Debunking Jesus?

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Dan McClellan (1:01)

The Law of Parsimony and Occam's Razor just kind of tear to shreds all of the very complex, convoluted structures that you have to build upon other structures upon other structures in order to make it all work. And it seems an awful lot more convenient to just say there was a dude, he died, tradition started circulating about him coming back to life, and then it took off from there. Like that is a far simpler solution to the problem. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:37)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:38)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:50)

Oh, I'm doing better than you are, man. I got zero cold right now. And you have a cold.

Dan McClellan (1:57)

Yes, I have one.

Dan Beecher (1:59)

That is one to nothing. I win. It's like golf. You want a lower score.

Dan McClellan (2:04)

Yeah, lower score is better. So I was like, can I just have one this time? And at least I've got that going for me.

Dan Beecher (2:12)

Yeah. So sorry about that. Sorry that I'm making you record while you have a cold. I'm a very cruel and heartless taskmaster.

Dan McClellan (2:22)

Taskmaster, yeah. That's the one. What do we got on the docket for today?

Dan Beecher (2:30)

We got a couple of fun things. We got a Who's That coming up at the end of the show. That's going to be, we're going to be talking about one Flavius Josephus.

Dan McClellan (2:41)

All righty. We're going to hit Flavius Town.

Dan Beecher (2:46)

Yeah, we're going to go to Flavius. Flava Flavius.

Dan McClellan (2:51)

You said Who's That and immediately the New Girl theme song jumped into my head.

Dan Beecher (2:57)

I don't know the New Girl.

Dan McClellan (3:00)

Oh, gosh. Yeah, this cold has me a little disoriented, but.

Dan Beecher (3:05)

Well, that'll happen. But before that, we're going to talk. I'm going to call it a history's mysteries.

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All right.

Dan Beecher (3:13)

And we're going to dive into a commonly held out thing from the people on my side of the table, meaning a lot of atheists share this kind of thing. Around this time of year, it starts to crop up, and we're going to discuss the various saviors in the world and how completely and totally similar they all are.

Dan McClellan (3:44)

The many that predate Jesus and were very obviously the inspiration for the fabrication of the story of Jesus.

Dan Beecher (3:53)

Jesus was a big old ripoff, and we're going to prove it or not. So let's just dive into that.

Dan McClellan (3:58)

Let's do it.

Dan Beecher (3:59)

Let's go with histories, mysteries. Okay. So a lot, so many people's first exposure to this. My first exposure to this, I will say, to this concept came from the documentary made by the self-engrandisement made by Bill Maher called Religulus.

Dan McClellan (4:26)

Religulus, right? Pronounce it as, okay, yeah, whatever.

Dan Beecher (4:32)

I don't know the original Greek or Hebrew, so I'm afraid I can't do anything with that.

Dan McClellan (4:37)

Yeah.

Dan Beecher (4:38)

But yes, religiouless, that was the one where I first encountered these claims, and I will admit, believed them rather uncritically.

Dan McClellan (4:49)

So that's the scene where he's like, there's the Jesus actor or something, and he's confronting him about it.

Dan Beecher (4:58)