Amaleq13

Please keep the focus on the evidence and arguments while avoiding personal jabs. Just a general reminder, folks. Many a good discussion have been derailed into an insult exchange.

Amaleq13, BC&H moderator

freigeister

He funny guy. He joke me.

Chili

This argument reminds of the 20-some honorary PhD's that were given to Margareth Mead to welcome the evidence that justified our sexual revolution that the masses ran away with and within 2 generations transformed into a near sterile civilization.

Now I never was a Puritan (far from it) but I realize that the priest must speak with urgency when he proclaims his message and it doesn't matter much if this is about sexual taboos or the historical Jesus. These are fundamentals of religion that are meant to serve us, and serve us well during our involutionary period while we go into the jungle of life = West.

After that we are on our own and should not interfere with the mandate of religion that got us thus far . . . or there might not be a "thus far" for the next generation or even 'be' a next generation. In fact, we are already importing this one.

Chili

Well that is too bad because "except [divine] intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge." This is a quote from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and you may read more about it here. The above quote is the conclusion found at the very end.

This kind of makes Daniet Dennet wrong, doesn't it?

youngalexander

It is seen by scientists as nothing of the sort provided that it supplies a better explanation of the known observations. Also that it is testable and leads to predictions which in turn may be tested.
It is because ID (for example), so spectacularly fails to do any of this that the scientific community reject it.

youngalexander

Aristotle seems to be a curious choice for a discussion of modern science. From my cursory examination of the link he appears to be equating science with mathmatics - proceeding from axioms. There is also the question of translation in general, but I shall allow more knowledgeable coves to deal with that.
Aristotle certainly does bang on about science, saying a great many strange things. For example;
Yup, certainly contradicts Dennet. However, I still prefer the latter. :wave:

Peter Kirby

Getting back to the topic:

Jacob, is there any way to test whether these criteria give us what we want: the truth of the matter that a writer did not believe in a human Jesus?

I have my ideas, but I'd like to hear what you think first.

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

Ted Hoffman

Yes they are able to do so IMO. Of course, degrees of certainty demanded in history are lower compared to sciences and that is why I have calibrated the criteria in percentiles.
If we get 75%, that indicates to us that we can be certain that the Christian writer in question embraced a Xstianity wiothout a HJ. I think the criteria can handle Ad Nationes quite well besides other potentially unwieldy candidates.
What do you have in mind?

Peter Kirby

I have in mind a test that will tell us whether the criteria's determination is accurate or sufficiently reliable. Simply saying that they will be accurate is not to test the validity of the criteria.

Let's call the hypothesis "a writer is a believer in a human Jesus" H. And the fact "a writer satisfies a sufficient number of these criteria" C.

What we want to know is Pr( ~H | C ), the probability that the writer is not a believer in a human Jesus given that he satisfies a sufficient number of the criteria. This is 1 - Pr( H | C ). We want Pr( H | C ) to be low, and Pr( ~H | C ) thus to be high.

By Bayes's Theorem,

Pr( H | C ) = Pr( C | H ) * Pr( H ) / Pr( C ).

How do we figure out Pr( C | H )? By a frequentist interpretation of probability, we would have to find all the cases of H and find out how many of them are also cases of C. The fraction of cases that are C would be the answer.

The other two variables, Pr( H ) and Pr( C )--the background probability of H and the fact of the degree to which the criteria are satisfied--depend on the particular case being examined. Pr( C ) should be either high or 1 if very many of the criteria are satisfied for a particular corpus.

Back to Pr( C | H ). Since we can't examine the writings of all people who accept or accepted a human Jesus, we will have to get a 'representative sample' of sorts. So I will take suggestions for the authors that should be on that list. The cutoff limit should probably be the mid 18th century, around which time we see the first mythicists who come from a different, rationalist perspective (if indeed there are mythicists before then).

Now, will Pr( C | H ) turn out to be zero? Will there be no cases, or at least no known cases, of human Jesus authors who satisfy the criteria? The very first criterion might seem to suggest so.

But this need not be the case. Consider, for example, an author who is living today and somehow managed to satisfy most of the criteria. We ask her, 'do you believe in a man named Jesus?' She says, 'yes.' What I'm getting at here is that there is at least the logical possibility that a person will satisfy the criteria and yet be an H. So Pr( C | H ) must be higher than zero. What it is exactly is open to empirical determination.

What my idea is, then, is this. The typical early Christian epistle is about 2000 words long, with a high end of about 10000 words. I suggest splitting the works of these H people into chunks of about 2000 words. Then the criteria are applied to each chunk. Then a kind of statistical or combinatorial analysis happens, either by hand or (better) by computer. The kind of analysis I currently have in mind is to take all the possible selections (this example is for a hypothetical author with about 20000 words): selections of 1 chunk of 10 (10 possible), selections of 2 chunks of 10 (45 possible) ... selections of 8 chunks of 10 (45 possible), selections of 9 chunks of 10 (10 possible), and a selection of all ten chunks (1 possible). If any of the given chunks within a selection satisfies the criteria, then that selection has a value of 1; if none of them do, that selection has a value of 0. Average the values of the selections, and you get a fraction, a probability value based on that one author. Do this for a dozen authors (authors that are not cherry picked of course), averaging each author's probability value, and you have something substantial that you are working with.

My hunch is that this will turn out well for your criteria, but I'd rather have more than a hunch.

(I welcome any corrections to the above by those who may be more able at this kind of thing. Also, if anyone has a better idea, I would like to hear it.)

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

Clivedurdle

Why is there any relationship between number of words and assumptions about HJ or not?

We are not agreed on the meaning of individual words - "flesh" for example!

We do not know how representative the existing "fossils" are - we do know there are huge gaps, and large chunks were deliberately caused, unlike fossilisation where the gaps and survivals are not deliberate.

Isn't there a major problem that everyone has assumed an HJ because that is the party line, and the odd gnostic or mystic who got accepted were allowed because sometimes it is useful some people to stray slightly from the straight and narrow.

Isn't the reality of xianity that it hasn't actually put that much emphasis on the living Jesus? The mass does not for example, it is very mystical.

Look at xian current practice - even the fundies talk of a personal relationship with Jesus - not a human but a spiritual being.

Is trying to identify xianities without an hj actually asking when and where and why did the hj concept became dominant?