Toto

Let me note that this question is not related to mythicism. If Jesus existed, and early Christians thought that the Holy Spirit descended upon him rather than that he was born as the son of God, then the baptism is just not embarrassing.

Toto

Yes, it would be. Predictive power describes the ability of a theory to explain evidence that was not available when the theory was constructed.

ApostateAbe

OK, so, given that thought experiment where the Archaeopteryx was discovered before Darwin's theory, then what, in your opinion, would be the relevant methodological principle that allows the fossil to be an advantage for Darwin's theory over the model of special creation?

Juststeve

Toto:

It would not be embarrassing to someone who thought that prior to the decent of the Holy Spirit Jesus was just an ordinary man, as sinful as anyone else, and in need of John's baptism. Can you document the existence of such people.

As Abe has pointed out the baptism appears to have been progressively more embarrassing through Matthew and Luke and finally to John where it is omitted altogether. According to standard dating this would be over a period of about 35 years.

Steve

Toto

This is an example of a theory that was validated by later evidence. Darwin's theory of evolution continues to be validated by observable events, such as the evolution of bacteria in response to antibiotics.

There is always a hope that there will be more evidence discovered from the first century that would validate one theory or another about the origins of Christianity. But so far, we only have various forgeries.

Toto

Adoptionism was declared a heresy in the second century, which indicates that there were Christians who thought that Jesus was (more or less) an ordinary man before the Spirit descended.

There were many varieties of adoptionism, some of which held that Jesus was the son of a virgin. The Ebionites believed that Jesus was chosen for his sinless character, but I do not see that this would preclude baptism by John, which was probably analogous to the ritual mikvah of the Jews.

I do not expect Christian doctrine to be strictly logical. The writer of Mark and the early adoptionists did not appear to be embarrassed by the baptism, and this is what counts.

Toto

It's just part of the evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

ApostateAbe

Be specific, if you can. Suppose I said that the Archaeopteryx also fits my explanation that the intelligent designer created animals whatever way he pleased. Is there no specific methodological principle you can apply for the arguments about the Archaeopteryx that says your explanation is better than mine?

aa5874

ApostateAbe, do you NOT understand that even EXPERTS do not always AGREE?

ALL we NEED is the CREDIBLE historical source of antiquity that can SHOW OR mention Jesus did actually EXIST and was ACTUALLY baptized.

You have ALREADY admitted that we CAN'T TRUST the NT GOSPELS so just GO find an historical source of antiquity that we can TRUST.

We ALREADY KNOW that people think it is plausible Jesus may have existed and was baptized but we CAN'T find a single CREDIBLE SOURCE of antiquity for the baptism of Jesus, the child of the Ghost.

ApostateAbe

Relating to the point about "predictive power" or "explanatory power," I found a blurb on TalkOrigins.org that appropriately expresses why "predictive power" can be applied to reinforcing explanations for past evidence. It is on the Index to Creationist Claims, Claim CA210: "A true science must make predictions. Evolution only describes what happened in the past, so it is not predictive." One of the counterpoints is:

2. The predictive power of science comes from being able to say things we would not have been able to say otherwise. These predictions do not have to be about things happening in the future. They can be "retrodictions" about things from the past that we have not found yet. Evolution allows innumerable predictions of this sort.

"Retrodictions" seems like a more appropriate word. There is actually a Wikipedia page on Retrodiction.

Retrodiction ... is the act of making a "prediction" about the past. This is especially useful when one wishes to test a theory whose actual predictions are too long-term to be of immediate use. One speculates about uncertain events in the more distant past so that the theory would have predicted a known event in the less distant past. This is useful in, for example, the fields of archaeology, climatology, evolutionary biology, financial analysis, forensic science, and cosmology.

Michael Clive Price has written:

A retrodiction occurs when already gathered data is accounted for by a later theoretical advance in a more convincing fashion. The advantage of a retrodiction over a prediction is that the already gathered data is more likely to be free of experimenter bias. An example of a retrodiction is the perihelion shift of Mercury which Newtonian mechanics plus gravity was unable, totally, to account for whilst Einstein's general relativity made short work of it.

Toto, my request remains open for you to explain why you would accept fossils discovered before Darwin's theory as lending greater weight to Darwinism, if not by "predictive power."