ApostateAbe

I have often brought up "explanatory power" as a reason for favoring one historical explanation over another. Some have challenged my use of this principle, or even the principle itself, and I take the principle to be very important, so I would like to talk about it in detail. The criterion comes from the methodology of "Argument to the Best Explanation," presented by C. Behan McCullagh in Justifying Historical Descriptions, 1984, on page 19. It is only one of five criteria, and they are each outlined on Wikipedia (Historical Method: Argument to the best explanation). Here it is:

The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.

The phrase, "observation statements," is another way of saying, "pieces of evidence."

So, there are a set of ways to rephrase this same principle.

• The hypothesis must expect the evidence and little of any other alternatives.
• The hypothesis should better predict the evidence--and the "prediction" may apply to evidence observed even before the formulation of the hypothesis ("retrodiction").
• Given the hypothesis, what is the probability that this evidence would exist? A higher probability speaks better for the hypothesis.

It is a principle that I believe we all implicitly accept and apply, I don't know if anyone would disagree with this principle for use in the debate about the existence of Jesus, but I will provide an example to demonstrate the utility of the criterion.

About 65 million years ago, there was a mass-extinction event that wiped out almost all of the dinosaurs (leaving only the ancestors of birds), called the K-T Extinction Event. The established paleontological explanation for this event is that an asteroid struck the Earth, drastically changing the global climate. There are many lines of evidence for this, but the primary evidence is a much greater concentration of iridium in the 70-million-year-old layer of all relevant geological sites. Iridium in the Earth is rare, but it is abundant in most asteroids. Therefore, a strong possibility is that an asteroid struck the Earth. However, there could be other explanations. For example, though iridium is rare, there are pockets of concentrated iridium in some locations of the Earth's crust. Therefore, maybe a very large volcano erupted above one of these pockets of iridium and blanketed the Earth with iridium-laden ash.

Which explanation is more probable? We wouldn't be able to decide without the principle of explanatory power. In one formulation of the pair of competing explanations,

1) An asteroid struck the Earth.
2) A very large volcano erupted.

If the iridium is explained by an asteroid striking the Earth, the explanatory power is very high. All asteroid pieces that have been chemically studied contain high concentrations of iridium. It doesn't mean that all asteroids contain iridium, but the explanatory power of this explanation is about the same as the percentage of asteroids that contain iridium, let's say 95% at a minimum. On the other hand, the eruption of a very large volcano has very low explanatory power, because pockets of iridium in the Earth's crust are scarce. I don't know exactly how scarce, but let's say there is only a 2% chance of a given very large volcano being just above a pocket of iridium. That would mean the explanatory power of the second hypothesis is only 2%.

There is a way to re-mask the improbability of the second hypothesis and greatly increase the explanatory power. Just rewrite it with more detail:

1) An asteroid struck the Earth.
2) A very large volcano erupted just above a pocket of iridium in the Earth's crust.

The explanatory power of the second hypothesis is now close to 100%. Given the second hypothesis, there is a very high probability that it would spread iridium all over the planet. However, it trades the advantage of increased explanatory power for an equal disadvantage: plausibility. There is only a 2% probability that a very large volcano would happen to be just above a pocket of iridium.

Therefore, the criterion does stand on its own--an unlikely hypothesis may have excellent explanatory power, but that may be at the cost of accepting the great disadvantage concerning plausibility or less ad hoc or other criteria.

The Biblicist Christian historical model for the evidence of the gospels, in fact, seems to score excellently on the criteria of explanatory power, explanatory scope and less ad hoc. However, its lack of plausibility effectively kills its probability. You can't get much less plausible than miracles.

Any disagreement about any of this?

aa5874

This is EXTREMELY odd. Remember you said we CAN'T TRUST the NT Gospels? Do you remember?

Now, please TELL US the FINAL score for the probability of the existence of Jesus when one USES evidence that WE CAN'T TRUST?

Now, please TELL us the FINAL score for the probability for the non-existence of Jesus when one USES evidence of mythology?

ApostateAbe, you are wasting time. You know that you FIRST must find a credible historical source for your Jesus.

Sheshbazzar

Asteroids and volcano's are real, while all gods are the imaginary creations of men.
Stories and theories about asteroids and volcano's are credible, whereas all stories and theories about an imaginary biblegod are uncredible.

Two entirely different subjects, what holds for one, does not hold for the other.
Reasoning that deals with real and physical objects, forces, and events, has no application to lying magical 'miracles', immaterial invisible 'ghosts' 'gods', and other invisible and undetectable phantasmagorical beings such as Angels, Cherubim and Seraphim's, demons, and devils.

You have NO case unless you can provide a credible contemporary witness to these claimed religious 'historical' events outside of these fabricated Biblical texts; Not one sentence of which is to be trusted.
The testimony of a perjured false witness cannot be employed to validate that same witnesses testimony.
Find something better than Bible verses to make your case.

ApostateAbe

I am with you, mostly. Are you with me on the point that we can use explanatory power and associated criteria to find the best explanations for evidence reflecting ancient religious myths? If so, are you also with me on the point that the best explanation either may or may not involve actual historical persons, places or things? If not, then why not?

Sheshbazzar

So then you wish me to accept as 'the best explanation' for Mormonism, is that Moroni was an actual historical person?
After all there could not be a Mormon religion unless there was a Moroni, so 'the best explanation' is that there was a real Moroni.

Sorry Abe, I ain't buying that faulty line of reasoning. Not about Moroni, and not about Jebus.

ApostateAbe

That's cool by me. Is your answer to my first question, "No," then? Or what?

spin

This thread has nothing directly to do with BC&H.

We have to blame Peter Kirby for the thread's existence, as Peter is responsible for the existence of the Wiki page from where "best explanation" was derived.

The first of the seven conditions is just as important as the others:

[T2]The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)[/T2]
Crash, boom, like a lead balloon...

While we're here:

[T2]The hypothesis must be of ''greater explanatory scope'' than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.[/T2]
Given that no "observation statements" (as per the definition in previous citation) are provided in the efforts of ApostateAbe, this one also goes down like the Hindenburg.

[T2]The hypothesis must be ''of greater explanatory power'' than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements. [/T2]
None doesn't equal "a greater variety of observation statements." ApostateAbe has provided not a single "observation statement".

[T2]The hypothesis must be ''more plausible'' than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.[/T2]
He has supplied no criteria for his claims that his views are ''more plausible''. He has merely assumed more plausibility for his historyless analyses.

And so on. One needs historical evidence to do historical research. That evidence falls into what the original writer called "observation statements". What ApostateAbe has been empty handed about was just that: no evidence.

Sheshbazzar

"What"; I'm not about to play your game and supply "YES" or "NO" answers to your loaded questions.

Frankencaster

Jesus was beamed down by aliens, crucified and his body beamed back up to the spaceship after three days.

I made it up

I'm a geologist...irridium having a possible terrestrial or asteroid origin is not made up.

Zombie Jesus explained by gospels or UFOs is not an explanation of anything but a fantasy. The fantasy can change to fit anything, Reality can't .

Only a silver bullet can kill a werewolf. Why not only a gold bullet can kill a werewolf? Neither have any sense in reality.

ApostateAbe

OK, what do you find wrong with that? Seems to me that it is a very basic necessity that your hypothesis must explain the evidence. The part you put in italics is seems to clarify that the hypothesis, all by itself isolated from all other knowledge, would not necessarily explain the evidence--you would kinda need a few other facts of the universe. For example, you might explain a news story of a fireman saving a baby with the hypothesis that there was a fireman who actually saved a baby. But, that wouldn't be an explanation without also in part some of the well-accepted facts including that firemen are generally human beings who can carry things. I don't know how you interpret that italicized part.