aa5874

You did not answer my question.

"If there were never elephants in your yard, what evidence would you expect"?

I did not ask what you would conclude.

There were no elephants in your yard and you are looking for elephant evidence. What do you expect to find?

patcleaver

I am assuming that you are only discussing foreign elephants and not some pre-historic North American elephants. There have never been elephants in the vast majority of back yards in the US. Based on what I know about zoos and circuses and how they operate and the history of of zoos and circuses that I know of, I would guess that elephants have not been in the back yard of even 1 in every 100,000 back yards here.

I cannot think of any reason that the probability of elephants in my backyard would be higher than average, and I can think of substantial reasons that the probability of elephants in my backyard should be lower than average such as that my backyard was a wilderness forest 20 years ago and the area is surrounded by cliffs that even goats could not climb. There has never been any zoo or circus within 30 miles of this area.

So I would guess that the probability of elephants having been in my backyard is probably far less than 1 in a million, but it is possible.

The probability of a God being in my backyard is zero because conventional Gods are impossible.

mountainman

Dear aa5874,

I enjoy your questions. Please keep them up. Will you accept the statistical distribution of radio-carbon dating citations on the appropriate evidence as at least one item on the check-list of possible answers to such question. A graph of such known citations may then exemplify both the evidence (by a cross for example, with a date on it) and the absence of evidence (by the absence of crosses with dates on them).

Generalising my response, the same sort of graph could be theoretically prepared in respect of the evidence of architecture (as in shrines, and temples and sanctuaries and basilcas and other buildings and monuments), the coinage of the emperors, the art work (murals, frescoes, decorations, etc), certainly inscriptions in the greek and the latin (and all other languages appropriate, such as Coptic and Syriac),
mosaics, engavings, certainly papyri fragments (separated by category of dating, with certain dates (ie: explicit) and those dated via their handwriting characteristics (ie: Paleography), also perhaps sarcophagi, burial relics, funerary ornaments, art, paintings, graffitti, sculpture, reliefs, ornamental works and all other forms of archeological relics and other citations.

Now, if we were to prepare a graph of the evidence for all these things and be able to zoom around it, as it were, in some hypothetical logic vehicle which did not have any preconceived notion of what the ancient historical evidence is trying to tell us, then we might be able to prepare a few maps.

My bet is that we are going to find a boundary event (ie: a clear demarcation and explosion of absence and evidence) between the "absence of evidence" and "evidence for the presence of the canonical Universal (within the Hubble Limit) Roman new testament designed for its academic Greek audience. But when did this happen? What do the graphs (above and below) say?


Best wishes,


Pete

spamandham

In general, evidence for absence of X includes any evidence that is not logically/probabilistically compatible with "X is true".

For example, suppose it were claimed that there are drug dealers.

You go out searching, and can find no drug dealers, nor can you find anyone who will admit to knowing a drug dealer. We must now conclude that there are no drug dealers, right?

No, because you see drugs proliferated everywhere, the idea of drug dealers is an ordinary idea, and dealers simply must be involved. The proliferation itself is the evidence.

This is why so many people disagree with your positions in Paul and Jesus...they see evidence they think is incompatible with your assertions, even though it's indirect. You would be better served by pointing out why that evidence isn't incompatible with your ideas, rather than robotically repeating "there are no unapologetic sources..."

I and I's JM

What if the elephant took such big steps that it just stepped over your hard?


And if we want to get technical, elephant footprints doesn't mean elephants were in your backyard, it just means that elephant footprints are in your backyard, then you make a logical assumption of a past event based on something you can sense in the present. It is a very logical assumption, but it can be no more than an assumption.

spamandham

...but what about the probability of Ganesha in your backyard? :Cheeky:

gurugeorge

Bingo, excellent post.

aa5874

You need to answer the very simple questions, if Jesus and Paul never lived, never existed, what evidence of them would you expect to find?

If Jesus and Paul never existed, never lived, what evidence of them would you expect to find in the writings of Philo, and in the writings of Josephus?

If Jesus and Paul never lived, never existed, what evidence of them would expect to find in all the non-apologetic sources of antiquity?

If Jesus and Paul never lived, never existed, what evidence of them would you find in artifacts or archaelogical findings of antiquity?

If you were never born, never existed, what evidence of you would I be expected to find?

Or, simply, what is the evidence for absence?

And, I did not investigate the existence of the characters called Jesus and Paul to prevent people from disagreeing with me. I am not an evangelist or a missionary for Jesus and Paul. I do not expect a reward or go to heaven.

Billions of people will never agree with my finding that Jesus and Paul are fiction since they were taught from childhood by people who are regarded as godly, truthful and of good-standing in society that the NT is true.

If you were never born, never lived, what evidence of you would I be expected to find?

spamandham

I wouldn't expect to find credible evidence of them if they didn't exist, but I might expect to find evidence that counters the proposition "Jesus and Paul were historical". Evidence like that would be compelling evidence of absence.

For example, "Paul" never quotes from Jesus, he never defers to Jesus for any of his moral arguments, and other than a couple of questionable "born of a woman" and "death unto a cross" type statements, he never refers to the life of Jesus. This is evidence that "Paul" has no knowledge of a historical Jesus and is in conflict with the claim "Jesus was historical".

The name change from "Simon" to "Paul" mildly counters the claim "Paul was historical", because the simplest explanation for the name change, is that Paul is a composite character.

These are the types of arguments you could be using to build a case for your proposed scenario, if you were interested in persuading others.

aa5874

So, if I cannot find any credible evidence for Jesus and Paul, would it be reasonable to claim Jesus and Paul did not exist?