned out to be false, deceptive, or poorly understood; such as suicide bombers being rewarded with virgins. Just because these men so firmly believed that their beliefs were true that they were willing to die for them does not give their beliefs any credibility. Here is an extensive list of refutations to this terrible argument.
Even this is making the generous assumption that the martyrs in question even existed. Some martyr-stories are known to be completely fabricated; the hagiography of St. Catherine of Alexandria, for example, is a partial rip-off of the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, the pagan philosopher who was skinned to death with tiles (by Christians!).
I think you’re overestimating the degree to which 1st century martyrs were killed for religious reasons and not more generic treasonous revolutionary talk or anti-statism.
However, people do memetically-wise genetically-foolish things (i.e. die for their beliefs) all the time and for lots of reasons. So the Christian martyrs are not strong evidence that biblical Jesus is true (whatever one means by “biblical Jesus is true”).
Wikipedia has decent material answering your implied question in parentheses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_myth_theory
See also the related articles. Cheers!
My experience with Homo Sapiens (from reading about repressive regimes) is that they will say anything to keep from being killed.
If somebody holds a gun to your head and says, “all you have to say is ‘I just made up this little story about my invisible friend, Joe Bob’, and I will set you free”, what are you gonna say? If you’d made it up, why not admit it, and go free?
This was the situation the apostles and other 1st century martyrs faced during the persecutions. Yet they all went to their deaths. That doesn’t impress you?
The apostles choosing death over renouncing Jesus is a popular meme, but we don’t actually have a historical basis for supposing that it happened.
As Richard Carrier notes, of the little evidence we have for early Christian martyrdom, none of it was as a choice between recanting a belief in Jesus and dying. They were simply killed on trumped up legal charges from which recanting would not have saved them.
Certainly there have been people who have chosen to die rather than recant their beliefs, in plenty of different religions. It wouldn’t even be particularly strange if early Christians did so, and it’s certainly possible that it happened, although it would not be significant as evidence for Christianity, for reasons that others have already addressed. But it appears that all our stories of this actually happening to any of the apostles were simply made up somewhere along the line by people who were in no position to know.
That may be what the majority does, but history is filled with people willing to die for their beliefs. From the Maccabees against Assyrian Greeks to Falun Gong against modern China, martyrdom is not all that historically unusual. And the beliefs supporting martyrdom are so blatantly contradictory that they can’t all be right.
Moreover, martyrdom is not particularly Christian. For example, Rabbi Akiva was a great Jewish martyr.
This argument is fallacious and does not address historicity in any way. People throughout history have, in fact, died for beliefs which turned out to be false, deceptive, or poorly understood; such as suicide bombers being rewarded with virgins. Just because these men so firmly believed that their beliefs were true that they were willing to die for them does not give their beliefs any credibility. Here is an extensive list of refutations to this terrible argument.
Even this is making the generous assumption that the martyrs in question even existed. Some martyr-stories are known to be completely fabricated; the hagiography of St. Catherine of Alexandria, for example, is a partial rip-off of the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, the pagan philosopher who was skinned to death with tiles (by Christians!).
I think you’re overestimating the degree to which 1st century martyrs were killed for religious reasons and not more generic treasonous revolutionary talk or anti-statism.
Not particularly.