And i hardly think you can hide behind CP Snow: This is not a sciences vs humanities thing. Many of the gnus are humanists rather than scientists – Hitchens, AC Grayling, Dennett, She who Must Not Be Named, Richard Carrier, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwin, Martin Amis, Ayan Hirsi Ali, etc

Two cultures anyone?

Anyway, it’s been real.

“One statement is written into the traditions of families, nations, philosophies, institutions, works of art, over centuries, ” – So what?

“and is probably not empirically testable.” Actually, it’s plausibility is relatively easily assessed. If it weren’t for the fact that they were encrusted by years of tradition, Christian beliefs would be laughed out of any serious discussion on the basis of their conflict with many empirically established facts in history, archaeology, biology and physics.

“The other was generated within the last 4 years out of spite that a black man is president.” – Again, so what? The truth of an idea has nothing to do with its age or the motives of its originators.

“One you get to know from experience as a practitioner in a spiritual tradition.” – Huh? How does one get to “know” that “Jesus Christ was the son of God and appeared to his disciples after he was crucified” from experience as a practitioner in a spiritual tradition? Experience of a spiritual tradition can have many beneficial effects and teach many useful things, but it cant be probative of whether certain events occurred 2000 years ago; let alone whether there is a god.

“The other you get by ignoring careful inquiries into official and other documents, and is a mystery you could solve in the manner of a detective story murder.” well, you get to Christianity by ignoring a massive amount of historical, archaeological and scientific evidence. In this respect the two cults seem to me to be very similar indeed.

“Anyway, again, it’s more than obvious that I’m wasting my time, and this is my last comment on the subject.” You wouldn’t be wasting your time if you actually read what we were writing and answered the questions we asked.

Instead, just think about if you walked up to say, someone’s churchgoing grandmother, and said, “Jesus Christ was the son of God and appeared to his disciples after he was crucified,” has the same status as “Obama is really Kenyan, and his birth certificate was faked and he shouldn’t be president.”

One statement is written into the traditions of families, nations, philosophies, institutions, works of art, over centuries, and is probably not empirically testable. The other was generated within the last 4 years out of spite that a black man is president. One you get to know from experience as a practitioner in a spiritual tradition. The other you get by ignoring careful inquiries into official and other documents, and is a mystery you could solve in the manner of a detective story murder.

Anyway, again, it’s more than obvious that I’m wasting my time, and this is my last comment on the subject.

I think you’ll find that its *you* who keeps repeating things in order to avoid answering the question.

Anyway, I’m going to do one more post, because it’s obvious that I’m getting diminishing returns for the amount of effort I’m putting in. I disagree that commenters are “trying”. People are just repeating over and over again that we’re just dealing with ridiculous propositions and nothing else, etc. Basically I’m going to recap everything I said, and if you want to call it all “irrelevant”, whatever. Then we’re talking past each other.

You can easily define your terms and parameters with a birth certificate and reasonable evidence of birth.

You can easily define your terms and parameters with fossils and reasonable evidence of unguided evolution too. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Birthers don’t think the evidence is reasonable at all, instead preferring to think state officials will help issue fake birth certificates, setting ridiculous standards of evidence, and claim that it’s all a liberal socialist conspiracy. They’ll even argue that government is inherently unreliable, so they won’t accept any contradicting evidence offered by government anyway.

As a parallel, Creationists (included ID pronentsists) don’t think the evidence for unguided evolution is reasonable either, want a mutation-by-mutation account of the history of life, and prefer to think it’s all an atheist materialist conspiracy. They’ll even argue that science is inherently unreliable, so they won’t accept any contradicting evidence offered by science anyway.

These parallels are real, and they root in the same human tendencies towards rationalizing away uncomfortable evidence. You have said nothing that refutes this.

The fact that the analogy doesn’t cover all aspects of religion (or even all of religion) is irrelevant. It’s an analogy. They’re not expected to hold perfectly. If birtherism and religion would be entirely the same, it wouldn’t be an analogy anymore, it would be an equality.

As for #58:

“Birtherism is not the background of any institutions, legal systems, founding of nations.” Yes, but so what? What does that have to do with the issue of the truth or craziness of the central beliefs of the two cults.

“Birtherism is not a particularly diverse phenomenon, at all.” So?

“Birtherism did not help spawn whole systems of philosophy and inquiry, some of which brought about modern science in the first place.” Even if one accepts your premises (which I don’t), how is this relevant to the plausibility of the resurrection?

“Birtherism didn’t inspire art, architecture, inspire people to emigrate to other parts of the globe. ” So? Falsehoods can inspire. Mistakes can nevertheless give birth to great movements of people and art (Islam, for example, or Communism). What does this have to do with the question of the plausibility of the resurrection?

“(Need I continue?)” Yes, because you haven’t actually said anything relevant yet.