aa5874

What are you talking about? Ask Doug Shaver and Toto those questions. They think Paul likely wrote letters.

I don't know that Paul did exist.

It is FLAWED reasoning to think some real character named Paul wrote letters simply because the name Paul is found in letters.


All I know is that the Pauline writings are a PACK of LIES.

In the Pauline writings it is claimed that Paul was NOT the apostle of a man, that Paul did not get his gospel from man and that Paul witnessed the resurrected Jesus.

The Pauline writings support the MYTH Jesus theory.

1. Statements in the Pauline writings about Jesus CANNOT be historically accurate.

2. Myth Fables are NOT historically accurate.

3. The Pauline writings are Compatible with Myth Fables.

J-D

I'm talking about the fact that you talked about Paul but didn't say which Paul you were talking about.

aa5874

What are you talking about, J-D? Ask Doug Shaver and Toto those questions. They think Paul likely wrote letters AFTER using Flawed reasoning.

I don't know that Paul did exist in the 1st century before the Temple.

It is FLAWED reasoning to think some real character named Paul wrote letters simply because the name Paul is found in letters.

The epistle to the Romans was written by TERTIUS. Who is TERTIUS? When did TERTUIS write the Epistle to the Romans.


All I know is that the Pauline writings are a PACK of LIES.

In the Pauline writings it is claimed that Paul was NOT the apostle of a man, that Paul did not get his gospel from man and that Paul witnessed the resurrected Jesus.

The Pauline writings support the MYTH Jesus theory.

1. Statements in the Pauline writings about Jesus CANNOT be historically accurate.

2. Myth Fables are NOT historically accurate.

3. The Pauline writings are Compatible with Myth Fables.

Once you ask the same question over and over you will get the same answer.

The Pauline writings SUPPORT the Myth Jesus theory.

mountainman

It is a linear progression - the numbers are examples only - the scale is a range of all numbers allocated between 0 and +100 which represent an estimated measure of the probability that the relic is authentic and genuine. Probability may be traditionally represented as a percentage figure. The probability equations related to Bayes used by Carrier use the same type of convention for the positive scale, and I think he even refers to it as historicity.

The negative scale represents ahistoricity (fabricated historical authenticity), and is also a linear progression. It is introduced in order to keep a record of the instances and the degree of suspicion of fraud and fabrication that people have assessed against the evidence itself. This I find is therefore very helpful when dealing with the suspicious evidence examined and associated with various historical theories of christian origins.


Claims have been made from postulates Toto. The faithful will postulate for the glory of god. Others postulate to solve crimes. I completely agree that there is nothing about the evidence that allows people to make claims - these claims come from postulates and we have to deal with these claims by seeing them as human sourced postulates, and placing them into a collection of all postulates or hypotheses about the same evidence item as I have described.




By the same reasoning, if the gospels or the letters of Paul are not genuine, but a stupid early forgery, it's also irrelevant to the investigation. This is not the case. It is quite relevant to the investigation to find the assessment of evidence as forged, fabricated and non-genuine. In the case of christian origins, I think it is rather critical.



You have misunderstood the positive numbers are examples in a range between 0 and 100 representing the probability of historical authenticity. If you want to postulate that something is absolutely certain, then you rate it with 100%. What I describe corresponds to probability assessment.

mountainman

I feel J-D is about to break into poetry again soon, so I will preempt this by selecting a line of poetry that is completely relevent to this thread about the various postulates at the foundation of various historical theories of christian origins. It is the chorus line from the lyrics of "Under the Milky Way" by the Church and runs like this:

"Wish I knew what you were looking for;
Might have known what you would find"

J-D

I already answered that question.

J-D

Perhaps you are only capable of finding what you were looking for in the first place, but whether you are able to believe it or not, this is not always true of other people.

J-D

If the numbers are supposed to be a probability measure, then they don't match with the verbal descriptions. If the numbers are supposed to be, as you say, an estimated measure of the probability that the relic is authentic and genuine, then the correspondence should look something a bit more like this:

100% The relic is definitely authentic and genuine
95% The relic is very highly likely to be authentic and genuine
75% The relic is probably authentic and genuine
55% The relic is more likely than not to be authentic and genuine
50% The chances that the relic is authentic and genuine about even
45% It is more likely than not that the relic is not authentic and genuine
25% The relic is probably not authentic and genuine
5% There is little or no chance that the relic is authentic and genuine
0% The relic is definitely not authentic and genuine

In your presentation, your chosen verbal descriptions for +100, +50, and +25 all say that the relic 'is' 'genuine', which makes them all statements of 100% probability, although they are 100% probabilities for different statements. Your chosen verbal descriptions for +50 and +99 are also statements of 100% probability, for still other statements.As I pointed out previously, nobody solves crimes by postulating, and no sane prosecution or defence would attempt go get the court to accept a finding on the basis that it had been postulated.As I pointed out before, although it's true that everybody has background assumptions, it is not true that the only way anybody ever arrives at any claim is by introducing the claim itself as a background assumption.In many cases it is indeed important to detect forgery. One does not, however, detect forgery by postulating it. If you think particular documents are forgeries, or even that there is a significant probability of forgery which needs to be taken into account, you have never made a case for it. In principle, any document at all might possibly be a forgery, but that's the starting point for an investigation, not the findings of one.You have never shown how you do any probability assessment. Saying that a probability lies in the range of 0% to 100% is not a probability assessment; a probability assessment would be a procedure which provides some basis for arriving at a specific figure in that range.

mountainman

Thanks J-D. That is more or less exactly what I had in mind as a more general statement of the spectrum of verbal descriptions. My earlier presentation was a short-cut of this more complete range. It is this range of possibilities that have referred to before as "historicity" - a measure of "authenticity and genuineness".

I will try and get to the other questions later, but for the moment you must admit that in your above comprehensive schema for "positive historicity" has no real place to record the possibility that the relic is definitely a forgery and has been definitely fabricated other than the 0% option in the positive schema.

The purpose of introducing negative historicity was to provide for the assessment (at the postulate level of course) that the relic may be assessed as not just 0% The relic is definitely not authentic and genuine, but in fact can be assessed according to a mirror image spectrum which allows for the identification of the negative.

So here is a version of your comprehensive statement mirrored as both positive and negative historicity. Note that all values are supposed to be mutually exclusive and represent the range of values any postulate may take or assume. The positive values translate as an assessment of genuineness while the negative values translate as a measure of fabrication.

The situation is analgous to making the assumption that a writer of letters must be an historical character. Yes he might be, but he could also be a fictional character. The following table uses the word "relic" but we could be equally talking about the identity of an author like "Paul" or "Jesus". By only using the positive values, we will never arrive at a negative conclusion, whereas in fact in certain cases negative conclusions (and of course postulates) are entirely justified.

(Mutually exclusive) Positive and Negative Historicity of "Relics"

100% The relic is definitely authentic and genuine
95% The relic is very highly likely to be authentic and genuine
75% The relic is probably authentic and genuine
55% The relic is more likely than not to be authentic and genuine
50% The chances that the relic is authentic and genuine about even
45% It is more likely than not that the relic is not authentic and genuine
25% The relic is probably not authentic and genuine
5% There is little or no chance that the relic is authentic and genuine

0% Unable to tell whether the relic is either authentic or fabricated.

- 5% There is little or no chance that the relic is an inauthentic fabrication
-25% The relic is probably not an inauthentic fabrication
-45% It is more likely than not that the relic is an inauthentic fabrication
-50% The chances that the relic is an inauthentic fabrication is about even
-55% The relic is more likely than not to be an inauthentic fabrication
-75% The relic is probably an inauthentic fabrication
-95% The relic is very highly likely to be an inauthentic fabrication
-100% The relic is definitely an inauthentic fabrication

mountainman

Have a look at the notes, tutorials, blogs and article by Richard Carrier and others in reference such as this one:

Bayes’ theorem and the Jesus mythicism-historicity conflict Filed under: HISTORIOGRAPHY — Neil Godfrey.

This is also actually very relevant to this thread.