User talk:BruceGrubb/Archive1

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What is going on? World Blogs Clogs Elections The Bar (talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic) Welcome to RationalWiki, BruceGrubb! Check out our guide for newcomers and our community standards! Tell us how you found RationalWiki here! If you are interested in contributing: Read what our articles are intended to be Check out the to-do list See our help page and Wikipedia's formatting cheatsheet If writing a new article, consider writing up a draft And most importantly: Pull up a goat and have some fun!

Hi and thanks for joining. I'm sure that you'll fit right in. :-) --Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 16:10, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Sysop

Yep. P-Foster_{Can't we talk about this, baby?} 15:23, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Historical Jesus

You nearly done adding more stuff to this article? I suspect it's getting fat enough to start separating out sections into new articles with all the detail - David Gerard (talk) 07:26, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Pasting your talk page comment into the article

Why? Sophie^Wilder 14:51, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Please clarify? Why what?--BruceGrubb (talk) 15:00, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Try not to be an ass.

Blocking a regular for a day and calling him a vandal over an editorial dispute is unproductive, against the guidelines, and indicative that you don't quite understand how the place works. Please don't do that again. Hugs and kisses, Father Vivian O'Blivion (talk) 16:42, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

You did see Miekal protect to his preferred version then say "let's discuss it lol"? - David Gerard (talk) 22:50, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Nope. Father Vivian O'Blivion (talk) 22:55, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Well that is what he did. Also he ignored the point of reading the talk page.--BruceGrubb (talk) 03:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

That wasn't cool of him. But it's also kind of irrelevant. Father Vivian O'Blivion (talk) 03:59, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

He's a cretinous, incompetent editor but his heart is definitely in the right place, so cut him a little slack. Always good to try not to be an ass, but if you fail then you are in august company, and no one will hold it against you. Tielec01 (talk) 04:01, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Posting that the claim "Zeus and Heracles were regarded as one living people eventually deified" is "Bad. Wrong" here rather in the article's talk space IMHOshows that Miekal is trying to get his way rather then have a meaningful discussion. Otherwise he would have posted it to the article's talk page now wouldn't he?--BruceGrubb (talk) 05:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

No doubt. But it still ain't a reason to ban him. Father Vivian O'Blivion (talk) 12:37, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Minor Thing

But "Zeus and Heracles were regarded as one living people eventually deified", No. Bad. Wrong.--Miekal 05:12, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Not bad and not wrong. From the article itself:

In fact, Euhemerus himself stated that Zeus had actually been a mortal king who was buried on Crete (Zeus Is Dead: Euhemerus and Crete, S. Spyridakis, The Classical Journal, Vol. 63, No. 8, May, 1968, pp. 337-340.) and Eusebius in the 4th century CE accepted Heracles as a flesh and blood man who by birth was an Egyptian and was a king in Argos (Preparation of the Gospel (10.12) "from the reign of Hercules in Argos to the deification of Hercules himself and of Asclepius there are comprised thirty-eight years, according to Apollodorus the chronicler: and from that point to the deification of Castor and Pollux fifty-three years: and somewhere about this time was the capture of Troy.")

Also stuff like this belongs on the talk page of the article in question NOT in my talk page which is where I put this.--BruceGrubb (talk) 05:37, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually it wouldnt belong there, because it was completly off topic from that discussion. Also work from a 1968 article, basing itself on an ancient historian with a specific philosophical bent he looked at everything under is not going to make me believe zeus was a king on crete who later became a god. --Miekal 05:56, 16 June 2014 (UTC)--Miekal 05:51, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry that is now how things work here. ALl future comment son this matter will be copied to the main article page.--BruceGrubb (talk) 05:58, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

You have fun with that, but it isn't relevant to that discussion so your really just wasting your time.--Miekal 06:03, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

That is NOT your call to make and I have demonstrated on the article's talk page how it is totally relevent to the topic at hand.--BruceGrubb (talk) 06:24, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I think you need some sleep, you seem stressed to high hell.--Miekal 06:28, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

You options don't matter here but your continued posting to my talk page has been greeted with a 3 month ban on it regarding posts by you.--BruceGrubb (talk) 06:39, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to re-iterate my suggestion you get some sleep, because you really are over stressing over all this. Either way, this got completely derailed from what i wanted this topic to be about so, lets just end this.--Miekal 06:45, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Three month Bans

Thats not how we do things, but if you'd like to keep giving out abusive length blocks you can find out what it's like to not have those fancy powers anymore. --Miekal 06:45, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

stupid question

Why anthropology AND accounting? Are you trying to show when accountants first evolved. ;-) Oh, ps. i'm starting to study "theory of mind" (science, not philo) to help with my studies of language evo. Any suggests from an anthro point of view, of books about physical evo of the mind (brain) or language production features... just curious--En attendant Godot 16:13, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I took accounting when thanks to government cutbacks the three subfields I had expertise in (contact anthropology, archeology, and museum science) all got clobbered. I don't know of books on the physical evo of the mind but I do know of a book that can be best described as the anthropology of archeology; it's Bruce Trigger's A History of Archaeological Thought. It is arguable the best book on the views of archeology (and therefore anthropology) through the years as it shows how the views of the time the researchers lived in shaped how they saw the world.--BruceGrubb (talk) 16:22, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Gratitude

You've been doing some really good work on the evidence for Jesus article, and you deserve a really big thanks for it. I greatly appreciate all the work you've been doing. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 08:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Cheers and seconded. Shadow of Lords ^talk 17:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Auto-archiving

Rather than being unhelpful and annoying like that other guy, here's a useful bit of text to put at the top of your talk page so that our robot friends will do it for you:

{{Template:Talkpage/Pibot
|counter = 2
|minthreadsleft = 2
|algo = old(36h)
|archive = User talk:BruceGrubb/Archive%(counter)d
}}

That leaves two threads on talk at any time. You can also of course put stuff in there by hand.

Apparently there was a point to this, way back in the mists of time - David Gerard (talk) 11:50, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

You REALLY need to talk to him. And thanks for the script.--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:48, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ and Muhammad

Hi Bruce, I just noticed your post on Talk:Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ#Muhammad as a historical person and thought I'd give you a heads up that I later edited the section in question and why. Let me know what you think on that talk page. ScepticWombat (talk) 06:22, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Confused by your Fictional Pau/Prophet Fred section

I'm a bit confused about the point in your section on Fictional Pau/Prophet Fred. Do you mean to say:

1. that those arguing for a fictional(ised) Paul are simply bonkers (as the invocation of the "more evidence for Paul than for Prophet Fred"-line seems to suggest), or
2. that the Prophet Fred example clear illustrate why believers insisting that an important religious figue is real is rather dubious, even in the modern age (i.e. that Paul indeed could have been fictional(ised), and the grounds for dismissing this scenario a priori are suspect).

Look forward to clearing this bit up and I've already written a suggestion in case you meant something like option 2:

“”Some versions of the Christ Myth theory (such as Kenneth Humphreys'Citation not incl. here) suggest that Paul was a fictional person. The issue here is "there are four different “Pauls” in the New Testament, not one, and each is quite distinct from the others. New Testament scholars today are generally agreed on this point: (...) 1) Authentic or Early Paul: 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon (50s-60s A.D.) 2) Disputed Paul or Deutero-Pauline: 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians (80-100 A.D.) 3) Pseudo-Paul or the Pastorals: 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus (80-100 A.D.) 4) Tendentious or Legendary Paul: Acts of the Apostles (90-130 A.D.)Citation not incl. here The Tendentious or Legendary Paul can be shown to be a literary creation where at best "maybe there was some authentic source material behind some of what appears in Acts somewhere" [sic].Citation not incl. here As modern things like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and FDR: American Badass! just because you have a fictionalization of events it doesn't follow that the main characters in that story are fictional, but nor does fictionalisation add to the historicity of characters unknown outside such account, even if the account also include actual historical persons. As related below Authentic or Early Paul brings so little to the pro historical Jesus argument that claiming he is fictional makes little sense. However, claiming Paul is a fictional creation can smack of the kind of Illuminati level conspiracy theory nonsense seen in Joseph Wheless' 1930 Forgery In Christianity and be used to make the idea that Jesus was philosophical myth less digestible. Nevertheless, the accusation that a fictional Paul is wholly absurd in and of itself is illustrated as an asinine assertion by another comparison with the John Frum movement. Paul Raffaele's February 2006 Smithsonian article "In John They Trust"Citation not incl. here talks about a schism in the John Frum movement where Raffaele is told about a Prophet Fred (PF) broke with the main leader, Chief Isaac, in 1999. Raffaele is also told by a man claiming to be this Prophet Fred's brother-in-law that PF “raised his wife from the dead two weeks ago.” Yet when Raffaele goes to the village of PF, he is told that PF has gone to the island’s northern tip to preach. Now this seems a rather clear cut example of exactly that situation which an a priori dismissal of a fictional Paul relies on: We only have believers in John Frum/Jesus saying Prophet Fred/Paul existed. No non-believer in John Frum/Jesus has actually met Prophet Fred/Paul. Seven epistles appear to be of one hand and based on internal evidence are earlier then other epistles under the name Paul while Prophet Fred, as far as we know, hasn't written a single thing, though given that the John Frum culture is largely oral, this is perhaps less of a surprise. So there is only slightly less evidence that Prophet Fred existed in 2005 than for Paul around 50-70 CE, and the only evidence for the latter is a series of letters, some are regarded as being by "the real Paul" and some are clearly not. Yet while it would hardly raise an eyebrow if readers of Raffaele concluded that Prophet Fred was a fictional character, the almost equally elusive Paul is considered incontrovertible due to 7 letters by a person who is otherwise unattested by any contemporary observers.

A version of option 1 would be more like:

“”Some versions of the Christ Myth theory (such as Kenneth Humphreys'Citation not incl. here) suggest that Paul was a fictional person. The issue here is "there are four different “Pauls” in the New Testament, not one, and each is quite distinct from the others. New Testament scholars today are generally agreed on this point: (...) 1) Authentic or Early Paul: 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon (50s-60s A.D.) 2) Disputed Paul or Deutero-Pauline: 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians (80-100 A.D.) 3) Pseudo-Paul or the Pastorals: 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus (80-100 A.D.) 4) Tendentious or Legendary Paul: Acts of the Apostles (90-130 A.D.)Citation not incl. here The Tendentious or Legendary Paul can be shown to be a literary creation where at best "maybe there was some authentic source material behind some of what appears in Acts somewhere" [sic].Citation not incl. here As modern things like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and FDR: American Badass! just because you have a fictionalization of events it doesn't follow that the main characters in that story are fictional, especially not when we have good external evidence for their historicity. As related below Authentic or Early Paul brings so little to the pro historical Jesus argument that claiming he is fictional makes little sense. By contrast, claiming that Paul is a fictional creation smacks of the kind of Illuminati level conspiracy theory nonsense seen in Joseph Wheless' 1930 Forgery In Christianity and can be used to make the idea that Jesus was philosophical myth less digestible. The reason why a fictional Paul is an asinine assertion can illustrated by another comparison with the John Frum movement. Paul Raffaele's February 2006 Smithsonian article "In John They Trust"Citation not incl. here talks about a schism in the John Frum movement where Raffaele is told about a Prophet Fred (PF) broke with the main leader, Chief Isaac, in 1999. Raffaele is also told by a man claiming to be this Prophet Fred's brother-in-law that PF “raised his wife from the dead two weeks ago.” Yet when Raffaele goes to the village of PF, he is told that PF has gone to the island’s northern tip to preach. Just like the Paul mythicists dismiss his existence due to the lack of external evidence (and what would it be anyway? Paul was running a sort of "Christian Faith 101" correspondence course, not engaging with outsiders), they have to conclude that Prophet Fred couldn't possibly exist because Raffaele didn't meet him and the description of his supernatural actions are wholly implausible: We only have believers in John Frum/Jesus saying Prophet Fred/Paul existed. No non-believer in John Frum/Jesus has actually met Prophet Fred/Paul. However, seven epistles appear to be of one hand and based on internal evidence are earlier than the "spurious" epistles under the name Paul. By contrast Prophet Fred, as far as we know, hasn't written a single thing, though given that the John Frum culture is largely oral, this is perhaps less of a surprise. So there's actually less evidence that Prophet Fred existed in 2005 than that for Paul's existence around 50-70 CE.

Looking forward to your response. ScepticWombat (talk) 12:54, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Blocking to win an edit - war?

Not cool. Please don't do that. Enough drama around here these last few weeks. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 07:23, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Agree. I personally will remove you sysop rights if you continue. Gooniepunk (talk) 07:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Spencer and the Great Moment?

Hiya Bruce,

I'm wondering about your interpretation/presentation of Spencer. While I agree that he did counter the Great Man school, it would appear that he did it more from a racialist social Darwinian standpoint, rather than a focus on the moment per se. While subsequent historians have (rightly) dumped the racialist elements, the point seems to be about emphasising long term societal trends (e.g. social history, the history of ideas and so forth), and not about a specific Great Moment, as a contrast to the Great Man school. I've heard this long term focus referred to as anything from "trends and forces" to longue durée and it's not hard to see a heavy legacy of Spencer'esque determinism (though based on cultural, rather than racial, chauvinism) in Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations and its spin-offs. Just to make it clear: I'm probably more in this longue durée camp myself, so my mention of Huntington is not meant to be dismissive of longue durée as a concept - after all, the Great Man school is hardly free of similar chauvinism, though typically based on a more individualistic hero, rather than a collectivist race or culture, worship. ScepticWombat (talk) 11:53, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

You are taking the term " Moment" too literally. A better term would be Great Web where varies threads come together to produce X.--BruceGrubb (talk) 01:03, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Van Voorst

One of the lovely things about Dutch names is that while prefixes (or tussenvoegsels) are technically part of the surname, they are usually sorted by the first bit that actually "means" something, in this case "Voorst". In bibliographies (and other things that sort by last name), they are therefore sorted as "Voorst, Robert E. van", though the name would used in a reference with something along the lines of "(Van Voorst, 2000)". Also See the Wikipedia article on Dutch name..--JorisEnter (talk) 21:10, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Except wikiperdia also has a Van Voorst article so it is kind of a mixed bag.--BruceGrubb (talk) 21:16, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Yup. The actual last name is "Van Voorst" (or "van Voorst", I'm not sure). WP sorts Robert van Voorst as "Van Voorst, Robert E." so I suppose your option is the better one. Besides, the name is American so Dutch naming conventions probably don't apply here; compare the sorting of Robert E. Van Voorst (American) with that of Godfried van Voorst tot Voorst (Dutch); the latter is "Voorst tot Voorst, Godfried van" while the former is sorted at "Van Voorst".--JorisEnter (talk) 21:25, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

No problem. Heck, even English last names can be confusing. For example, is Sir Arthur's last name Doyle or Conan-Doyle? He has two of his children named 'Conan Doyle" but his other children have confusing last names. For example, daughter Denis is called Denis Percy Stewart Doyle by some and Denis Percy Stewart Conan Doyle by others.--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:01, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Generally, if it looks like a last name and it's separated/linked (depending on your preferences) by a hyphen, it's a single name; Conan-Doyle would therefore be a single name. This gets even more complicated when you've got a very impressive pedigree, leading to names such as Temple-Nugent-Brydes-Chandos-Grenville (although the Netherlands has Van Zuylen van Nijevelt-Den Beer Poortugael).--JorisEnter (talk) 22:25, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Except the hyphen generally doesn't appear with regards to "Conan Doyle" so no help there.--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:37, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Your powers are needed

Hey buddy! Hope life's treating you well. Anyway, in case you missed it, here's this. Haven't looked too closely yet myself, but I'm sure you have some valuable input, as always. All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 12:10, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

For your consideration

Hey buddy! Just wanted to tip you off that an article called Historical forgery has just been birthed at the site. Mentions some stuff that I believe you have considerable expertise regarding, like Pauline forgeries... Would be great if you had the time some day to just take a peek at it and help us cross-check that it's the right deets on that sort of stuff. If you want to, of course. Until then! All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 23:23, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Unmotivated edits on Christianity

"Some people have observed that many sects of Christianity have henotheic aspects such as the Trinity"... i'm sorry but i must disagree with you, forasmuch as the Trinity is the most important and fundamental belief in Mainstream Christianity (Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches, and Protestantism), which is not simply made up of many sects, otherwise these Confessions wouldn't be mainstream. Moreover, why do you put so much emphasis on Henotheism? Most Christians (both mainstream and sectarian) consider themselves to be Monotheists; i mean, i can't really see the point of what you're doing.--Sofer (talk) 01:08, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Did you read Nick Lilavois's summation of the issue? It give the situation in a good tight nutshell. As for what Christians call themselves I would use the old adage if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck odds are it is a duck.--BruceGrubb (talk) 00:22, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, i did it, but this is an encyclopedia: references are above all opinions, neither Lilavois nor you cited any reliable source.--Sofer (talk) 01:42, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Talk page

I won't go on with this nonsense about Monotheism and Henotheism (if think that you still don't understand what does that term mean, despite all the explanations!) and i don't have time to listen to your excuses or rollback your vandalisms, so let's end it here. Since we can't find an agreement, i think we should ask the Community to vote.--Sofer (talk) 05:58, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

I implore you

Both your knowledge about Christianity and your dedication to writing for RW is outstanding. For those, I applaud you. But Bruce — please, please stop and read this and this.

And before you say "...but RW isn't Wikipedia!", please keep in mind that we're overtly set out to be less technical than Wikipedia is! So whatever goes for Wikipedia in those links, goes doubly for RW. This has real consequences.

Sadly, this is all going to have to be reverted for the simple reason that it's ruining the article. It's not wrong — it's unreadable. Wierdly and inconsistently formatted, incredibly dense academic text (where various quotes stand in for handwritten text far too often).

Now — the sources, and your handling of them, is impeccable. But concerning your writing — please realize that most RationalWiki articles don't read anything like the text you're adding — in fact, the rest of the article doesn't read anything like the text you're adding into it. Never mind that said addition has now grown the Christianity article to the point where half the article is on the highly technical topic of henotheism.

Someone is going to have to re-write all of this article as well. Again, its sources are tremendous. It's conclusions, varied and academically correct. But the article itself is close to unreadable, for the same reasons given above.

I wish I had a simple solution. But I don't. So whatever you do, please just read these for starters. All the best, your friend Reverend Black Percy (talk) 17:35, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Not to be a dick but

Relatively fatal grammatical flaws in this revision (use CTRL+F to find them):

• "...which is is believed ancient Jews..."
• "...even though in though..."
• "...Satan is an fallen angel..."
• "...were two separate beings</ref>" <- Missing a period at the end.

Just saying. All the best buddy, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 01:35, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Ah but grammar is a totally different thing then spelling. Also if it is that minor why not simply correct the grammar rather then doing a revert?

Regarding Satan I originally had "...Satan is an angel..." (which is correct grammar) and threw in the clarifier "fallen" and forgot to change the an to an a. Fixing it I noticed a comma error and fixed that.

On a side note I use a Mac. In the Mac OS CTRL+F generally doesn't do anything; find is option+F. --BruceGrubb (talk) 01:39, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Regardless, I'd really appreciate if you read through what you wrote before (and after) submitting it. Because really, you ought to have seen the first three of those instantly if you had read your own addition out loud once. I'm not saying everything has to be perfect — but I spend enough time as it is cleaning up other people's mistakes (and I'm not even able to keep up — there's literally cruft gathering in the wiki because people won't spellcheck their own additions). So I'd really appreciate it if you just took some extra steps to just, you know, help out with your spelling. Again, I'm not saying it has to be perfect. We're all human. I'm just saying, like, help me out here — read it once and errors like the ones above will be obvious. I'd mean a lot to me, and it'd save me the dilemma of either having to take time and effort to clean up your stuff for you, or reverting when your additions are overall very good, just poorly written/polished (or the third option — leaving stuff in that reads "though in though" in mainspace articles). I hope you will atleast pledge to just keep an eye out in regards to your own stuff, that's all. Anyways, I appreciate it. Thanks in advance. All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 01:55, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

I try to spell check as much as I can with rationalwiki's spell checker but it is poor grammar checker (which all of the above are as the errors have nothing to do with spelling). At least modern grammar checker don't barf at the Gettysburg Address as they did in the past.--BruceGrubb (talk) 02:22, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Atleast a modern grammar checker doesn't barf, you mean. But what I was driving at is; since you're clearly aware of the fact that RW's spellchecker doesn't really check grammar — would you buckle up for the community and, y'know, walk that extra mile and just keep an extra lil' eye on your own grammar? Atleast concerning your mainspace additions? That'd be great. All the best bud, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 02:35, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

LibreOffice's grammar and spell checker doesn't like Atleast a modern grammar checker doesn't barf. It corrects it to "At least a modern grammar checker doesn't barf". Funny thing, that correction is still wrong as you can see if you read the whole thing: At least modern grammar checker don't barf at the Gettysburg Address as they did in the past. "Checker" should have been "checkers" but even 1Checker missed that nuance. Troubling thing is "At least modern grammar checker don't barf at the Gettysburg Address as they did in the past." does pass LibreOffice's and Mac OS' grammar and spell checker (not sure why). So grammar and spell checkers are not created equal and don't spot all errors.--BruceGrubb (talk) 20:31, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

True enough. Which is why it's up to us — as human beings, instead of programs — to act as the real grammar- and spell checkers. This is of vital importance for anyone who has done, or plans to do, long-term contributions here. Also, this type of edit is a move in the right direction. Well done! Please keep experimenting with ways to reduce the over-technicality of text you've submitted. Thanks, appreciate it. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 21:45, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

What the flying fuck

Is up with you citing Graham Hancock of all people?!

You DO realize — of course — that he's a complete crank, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever? Reverend Black Percy (talk) 11:36, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

At the time he was the only "source" (and I use the term very loosely) to back up the claim "Akhenaten was also believed to actually be Moses" which was already in the article. It seems to be a corruption of Sigmund Freud's idea that Moses was an Atenist priest who quickly left Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's death.--BruceGrubb (talk) 12:42, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

So you're defending your use of Graham Hancock? Jesus. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:29, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Only in the 'here is where this idea comes from' sense. We cite Jack Chick as a way of showing 'here is this (silly) idea and here is who supports this idea'; a sort of Reductio ad Hitlerum if you will.--BruceGrubb (talk) 13:38, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Oh, wait — you mean, you were citing a crazy claim with a crazy source? Because if that is exactly, literally what you did — then that's completely fine, obviously. Was this what you were doing? Please be as clear as possible. Thank you. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 17:25, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I was citing a crazy claim (that was already in the article BTW) with a crazy source. I have done the same thing in the Mormonism article with an example of those who claim Mormonism isn't monotheistic. Heck, in the Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ I put in the snark "If you want to see just how bad Christ Mythism can get (and want to kill a few brain cells in the bargain) watch Zeitgeist; everything in that thing is wrong and is the poster child of bad Christ Myth."

I should mention that a little more digging shows that Ahmed Osman has also bought into this bizarre theory as shown in Moses - Pharaoh of Egypt (1990). Paul Roland in his 1995 Revelations: wisdom of the ages claims "That episode may, however, have been a veiled reference to the fact that Moses (born circa 1394 BCE) was not an adopted slave child but Akhenaten, son of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III." It doesn't help matters that when Moses supposedly was born ranges from 1571 BCE to 1391 BCE so counter arguments that a century separates Akhenaten and Moses is on shaky ground. Of course this all assumes Moses actually existed. ;-)--BruceGrubb (talk) 21:36, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

This...

...might be relevant to your interests. All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 00:22, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of pseudoarchaeology

Turns out, we have one of the web's most visible articles on the so-called Wedge of Aiud. Even so, it's an article we need to expand, like the article on the Ossary of James.

We recieved some crank criticism for it earlier, to which I replied in full. However — like on the Ossary talkpage — my talkpage research has yet to be worked into the article proper.

That being said, and particularly with you being a trained archaeologist; perhaps we should focus some energy away from something as major (and such a dead horse) as Jesus, and instead improve on our debunkings on things like the Wedge, the Dendera lamp, the Yonaguni Monument and the likes? What are your thoughts on this? All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 10:13, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Food for thought

I have much respect for AronRa. Check this out, just for the fun of it! What are your thoughts on his discussion?

Also, before you reply, here is the blog post that the above video is a clarification to (meaning, read the blog post first if you want the "full" context).

All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:06, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

His use of Robin Hood and Heracles at the start gives a disconnect. Robin Hood has much the same problem that King Arthur does, though we do have legal documents from 1226 regarding how Robert Hod (i.e. Robin Hood) became outlaw but the name as a stock name for an outlaw dates to 1262. Similarly, Heracles could have been exaggerations of a real life man. We read of Milo of Croton carrying a full grown bull around, killing it and eating it in a single day and of Poulydamas who is said to have killed a full grown lion with his bare hands (ala Nemean Lion) and stopped a speeding chariot by grabbing it with one hand. Yet we know that Milo of Croton and Poulydamas were real people. Heck, we now that three native actually used the name "John Frum" but the disconnect between then and the John Frum depicted is so different that they might as well be totally different people.

His version of the Christ Myth echoes John Robertson's and Remsburg's: a Jesus (possible flesh and blood) so mythologized that nothing remains of the actual man. To rephrase Star Wars: 'This isn't the Jesus you are looking for.'--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:09, 6 April 2017 (UTC)