Hubris

Hubris by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) via Flickr

Hubris (Greek: hybris) This term, often used in literary criticism, denotes haughtiness, arrogance or overconfidence usually resulting in some sort of personal disaster.

The term has a complex history in ancient Greek culture. And the idea crops up in the Old Testament Proverbs, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”¹

In the 20th and 21st centuries the idea of hubris has been explained through the psychological concept of the unconscious. For instance, most of us have probably heard of the idea that some criminals, at some level, want to get caught.

So they leave obvious clues or do things that appear hard to understand (like a wealthy Hollywood celebrity shoplifting in a store that has security cameras, or an important politician tweeting profane things).

However, they do this unconsciously, so the theory goes, because they actually want to face their unresolved issues and come back to their true selves and feelings. And getting caught in a silly, shameful thing is a surefire way of being humbled and brought back to oneself.

Theological explanations concerning why bad things happen to people, even seemingly good people, usually refer to God testing, strengthening or purifying us for everlasting life in heaven.

—

¹ http://bible.cc/proverbs/16-18.htm

Related Posts » Oedipus

Related articles

• Santorum Accuses Obama Of ‘Hubris’ And ‘Snobbery’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Santorum upset that Obama wants an educated America (americablog.com)
• Word of the Day #1 (unclefrodo.wordpress.com)
• Santo: Obama’s “Hubris” Agenda (thepage.time.com)
• Hubris (youngadultministries.wordpress.com)
• Corporate hubris – and a bit of festive cheer (flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com)
• Andy Ostroy: Hubris, Hubris, Hubris. Explaining Herman Cain’s Downfall (huffingtonpost.com)
• Hubris (infinitepirate.wordpress.com)
• An Oedipus Retelling (rogueclassicism.com)
• All were complicit in RBS’s tale of hubris (telegraph.co.uk)

David Hume

David Hume's statements on ethics foreshadowed those of 20th century emotivists via Wikipedia

David Hume (1711-76) was a Scottish philosopher who developed a naturalist perspective on all aspects of human life.

For Hume, the highest good is based on the pursuit of happiness. We are personally happy when we’re good to others, not due to some high spiritual reward but because this approach leads to a harmonious social whole. So personal and social well-being go hand in hand.

This means that morality isn’t based on austere rational principles but on the desire for enjoyment. Accordingly, Hume believes that reason cannot determine anything without experience. And he goes as far to say that reason is the “slave of passion.”

Hume’s metaphysics, in particular his critique of the belief in cause and effect, remains an important challenge to our conventional way of seeing. All we can be sure of, says Hume, is that certain events occur one after another in a given region and for a certain duration.

In billiards, for instance, the white ball appears to cause the motion of other balls when impacting them on the gaming table. But here’s the radical part. Hume says that all we can truly know is that, in the past, the first ball impacted and the other balls moved. We cannot prove that the first ball’s impact will always be followed by movement of the other balls. And for Hume, there is no rational way to demonstrate a causal connection:

Reason can never shew us the connexion of one object with another, tho’ aided by experience, and the observation of their constant conjunction in all past instances. When the mind, therefore, passes from the idea or impression of one object to the idea or belief of another, it is not determin’d by reason, but by certain principles, which associate together the ideas of these objects, and unite them in the imagination.¹

Put differently, from prior experience we build up a series of expectations and habitual ways of interpreting observations. Hume calls these “ideas.” But ideas they simply are. Although we expect the billiard balls to move, we have no way of proving or knowing that they always will.

At first, this may seem absurd. But Hume’s critique of causality had a profound effect on one of the most important thinkers in the history of Western philosophy, Immanuel Kant.  Mortimer Adler says “…Kant tells us that David Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers.”²

In addition, on a quantum level of reality, contemporary physicists claim that observations of subatomic particles support the ideas of probability and simultaneity instead of linear causality.

However, some say it’s invalid to compare quantum and macroscopic levels of reality because subatomic particles exist in an entirely different arena, and behave in different ways than the larger aggregate objects which they make up.

This debate continues to this day, the answer to which might depend on one’s core beliefs and related worldview. Or in Hume’s terms, one’s “customs of thought.”

Related Posts » Atheism, Behaviorism, Mill (John Stuart), Roberts (Jane), Rousseau (Jean Jacques), Smith (Adam), Synchronicity, Unconscious, William of Ockham

—

¹ David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1896 ed.), SECTION VI.: Of the inference from the impression to the idea, paragraph 278.

² Adler, Mortimer J. (1996). Ten Philosophical Mistakes. Simon & Schuster. p. 94, cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Pure_Reason#cite_note-2

Related articles

• Link blog: philosophy, hume, atheism, david-hume (pw201.livejournal.com)
• Causality becomes increasingly elusive (boingboing.net)
• Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion by David Hume (belladeluna.wordpress.com)
• David Hume on Causation (socyberty.com)
• Hume on Rousseau (cafehayek.com)
• “Cause Is Not a Fact”: (brothersjuddblog.com)
• Of Hume and Bondage (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• On David Hume (myintelligentlife.wordpress.com)

Homer

Homer was also called Melesigenes (son of Meles) by the name of the brook which flowed by Smyrna. This photo is of a marble terminal bust of Homer. Roman copy of a lost Hellenistic original of the 2nd c. BC. From Baiae, Italy via Wikipedia

Homer is an Ancient Greek poet (Homeros) of uncertain identity.

He or she was believed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to have authored the classic epics of the Odyssey and Illiad around the 8th-7th centuries BCE, the former epic likely predating the latter. Today, most people will tell you that Homer is the outstanding author of the Odyssey and Illiad but, in reality, this authorship isn’t solidly established.

Not unlike the uncertainty concerning the originality and authorship of some of the works of Shakespeare, Homer probably borrowed from existing mythological tales which were transmitted through oral tradition.  And with a particular poetic genius, he or she depicted the enduring characters of the Olympic pantheon.

Contemporary scholars say that the two Homeric classics may have been authored by several persons.

The ancient Greeks saw Homer as an impoverished, blind minstrel. And a contemporary minority view suggests that Homer was a woman. Regardless of the poet’s gender, his or her lasting impact on Western culture is undeniable.

Medieval bards wrote of Troy and neo-classical painters depicted the pursuits of the Homeric gods in all their outrageous splendor and folly.

The 33 Homeric Hymns, likely written after the two epics, are no longer attributed to Homer.

In more recent times, a Homeric strain is arguably discernible in the works of the Canadian poet and musician Leonard Cohen, who took up residence in Greece during his formative years.

Related Posts » Achilles, Aeneas, Aesculapius, Aphrodite, Athena, Blessed Isles, Cyclops, Demeter, Eleusinian Mysteries, Hermes, Hesiod, Myth, Odysseus, Orpheus, Sirens, Troy

Related articles

• Illiad (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• What did Homer do that was important the ancient greek civilization (wiki.answers.com)
• Hermes (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• How are Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ and L Frank Baum’s ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ alike (wiki.answers.com)
• Summary of reaction paper of Odyssey (wiki.answers.com)
• Who wrote the Iliad (wiki.answers.com)
• Book Discussion: The Odyssey by Homer (alleganylibrarycollections.wordpress.com)
• Sounds Like Epic Bull to Me … (rogueclassicism.com)
• Ancient Greek punishments: the 8-bit Flashgame edition (boingboing.net)
• 10/7 The Dark Ages and Homer (not Simpson!) (dohertyforwesternciv.wordpress.com)

Homeopathy

Old Homeopathic belladona remedy via Wikipedia

(a) In natural medicine homeopathy is a so-called “alternative” approach to healing based on the belief that illness arises from an imbalance of internal and external elements. The basic premise is that the basic life force, a sort of vital energy, needs to be rebalanced or realigned to restore health.

This is normally achieved by the practitioner assessing the whole patient, and not just the area of illness. From this assessment, what is believed to be the appropriate substance is administered, usually in a highly diluted mixture.

Critics say that the mixture is so highly diluted that whatever original substance was supposed to be administered is not present in the final solution.

Critics also say that, although the odd individual may show signs of improvement, homeopathic medicine does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Unlike allopathic (i.e. conventional) medicine, there is absolutely no statistical evidence that it works.

Chola Bronze icon. Siva and Parvathi c. 1200 C.E. via Wikipedia

(b) The Indologist Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty uses the term homeopathy in her study of the medieval Hindu myths known as the Puranas.

As as structuralist thinker, O’Flaherty tends to see the vast and baffling repertoire of Hindu myth in terms of binary opposites.

Siva, for instance, regulates the balance of the universe though (seemingly) ungodly activities, such as tempting the Pine Forest Sage’s wives. Siva’s attempt to seduce the sages’ wives breaks the sages’ meditation, the power of which threatens the balance of the cosmos.¹

While they may appear to be quite different, both the alternative medicine and mythological studies definitions of homeopathy point to the notion that problems may be corrected by restoring balance.

—

¹ See Wendy Doniger, Siva: The Erotic Ascetic p. 173.

Related articles

• Can allopathy medicine be used with homeopathy medicine (wiki.answers.com)
• Homeopathy (nicollefrenchblog.com)
• Homeopathy (nearfetching.wordpress.com)
• XKCD Nails It on Homeopathy (skepticalteacher.wordpress.com)
• The disinformation myths against homeopathy (usapartisan.com)
• A “personal case” for homeopathy, part 2 (scienceblogs.com)
• The de-development (velopment?) of Europe: bovine homeopathy (junksciencesidebar.com)
• Real-Life Evidence Homeopathy and Allergies (christineonhomeopathy.wordpress.com)
• Why do you reject Homeopathy? (triangulations.wordpress.com)
• Medicine shmedicine part 1: Homeopathy. (simplexion.net)

Holy Spirit

Child Jesus with the virgin Mary, with the Holy Spirit (represented as a dove) and God the Father, with child john the Baptist and saint Elizabeth on the right, 1665-1670 Bartolomeo Esteban Murillo via Wikipedia

In Christian theology, The Holy Spirit is one of the three “persons” constituting the Holy Trinity of The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit.

Each person is said to be eternal, equal, distinct and yet of the same substance. The term Holy Ghost is an old English version of the Latin Spiritus.

In the New Testament Jesus promises his disciples that the Paraclete or Spirit of Truth will return. However, the worldly and evil people of this world cannot and will not see it unless they repent (John 14:16-17).

Around 360 CE the early Christian Church opposed as heretical the idea of the pneumatomachi–-the teaching that Jesus Christ but not the Spirit is Divine.

In 381 the Council of Constantinople repudiated these heretics by declaring the dogma of the Holy Spirit. This was further elaborated in 589 by the Council of Toledo’s dogma of double procession, or the filioque, which stipulates that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

This teaching became popular as the Nicene Creed spread throughout the empire of the Franks from the 9^th-century onward. But due to an apparent temporal paradox (How can the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son if the Holy Trinity is co-eternal?), the filioque has been controversial and, indeed, openly attacked by the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Many Christians tend to describe the Holy Spirit as an indwelling of the divine. That is, God is wholly-other but also immanent as a numinous experience. On the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Karl Gross cites Evelyn Underhill:

As they know themselves to dwell in the world of time and yet to be capable of transcending it, so the Ultimate Reality, they think, inhabits yet inconceivably exceeds all that they know to be — as the soul of the musician controls and exceeds not merely each note of the flowing melody, but also the whole of the symphony in which these cadences must play their part. » Source

However, a philosophical problem arises with the idea of indwelling. It’s obvious that many religious groups (and individuals) claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit while promoting drastically different agendas. Perhaps a partial solution to this problem could be to say that some of these groups and individuals are closer to enacting God’s will than others.

Related Posts » Arius, Calvinism, Christianity, Confirmation, Joachim of Fiore, John the Baptist, Otto (Rudolf), Psychosis, Spirit, Swedenborg (Emanuel), Tradition, Wave

Related articles

• Praying for Yourself and Those Whom You Love to Experience the Liberating Power of the Holy Spirit (trinitytuscaloosa.wordpress.com)
• When someone is speaking ‘in tongues’ in the Holy Spirit does this mean that you are speaking God’s language which is ancient Hebrew (wiki.answers.com)
• The Dove and The Holy Spirit (tnlighthouse.wordpress.com)
• walking in the truth…walking in love (evanlaar1922.wordpress.com)

Holy Rosary

Azzano San Paolo, Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy - procession on the Feast of the Holy Rosary by Luigi Chiesa via Wikipedia

The Holy Rosary is a Catholic devotion usually prayed on a circle of beads, with a short row of five beads and crucifix attached at the bottom.

One prays the rosary to the Blessed Virgin Mary, not only to venerate her and glorify the Lord, but also to implore the saint to pray to God on one’s behalf. This request for intercession can be for oneself, others, the whole world, and for all souls who ever existed and will exist.

A distinction can be made between the instrument itself (the loop of beads), and the type of prayer performed with them. For instance, Catholics often pray a special prayer called the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, apparently given to St. Faustina, using rosary beads.

Before 2002, the full rosary consisted of 15 decades (ten beads per decade). A Hail Mary Prayer is said on each bead, with two extra prayers at the end of each decade. The first prayer is The Our Father, which is repeated on each large bead dividing the decades.

A sterling silver Catholic rosary via Wikipedia

Each decade celebrates a holy “mystery.” A mystery is a particular event in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The first group of mysteries involves the Joyful Mysteries (5 decades), dealing with the events leading to Jesus’ birth and growth to maturity.

The next group of mysteries are the Sorrowful Mysteries (5 decades), focussing on the period from Jesus’ arrest to crucifixion.

The third group is the Glorious Mysteries (5 decades), dealing with Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, as well as Mary’s assumption into heaven.

To these three mysteries, Pope John-Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries in October 2002. So the former group of three mysteries (Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious) officially became four.

No one really knows for sure how the Holy Rosary came into existence. Some believe that it was adapted from earlier Muslim prayer beads, introduced through the Crusades.

Sandro Botticelli, Magnificat, 1480-81, tempera on panel, Uffizi Gallery, Florence via Wikipedia

Others believe that the Catholic rosary existed prior to the Crusades.

Catholic tradition, itself, says the Holy Rosary originated with St. Dominic (1170-1221 CE).

Not a few non-Catholics liken different goddesses to the Virgin Mary, and in a similar way, not a few people say that different types of prayer beads found around the world – such as Tibetan and Islamic forms – are equivalent to the Holy Rosary.

But this claim seems superficial because world religions are so different from one another.

Related articles

• New Rosary Commemorates the Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks; Precious Keepsake Symbolizes a Sign of Hope for all in the Face of Global Terrorism (prweb.com)
• Why are there 59 beads that make up a rosary (wiki.answers.com)
• Our Lady of the Rosary (sevenoaksordinariate.wordpress.com)
• Rosary (cutoutandkeep.net)
• How to Use Advent to Establish the Family Rosary… (cantuar.blogspot.com)
• Hail Mary Prayer (earthpages.wordpress.com)
• October: Month of the Holy Rosary (catholichomeeducationnetwork.wordpress.com)
• Ave Maria! Rosary Part 1 (growingapologist.wordpress.com)
• How do people respect the rosary (wiki.answers.com)

Holy Grail

"How at the Castle of Corbin a maiden bare in the Sangreal and foretold the achievements of Galahad via Wikipedia

The Holy Grail is the chalice that, according to legend, Christ and his disciplines drank from at the Last Supper. Joseph of Arimathea is said to have placed drops of Christ’s blood in the Grail before taking it to Glastonbury.

In Arthurian legend the cup is named Sangreal and was pursued by the Knights of the Round Table after it miraculously appeared at Pentecost, just above King Arthur’s famous Round Table.

Some scholars believe that the archetypal “Holy Cup” may have appeared in pre-Christian Celtic myth but by the 12^th century the Grail was well established in medieval romantic literature. The most popular of these is Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie. But the idea first emerged in Perceval, le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail) by Chrétien de Troyes.

The Grail is first featured in Perceval, le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail) by Chrétien de Troyes, who claims he was working from a source book given to him by his patron, Count Philip of Flanders. In this incomplete poem, dated sometime between 1180 and 1191, the object has not yet acquired the implications of holiness it would have in later works. While dining in the magical abode of the Fisher King, Perceval witnesses a wondrous procession in which youths carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another, passing before him at each course of the meal. First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabras. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or “grail.”¹

The depth psychiatrist Carl Jung saw the Grail as a symbol of the eternal self, and other Jungians have gone into an elaborate archetypal analysis of the Grail story, conforming their interpretations to Jung’s theories.

More recently some treat the Holy Grail as historical fact instead of fiction or psychological fact. And new legends have arisen from that. But to most, complicated metaphysical Holy Grail theories, old and new, are at best legends intended to inspire. The more recent of these could also be calculated attempts to sell books to gullible consumers always on the watch for some ephemeral fascination.

—

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Grail#Beginnings_in_literature

Related Posts » Hero

Perceval, le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail) by Chrétien de Troyes

Related articles

• December 8, 2011 Arthurian Fact of the Day (caridwen.wordpress.com)
• Discovering the Truth Behind the Mystery of the Holy Grail (prweb.com)
• Europe u-knighted: King Arthur proves how European the British are (guardian.co.uk)

The Holy

Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) via Wikipedia

The German Lutheran scholar Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) describes The Holy in terms of a personal experience.

In The Idea of the Holy (1917) he borrows from the Latin word numen when introducing the term numinous, which refers to ”deeply felt religious experience.”

Experience of the numinous may derive from a monotheistic God or from many pagan gods. When originating from God, Otto says the numinous is endowed with “rationality, purpose, personality and morality.” Pagan numinosity, he suggests, is somehow inferior.

Otto makes a similar distinction between magic and religion. Not trying to be non-judgmental or politically correct, he says magic manifests a “dimmed” numinous, in contrast to the experience of God, which he describes as an awe-filled encounter, a mysterium tremendum and a majestus.

For Otto, the experience of God is the highest type of numinosity. It’s a personal experience of an omnipotent, omniscient power that’s worthy of utmost respect and which inspires not just awe, but also a healthy kind of fear.

The individual is urgently attracted to this power, but the experience of the Godhead may also frighten, humble and purify.

In addition, Otto notes that one would experience a sense of creaturely unworthiness and perhaps wretchedness, standing naked, as it were, in the face of such a great, powerful and “wholly other” Godhead.

Related Posts » Hick (John), James (William), Wach (Joachim)

Related articles

• An Outline of Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (epages.wordpress.com)
• Philosophy Word of the Day – Religious Experience (greatcloud.wordpress.com)
• Review – Strange is Normal: The Amazing Life of Colin Wilson (DVD) (epages.wordpress.com)
• The archetypes are gods: Re-godding the archetypes, by John H. Halstead (humanisticpaganism.wordpress.com)
• Parapraxes, Accidents and Necessary Mistakes (epages.wordpress.com)

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes via Wikipedia

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher whose work emphasized society and politics. He’s often described as the founder of modern political philosophy, although some attribute that honor to Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 – 1527).

Hobbes makes a distinction between knowing that God is and knowing what God is. From this, the Catholic scholar Fr. Frederic Coppleston says it’s misleading to say that Hobbes is an atheist, even though many still do.

Hobbes was, in fact, embroiled in controversy from ongoing accusations of being an atheist and, by implication, a heretic. His fear of being found guilty of the latter charge compelled him to burn some of his writings and study, very carefully, the existing laws of his day.

Fortunately, King Charles II liked Hobbes. Hobbes had taught the future King, and the monarch Charles played a role in keeping Hobbes safe.

The king was important in protecting Hobbes when, in 1666, the House of Commons introduced a bill against atheism and profaneness. That same year, on 17 October 1666, it was ordered that the committee to which the bill was referred “should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness… in particular… the book of Mr. Hobbes called the Leviathan“¹

The debate continues to this day, nobody really knowing how Hobbes stood on the point of God’s existence.

The frontispiece of the book Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes via Wikipedia

In his seminal work, Leviathan (1651), Hobbes study of the commonwealth deals mostly with civil philosophy. And civil philosophy itself has two forms: ethics (relating to the individual) and politics (relating to society).

Hobbes also imagines what society would be like without a governing body. In so doing he distinguishes two types of bodies, the natural body and the commonwealth.

The natural body is, so Hobbes envisions, what life would be like without a political system.

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.²

In Leviathan Hobbes spells out his belief that human beings are rational and, above all, seeking self-preservation. If left to our natural devices, however, we would become ruthless power seekers, each seeking to gratify his or her own interests, culminating in countless wars. Because this kind of existence would be intolerable, human beings agree to submit their individual wills to a Sovereign.

Not a few writers say that Hobbes claims that life is “nasty, brutish, and short,” but they obviously haven’t done their homework. As noted, Hobbes describes life this way when estimating what things would be like without any government. Left to its natural state, mankind would be beastly. But politics apparently saves us.

Retrato del filósofo francés Michel Foucault via Wikipedia

Hobbes also maintains that the knowledge gained from philosophizing brings personal power. This could be seen as foreshadowing the 2oth century thinker Michel Foucault’s idea that “knowledge is power.” Both Hobbes and Foucault believe that power should be expressed through social action.

But unlike Hobbes, Foucault also says that “power is knowledge,” meaning that those with more social power have a greater ability to impose their particular norms and values on the rest of society; and society is composed of people who, in many instances, would rather abide by a different set of norms and values.

By way of contrast, Hobbes says that power gained from knowledge should be applied to the common good, a perspective which, in the 20th century, Foucault might have regarded as simplistic or, at least, idealistic.

—

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes#Later_life

² Leviathan XIII “Chapter XIII.: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery.”  http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=585&layout=html#chapter_89842

Related articles

• How Google & Facebook May Have Taught Us About Hobbes (gameofroles.wordpress.com)
• Foucault and Hobbes on Politics, Security, and War (2011) (foucaultnews.wordpress.com)
• Hobbes Leviathan: Analysis of Human Behaviour (socyberty.com)
• Hobbes’ Leviathan and the absolute Sovereign (theedexperience.wordpress.com)
• And the reason is love! (nikhilchawla.wordpress.com)
• What Is a State, and What Are Its Powers? (anationbeguiled.wordpress.com)
• Really, Hobbes? (gameofroles.wordpress.com)

Historicity

Image of a horse from the Lascaux caves via Wikipedia

The word historicity has two main meanings. The first refers to any kind of recorded history after prehistory. This could include cave art, such as we find at Lascaux in southwestern France.

The second meaning of the term refers to questioning the historical existence of Christ, or some other divine personage, mythical figure or place.

For example, an opponent of Christianity might say, “the accounts of Jesus that appear outside of the New Testament are riddled with ambiguity, so the historicity of Jesus is hardly confirmed.”

Related Posts » Atlantis, Christology

Related articles

• Reasonably doubting that John baptized Jesus – Or how HJ scholars worked before they had Tools (vridar.wordpress.com)
• Non-Biblical Sources which Document the Historical Jesus (compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com)
• Dale Allison on Jesus Mythicism (diglotting.com)
• David Fitzgerald Debunks Historical Jesus at Skepticon 3 (holyblasphemy.net)
• Critically evaluating Paul’s claims about Jesus (vridar.wordpress.com)
• Why and how I came to question the historicity of Jesus (vridar.wordpress.com)
• Bart Ehrman’s failed attempt to address mythicism (vridar.wordpress.com)
• A rational foundation for investigating the mythicist question (vridar.wordpress.com)
• Reconciliation and Representation: Doctrine of Christ (wateristhickerthanblood.wordpress.com)
• Chris Columbus to Produce Film about Jesus Christ as a Kid (geektyrant.com)