AtheistGamer

I know I've probably used up my quota of threads this month already, but I just had to ask this. Anyway...

Alright. I was in a stickham room tonight with some wanna be apologists. I tried to tell them that even if they could prove the ressurrection historically it wouldn't be enough because the claim that someone rose from the dead is just too incredible for history to deal with.

I also asked them why didn't they prove the supernatural using science. Then they said that the supernatural was beyond the scope of science. Since I had already heard that one before I asked them if the supernatural has an observable effect on this world. They said yes it does. Then I said if it has an effect on the physical world then it should be testable.

After that they then pointed to the ressurrection. I told them that the ressurrection happened 2000 years ago and isn't testable. Then they took that and ran with it acting as if I hadn't heard that science isn't the only informer of truth.

So anyway my question is... Am I being unreasonable in saying that history cannot verify incredible claims like the ressurrection?

Petergdi

If you start with the position that no amount of evidence will convince you of X then your starting position makes a convincing demonstration of X impossible.

Another person might think that X is possible and then would be open to evidence that X had in fact happened.

Your starting presuppositions are your own business. I don't think it unreasonable for you to have them. I would think it unreasonable for you to require me to share your starting presuppositions. You are only being unreasonable if you mean to suggest that your own presuppositions ought to be universal.

You can argue about what sort of starting presuppositions are reasonable to have, but you actually have to make an argument for them. Most of the time people start with a firmly held conviction that their starting presuppositions are the only ones that a reasonable person could have. This is often untrue - I have found reasonable people with quite different starting presuppositions than mine, People often are very touchy about having their presuppositions examined. I think this is because everyone has a world view which hangs on their presuppositions and thus they tend to think their own starting point self-evident.

Peter.

AtheistGamer

Plenty of evidence would convince me of God. Just not arguments that the ressurrection is historical. For example: If we had the bones of some saint and looking at his bones under a microscope you saw the phrase "lol God wuz here" written billions of times that would convince me.


Hmmm. I have to be honest here. I would require people to hold to my belief that history is not accurrate enough to know for sure whether a ressurrection actually happened.

GakuseiDon

It is testable if it is repeatable. From here:
http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~acarpi/NSC/1-scimethod.htm

Testing: Of all the steps in the scientific method, the one that truly separates science from other disciplines is the process of experimentation. In order to prove, or disprove, a hypothesis, a scientist will design an experiment to test the theory. An important aspect of scientific experimentation is repeatability.

Doug Shaver

It depends on how you define the key terms. One could say that to verify any proposition is just to establish sufficient reason to think that it's almost certainly true. What it takes to do that depends on both the proposition itself and the mindset of the inquirer. To assert at the outset that the proposition is incredible is to say, in effect, that there cannot be sufficient reason to believe it, if you mean "incredible" in its literal sense. If that is your mindset, then it's hard to fault Christians for thinking that you're being unreasonable.

AtheistGamer

No no I don't mean incredible like that.

spamandham

No, you are being perfectly reasonable. To see if your friends agree with you in principle, present to them the ridiculous claims of other religions (preferably ones that are written down in ancient texts), and see how easily they dismiss those. It will quickly be apparent (to you, not them) they are engaged in special pleading.

Roger Pearse

You've tripped over yourself here. If we are investigating whether an event took place, we use the methods of history. Saying "we will exclude all supernatural events", and then saying "well history can't prove this event" is to start with a bias and then turn it into a conclusion! It's circular.

We don't KNOW if it's "incredible" (bias) before we have done the investigation. We might conclude it afterwards; not before.

It's never a good sign, in general, when people try to find ways to skew an investigation against one answer, before they even begin.

True, but somewhat misconceived, because not repeatable. The supernatural is not like electricity. It is conceived as the actions of someone. We investigate what people do, and have done, by historical methods, not scientific ones. We'd use science, if we could find a way to do so; but we can't, because (e.g.) we can't get Julius Caesar in a test-tube.

Note also that you've switched argument here. You're starting with "did the resurrection happen." Now you've demanded that they prove that the supernatural exists. These are not the same argument, and would be approached differently. I doubt that they have any interest in proving the latter.

Nor, indeed, any other event that took place in the reign of Tiberius. This type of argument is a fallacy, in that it presumes that history, politics, life and art do not exist.

Well, you made an argument that it WAS! (i.e. history is bunk).

Yes. Never mind "incredible"; history exists to tell us whether things happen. If someone finds it incredible that something happened, that is a statement about THEM, not about whether the event DID happen. The latter remains to be proven.

The main reason for bunk scholarship (or, indeed, why people buy duff used cars) is that people introduce their conclusions in advance into their investigations, under one form or another. Always be wary of this. It's the first mistake we all make.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Zarathustra77

Woot! How many religious nutters can we get to volunteer for this? We just tell em we're going to try to prove the Ressurection is true by killing them and seeing if they come back to life in 3 days...

rizdek

This comment will reflect my lack of knowledge of methods used to determine the veracity of historical claims. But nevertheless, perhaps you can answer it for me. And I'm not going to talk about the resurrection specifically, although the answers you give might help me consider/reconsider how I view such events.

I glean from threads and books that the method to determine history is to evaluate the reports, their authorship, and when they were written relative to the event. Then take into account the corroborating evidence, both in archaelogy/artifacts and in other documents. The degree to which these documents are independent accounts is a factor. There are probably other things, but one thing I perceive that is not used is one's predisposition to what could happen. I think that's what you comment that I quoted was saying.

Is that a general principle with all historians, or just a majority, or just a subset?

Do historians ever look at an event and say, "that is less plausible and therefore more corroborating evidence is needed to accept it?"

The other thing I wonder is, is the nature of the "acceptance" of historical events derived via the historical methods different than the nature of the acceptance we have for current, survival type events/situations with which we have daily first hand information? What I mean by this is, I can read a book about WWII for example, and from the way it describes events, and the corroboration I can find in other books, I can determine to what extent I "accept" that this book I'm reading is describing real events...even if not completely. But may acceptance has little bearing on my everyday life. In other words, I don't change my life (other than maybe how I think of WWII) in any material way. Therefore, my "acceptance" of "rejection" of the contents of the book doesn't matter to me. But if I read that electricity can kill me if I do my own electrician work, and if once I got shocked trying to do so, I am convinced beyond doubt that electricity is absolutely dangerous and can hurt me. I need not depend on anyone else telling me. And from that I can easily accept, even if operationally, that it might be able to kill me and live my life accordingly.

I realize history might be used to help us determine what we should do under a given situation. For example, if a particular political "maneuver" by a country or leader, resulted in a war and we learn that through the historical method, we might try to avoid such a maneuver if we wanted to avoid war. But that "acceptance" of the event seems to be an operational acceptance that is then applied to decisions and actions. One might operationally accept what has been determined by studying history using historical methods without believing it "with all their heart," whatever that phrase means, but I liken it to something similar to "I'd bet my life on it being true." Do historians actually think they derive a picture of the past that they'd "bet their life on" so to speak? IE that it happened the way they accept that it happened without a doubt?