mountainman

Yes, and if you were a good and thorough and systematic researcher you might also gather and discuss at least some data which does not support your hypothesis, and that would be negative evidence.

If you just list all positive evidence your hypothesis is probably too good to be true
If your hypothesis is unfalsifiable then it cannot be of much value ....




I am using this definition .....

Evidence in support of a proposition/claim/hypothesis is positive evidence;
evidence against the same proposition/claim/hypothesis is negative evidence.



In this discussion I have referred to that scenario as NULL evidence.



No that's right. But I am applying that principle to any one hypothesis, in that I am defining evidence in support of the hypothesis as positive evidence, while evidence against the same hypothesis is negative evidence.


Most hypotheses should have a FOR and AGAINST balance sheet for the assessment of all the evidence. There should always be expected that there will be evidence both (+) for and against (-) any one hypothesis.


I hope this makes sense.

mountainman

So according to your argument we simply dismiss all the forgeries and then assess the amount of what is deemed "genuine authentic evidence", and allow this to be represented via Carrier, in a Bayesian equation.

Do you have any idea of the amount of evidence that needs to be dismissed?

IOW are you able to offer a ratio between the amount of hypothetical evidence that is still recognised as "genuine and authentic" and the amount of hypothetical evidence that has been classed as forged or fabricated, and is to be, according your argument, simply dismissed as having zero value in the investigation.

Do you think the aim of the investigation is to find positive evidence for claim for the historical jesus, or to arrive at the historical truth concerning the question of his existence? Obviously there are many agendas, and these appear in the nature of the hypotheses and claims.

Toto

Why not?

Why does that matter?

Totally irrelevant. You could dismiss 99% of the proffered evidence as forged, but if the 1% remaining is good, you would still call that good evidence and base your conclusion on it.

Different investigators may start off with different aims. Whatever the aim, the conclusions will be tested by neutral criteria.

aa5874

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumen...ative_evidence

There is such a thing as "Negative evidence" so I really don't know what people here are arguing about for months.

mountainman

Because you and I know that some people will defend the notion that any one of these generally condemned forgeries is actually positive evidence, or partially positive evidence (such as the TF). Therefore the way I see the compete and exhaustive Carrier's Bayesian equation is that it has a whole truckload of the generally dismissed evidence at the end of it. According to your argument, if the forgeries are to be assessed with zero value, they dont change your result, but they allow other independent positions on any of these forgeries, such as for example the TF, to use the same Bayesian Equation and allocate to that item, some positive value.




In what other field of human discipline are there so many forgeries? This fact is itself a form of negative evidence which has generally been ignored. The paper trail of "Christian Origins" is perhaps the planet's greatest forgery mill. The stats indicate the degree.



The scenario is by no means irrelevant. You are an investigator at a crime scene characterized by truckloads of forgery. Someone hands you 100 birth certificates for Jesus, Paul, the Apostles, some Church Fathers and a bunch of local "Saints", but the back-office report says 99 of these are forgeries. Are you telling me you are going to walk into the Chief's office with the apparently genuine birth-certficate and make a case with it? Dont you think that the investigator should make an attempt to explain the 100:1 ratio of forgeries to "apparently genuine evidence items"?

mountainman

Thanks aa5874. What do you think may be meant by the phrase positive evidence about something of an unpleasant nature? What might be an example or two? Would a forgery fit this description?

Toto

Why are you confusing the issue? If we agree that something is forged, we dismiss it. There is no such complete agreement on the TF.


No it is not a form of negative evidence. It is just evidence that later Christians felt free to manufacture evidence for one point of view. It provides no evidence, positive or negative, about what happened in the first century.

You can find forged evidence in lots of other situations - George Washington's Prayer Book, the cherry tree, lots of other fake evidence on the Christianity of American Presidents. Look at the history of any European country, and you can find fakes, forgeries, legends. Christians have just been around longer.



You have constructed a hypothetical case - but why was that one document deemed genuine and not a forgery? That's the only evidence you need to consider.

mountainman

There may not be such complete agreement on any one of the 99% of forged evidence. This evidence cannot be dismissed until the case is closed, and I am not sure that the case is closed yet. Rather than confusing the issue I am simplifying and clarifying the issue by pointing out that Carrier's Bayesian equation by necessity must represent all the evidence items in a sequence including the 99% of evidence deemed forged. It will be up to whoever uses this Bayesian equation to allocate zero values to the items that they consider forged, or alternatively anyone is free to allocate a small positive historicity value to a forged item they consider in fact may be genuine.


I remain unconvinced.

Each forged item represents a fraudulent claim for an authentic item which is later recognised as not legitimate evidence. In the case of reported events, the forged events are events which did not happen. Josephus did not mention Jesus, etc. I see this as a list of negative evidence, not neutral evidence and not positive evidence.


The "Great Silence of the first century" is negative evidence against any claims that anything happened in the saga of the history of Christian origins in the 1st century.

The fact that Christians (early or late ones - we dont know the century in which they appeared) manufactured evidence to support the position of the canonical orthodox heresiologists is against the Christians, not for them.


Everyone knows that. What they dont know is how long.
This is the important question to answer with the evidence available.
The evidence available consists of 99% forgeries, with 1% questionable.







I'd be taking the one document back to the back-office and asking them to run an exhaustive second check.

J-D

What is your justification for saying that?

mountainman

Two example arguments:

A Silence That Screams [freethoughtpedia]

The Christ - John E. Remsberg - Chapter 2; Silence of Contemporary Writers