Jesus of Nazareth - Merging public profiles into MPs

My feeling is that we should always merge in the duplicates that can be merged. One World Tree. The MP can be locked (and probably should be if it isn't already). We can deal with the "unexpected" relationships as they come up.

I'll do some merging on these now. Mostly some small fragments of trees. "Luckily" most of these duplicates are private, abandoned and not part of the Big-Tree, so there is nothing we can do at present.

And Jesus is alive according to the profile ;-)

Haven't you heard the Good News yet Bjørn?

I would refrain from merging obviously fake/joke trees if they are still unconnected and can be easily deleted. I'd just report them as fake.

You will find duplicates for the Prophet Muhammed as well. It makes it hard to find these profiles because if you put Mohammed in, you won't get the master profile. GENI needs to be programmed to use some fuzzy logic. Thats another reason that duplicates are put in because if you have one letter that is not like the profile you might assume there is no profile for the person you are seeking because you can not find it.

The Gospel Jesus' Wife---evidence emerges of possible marriage . . .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/the-gospel-of-jesus-wife-_...

It's not evidence of a marriage, but rather evidence that certain people in a certain location well after his death believed he was married. Important historical distinction.

This is a Discussion about merging duplicate profiles of dubious quality into a popular Master Profile, please don't side track it with religious debate.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God and human Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary+++

The thing is that if you make a fictional profile, then you should be ready to make several different fictional profiles for different versions of Jesus. When i'm releasing my new version of the bible next year that will have Jesus married to Hermione from Hogwarts that is just as official as what other people made up his line to be.

The thing is that you've opened a pandora's box by having the profile to begin with. Really to the only way to deal with it now that is remotely sensible is to have thousands of versions of it. But of course, somebody will always want to push their view on others; so i'm not going to bother with this...

There is documentation attesting to Jesus's existence within 50 to 100 years of his life. This is more source data than we have for many profiles considered completely legitimate historical figures on the world tree.

Even as an atheist, I have no difficulty seeing the difference between the historical probability that a person called Jesus existed, and the fiction that is a figment of JK Rowling's imagination..

Quite a few people called Jesus existed. I think there are very many in Mexico, as i understand it it's a rather popular name there. And you have evidence that goes way before 50 years after the person's death and magical zombification.

Btw, it has nothing to do about being an atheist. Atheism means "without theism". People without theism can still believe nonsensical claims. About 10 years ago i would probably also say that Jesus of Nazareth has existed, and you know what i did then? I went and looked at the actual state of the research on the topic. It is a great day for a person, when their beliefs are shown to be incorrect, it's called "growing".

Until one proves that Paul has deliberately fabricated the person Jesus about whom he is writing, there exists sufficient historical documentation to warrant a profile.

This is not a belief. Personally, I think there's a strong likelihood that the person Jesus is a textual redaction; but the FACT is that right now there is sufficient scholarly consensus that parts of Paul's letters are genuine to make them valid Source Documentation for this period in history.

You don't do that for *any* other person in genealogy. You don't demand that somebody proves the negative because it's impossible. If you claim that something is correct, it is up to you to to prove that he actually: 1) Said what he is quoted to say. 2) He meant that as a factual statement and not as a metaphore, alegory, etc.

Imagine what would happen to genealogy if what you are applying here would actually fly:

Somebody adds tons of people to the tree. It would be up to you to *prove* that they didn't want to add that person in reality, and if you cannot, you would have to accept that as true.

This is called "false dichotomy".

> You don't do that for *any* other person in genealogy

Actually -- you do that for EVERY other historical person. You can only know what contemporary or near-contemporary sources say. If those sources are accepted by the majority of scholars, the burden is on you to make your case.

This is very different from the case where something is a matter of faith or can be proved to be a modern invention. In genealogy, faith is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the sources and what can be extrapolated from them.

While i do have a desire to start creating fake profiles to make a point. I'm not going to. Keep your fictional characters in the tree, just please keep them as disconnected as possible.

Your emotional responses to the subject appear to be clouding your logic.

You are disagreeing with the Source Documentation that scholarly consensus takes to be legitimately from the period. The onus is on you to prove your case. So far there is no evidence that you're even cognisant of the data with which you'd need to engage to make any argument about the validity of the Sources. Your own prejudice and broad throwaway insults do not constitute academic engagement - although they do provide a good example of somebody creating a 'false dichotomy. '

>=Somebody adds tons of people to the tree. It would be up to you to *prove* that they didn't want to add that person in reality, and if you cannot, you would have to accept that as true.= This appears to be a personal projection?

I do not engage in false dichotomy. I completely recognise that it's not "Until one proves that Paul has deliberately fabricated the person Jesus about whom he is writing, there exists sufficient historical documentation to warrant a profile".

Let me list some other options:
Paul was making a celestial being, that existed within a specific mythology.
Paul was accidentally mistaken about some facts.
Paul was attributed having said something that he didn't actually say (through intential or unintential misrepresentation).
Paul was himself a composite character, and thus Pauls have said many things, some of which were true and others were not.
.... (probably almost infinite number of other possibilities)

Regarding personal projection. Would you provide at least one fictional profile that i have added. I didn't do that even as a joke. There were some profiles that i have added when i just started, which were not based on as much information as i would require right now. I attempt to look through my tree every so often and when i spot them, i either change them or actually find information and record it.

If you are talking about my People killed by GOD project, then please keep in mind that that project clearly stated that it was here to combat fictional profiles, and *not a single profile* was added as a part of that project.

You're still mistaking your emotional prejudices for academic engagement. That you can generate infinite possibilities for an author's reasons for fabricating history, is a fact that applies to all historical profiles - it doesn't constitute an argument. It's a false dichotomy.

In order to make the argument you appear to be wanting to make - you have to first prove that there is reason to believe that in these Sources Paul is deliberately lying about his belief in the historical existence of the person Jesus about whom he writes.
To do this, you'd have to engage with the text and the academics in the field.
Only once you've done this does it make any sense to start generating reasons for why Paul would do this.

Regarding personal projection >=Somebody adds tons of people to the tree.=
You've added in the region of 700.000 profiles in about two years, largely without Sources.

I don't know what your point about 'proving that they didn't want to add that person in reality' means at all.

I wasn't referring to your "People Killed By God' project. I'd forgotten about that - Where is it? Have you deleted it?

The OP said (in 2014):

>>>> This is a Discussion about merging duplicate profiles of dubious quality into a popular Master Profile, please don't side track it with religious debate.

A separate thread would probably be the best way to go if anyone wants to continue debating the existence of Jesus and/or the validity of sources in that area. A dedicated thread would be easier for interested parties to find, too.

False dichotomy: http://www.philosophy-index.com/logic/fallacies/false-dilemma.php

"You've added in the region of 700.000 profiles in about two years, largely without Sources." Please show me which profiles are "largely without sources", i would say that 99% of everything that i add lists the sources in the description. You can of course complain that i don't translate it into english, but sources are listed... in fact there's a *link* on most of the profiles.

This is certainly not "a religious debate." It's on topic about "profiles of dubious quality".

Please let's not start another thread dedicated to a subject that already has too many threads. We don't want it be easier to find.

"In general, a false dichotomy gives the impression that the two oppositie options are mutually exclusive (that is, only one of them may be the case, never both) and that at least one of them is true, that is, they represent all of the possible options."
You are arguing that if Jesus isn't 'a magical zombie' then it is obvious that he can't have existed at all & the profile must automatically be fictional.

Sorry to have added the point about sources - it wasn't relevant to the point I was making. (I simply assumed that you couldn't scrape that many profiles per minute and also source them - I see that you can. Well done.)

Let me restate the post without that:
Regarding personal projection >=Somebody adds tons of people to the tree.=
You've added in the region of 700.000 profiles in about two years.

I don't know what your point about 'proving that they didn't want to add that person in reality' means at all.

I wasn't referring to your "People Killed By God' project. I'd forgotten about that - Where is it? Have you deleted it?

"You are arguing that if Jesus isn't 'a magical zombie' then it is obvious that he can't have existed at all"

False

No, not false.
The underlying premise of all your insults about it being a fictional profile of a
'magical zombie', and the fact that you feel that you don't even have to explain why you're assuming the Pauline Source is necessarily incorrect -
relies on your assumption that deriding the religious belief is sufficient disproof of the source.

It isn't sufficient, and someone of your intelligence shouldn't be using insults to stir up controversy if you can't make a logical argument.

So I take it "People Killed by God" was deleted? Why?

I've not deleted the project... maybe somebody got offended by it and got it deleted.

Or (i try to assume good stuff wherever possible) maybe Geni just needed to clean up projects, and this one had no profiles and no discussions or anything similar... i will chose to believe that Geni just needed the server space and not that it's supporting fake profiles.

And i've also said that if Geni was planning to delete God they can delete the project, so maybe somebody was planning to delete God Almighty . and just didn't get to it yet. Yeah, i think i'll chose to have faith in the level of intelligence of my comrades on Geni.

:-)