Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 05-21-2011, 11:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

... The HJ explanation would be weak if there was an alternative explanation that is greater, in my opinion. I maintain that the evidence is never "weak." Nor can the evidence be "strong." Only the explanations can be strong or weak. The evidence in relation to a particular theory can be fitting, unfitting, relevant, or irrelevant, but not strong or weak.

I don't think that you will find any support for this idea among anyone, anywhere.

You seem to be unwilling to tolerate any possibility that there are things that we cannot know because there is no evidence. You don't want to think that there are conclusions that can only be tentative because we have a little evidence that points in one direction, but we might find more evidence that would lead to a different conclusion (which is the case for a lot of medical and scientific research.)

ApostateAbe · 05-21-2011, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

... The HJ explanation would be weak if there was an alternative explanation that is greater, in my opinion. I maintain that the evidence is never "weak." Nor can the evidence be "strong." Only the explanations can be strong or weak. The evidence in relation to a particular theory can be fitting, unfitting, relevant, or irrelevant, but not strong or weak.

I don't think that you will find any support for this idea among anyone, anywhere.

You seem to be unwilling to tolerate any possibility that there are things that we cannot know because there is no evidence. You don't want to think that there are conclusions that can only be tentative because we have a little evidence that points in one direction, but we might find more evidence that would lead to a different conclusion (which is the case for a lot of medical and scientific research.)

Toto, my assertions about the relevant distinctions between "evidence" and "explanations" follow from my own critical thinking on this philosophical matter, not from other thinkers, though I almost certainly would not be the first to make such distinctions clear. Many people mislead themselves, I think, when they make such claim as, "The evidence is poor." We often say it, but this does not actually make sense, because objective reality does not have a scale of quality. This should be taken as obvious truth, and yet our everyday language of debate assumes that evidence really can be judged that way. So, what do we really mean when we say, "The evidence is poor"? Typically, what we really mean is that the explanation for the evidence is poor.

We mislead ourselves again when we say, "There is no evidence." There is almost always evidence, because "evidence" is any objective observed reality that relates to a certain hypothesis. So, what do we really mean when we say, "There is no evidence"? What we really mean is either, "The evidence does not closely fit to the explanation," or, "The evidence does not closely relate to the explanation."

Using the rigorous definition of evidence, there is abundant evidence relating to the ideas concerning whether or not Jesus existed. The evidence is more than enough to form a conclusion, be it with a merely-mythical Jesus, a historical Jesus, or some other related position. It is possible, though unlikely, that the evidence may fit two opposing hypotheses equally well. It is unlikely, because evidence is a reflection of objective reality, and objective reality does not go in two opposing directions. The more evidence we have, the more certain of our conclusions we can be, and the evidence is abundant, for one conclusion or the other. You know what my conclusion is.

jgoodguy · 05-21-2011, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgoodguy

May I suggest that the HJ evidence is not only weaker than most folks imagine, but is worst that most folks can imagine.

You mean it can't possibly be any worse? I think I can imagine evidence that is far less fitting for HJ than we have at this point. Suppose that we have evidence of ancient myth that really is what Acharya S and Freke and Gandy claim. Suppose we have ancient evidence that shows other mythical characters getting baptized, having 12 disciples, getting crucified, killed and raised again. Suppose we had evidence of an ancient religion before the first century CE that was a lot like Christianity. Suppose we have evidence that Peter, James, John, John the Baptist and Pontius Pilate were only myths. Suppose we had a heretical sect within 1st or 2nd century Christianity that believed that Jesus never existed on Earth. Suppose we had critics of Christianity who thought Jesus never existed. Suppose Jesus was not portrayed in the myth as a doomsday cult leader.

Wouldn't that make for much a much stronger explanation that Jesus was never a human being?

The HJ explanation would be weak if there was an alternative explanation that is greater, in my opinion. I maintain that the evidence is never "weak." Nor can the evidence be "strong." Only the explanations can be strong or weak. The evidence in relation to a particular theory can be fitting, unfitting, relevant, or irrelevant, but not strong or weak.

Let me suggest that the available evidence is so crappy that no conclusion about the existence of a HJ, the nature of a HJ nor the effect a HJ had on Christianity can be determined.

Toto · 05-21-2011, 01:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

...
Toto, my assertions about the relevant distinctions between "evidence" and "explanations" follow from my own critical thinking on this philosophical matter, not from other thinkers, though I almost certainly would not be the first to make such distinctions clear.

It is axiomatic among critical thinkers that the human brain has not evolved for critical thinking. That's why you have to check your ideas with others. If you have a unique idea, and others do not agree with you, you need to step back and look at what you claim.

Quote:

Many people mislead themselves, I think, when they make such claim as, "The evidence is poor." We often say it, but this does not actually make sense, because objective reality does not have a scale of quality. This should be taken as obvious truth, and yet our everyday language of debate assumes that evidence really can be judged that way. So, what do we really mean when we say, "The evidence is poor"? Typically, what we really mean is that the explanation for the evidence is poor.

This is absolutely not true, or else no one would need to desgin experiments to get more information or search for more historical or archeaological data. Look at medical research on a debatable subject such as the lipid hypothesis. The evidence is equivocal, although there are dogmatists who think that we have the answer.

Quote:

We mislead ourselves again when we say, "There is no evidence." There is almost always evidence, because "evidence" is any objective observed reality that relates to a certain hypothesis. So, what do we really mean when we say, "There is no evidence"? What we really mean is either, "The evidence does not closely fit to the explanation," or, "The evidence does not closely relate to the explanation."

Sometimes we mean that there is no evidence.

Quote:

Using the rigorous definition of evidence, there is abundant evidence relating to the ideas concerning whether or not Jesus existed.

Please consider that there are highly educated critical scholars who disagree with this proposition. Some of them believe that the evidence points to Jesus existing, but I can't think of any who could claim that there is "abundant" evidence.

Quote:

The evidence is more than enough to form a conclusion, be it with a merely-mythical Jesus, a historical Jesus, or some other related position. It is possible, though unlikely, that the evidence may fit two opposing hypotheses equally well. It is unlikely, because evidence is a reflection of objective reality, and objective reality does not go in two opposing directions. The more evidence we have, the more certain of our conclusions we can be, and the evidence is abundant, for one conclusion or the other. You know what my conclusion is.

I know that the process by which you reached your conclusion is faulty.

spin · 05-21-2011, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

N/A
Joseph, there is a heckuva lot of material that you laid out for me here, and I have delayed responding to it, and I apologize. Allow me to correct a mistake: I have repeatedly stated my preferred historiographical methodology, as I did in part of the quote that you apparently skipped when you focused on another part of my same post in the beginning. I said:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I really do think that an explanation only need to be the best explanation in order for it to count as probable fact. The methodology I subscribe to is, "Argument to the Best Explanation," and it really is all about the best explanation, not the only explanation. If the premises and arguments have absolute probabilistic values, then maybe we really can jump to evaluating the probabilities of an explanation independent from all competing explanations. When such probability values are lacking because the evidence is subjectively interpreted, then we can at least make relative probability estimates, as in one explanation is more probable than another. And, for that, we really do need to pick the best explanation out of many, and no single explanation is established as probable all on its own without respect to competing explanations.

If you follow that link, you will see the methodology laid out in full.

I take it to be a methodology with greater scope and more rigor than the methodologies that are also very common in critical New Testament scholarship. This methodology is not just appropriate for New Testament scholarship, but it is appropriate for determining greatest relative probability of any explanations about anything in any empirical field of study.

The more specialized methodologies of New Testament scholarship, such as the Criterion of Embarrassment, or the Criterion of Multiple Attestation, or the Criterion of Earlier is Better--they are good, but of course they have limits, and those limits show up most relevantly in debate. Someone may propose that the baptism accounts are embarrassing, but what if someone else claims that the accounts are not really embarrassing but are instead a necessary plot device for a fictional narrative? That is where the Criterion of Embarrassment or any other criteria specific to New Testament history simply isn’t enough. To strike down unlikely hypotheses, we would need such criteria as plausibility and less ad hoc, two of the five relevant items in Argument to the Best Explanation, to help show that the textual evidence that seems to show embarrassment to many critical readers really is embarrassment. Does the evidence more plausibly show a literary contrivance, or does the evidence more plausibly show a genuine embarrassment?

We don’t even need the Criterion of Embarrassment if we simply frame the problem like so: what is the most probable explanation for the details of these accounts? Embarrassment can be an important element for making the best sense of the writing, but it doesn’t need to be a criterion of its own.

For example, is it more probable or less probable that the author of the gospel of Matthew corrected for embarrassment as shown in the evidence of Matthew 3:13-14?

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’

Is it more probable or less probable that the author of the gospel of John corrected for embarrassment as shown in the evidence of John 1:30-33, with a seemingly very focused omission of the baptism event?

This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”

Using the criterion of plausibility, the most plausible way to make sense of this evidence seems to be that the gospel authors were genuinely embarrassed. We have still more evidence to that effect in the gospels (see the OP), and it plausibly fits the historical reality reflected in the evidence from Josephus (that there was a cult of John the Baptist in the same time and place as the Christians).

That’s all I feel like writing about for now. Your posts really do seem to demand a lot from the brain.

Some day ApostateAbe might attempt to deal in history, as is your stated aim (you know, historical jesus and all that), but you're still text shuffling. Embarrassment. Multiple attestation (pssst, Abe, that's supposed to be multiple independent attestation). Best explanation (without any observation statements).

Embarrassment has always been a non-starter in this discourse: it's mainly eisegetical in nature and ultimately an argument from unplumbed ignorance. To complicate this hopeless attempt to eke out embarrassment, the gospel tradition was developing fruitfully as can be seen throughout the literary stages, two feeding stories from the same source, two birth stories from the same source, sermons added, resurrection scenes, discourses, on mountains and on plains, an apocalypse that evolved. Out of this variation (which reflects more a natural selection than a conscious evolution) one hopes vainly to decide that something is embarrassing so it is more likely to reflect reality: utter ignorance. Scratch embarrassment as being still an embarrassment to use in this context.

The historical equivalent of observation statements are independent historical data established outside the hypothesis claimed to be a best explanation.

ApostateAbe · 05-21-2011, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

...
Toto, my assertions about the relevant distinctions between "evidence" and "explanations" follow from my own critical thinking on this philosophical matter, not from other thinkers, though I almost certainly would not be the first to make such distinctions clear.

It is axiomatic among critical thinkers that the human brain has not evolved for critical thinking. That's why you have to check your ideas with others. If you have a unique idea, and others do not agree with you, you need to step back and look at what you claim.

You got that right. But, who would you say disagrees with me? Besides you, I mean. I kinda take this sort of idea to be obvious, once the thoughts are presented, at least.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

This is absolutely not true, or else no one would need to desgin experiments to get more information or search for more historical or archeaological data. Look at medical research on a debatable subject such as the lipid hypothesis. The evidence is equivocal, although there are dogmatists who think that we have the answer.

You can certainly change the evidence by increasing it, but, when there are two explanations for exactly the same set of evidence, then obviously it is not a matter of the quality of the evidence but a matter of the quality of the explanations. It doesn't even make sense to speak of the quality of an objective reality. If we did, then it would be only in relation to the explanations, and the explanations are the relevant things we judge, not the evidence. It is kind of like talking about objective morals. It doesn't even begin to make coherent sense to think in those terms.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Sometimes we mean that there is no evidence.

And that would be true if there were truly no evidence that sufficiently relates to a hypothesis. All other times, there is evidence. We just need to stop using a muddled definition of that word.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Please consider that there are highly educated critical scholars who disagree with this proposition. Some of them believe that the evidence points to Jesus existing, but I can't think of any who could claim that there is "abundant" evidence.

Yeah, you could be right. Bart Ehrman, for example, very strongly states the certainty of the conclusion of the historical Jesus based on the evidence, but I don't know if he would say that the "evidence is abundant," since "evidence" as the phrase is commonly used is conflated with the associated explanations, not the points of objective reality that stand on their own.

Kapyong · 05-21-2011, 04:25 PM

Gday,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

Toto:

You will find a good argument for partial authenticity of the TF here:

www.bede.org.uk/josephus.htm The author also counts your Steve Mason among those who thinks Josephus mentioned Jesus in the authentic original. Do you disagree?

"Partial authenticity" ?

i.e. partial IN-authenticity.
i.e. it's been CORRUPTED by Christians.

But somehow you are convinced that a partially IN-authentic passage, corrupted by Christians, supports your opinions and those of and faithful Christians. You just ignore the in-authenticity, and trumpet this (partial) authenticity.

Somehow you believe partially in-authentic actually means authentic evidence for an HJ.

But the passage has been CORRUPTED - it could have been something like this :

"Now about this time there arose the legend of Jesus, said to be a wise man, who was a doer of wonderful works. But teachers and such men as receive the truth with pleasure knew he was not real. They say he drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. The story says that when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. We Jews know he was but a legend, a story made up from the scriptures, but the stupid tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

K.

Kapyong · 05-21-2011, 04:52 PM

Gday,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar

I am not calling him a liar, I am saying that he was a only a hack writer who 'borrowed' from the works of others to compose another in a series of highly fictional accounts then popular with contemporary tastes.

JS sees exactly and only two black/white possibilities :

* authentic true historical reports
* lies / fraud

And the Gospels couldn't be LIES, so they must be true.
Q.E.D.

K.

Kapyong · 05-21-2011, 05:01 PM

Gday,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

Shesh:

Never in antiquity was it argued that Jesus never existed as a person on earth. That's what we are talking about, not belief in the nonsense no one around here believes.

Numerous early Christians argued he never "came in the flesh" - in which case he was NOT historical, even if they believed he walked the earth as a PHANTOM.

A phantom is not a historical Jesus.

2 John warns of those who don't
"acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh".

Marcion, in mid 2nd century, claimed Jesus was a phantom or spiritual entity, and not born of Mary :
“Marcion, I suppose, took sound words in a wrong sense, when he rejected His birth from Mary...”

“...they deny ... His humanity, and teach that His appearances to those who saw Him as man were illusory, inasmuch as He did not bear with Him true manhood, but was rather a kind of phantom manifestation. Of this class are, for example, Marcion...”

Polycarp's epistle refers to those who do not agree Jesus came in the flesh :
"For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist"

Basilides, in mid 2nd century, denied Jesus was really crucified, and the physical resurrection :
"Christ sent, not by this maker of the world, but by the above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute of the substance of flesh: that it was not He who suffered among the Jews, but that Simon was crucified in His stead: whence, again, there must be no believing on him who was crucified, lest one confess to having believed on Simon. Martyrdoms are not to be endured. The resurrection of the flesh he strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to bodies"

Bardesanes, in mid 2nd century, denied that Christ was physical :
"...assert that the body of the Saviour was spiritual"

Minucius Felix, in mid 2nd century, denies the incarnation and crucifixion along with other horrible accusations.
"...he who explains their ceremonies by reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for his wickedness, and to the deadly wood of the cross, appropriates fitting altars for reprobate and wicked men ... when you attribute to our religion the worship of a criminal and his cross you wander far from the truth", and also: "Men who have died cannot become gods, because a god cannot die; nor can men who are born (become gods) ... Why, I pray, are gods not born today, if such have ever been born?"

Kapyong

Kapyong · 05-21-2011, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

Toto:
I wonder what it means when you write "We went through this all before".

It means you were presented with the evidence that showed your claims wrong; but you just repeat the claims.

In fact - some early Christians DID deny Jesus was a normal physical historical being. A phantom is not historical.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

Toto:
All we really know is that none of them made what would have been a final knockdown argument, its all fiction.

Wrong again.

Celsus, in late 2nd century, attacked the Gospels as fiction based on myths :
"Clearly the christians have used...myths... in fabricating the story of Jesus' birth...It is clear to me that the writings of the christians are a lie and that your fables are not well-enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction"

Porphyry, in late 3rd century, claimed the Gospels were invented :
"... the evangelists were inventors – not historians”

Julian, in the 4th century, claimed Jesus was spurious, counterfeit, invented :
"why do you worship this spurious son...a counterfeit son", "you have invented your new kind of sacrifice ".
Julian was
“convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.. ”

Caius, claimed the truth about Jesus was falsified from the late 2nd century :
"For they say that ... from ... Zephyrinus the truth was falsified ..."

Tatian, in later 2nd century, compared Christianity with pagan mythology and wrote:
“Compare you own stories with our narratives. Take a look at your own records and accept us merely on the grounds that we too tell stories”

Some who denied the incarnation, according to 5th century John Cassian :
“By denying also that the Son of God was born in the flesh, you are led also to deny that He was born in the Spirit, for it is the same Person who was born in the flesh who was first born in the Spirit. If you do not believe that He was born in the flesh, the result is that you do not believe that He suffered. If you do not believe in His Passion what remains for you but to deny His resurrection?”

K.

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