show_no_mercy

I see freetrader still isn't going to provide us with the first Christian to utilize any narrative gospel specifically presenting a preaching, miracle working Jesus.

How could this Egyptian prophet get such a following without having done miracles?

How could Anthrognes have convinced all these people that he was the messiah without doing miracles?

How could this nameless Samaritan have convinced a multitude of Samaritans to follow him unless he had done some miracles?

Why would the Jews send this Jesus over to the procurator unless he really was possessed by some evil spirit?

jakejonesiv

Reputed miracle workers.
Apollonius of Tyana, Asclepius, and Simon Magus.

spamandham

I for one, am willing to concede that there are no miracle workers in the historical record that are sufficiently like Jesus to satisfy your demands. Can we possibly move beyond this red herring now?

The lack of other miracle workers sufficiently like Jesus is totally irrelevant to the basic observation that miracles are a priori implausible, and *any* plausible explanation - even if it can't be proven correct - is nonetheless a *better* explanation.

freetrader

aa5874:

No, the healing acts are more credible or have higher probability than reputed acts like the walking on water or turning water into wine, assuming that a "miracle" cannot be just an illusion or trick which misleads the onlookers.

We have thousands of anecdotes, probably tens of thousands through the centuries, of healing events which were non-medical or outside the confines of the current known science. These anecdotes are evidence that increases the probability that such events actually have occurred, even if you still regard them as less than 50% probable.

You can eliminate anecdotes which were investigated and found to be false or exaggerated. But even with these eliminated, there are still thousands of anecdotes which have not been investigated and refuted, and many investigated without any explanation being found.

On the other hand, the anecdotes of walking on water and such acts are far fewer in number, and when these few are investigated it is easier to identify an element of illusionism or trickery involved which can account for the phenomenon in terms of current known science. So the number of unexplained anecdotes of this type is much lower.

The more reported cases there are, the greater is the evidence. Anecdotes of mind-reading, under the guise of astrology readings and communicating with the dead, are perhaps more numerous than miracle healing anecdotes. Even though trickery can explain many of these, the large number of unexplained cases increases the probability that there are legitimate cases of this lying outside the reach of current known science.

But phenomena like walking on water are much less probable because of the far lower number of unexplained cases, and thus far less precedent, and it's really little more than a dogmatic emotional outburst to insist that these are the same as miracle healing stories and are equally credible or noncredible.

The hypothesis proposed here, that there may be truth to the miracle healing stories of Jesus, is not even being considered seriously if one's only attack is to lump these stories in with the walking on water stories and to use the latter as an instrument of ridicule. You should not pretend to be responding to our topic if the only approach you can offer is that of ridicule without addressing the issue in a serious tone.

Yes, it is easy to explain how miracle acts could come to be attributed to Jesus once he became established in people's minds as a messiah savior figure. But what has not yet been explained is how this obscure Galilean figure first came to be made into a messiah hero to which the mythical elements could then be added.

So the peripheral elements such as the walking on water can easily be accounted for, but only after acknowledging the initial account of the healing acts which explain the original hero figure as a starting point. If all you can do is ridicule the later added mythic elements while leaving the original messiah figure unaccounted for, you are really wasting your time pretending that you have addressed our topic, when all you are really doing is conceding a high probability to the basic miracle healing accounts, without which we cannot explain the origin of this hero figure.

Your listing of several healing stories seems to serve no point. You're supposed to be trying to explain how the miracle hero Jesus legend originated while assuming that he really performed no such acts. To just merely list some of these stories and snicker at them for their simplicity hardly does anything to add clarity to our topic.

Remember that we are not concerned with the particular details of each story. Many of these, or parts of them, might be artificial or fictional -- that is beside the point. They were written in the belief that Jesus did in fact perform such acts, even if the details are partly fictional. And there is no pretense that the writers were sophisticated or eloquent in their style of language.

Again, mere ridicule of the stories or the writers is hardly any serious approach to answering the question posed here in our topic.


You're missing the point about my reference to a "success rate". I was asked how Jesus is unique if I'm conceding that there have been others also who might have performed miracle healing acts, and thus why those others are not also deified into messiah or savior figures.

And my answer was that since he stands out historically as a unique miracle-worker figure, it could be because he had an unusually-high success rate. I think it's probable that there have been other healers who had some success, but they all seem to have had a limited success rate, and a lower number of successes naturally results in a smaller impact and less belief by the public in the power of the healer, because the few successes could be attributed to coincidence.

Admittedly I would prefer it to be the case that Jesus had a 100% success rate, but this has to be a hope only. Perhaps a logical argument could claim that a success rate of only 80-90% is actually less likely than a 100% success rate, because if he had that much power he should have been able to heal every victim he encountered without any exceptions. In other words, there is no logical explanation for the 10-20% failure rate, and so it's more reasonable to assume a 100% success rate.

So I am suggesting only that his success rate might have been unusually high, which would explain his uniqueness as probably the world's most reputed miracle healer. And if he did no miracle acts at all, then I'd like to hear an explanation how he came to acquire this distinction (by 100 AD at the latest).


I'm not referring to NT accounts here. My point is that we have many anecdotes of healings which were not done through standard medical science. Though most were not investigated, some were, and of these some are still not explained by standard current science.

The large number of reputed unexplained cases is evidence that such healing power (outside known current science) is possible -- no, not proof, but evidence that increases the probability that such power is possible beyond what it would be if there were no such cases.

Your use of the word "still" shows you think "defies explanation" somehow conflicts with "genuine". "Genuine" just means the event really did happen, such as a victim being healed or recovering. "Defy explanation" means the healing act was done outside current known science, so the explanation how the healing was performed is not yet known.

The NT miracles obviously were not investigated in this sense. My argument is not that these events were investigated and proved, but rather that Jesus likely performed acts like these because otherwise there's no explanation how he gained such wide recognition for doing such acts and became deified.

spamandham

I think you've got the cart before the horse. The miracle stories were attached to the Jesus character *after* he had become an icon. They are not the reason he became one.

How do we know? Because Paul's writings are earlier than the Gospels and make no mention of any miracles or healings by Jesus. Further, it was commonplace to puff up legendary figures by attaching miracles to their memory. This was done with virtually every emperor.

Amaleq13

As you've already been informed, that is simply false. Only reliable evidence can increase the probability and anecdotal evidence is inherently unreliable.

The number of people who believe a thing has no logical connection to the truth of their belief.

You are engaging in a fundamental logical fallacy with this assertion.

freetrader

Responses to thedistillers:


So then you're suggesting that everyone who ever claimed to have seen aliens really did see aliens? Or that anyone who ever claimed to have seen something never really saw anything?

That the historical Jesus really did perform the miracle healing acts is based on some simple propositions (as opposed to arbitrary dogmas such as that every claim that someone saw an alien or something unusual must ipso facto be false):

People see things happen;

when they see something unusual, they report it to others;

with increasing eye-witness reports, or indirect reports from eye-witnesses (2nd- and 3rd-hand accounts), the evidence for the events and the credibility increase and the reports become more widely circulated, and though this isn't proof that the unusual events really happened, it does increase the probability of those reports being true;

word-of-mouth reports of the miracles of Jesus, including eye-witness testimony, were circulating in the early 30's AD, along with other reports about him, so when Paul and other early Christian evangelists traveled on missionary trips and recruited new believers, they were preaching to people who already knew about the Jesus figure from the word-of-mouth reports and so were fertile ground for the new evangelists.

The above explains what we know of what happened in the period of 30-100 AD about the emergence of the Jesus messiah figure. If the above is not correct, then we don't have a plausible explanation how the Jesus figure came to be mythologized into a god.


Why the word "magic"? This is totally inappropriate unless you are equating "magic" with "miracle" in some way. But this topic "Maybe the historical Jesus really did do miracles" is not intended to say anything about "magic."

In this title the word "miracle" is only an identifier word, not a description of the acts. This word is used to identify certain acts which are described in the gospel accounts. I could have used only the word "healings" instead of "miracles," however "miracle" conveys better the sense that these acts were not mainline medical healing acts.

Nothing in this title or in the arguments presented is intended to say anything about the nature of these acts, except that these healings probably were not done according to current-known mainline scientific medical healing techniques. The question to be answered is whether these particular acts really happened, not HOW they happened.

So the phrase "magic is the best explanation" is totally irrelevant to anything intended in the title or the arguments presented. The alleged acts in question either happened or they did not -- nevermind the "explanation."

The claim that these miracle acts did happen is like claiming a magician pulled a rabbit out of a hat: If enough witnesses say they saw it, then it's possible or even probable that it really did happen, no matter what the explanation may be. A claim that something happened does not have to include any claim about how it was done or about the "explanation" for it. The explanation how the rabbit was pulled out may be "magic" or it may be something else. Either way, it doesn't matter. The only question is whether the rabbit was pulled out of the hat or not.

So you are not responding to our topic when you say "just because we're not able to explain . . . doesn't mean that magic is the best explanation." The issue here is about WHAT happened, not HOW it happened or the EXPLANATION for what happened. Did these events happen or not? Did the historical Jesus perform these acts or didn't he?


The question here is whether the "something" really happened, not what made it happen or how to best explain it. Perhaps you've been trained to blurt out "Magic!" whenever you hear "Jesus" and "miracle" in the same phrase, like a Pavlovian dog trained to salivate when it hears a bell ring.

Let's ask a similar question about a different kind of event where we can avoid the buzzwords "miracle" and "Jesus" -- how about an unusual event from recent history: Is it true that in 1956 an obscure mediocre baseball pitcher, Don Larson, came out of nowhere to pitch the only no-hitter in World Series history -- a perfect game even? This was a highly unlikely event -- the odds against it are probably greater than the odds against a miracle healing act.

Still this event probably happened because of multiple witnesses and records of the event. But if something compels you to pound your fist on the table and salivate: "But it wasn't magic! It wasn't magic!" OK, calm down -- it didn't have to be magic. We can suppose many possible explanations other than "magic."

I'm only saying the event took place. There's evidence that it happened, but no matter how unusual or how improbable it was, we are not saying it was "magic" that made it happen. Something unusual or unlikely can happen without it having to be "magic" that caused it.

And the cause too could be something unusual. Is it possible Don Larson experienced an unusual secretion of adrenalin or some other chemical on that particular day? When we don't know the explanation, we have to leave open the possibility of something unusual or even something not yet known to mainline science.

Insisting that it wasn't "magic" or it had to be this or couldn't have been that and so on is irrelevant to the point. The issue is whether it happened or not -- it is likely that it did happen, or there is a good possibility it happened.

What is clearly unscientific and wrong is to just dogmatically rule out everything that is unusual or cannot be explained by current known science. Less probable, yes. But when other explanations are also less probable, there comes a point where one must choose from among all the improbable explanations.


What's this obsession with "magic"? Did you have a bad experience with a magician who beat you in early childhood? Were you a magician's rabbit in a previous life which got pulled out of a hat too many times?

Though we should try to avoid "magic" explanations, let's not get carried away with the notion of exhausting all "naturalistic" explanations. In some cases the "naturalistic" explanation is much less likely than the non-"naturalistic" explanation:

Suppose we want to explain an alleged prophecy from Nostradamus. The the non-"naturalistic" explanation says Nostradamus had some kind of foreknowledge of the predicted event. But the "naturalistic" explanation is that the prophecy was never really issued in the first place but that there was a conspiracy to rewrite the books and implant memories into everyone who had ever read Nostradamus.

So according to the "naturalistic" explanation thousands or even millions of people were kidnapped and programmed to believe they had read this prophecy in Nostradamus, plus millions of copies of the books were secretly stolen and replaced by new printed books which were changed to contain the prophecy which was never there in the original version, and all the original copies were destroyed.

By your rule that all "naturalistic" explanations must be exhausted first, you would have to regard the possibility of such a conspiracy as higher than that of Nostradamus having actually had some uncanny ability to foresee the event in the prophecy.

(Don't waste your time trying to answer this by claiming there are no convincing prophecies in Nostradamus -- we could substitute Edgar Cayce who predicted some specific events -- because even if you're right about that it totally misses the point here, since this is not about Nostradamus but about whether any "naturalistic" explanation must always take precedence over a "magic" explanation.)

Yes, you could probably come up with a better "naturalistic" explanation than this conspiracy explanation, but by your dogmatic rule, ANY "naturalistic" explanation that can be imagined, even this fantastic conspiracy theory, has to be given preference over any explanation you brand as "magic."

Yet you would surely be wrong to imagine that any such conspiracy could ever actually be carried out or could be more likely than the non-"naturalistic" explanation. It would be extremely difficult (virtually impossible) but still not supernatural. This conspiracy scenario would not defy any known principles of science, whereas any potential to predict future events does lie outside any present known science.

And yet the hypothesis of a not-yet-explained ability to foresee future events is more likely than an elaborate secret conspiracy to round up everyone familiar with Nostradamus and reprogram their memories and also surreptitiously snatch away all the copies of those books and replace them -- you have to admit that there comes a point where the "magic" explanation is really more credible than such a convoluted "naturalistic" one.

And so you're obviously wrong to insist dogmatically that all "naturalistic" explanations must first be exhausted before any "magic" explanations can be considered. Just because your explanation is "naturalistic" does not make it automatically preferable to any explanation you brand as "magic."

I'm watching something on the Nightly News right now about therapeutic horse-riding as a form of treatment for some kinds of medical patients. I doubt there is any rigid scientific testing that proves the validity of this kind of therapy.

Maybe it works, or maybe it's an illusion -- no doubt there are hundreds of anecdotes of patients swearing it has helped them, and no doubt there are dozens of possible "naturalistic" explanations which would refuse to acknowledge any real therapeutic value outside just a normal psychological good feeling to the patient.

Whatever the truth is, it is not the case that you have to exhaust every imaginable "naturalistic" explanation before considering the possibility that there might be some "magic" healing vibrations from the horses to the patients riding them which is not yet known by science.

You can imagine any number of conspiracy theories about the patients being hypnotized or being drugged, or the horses being drugged in some way -- or perhaps the patients being bribed by horse ranchers to lie to the interviewers in order to boost the demand for horses. You can invent hundreds of possible conspiracy explanations which would be "naturalistic" but far less probable than a theory about hypothetical "magic" healing vibrations flowing from the horses to the patients.

So it is not correct that every imaginable "naturalistic" explanation has to be first exhausted before giving consideration to any off-beat "magic" theories to explain something unusual. As those "naturalistic" explanations become more and more wacky, they become less probable than the non-"naturalistic" ones.


Once again, it's not the "rise of Christianity" we're trying to explain here, but more specifically the "rise" of the Jesus figure as a reputed miracle-worker and savior figure, considering that there was no one there, nothing there of any substance to which the mythologizing could be attached, as we recognize such mythologizing in the case of other hero figures in myths and traditions.

No one yet has offered a "naturalistic explanation" for this that has any plausibility. It is not true that we must exhaust every imaginable "naturalistic explanation" for this before we might consider an explanation that would lie outside the current known orthodox science.

When those "naturalistic" explanations become improbable beyond a certain point, it is more reasonable to consider that Jesus may have actually performed the miracle acts, even though it means our science at its present state cannot account for such acts.

aa5874

So what miracles did Jesus do after his supposed miraculous conception and miraculous ascension.? How do you get a miracle to do miracles?

The belief that Jesus did miracles is not dependent at all on Jesus doing any miracles, all that is needed is a plausible story about Jesus doing miracles. In antiquity, the method of healing where Jesus used spit to make the blind see was accepted as plausible.

Joseph Smith started a religion based on belief and the plausible idea that angels and God could talk to him and tell him about some hidden plates.

Plausibility is a fundamental ingredient in belief.

A story written in the early 2nd century in Rome about some Jew in Judaea called the Son of God who did miracles 70 years earlier is a plausible story. And after 300 years, the Roman Emperor Constantine made the plausible Jesus story, the official religous story of Rome.

The Mormons religion started by Joseph Smith probably took far less time and belief in miracles to have millions of followers.

And by the way, magicians are not involved in healing the sick and raising the dead.

Magicians do magic tricks for a fee. They do not generally pray for miracles but practise their magic tricks until they are perfected.

If you need medical attention, do not go to a magician for healing, you may [die] disappear from the face of the earth.

freetrader

spamandham:


Though there are some similarities, as the Jesus messiah figure became mythologized like many others, the Jesus figure stands out uniquely separate from all these because there is reliable evidence that he had superhuman power, unlike any others.


But there's no reliable evidence that any of them did perform miracle acts.

And let me qualify this in order to be precise. In some cases there may be reason to believe they performed something unusual. Power to heal might not be limited to only Jesus. What still probably separates Jesus from the other examples is the likely high success ratio.

Obviously any healer has at least a small percentage of successes due to mere coincidence. But beyond this there could be some real healing power in some cases, though it's probably very limited, as the number of successes is far outnumbered by the number of failures.

The reputation of Jesus as a miracle healer at a very early point can not be found in other examples, except in cases where the healer had a very long career, such as 30 years or more, of teaching and performing "healing" acts, where the successes were publicized and the failures overlooked, and this went on for decades as the teacher or prophet increased his following through his talent and charisma as a speaker.

Jesus stands apart from these cases in that his public career lasted only for one year (3 at the most) and so he did not have time to amass a following, as did all the other examples you can name. And yet his reputation as a healer became widespread beyond that of any of the others.


Yes, Christianity is just one more religion. But the Jesus figure in particular stands apart and is not just one more of a long list of messiah cult leaders. There is reliable evidence of a considerable power he had to perform miracle healing acts, which is not the case with any of the others.


Again, the topic is specifically the Jesus figure in particular, not the religious cult(s) that formed around his name. These all attached to him because of his already-established reputation as a miracle-healer.

There are no other healers of equal repute -- the closest would be some mythological figures who required centuries to gain their reputation, plus there were a few sages who enjoyed a long career, like Sai Baba and other eastern mystics, and acquired a large following after many decades of teaching and attracting more disciples.


Again, it's not the rapid rise of Christianity per se that is the point here. It's probably related, but what really stands out is the personal figure of Jesus the Galilean who by any standard should not have been made into a miracle-worker or messiah or god for anyone -- for the Jews or the Greeks or the Romans or anyone else.

Why or how did this unlikely nobody get elevated and mythologized into a god or messiah figure? There is no explanation how this kind of attention came to be placed upon him. It is not comparable to any other cult figure or deity or messiah or prophet etc. that you can name.

He cannot be likened to Buddha or Krishna or Sai Baba or Socrates or -- name your example -- They all had long distinguished careers in which to accumulate their multitude of disciples. Plus in most cases centuries beyond in which the miracle stories had plenty of time to become invented.

Rodney Stark says nothing to address this. If he does, find the particular facts and give them to us. He gives no examples of any other miracle-workers or man-gods or avatars etc. who have any resemblance to the Jesus case. All his examples are of well-established figures who preached for decades in order to acquire their reputations, whereas Jesus was a nobody of no standing at the time of his death (other than his possible reputation as a miracle-worker).


Early on each of those cults was started by a guru who enjoyed a long public career and amassed a following over several decades of preaching. In each case it is clear that it was the long period of preaching and winning more disciples which led to any stories of miracles. Such stories accumulate over time.

And again, if there's an exceptional case where the guru can be shown to have really done a healing act or other miracle, then maybe that particular story is true. We don't have to dismiss all such stories as fiction. But we can explain generally how the miracle fiction stories could become attached to a guru over a long career of preaching and impressing his disciples with his charisma.


You're talking about "Christianity" -- which is not the topic. It's the Jesus figure which is unique, not the multiplicity of cults and religions which attached themselves to him. But his uniqueness as a performer of healing acts is the explanation why so many upstart cults chose him as their deity figure.


"Christianity" is not unique -- it probably would have existed anyway, even if Jesus had never existed. Some details would be different, but most of the rituals and preaching would be about the same.

The question is: Why did the new religious movement attach itself to this unlikely Galilean figure, who was a nobody who did nothing and had no repute or standing or any claim to being any messiah or anything else, if he did not perform miracle healing acts such as we see in the NT accounts?

This is the real question, and no one yet is giving a plausible answer to it.

Deus Ex

Because he was God, baby! Can I get a Amen!