Amaleq13

Why do you keep asking this stupid question when the stupidity of it has been amply demonstrated in this thread several times?

It boggles no one's mind but your own.

1. He impressed a relative few with apparent magic tricks and impressive teaching.

2. His closest and most devout followers couldn't handle his sudden and humiliating death so they convinced themselves he had turned the horrible defeat into victory.

3. They subsequently convinced others with their own apparent magic tricks and stories of Jesus.

4. Paul convinces himself he's been persecuting in error and discovers a gold mine by changing the focus to an exclusive emphasis on the risen Christ and selling it to god-fearing gentiles.

5. Belief in the risen Christ grows in popularity.

6. Lack of biographical information inspires the first attempt to write a story about the life that ended with the risen Christ.

7. Fast forward past centuries of in-fighting, forgery, and deception to the various modern interpretations of "Christianity".

And still no reason to assume anybody in this story actually had magical powers.

Because using mud and spit to perform magic is obviously more incredible than simply performing the magic without props? :rolling:

So they weren't believed capable of magic until after they became famous? Isn't that the notion you are arguing against? :huh:

Diogenes the Cynic

This is an absolutely irrelevant distinction, and it's not even true. Lots of complete nobodies were believed to have had magical powers. They still are.

You haven't explained how those who believed the Jesus stories were supposed to have been able to verify them. If you can't show that they had any means of verifying them, then your whole thesis (as weak as it already is) completely falls apart.

Even Paul never said he saw proof. He said he got his info from his on hallucinations.

You're also still hampered by that extremely inconvenient fact that miracles are impossible. Impossible hypotheses can never be preferred to possible ones.

Incidentally, you still haven't shown any evidence that Jesus' initial noteriety had anything to do with a reputation for mgic tricks. The attribution of miracles to Jesus seems to have been a much later accretion.

The same thing happened with the historical Buddha.

Diogenes the Cynic

I should probably add that it's entirely possible that Jesus did have a reputation as a faith healer and an exorcist. Such individuals were a dime a dozen then, and still are. It doesn't mean they're actually doing anything miraculous, though, and even today, there are millions of people who fall not only for faith healing performances, but psychics, mediums and the like. I've even seen people who are convinced that straight up stage magicians like Criss Angel and David Blaine are real.

freetrader

gdeering:

I'm not saying he is "God's son" (or that he isn't). If he did have the power I'm suggesting, then he wasn't "uninteresting". If he is still alive and has that kind of power, then that makes him interesting, I'd say.

But I won't try to go beyond the point I'm making here, which is that it's a good possibility that he really did do miracles, because this seems to best explain the facts we have. Making this point is enough work without trying to expound further on it.


The word "miracle" is a problem. It doesn't necessarily mean anything about God, in the arguments I'm giving. God may be there somewhere, or maybe not. One could be an agnostic and still agree with the arguments I'm giving.

Instead of "miracle" I might have used a phrase like "highly-improbable and apparent superhuman act" or something like that. Especially the healing acts done outside the realm of known medical science.


If those acts really did occur, they were not considered ho-hum. They were just as unprecedented to them as they would be to us today. If a healer really did have extensive power to heal today (or any other time) it would have a strong impact on the society where it happens.

They were not "miracle-fatigued". Perhaps repeated unproved claims would have a fatiguing effect, but not if the events really happened.

Do you mean the miracle stories that ended up in the Gospels were previously passed by word-of-mouth? That sounds likely, and if those accounts were untrue and there had been no such miracle acts, then the mere fiction stories of them would have had the fatiguing effect you suggest and would have been forgotten (or perhaps all summed up in one phrase somewhere with little or nothing said about the performer of the alleged acts).


That word "supernatural" is also a problem. Maybe "superhuman" is a little better, or "supernormal" or "paranormal". Whatever it's called, I don't know if it can be proved, but I think there are enough cases of such reported events to conclude that such things have probably happened. But still, most reported "supernatural" events probably did not happen.

I don't see how anyone can claim that the "supernatural" has to be limited to Jesus. But what might be unique to him would be an extreme power to perform such acts which surpasses all the other known cases. That would be a reasonable possibility, but not saying that only he ever did such acts.


If you mean miracle acts totally unlike any others, then I doubt they are so unique. But what could be unique is the extent of his power to do the healing acts, such as an unusually-high success rate. Perhaps some earlier healer or prophet performed similar acts but had a very low success rate (successes vs. failures). This is my best conjecture about the uniqueness of Jesus.


If you mean Hebrew prophecies fulfilled by Jesus, it's interesting, but whether he can be tied in to those or not, it's a good possibility that he performed the miracle healing acts, and maybe it does not matter whether he was descended from David or was the "suffering servant" of Isaiah and so on. I don't think those Hebrew prophecy tie-ins are necessary to establish that he had power such as we see in the NT accounts.


A good explanation of all the ideas that converged here is that he really did perform the miracle acts, and he did this on a grand scale, so that he quickly became noticed favorably and everyone wanted to use him as a vehicle for their ideology.

So he attracted not only Jewish ideas (messianist and zealot and pharisee and essene) but also gnostic and Greek ideas -- every faction floating around, both before his elimination and later as well, wanted to identify with him because of his power.

But if he did not have any such power, and thus was only another sidewalk preacher, it's hard to explain how all these different schools came to be connected with him in the NT accounts. What attracted them to him? Why did they all want to jump in and put their words into his mouth?


I'll stick to the easier questions, like what caused this convoluted hodgepodge to come about.


Whether a miracle-worker per se is needed or not, the kind of power shown in the healing acts and also in the resurrection give a hopeful sign, or it's good if that kind of power exists.


You mean today there are no witnesses to what happened back then (there were witnesses at that time, if the accounts are to be believed). Obviously there are no witnesses today to anything that happened centuries ago.


How about: the "real miracle" is the actual event when it happened, whereas the word-of-mouth legend is the later report about it or the later talking about it. Some of the legends are false, but others are true. And maybe the most common legends are those in which an essential core element in the legend is true, but other fictional parts got added to it later.

The Jesus legend is probably one with a core of truth to which fictional elements were later added.

Past events can be tough to verify. All we have is more probable and less probable. As a practical matter I guess you can say some past events are known with total certainty. If that's what "verified" refers to, then there's far more history that is unverified than verified, far more than just miracle accounts.

freetrader

Amaleq13:

Well, you know there are thousands of anecdotes. You could argue that no truth can be claimed unless it is certified by some established body of scientists who investigated it and put their seal of approval on it. I don't see much point in arguing how much verification is necessary in order to make a truth claim finally and officially established.

If claim 1 is attested by 10,000 anecdotes and claim 2 is attested by only 20 or 30, then claim 1 has more precedent than claim 2, all else being equal.

I don't know of any survey, but I'm sure there are more anecdotes for healing events than for something like walking on water. So I give more credence to the healing claims than to the walking-on-water claims. This is a reasonable judgment to make just on the basis of the anecdotes alone.


Every "reported case" gives a tiny increment more of credibility to a particular claim. Rational inquiry does not demand that every claim has to first be certified by a national board of scientists. The more a certain claim is investigated and confirmed by another team of scientists I agree its credibility is increased.

But there's nothing wrong with believing people generally who say they did this or saw that or went here or there and so on -- yes, it would increase the credibility of everyday claims if we hired a certified detective to investigate every claim someone makes, including what they ate for breakfast, in order to establish stronger proof that the claim is true.

Generally, if someone says they recovered from an illness, it's reasonable to take their word without having to commission a board of scientists to confirm the claim. If they claim something about what caused the recovery, one might be more skeptical, but certainly in many cases such a claim is believable. As the claims become more improbable one becomes more skeptical. But to throw out all claims or anecdotes entirely is hardly rational.

Whatever supreme board of experts you claim as the final authority on what is and what is not true and no matter what rulings they hand down or who they overrule, those 10,000 anecdotes still carry some weight, even if they are offset by other evidence.

If the team of scientific experts rules that the claim supported by 10,000 anecdotes is false, then the probability for that claim goes down, maybe from 60% to 20%, e.g., but if the number of anecdotes was only a dozen or so, then the probability would drop even lower, like to only 3 or 4%. Obviously such percentage numbers cannot be calculated precisely, but at least in theory there is a way to do those calculations if enough data could be gained and proper values assigned to all the individual factors known.


What you're saying is also gossip. But that doesn't mean it carries no weight. I'll try to take your points (your "gossip") into account in future arguments. I don't agree that all "gossip" has to be discounted..


What about biofeedback? Is that one of the "hoaxes"? No doubt you're aware of many procedures or disciplines which use mental processes, and you know the advocates claim to have done tests and measurements to confirm their benefits.

You can reasonably reject their claims and say they've not been tested by the best scientists or by the most rigorous standards. But that they were tested on subjects who claim to have been cured or benefited does increase its probability to a higher level than if there had been no testing and little or no testimony from subjects.

In some cases the evidence offered sounds as convincing as that offered by the medical community for their standard recognized procedures. Obviously the standard medical practices have a failure rate which undermines the claims of doctors that they know how to heal.

The popular belief that doctors cure people is partly just folklore, because in many or most cases the patients would have recovered just as soon anyway without the doctor. So we can be just as skeptical about the recognized established medical practitioners as about the more offbeat ones.

The only thing we know for sure about all the practitioners is that they get well paid for their craft and probably get rich -- that much is well documented and beyond dispute.


I'll keep that piece of additional "gossip" handy, and next time someone makes "therapeutic touch" claims, I'll subtract a few percentage points from the probability I would otherwise have assigned to their claim to have studied and measured and proved it beyond all doubt. Not knowing the Absolute Truth as you do, the best I can do is keep adding and subtracting estimated probability percentage points to this and that claim.


You too are obsessed with why the gullible ones were duped and ignore the ones who were duping them. You're not explaining how the belief spread if you only notice the ones being proselytized and ignore the ones doing the proselytizing.

The question needing to be answered is why the proselytizers used the Galilean Jesus figure as the central object for their new cult, or how they happened to come upon this unlikely choice as their messiah figure. This choice is so irregular (assuming Jesus actually did no miracle acts) that the probability of it might be lower than the more obvious possibility that he actually did such acts.


Surely those same good feelings and well-being would have been more easily gained by choosing Zoroaster or any number of other popular messiah figures and prophets and saviors who had a vastly wider reputation at the time.


An established Greek or Roman god was just as capable of offering eternal bliss and would have been much more readily acceptable to the targeted audience.


"Christianity" perhaps would have been successful anyway, even without the Jesus figure. The "mystery" is not why Christianity spread, but why did it adopt this particular unlikely Galilean rather than someone of higher repute to be its messiah figure. This is the question we need an answer to.

Perhaps there's no way to judge how fast "Christianity" would have spread if it had adopted some other messiah figure than this one.


But the choice of this messiah figure is also unlikely and unprecedented. By my calculation, this choice is so unique that its probability is 20.3% lower than the likelihood of Jesus actually having performed miracle acts, which provides the explanation why they chose him. (But after considering your argument, I've recalculated that to 20.1%.)

freetrader

Toto:


Well, at least this is a little progress toward the real question. However, this still does not focus on what is driving the inventors, the proselytizers or the ones who shaped the new cult for selling it to the intended market.

What was this "religion" that "formed around a mythical Christ". Who were these people? Was the "Christ" they formed around understood by them to be the historic Galilean Jesus figure, or was it some abstract idea? And who invented the story of Jesus with the miracle-filled career? Or rather, why did they choose this particular figure?

Why did they make a him a Jew from Galilee? And why didn't they choose a real figure instead who had a wide reputation? Did they know the figure they came up with was a fiction? Or did they believe in the figure themselves? Did they know they were back-dating the story?

In other words, they knew they were foisting a "hoax" -- I don't reject that possibility, I just want to know if they knew they were doing that. And if they knew, what was their reason for doing this? Why did they consciously choose to foist a deception? Was it to serve a social function? How did this approach serve such a function?



Well the debate's over. Everything I said has been disproved in the above book, so we can forget all this and go fishing.

Toto

I assume you mean this to be sarcastic, but, yeah, everything you have said has been disproven, if not by Carrier, by some investigator. There are actual studies of supernatural claims of healing, of supernatural events in general, based on real investigation and not pulling arbtrary percentages out of your ear.

There are sociologists who have studied the formation of new religions. There are historians who have studied religion in the Roman Empire. If you want to do some background reading, it might make this discussion a little more productive for all concerned.

Amaleq13

And you should know that anecdotal evidence is incapable of producing reliable conclusions. This is Logic 101, amigo. Your entire post reflects profound ignorance of the fundamentals.

Anecdotal_evidence

That would be great but less support, as long as it is credible, would certainly be an improvement over the unsubstantiated gossip you currently offer.

Translation: You don't have anything even vaguely resembling credible support so your only hope is to irrationally disparage the notion that unsubstantiated claims require support.

And neither has any greater claim to credibility. The sooner you figure that you, the closer to rational thought you will be.

There is nothing reasonable about accepting unsubstantiated gossip. Your standards for truth are far too low. No wonder you believe silly things.

Wrong. Every confirmed case provides credibility to the claim. A single unsubstantiated claim is worth zero. Multiply that as many times as you please but the answer will not change.

Your approach simply cannot differentiate between superstition and genuine efficacy and that makes it unacceptable to anyone rational.

True and neither do I. Rational inquiry does, however, require that unsubstantiated claims be supported with more than their bare existence. Please stop this ridiculous pretense that you are being subject to some unreasonable burden.

You've got nothing but unsubstantiated gossip to support the notion of the existence of some sort of healing power. As I already mentioned, every attempt to scientifically study the phenomenon I've ever heard of has failed to support the existence of such a power. That is deeply problematic as far as any truly rational inquiry is concerned.

It is entirely rational when the claims or anecdotes run contrary to known facts and lack any substantiating evidence. To pretend otherwise is simply foolish.

freetrader

spamandham:

You're saying the same basic argument I'm giving for claiming the Jesus miracles must have really happened can also be given for any claims of miracles having happened. In other words, the same basic logic can be applied to any other such claim, making it fit the details or particulars of that claim and forcing the conclusion that those miracles must have really happened in order to explain something that is unique to that example of a claimed miracle event, and of course there's always something unique or special in every example of anything or any event or any claim.

The best way to test that theory is to have an example of such a miracle story and see how such an argument would be made in that example. Without a specific example, it's not really clear what the logic is, or rather, whether the logic would really be compelling in the other cases you're suggesting.

Someone else will have to provide the example -- someone who really wants to prove this point.

What I will do here is once more present the argument as it applies to the Jesus case:

Yes, there's lots of miracle stories -- and we generally don't believe them because we know such stories get fabricated in one way or another.

But the Jesus case stands apart from the other examples and cannot be explained the same way those other cases can be explained. The usual explanation is as follows:

Miracle stories are invented and attached to certain prominent figures who at the time had a long-standing reputation and were highly regarded and had a long career of developing a following of disciples or admirers who are then confirmed in their devotion to their hero and who use these stories to further propagate the fame of the revered leader.

Such stories are thus used to strengthen and solidify an already-existing reputation and expand the hero's aura which was strong already and is now made stronger still.

The purpose for thus attaching the miracle stories to the hero is clear, and the motivation is clear. The ones doing this already are devoted to the hero and want to enhance his greatness even more. Even if the miracles are obviously fiction, they want to believe he has such power and will overlook any discrepancies and will suppress their doubts and do whatever is necessary to get the stories established for the good of the cause.

That's more or less how it happens. But in the case of Jesus it did not happen this way. He was not a glorious figure with a grand reputation and long illustrious career. Therefore we must find another explanation of how the miracle stories got attached to him, who attached them to him and why.

Lacking any such credible explanation, the best one is that he actually did do the miracles which were witnessed by a sufficient number that his reputation as a miracle-worker spread without anyone planning it or scheming to enhance his reputation, and the word of his miracles spread spontaneously until he accumulated a following, even after he was gone, and the various cults and factions attached their ideas to him and put their words into his mouth so that his fame as a wise teacher also spread and he became made into a god.

So this is how the logic leads to the conclusion that he must have really done the miracles, even though we usually assume that the miracle stories attached to a figure were added later -- in this case that explanation doesn't work, so we fall back on the only remaining explanation, even though improbable for most cases, and yet in this case it is the only explanation, as all the others are even more improbable than this one.

Now can this same logic be applied to any case of a reputed miracle-worker to lead to the same conclusion that the miracle stories attached to him must be true because no other hypothesis will suffice to explain something that has to be explained, such as how the miracle accounts could have come about?

Let us have such an example and look at the logic and the details of how that conclusion is reached. It's probably not true that this same argumentation can be applied to other examples of reputed miracle-workers.

But we have to see the example to be sure. What's the best example you can come up with?

And a further point why your theory is probably wrong, i.e., your theory that this same logic or this same argument would apply to any example of a reputed miracle-worker, thus proving that the miracles must be true:

Suppose the facts were different. Suppose e.g. that Jesus had enjoyed a long public career, let's say 30 years or longer in which to accumulate a large band of disciples who became devoted to him, because of his charisma, and they started making up miracle stories about him.

With this being the case, and perhaps all else being the same, with the same preaching (or sermons put into his mouth by later writers) and the same eventual arrest and crucifixion, the argument I'm giving would not hold and I would have to admit that those miracle stories got attached to him along the same pattern that similar miracle stories have been attached to other reputed figures and celebrities. So in that case I'd not have any argument like I have here to claim that he must have done miracles.

Only if some new element was added, like for example if some archaeological evidence was left, perhaps extensive eye-witness accounts going way beyond anything we have, very reliable in some way, then perhaps that evidence could be cited to prove that in this singular case the miracle stories must be true, because there's so much more reliable evidence. But without that, with all else being the same except that his preaching career lasts 30+ years, this argument could not be made.

So it seems not the case that you can just tweek this argument around this way or that to fit any case of a reputed miracle-worker. But let's have an example of such a miracle-worker or miracle story if someone thinks otherwise.


Of course there is creativity in the domain of religion. Such as great works of art and music and architecture. Who can deny that? But what kind of creativity are you suggesting that would cause miracle stories to be invented in a way that goes contrary to all the other known cases of inventing miracle stories?

Creativity in music and art is much different than creativity in conjuring up miracle stories to be attributed to an unknown figure, rather than to a reputed prophet or hero with an established reputation -- what were these creative persons thinking? Was it a deliberate deception they were planning, or was it subconscious without any plan? Don't creative people see or envision the final product they're putting together? It's known revered heros who inspire art, not someone obscure and of low repute.



I guess you mean that if we agree that 5 years of public life is long enough for a miracle-worker prophet hero to accumulate his following, so he could start as a nobody and then with enough talent earn his reputation in that time frame, then it's possible his disciples would add the miracle stories and make him famous and that could explain how he would finally be elevated to godhood status in a short time -- and then you're adding the further observation that there isn't really that much difference between 3 years and 5 years, so maybe Jesus just went the 5-year route but managed to squeeze it into 3 years.

This is playing around a lot with hypothetical numbers. All these are "rounded-off" figures. Let's nail this down better -- it's too loose:

For one thing, there is a shade-of-gray issue that enters this picture. For example, even though I suggested 5 years, that doesn't mean there's nothing unusual about a teacher that goes for only 5 years and gets snuffed out and is made into a god and gets miracle stories attached to him. In only 5 years also that would be quite remarkable. Possibly even 10 years. It's impossible to draw that line at one particular time point.

So let's not pounce on one figure like 5 years or 6 years or 3 years. I'd say if his public life had been 5 or 6 or 7 years, this argument would get to be more difficult to maintain. I think if it could be shown that he was active that long I never would have started thinking this and trying to develop this argument -- it would not be very persuasive, though one could still suggest that it's amazing how he achieved this much in such a short time span of only 5-7 years.

But I have to go a step further here. The strongest case can be made that his public career was only one year maximum, quite possibly less than one year.

I won't make the case at this point, but if someone wants to bring it up we can argue about it. I will point out that there are those who try to make the case that his public career actually was much much longer, beyond 10 years, some even trying to strrrrrrrrrrrrrretch it out to 15-20 years. You can find those arguments. I'll even give you a website (it seems to be defunct now, but you can read the arguments). The site is www.JesusPolice.com .

There is a list of topics down the right-hand column, giving various myths and linking to discussions on each of the listed points. One of the topics is something like "His public ministry was only 1-3 years".

In that discussion, they argue that one reason Jesus had to have had a much longer public ministry than only 1-3 years is that it's just not possible for a great teacher or prophet to amass a following such as Jesus had without being at it for a long time, like 15-20 years, and it's just incredible to think he could have pulled this off in only 1-3 years, absolutely impossible, so we must find a way to strrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrretch his public ministry out to more than 10 years. And it's pathetic some of the juggling of numbers they do and the antics they go through to add those extra years.

Most of the argument focuses on the figure of John the Baptizer who can be connected to Jesus and placed somewhat into a time frame, and they distort some alleged texts of Josephus to stretch out the point of this one's execution, to push back the arrest of Jesus to as late as 35 or 36 AD. But then at the lower end they play around with other numbers to push the beginning of Jesus' public life back to 26 AD but, not being satisfied with that, they do even further acrobatics to push his baptism by John way back to 5 or 6 AD, to give him a long career of 30 years or more.

So anyway, we can get into the numbers of how long or short his public career was. But the best evidence is that it was even less than one year. But as I said above, even 5 years would be impressive, or 6 or 7 or 8, and so on, but the longer this time period was, the weaker my argument becomes. All else being equal, if it was a 10-year period (or 9 years), there wouldn't be a strong case here. But when I found that the correct time period was one year maximum, this argument becomes very strong.


We needn't argue how popular Jesus was during his life -- I think he attracted unusually large crowds, but maybe that's not so important. But it's those followers "who popularized him later on" who are important. Why did they popularize him? What did they see in him? Do you mean Jews near Jerusalem? Or do you mean Paul and others who entered the scene later? Are these followers the ones who introduced the miracle stories?

If the miracle events really did take place, it explains why those followers proceeded to popularize him and spread the word. Such acts made a strong impression on them and drove them to such action. But without those acts, or something equally sensational, it's hard to explain why these "followers" would undertake this activity. What drove them, if not their memory of his miracle power? or if you mean 20-30 years later, then the second-hand reports of it from those who witnessed it directly?

spamandham

No, it doesn't. Bullshit best explains the facts we have. It's a simple explanation, and we know for a fact humans engage in it.

You ignore the simple explanations given here over and over. Why are you here?

If you are hoping to somehow convince people here that miracles are a reasonable alternative to normal mythmaking and religious BS, you are failing miserably.