What do you mean by the term "simpleton"?

"heir writings do not point to that founder being, on Carrier’s thesis, a
spiritual being (i.e., a purely spiritual Jesus, Gabriel, and Moroni)."

Right and the Earthly writers would be John, Joseph Smith and Mohammed. So the analogy works. CArriers' book is excellent!

Apologies for not clearly attributing the blockquote.

Just for the sake of clarity and fairness (to myself) I wish to point out that the unattributed block quote you use at the beginning of your response to me—a quote which by convention would be assumed to be mine—is actually from josh harvey. I don't wish to be associated in any way with his views.

As I have said before, my only point in this thread is that Mike has taken one argument sometimes put forward by Christian apologists and has said, "Prove it." There is no evidence to support the argument, It's really just a bad argument, which you yourself wouldn't make, so I am not sure why it has generated so much discussion.

it makes it convenient to say motives were racially motivated rather than religious.

Convenient for whom? For the Nazis? Is it less evil to exterminate 6 million people on the basis of race than on the basis of race and religion combined?

The point of my comment was that Jews threatened by the Nazis could not escape death by agreeing to convert to Christianity.

The Nazis had long sought a legal definition that identified Jews not by religious affiliation but according to racial antisemitism. Jews in Germany were not easy to identify by sight. Many had given up traditional practices and appearances and had integrated into the mainstream of society. Some no longer practiced Judaism and had even begun celebrating Christian holidays, especially Christmas, with their non-Jewish neighbors. Many more had married Christians or converted to Christianity.

. . . . The Nazis rejected the traditional view of Jews as members of a religious or cultural community. They claimed instead that Jews were a race defined by birth and by blood.

Despite the persistent claims of Nazi ideology, there was no scientifically valid basis to define Jews as a race. Nazi legislators looked therefore to family genealogy to define race. People with three or more grandparents born into the Jewish religious community were Jews by law. Grandparents born into a Jewish religious community were considered “racially” Jewish. Their “racial” status passed to their children and grandchildren. Under the law, Jews in Germany were not citizens but “subjects of the state.”

This legal definition of a Jew in Germany covered tens of thousands of people who did not think of themselves as Jews or who had neither religious nor cultural ties to the Jewish community. For example, it defined people who had converted to Christianity from Judaism as Jews. It also defined as Jews people born to parents or grandparents who had converted to Christianity. The law stripped them all of their German citizenship and deprived them of basic rights. . . .

Did the Nazis hate Judaism as a religion? No doubt. But they were attempting to exterminate an entire people by the Holocaust, not just end the practice of Judaism.

David’s context is without error. A legal definition for Jew was created soon after Hitler became Prime Minister in the early 30’s. The definition based it on biology, not religion. It went back two generations and only required one parent or grandparent to be a Jew for the descendant to be a legal Jew, open to racial persecution.

Is there evidence that practicing Jews were to be treated especially harsh? Yes, but it’s irrelevant. Why? We can make a prediction if what you say is true. Were Jews in the clear if they converted to Christianity? No.

While the legal definition of a Jew was tweaked a bit over the years (full Jew if 3/4 or more of grandparents were Jewish) the biological factor was never removed.

Mike, excommunicated

The jewish people are unique that their race and their religion are both so much part of their identity; it makes it convenient to say motives were racially motivated rather than religious.

Taking it back to the OP:

God incarnating on earth in time men were closer to caveman in intelligence than us today with an average lifespan of what 30 some odd years? People who thought evil caused disease instead of pathogens. Qualified to receive God and tell his story for 2000 years

What is assumed here is that the Apostles were a bunch of simpletons. They were not; specifically Paul was not who was an educated Roman citizen and a persecutor of Christians who converted because he witnessed the phenomenon of a resurrected Christ. My second point is that if this phenomenon of a resurrected Christ is how He chose to reveal Himself to humanity at that time with the foreknowledge of the future (which Christ possessed as He not only predicted Christian persecution but made it a tenet of the faith in the beatitudes). And... Christians were persecuted in Rome in the 1st century and in the Gulags of the 20th century and met an unnatural early death for His name. This is historical truth, even if He was a fraud. Maybe that is what "qualified" these "cavemen" and what is the alternative to these "cavemen"? Apparently He should have waited 2k years for modern medicine to reveal pathology, the litmus test of "qualified" human.

I understand the argument you're trying to make me make. And you refute the argument by weaving something unknown into a premise specific question asked in a way that makes the question beg itself. Fine, you both win your own argument: "It does torpedo the claim that alleged eyewitnesses died rather than recant."

However, it is logical that martyrdom would be expected if the resurrection from death is true and the prophecy of Christ was true, but not conversely. Meaning if the resurrection from death was false, it doesn't logically follow any man would die an unnatural death for a known lie. But I never played the "if the" card, I merely said 1st century Christians were more willing to die for their personal knowledge than people today are. Which is a personal historical opinion which Mike didn't seem to have a problem with. He asserts martyrdom is common for untruths, which I obviously agree. Martyrdom is one piece of evidence for the resurrection, but not compelling on it's own.