There can be many reasons: they were all trained as apologists (and thus continue using invalid apologetic presumptions and methods because they never learned they are invalid), have built careers and staked claims on historicity that it would be hard for them to self-repudiate, and in several other ways are subject to institutional inertia (guilds always resist challenges to their consensus; it can take decades to turn that ship around), which includes threats against academic apostasy (reputation, status, jobs, grants, the ability to publish, even such things as office space and committee assignments, are all threatened to be taken away or interfered with for anyone who strays too far from even a secular orthodoxy), even social and family pressure (e.g. Bart Ehrman has a Christian wife who is already unhappy at his agnosticism; mythicism would be a bridge too far). I have made similar points before. We often can’t know the secret motives of any given individual. It can be as simple as their not grasping how logic or evidence works and thus instead sticking to what they deem to be the “safe” position to take, or as complex as their being under social, filial, or peer pressure, or any combination.

But why? Certainly they do not spend their time arguing that there is history behind the ancient myths of Egypt, India, or Middle America. What do they think would be lost if the Gospels were indeed entirely fiction? Or is it like a puzzle, a game of deciphering the NT code to find the “truth” behind the parables? If the latter, I find it amusing that they would be attracted to the very thing that made mystery religions so successful in the first place!

I admire your patience in deconstructing their arguments with precision, logic, and evidence. But after all this time, I still find it strange that you have to at all.

What she gets obsessed with has changed over time. But various forms of delusional solipsism (inclusive of simulation theory) is not an unheard of outcome of psychosis, particularly in a culture rife with the concept. Psychosis often adopts stances available in its culture, e.g. if one lives in a world where simulation theory and arguments for it are abundant, it can become an attractive fixation for one’s psychosis. Just as psychotic obsession with the existence of gods, then demons and angels, then faeries, then alien visitors evolved over time, corresponding in each stage with what was popular in the surrounding culture.

“This author is, sadly, insane”

Undoubtedly so, she is just obssesed with the whole “Reality is a simulation” thing.

Which i think, could be the subject of a very interesting philosophical discussion, but i never thought that there are people who take it seriously.

That author is, sadly, insane. Nothing in her account is intelligible or based in factual reality. I blocked her a long while ago after she kept sending me disjointed and disturbed comments. Which I believe she has been doing to several prominent atheists. So whatever she is putting my or anyone else’s name to now you should ignore.

If you mean a hyphen is missing from all-around, fixed. If you meant something else, let me know.

“He’s also a great educator and all around guy…..”

https://twitter.com/LaurieJeanBrow1/status/1410268710401548291/photo/1