Doug Shaver

Jesus' nonexistence is as falsifiable as any other historical thesis. Unambiguous and incontrovertible evidence for Jesus' existence would falsify it.

The likelihood of finding such evidence is irrelevant to the issue of falsifiability per se. Your science background should have taught you that.

David Deas

Interesting. But if that likelihood tends to be *zero*, then I think its very relevant to the practical falsifiability. Internet posters typically don't claim to be doing anything scientific or rigorous, but the strength of some of these people's convictions over this issue is astonishingly out of whack with the strength of the available evidence, and no one has ever offered a legitimate way to test their hypothesis.

The interesting thing to me is that scholars like Meier have proposed that their criteria, such as the criterion of embarrassment, is "scientific" but I have not seen any independent research to corroborate these claims. It seems to me that said academics merely use the term "scientific" because science is synonymous with truth, and therefore offers strengthening to their rhetoric. But I have not heard of any science going on anywhere in the fields of Biblical study. Even in Biblical archaeology, where one expects the most rigor, every year it seems at least 10 Biblical archaeologists make a claims that go so far beyond the available evidence its ridiculous.

aa5874

Please state the scientific method that was used by you in order to claim "no one has ever offered a legitimate way to test their hypothesis"

Remember you have already claimed that YOU come from a science background and "if it is not scientific then it is not the truth.

Please demonstrate your science background and methodology to TEST your own claim "no one has ever offered a legitimate way to test their hypothesis."

"....If it is not science then it is not the truth..."

spamandham

The hypothesis that Jesus never existed *is* testable even without finding any new evidence. The tests are not individually conclusive, but tend to be more like "if Jesus existed, there is an X probability that we would know where his tomb is based on similar cults." "If Jesus existed and the writings of the NT are as early as usually dated, there is a Y probability we would have writings from Jesus himself based on similar cults." ...and so on. It is possible, though no-one has bothered to approach it scientifically as far as I know, to come up with a real composite probability for the hypothesis that Christianity started as a Jesus personality cult.

mountainman

Its also interesting that an equivalent formulation of the hypothesis that Jesus did not exist is the hypothesis that Jesus was a purely mythical creation - in any other words just a common fiction. This hypothesis becomes falsifiable via Popper on the basis of scientific, archaeological or any other evidence admissable to the field of ancient history.

Analysis of the chronology of C14, archaeological and manuscript evidence has been offered here and there.


This next question is specifically addressed by Carrier ...

See Carrier's treatment of these criteria in the article “Bayes’ Theorem for Beginners: Formal Logic and Its Relevance to Historical Method

The "Popular Historicity Criteria" used by "Apologists" is essentially bogus.


At the end of the day, it boils down to hypotheses and their subsequently developed theories - in the field of ancient history - that directly address the entire and complete body of the ancient historical evidence that will be successful.

The hypothesis that Jesus was a fiction is shared by a number of theories.
See for example the list provided in the article Theories of the History Christianity involving Fraud & Fiction

Distinctly possible corroborative evidence has been cited.
For example ...

I think that people need to appreciate the fact that the field of "Biblical Archaeology" is really less that 200 years old, and does not really enjoy an untarnished reputation. The more one studies it in a skeptical and critical manner the more one understands it was itself created by the 19th century Roman Chuch Popes.

We find Graydon Snyder in his book Ante pacem: archaeological evidence of church life before Constantine admit the following ....

In recent times "Old Testament" Biblical Archaeology has reversed the assumptions that the OT is history.
On this issue see for example Debunking Christianity: How Archaeology Killed Biblical History by Hector Avalos.

Many forgeries are conducted for power and influence and money.
See Oded Golan for a recent example.

But at the end of the day ... we have no UNAMBIGUOUS corroborative evidence for the Big Jesus Idea before the 4th century.

Now we do have a confirmed meteor crater in Italy around that time.



If we dont have unambiguous evidence for the HJ before the 4th century, and then an explosion of finger-pointing evidence after Constantine published his 50 Bibles, then it could be that the bible came down from outer space. (Think about the story of Superman for example). That is one valid hypothesis which would explain the evidence explosion on or about the Great Nicaean BOUNDARY EVENT.

Doug Shaver

The point of falsifiability is to distinguish scientific hypotheses from all the other kinds. It is pointless even to talk about evidence if it is conceded at the outset that no evidence could possibly make a difference in evaluating the truth or falsity of the hypothesis. But if an advocate is willing to say, "If X were discovered, then we'd have to forget about this hypothesis," then we're talking about an idea to which evidence has at least some relevance.

What typical posters do is beside the point for those of us who can be scientific and rigorous.

If someone you are debating tries to use that criterion, then you might want to challenge them about that very issue.

Maybe so, but a blanket condemnation of that sort has little or no bearing on whether any particular assertion by any particular apologist has any scientific merit.

aa5874

A person does not have to be a rocket scientist to develop the theory that Jesus was fictional/mythical.

1.We have extant information from antiquity about Jesus of Nazareth.

2. The extant information described Jesus in a non-historical manner. He was the offspring of a holy Ghost of God and a Virgin, a Messiah, Creator of heaven and earth, equal to and worshiped as a God, who was RAISED from the dead and lived in Galilee for about 30 years.

3. We have extant information from Jewish writers called Philo and Josephus that covers the period of the supposed life of Jesus on earth. Except for forgeries about a resurrected Jesus in the writings of Josephus, there is ZERO on Jesus of Nazareth.

4. We have extant information from Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the younger and again the character Jesus of Nazareth cannot be found any where. There seems to be no recollection from any non-apologetic writers of a Messiah called Jesus of Nazareth that was well-known and revered by Jews in Judea.

5. From Philo and Josephus it is found that Jews during the time of the Emperors Tiberius and Caligula would NOT have worshiped a man as a God. Jews did NOT worship King David as a God nor any Roman Emperor as Gods. Jews did NOT worship the Messiah called Simon BarCocheba as a God.

6. In a nutshell, every condition to support the historicity of Jesus is ABSENT from all EXTANT sources of antiquity.

a. His origin is fictional/mythical.

b. His miracles are fictional/mythical.

c. His accomplishments are fictional/mythical.

d. His departure from earth is fictional/mythical.

e. His deification by Jews is fictional/mythical.

The theory that Jesus was fictional/mythical is EXTREMELY good.

David Deas

You're equivocating logical and practical falsifiability.

It is difficult to cite very many conjectures that are not at least in principal falsifiable. That is why practical falsifiability is important. If your conjecture is only falsifiable because you're holding out for time travel, your conjecture isn't very good.

Evidence has no relevance here for different reasons. In particular, because nobody actually has any.

Those of us who can?

You're not doing science unless you adhere to the scientific method. What in the world does the suggestion that Jesus may have been a mythological character have to do with the scientific method here? Can you show me an example of how a poster might relate those two?

It is well known that the field of Biblical study is an example of non-scientific scholarship, so blanket condemnation of field related apologetics as non-scientific seems pretty appropriate to me. That is, unless you can explain what scientific merit does any conjecture have regarding the historicity of Jesus Christ? There are an infinite number of logical possibilities that all conform to what scant evidence we do have concerning early Christianity, and we have no real way of ruling any of these out at present. Pretending that one's own conjecture is any better than the next person's conjecture *is* thoroughly unscientific.

aa5874

What nonsense! What absurdity! You appear not to understand what is EVIDENCE.

There are documents of antiquity that have survived that contains written statements about a Jesus the Messiah who supposedly lived on earth in Galilee during the reign of Tiberius when Pilate was governor of Judea.

mountainman

The field in question is ancient history.
This field is serviced by the fields of science.
The field of "Biblical History" is a subset of the field of ancient history.

Both science and ancient history deal in the interpretation of evidence.
We have no evidence for the existence of Jesus in the 1st century.
The evidence for Jesus in the 2nd and 3rd centuries is highly tenditious.
We have a "Hail Jesus" literature and archaeological evidence explosion with the Constantinian Christian State Church in the 4th century.
The hypothesis is simple: has Jesus been fabricated?
If so when, by whom, why, how and the usual questions.


Read some background information about a text from the scriptoria of the 4th century called The Historia Augusta. It was tendered to the aristocracy as the history of the ROman Emperors in the 4th century. Modern scholarship has determined it to be an extremely lavish forgery. It cites over 160 forged documents and invents its own historical sources. It even invents historical sources to disagree with its own invented historical sources.

It is commonly accepted that manuscript is an utter fabrication.

The questions then become the following .....

Is the Christian "Ecclesiastical [Church] History" of the same genre?
Is the Christian New Testament Canon of the same genre?
The hypothesis of a fictional Jesus is critically sensitive to evidence.
This evidence is that which is admissable to the field of ancient history.
It may be scientific - for example the C14 citations on "Early Christian Documents".