Noyau (1)

…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation

Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.

2,559 thoughts on “Noyau (1)

  1. stcordova:
    Blast away troll, I can’t hear you.

    LOL! Of course you can Slimy Sal. Your ego is way too big to ignore any comment you suspect might be about you from anyone on your supposed “list”.

    That’s OK though Slimy. Even though you’re the same immature shithead you always were other people can see the evidence that is posted. Everyone can see you turn tail and run from the geological evidence and the genetic evidence and the population evidence.

    I know it irks you no end you can’t delete rebuttal posts or change people’s words without attribution like you did on other boards. Too bad. That’s why clowns like you don’t last a week on open discussion boards you can’t control.

  2. Rich:

    UD’s Gaulin infection has really flared up…

    He’s expanding to fill the tard vacuum left by ba77.

  3. Flint: …historians are increasingly coming to the suspicion that there never was any actual historical Jesus.

    LoL! Another Jesus Denier!

  4. I see that Sal has developed his own version of the Gish gallop.

    Blast out quote mined bullshit faster than it can be answered. Never mind that it displays no understanding of biology. The quote mined stuff must be answered, or evolution is dead.

  5. Flint: And on a related note, historians are increasingly coming to the suspicion that there never was any actual historical Jesus. Instead, Jesus was more like Uncle Remus, someone invented to embody the theological positions (not particularly compatible, but who’s counting?) of the politically ascendant factions which got to write (and select) the gospels suiting their positions.

    I’m not sure this is actually true. There are some historians who doubt that there was a historical Jesus, but it’s a stretch to represent this view as a consensus among historians. If anything, most historians reject mythicism and regard it as an extreme view. Of course, that’s an entirely different question from whether Jesus did and said any of the things that the Gospel writers and other sources attribute to him.

  6. Kantian Naturalist: I’m not sure this is actually true. There are some historians who doubt that there was a historical Jesus, but it’s a stretch to represent this view as a consensus among historians. If anything, most historians reject mythicism and regard it as an extreme view. Of course, that’s an entirely different question from whether Jesus did and said any of the things that the Gospel writers and other sources attribute to him.

    Not quite my reading here. Of course, this cannot possibly approach consensus among theological historians, but it is growing increasingly reputable and plausible among secular historians. The stumbling block seems to be that there is a long gap between the writings of Paul (who never says there was an Earthly Jesus, explicitly says it all took place in the lowest heaven, etc.) and the writings of Mark, which are written much more as myth than history (not just style, not just lack of ANY attribution to sources, but closely paralleling OT tales, Homeric tales, Pagan myths, etc.)

    Moving right along, the sayings and lessons attributed to Jesus were clearly crafted to fit the theological positions of those factions which decided what to preserve – and they preserved NOTHING between Paul and Mark, which could have been as much as 50 years. However, if you are saying it really doesn’t matter whether those sayings are attributed to Jesus, or (surely mythical) Moses or Aesop or whoever, I agree. Their value doesn’t lie in the attribution anyway.

  7. Flint: However, if you are saying it really doesn’t matter whether those sayings are attributed to Jesus, or (surely mythical) Moses or Aesop or whoever, I agree. Their value doesn’t lie in the attribution anyway.

    I think of it as comparable to the question of “who was Socrates?” We don’t have anything that Socrates wrote (if he wrote anything at all). Our knowledge of Socrates comes from Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and a few other Greek and Roman sources. We have every reason to believe that there really was a person named Socrates, and no reason to believe that he did or said anything that Plato, Xenophon, or Aristophanes depicted him as doing and saying. Aristophanes was (we think) deliberately satirizing him, and Xenophon and Socrates were (we think) deliberately honoring him in their dialogues, but even then Xenophon and Plato each have their own reasons for depicting him as they do. The value of Plato’s dialogues does not lie in whether or not they are reliably depicting the historical Socrates!

  8. Kantian Naturalist: The value of Plato’s dialogues does not lie in whether or not they are reliably depicting the historical Socrates!

    Yes, here we certainly agree. Even if “Socrates” existed only in the works of Plato (and those who subsequently copied and embellished Plato), it would be Plato’s words we respect, much as we respect some of the sayings of Sherlock Holmes.

    The distinction, if it matters, would hinge on whether an entire religion followed by billions had the physical existence of Socrates at its core. Imagine if this were the case, and if there were NO surviving independent mentions of Socrates (and a puzzling absence of contemporary discussions of Plato).

  9. There’s a new page for the Noyau thread here. I moved the couple of most recent comments and this thread is now closed to new comments.

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