But his followers were all willing to die because they believed Jesus rose from the dead and they saw it. Seems unreasonable that they would die for something they know is a lie.
> But his followers were all willing to die because they believed Jesus rose from the dead and they saw it.
There is very little objective reason to believe that to be the case. There are (themselves mostly unsubstantiated) stories that a number of the inner circle of contemporaries, some of whom are also identified as witnesses of the resurrection, died for the faith, which is both considerably less than "all of his followers", and considerably less established as objective historical fact rather than part of the same system of mythology.
It's certainly a fact that a little later, a lot of people who could not have been witnesses to the resurrection at the time it is held to have happened died for the faith (whether willing or not), but they obviously don't support the argument you are making.
You can't rest a claim that one element of myth is objective fact on the argument that other elements of the same myth -- with no more objective support -- seem more likely if the first element is true.
Well that's the right idea, though. Taking it a few steps further, what would be more likely, that the vatican is a power hungry institution like any other, or that a pope is chosen by god himself, sometimes two of opposing believe at the same time even.
Who said they died because of their belief in the Resurrection?
I think it is highly likely that His followers believed strongly that He was the Messiah and His message had divine provenance.
It's much less clear which parts of, what became, the accepted view they considered worth dying for.
Maybe they believed in the truth of the Resurrection. Maybe they weren't aware of the claims (ok that's unlikely). Maybe they were aware and decided that it was good for the message (much more believable). Maybe they thought that it wasn't that important to the overall mission either way.
I don't know the answer, of course, but it's perfectly plausible that they didn't believe in the Resurrection and still fulfilled their mission. Plenty of people have died for what they believe is right without needing to have a mentor rise from the dead.
That's only relevant for martyrs who knew him in life, saw him 'die', and come back.
Everyone else died from a story making every single person on that list irrelevant.
ed: There is a very long list of people who where assumed to be dead before 'coming back' so even people who where 'there' don't mean much. It's not like someone was beheaded and the head grew back.
A suicide bomber really believes in what they are dying for and that is the point. With the disciples the fact that they were eye witnesses to the central point of their religion is unique. Either they saw Jesus rise from the dead or they were lying. If they were lying, then why would they be willing to die for a lie? Just doesn't add up in my book.
The disciples are characters in the Resurrection story. That their lives (and deaths) are accurately recorded history is also an open question, as was pointed out above [0].
I would love to see something like this for broader issues and I see two big benefits.
1) I think it could be really helpful to bloggers. If I wrote a post on a divisive topic, I would love to have it reviewed by respected people who are on the other side (not sure exactly how you would work out the respected part). When we write it's too easy for us to build up a scarecrow argument then knock it down to the delight of those who already agree with us. For example imagine a metric that showed how much people who disagree with the article respect it anyways. If I saw something like that on my Facebook feed I would be more likely to read it.
2) A place for us to get experience on how to debate better. There are a number of principles that a site like this could promote. For example, when you disagree with someone ask a question you actually want the answer to, then talk about it. It sounds easy but it can only become a habit with deliberate practice. I have seen a number of other TED talks that go over these kinds of things.
It includes the impulse to suggest that things we favor have no negative consequences (or reasons to doubt them), while things we oppose have no positive consequences (or reasons to believe them).
In some forms of high school and college debate, you can lose points if you don't rebut every single argument raised by your opponent (but your rebuttal doesn't necessarily have to be good in the ordinary sense of the word!). In policy debate this can lead to spreading, where people speak absurdly quickly because they want to be counted as having formally responded to everything the other side said, or having introduced points that the other side failed to rebut.
This is kind of wacky because it gets into a stylized activity far removed from what most listeners would understand as substantively discussing an issue. And it doesn't seem to admit the possibility that both sides might have some points to which there is no convincing rebuttal (which Eliezer suggests is actually a normal state of affairs for talking about real-world issues).
With response to "The 1916 book The Institutional Care of the Insane of the United States and Canada reports" paragraph. Schizophrenia is by no means easy to diagnose and there is a lot of debate over when someone is or isn't Schizophrenic. I have known two people (one a family member) that some would call Schizophrenic and after many years I'm still not sure if that is a fair diagnosis or not. I think it might be a bit much to expect a society with little social expectations to evaluate this well.
In our society we suspect people to have mental illnesses but it takes years to get a good diagnoses and sometimes they never get a clear one.
I've worked the standard 40-? hr/week programming jobs for years and about a year ago I took on a project where I was the only developer and before I took the job I made the decision to work about 20 hours a week. Turns out that 20 wasn't quite enough so I ended up doing 25-30.
Looking back I think 25-30 hours is about as efficient as I could have been as I gave the best hours of my day. But when it came to the last month before the release I found I did have to give some more time to get it done on time. Short bursts of working long hours seem to be effective for me, but I also noticed that I needed to take some time off after the project.
It's been a great year and I've really enjoyed the other things I was able to do with my time. If you are able it's worth considering even if you take a little less pay.
"[FizzBuzz helps to] filter out the 99.5% of programming job candidates who can't seem to program their way out of a wet paper bag."
He's not saying 99.5% of candidates can't do it, but rather 99.5% of candidates who can't seem to program their way out of a wet paper bag can't do it. Presumably 1 in 200 of the candidates who can't program manage it by blind luck.
i dont think its correct though - the first time i got asked this problem was the also the first time i heard of fizz buzz - and i had already been doing c++ perl and shell scripting for 15 years... there was no written explanation, and i had no f clue what he was talking about. i couldnt solve it then and today 3 years later i could probably barely solve it.
when he said "print every number up to one hundred and if its the 3rd line print fizz and if its the fifth line print buzz"... honestly my train of thought was "why the fk would u print every line and print again if its the 3rd line and print again if its the fifth line...?? and why would you print 6-100?"... not the best explanation either, and i had no idea he meant print the string "Fizz" when he said print fizz... i thought maybe he meant some ruby gem rails.Fizz or what not...
of course the commenters code example above is clear as day, maybe i just read code better than i talk about code (this so much... for a lot of us). and i didnt get that job.
I've run into this as well. Of course, it was ultimately a good negative filter; if the interviewer could not clearly explain what he wanted out of such a simple program, how would he have done at explaining the requirements for a much more complicated program?
Top notch article thanks for posting. Thanks for pointing out those fonts, I feel like finding good fonts is always a struggle for me. Anyone have any other suggestions like these?
One way is getting a typekit subscription and checking out their font lists [1]. Aside from providing many excellent fonts, there are good descriptions of mood properties and historical context that can really help to choose something appropriate.
Source Sans Pro is Adobe's first open source typeface and was designed by Paul D Hunt. It was specifically designed for user interfaces, and is available in multiple weights. I think the regular weight also works well for body text.
Whenever I find a font on a page that looks interesting, I highlight it and go to Chrome's Inspect element Computed tab to get the font name. As the blog says, steal like an artist.
Thanks Matt that is more what I was thinking. There are 40,000+ companies that use Zendesk so estimating less than 5000 copies seems reasonable and I also agree 1000$ advance is unusually low.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_Christian_martyrs