DramaQ

Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "an affirmative".

For instance, suppose a victim of a flasher provides the police a description of the flasher good enough for them to haul in a suspect. And suppose it turns out the suspect they arrest has a huge red swastika tattooed on his chest (for years now).

The failure on the part of the flashee to mention any swastika could certainly be used as a good argument that this man is not the flasher.

Is that “an affirmative�, i.e. the man is innocent, or a “negative�, the man can not be said to be guilty?

Either way, the lack of evidence, the failure to mention something that SHOULD have been mentioned, leads to a positive conclusion.

DQ
(Still in the sidelines)

Ceverante

What I mean by 'affirmative' is actually a deviation from a 'default' position. I can provide positive evidence that I've met someone by providing a detailed description of this person, have a personal belonging of this person and a video clip of such a meeting.

The default position is everyone else (who've not met this person) will have no detailed description, no object that once belonged to this person and no video clip of such a meeting.

By providing 3 such affirmative evidence, I can prove beyond reasonable doubt that I've once met this person.

But I cannot prove that I've never met this person by using the 3 evidence in 'negative' mode. All I have is 'NIL' evidence. When something did not occur, does not exists, it cannot produce any positive or affirmative evidence.

I'm not sure if this is clear, I'm still trying to gater and re-arrange my thoughts...

Occams_Razor

There is another kind of negative evidence used in court all the time, generally referred to as the "missing document/missing witness charge" (a charge is an instruction To a jury about the law, its application, and the weighing of evidence).

The gist of such a charge is that if one side in a suit has access to a witness/document that should have some bearing on the case, and that if called/produced would be expected to testify/weigh favorably for that party's case, but that party fails to call/provide such witness/document, the jury is instructed that the party's failure to do so permits an inference that the witness/document would would not have supported that party's position on the issue at hand.

Typical scenario: car crash--husband and wife in one car, husband is injured. He sues and the gravamen of his suit is that the light was red when the offending vehicle entered the intersection. If a missing witness charge is allowed, the jury is given instructions that they may infer from the husband's failure to call his wife to testify that the light was not red.

bfniii

ask the people who make this claim. like wikipedia for starters.

if we doubt that there were eyewitnesses to biblical events, then why shouldn't we doubt any people who claim the opposite about those same events? or anyone who claims anything from the first century for that matter.

we've been over this one. if he doesn't mention christianity, why should we consider it relevant that he doesn't mention the infanticide?

that he doesn't mention christianity does nothing to show that he couldn't have or that he didn't have motive to do so.

You. I’m sure you mean first century. Ok. Josephus. He wrote about lots of stuff. How did he get his information?

besides, establishing a precedent is not proof in every instance.

it doesn't matter his particular quantity of knowledge about christianity in regards to just knowing about the religion. you claim that no one knew enough about the religion. well, the jews did. you claim that christianity was too obscure. well, even an author in rome had heard of it just scant years after it started.

why not?

An example of another instance proves nothing. Forget written, the jews don’t even try. They just make up some lies that even they don’t believe too strongly or else they would have followed up on them.

Destroyed by malicious influential Christians.

They may have been. Then again, there may not have been. I’ve presented my case as well.

Trumping up pliny and tacitus does not support your point as I stated above. The quantity of information that tactitus had about Christianity does not show that everyone in the world knew next to nothing about Christianity. What it does show is that someone as far away as rome, wrote about the Christians in the late first century. If that is the case, clearly Christianity was spreading meaning knowledge of it was disseminating. If tacitus was aware of it, how much more aware were the regions surrounding Judea?

Again, making up some slander is not refutation. In a previous post, I proved several examples of what they could have done very easily if their case was genuine.

If their testimony was irrefutable, then the evidence would be obvious, right? Again I refer to the examples of refutation I provided in another post. Perhaps you could explain how people would have believed Christians if those were provided.

Exactly. The bible asserts that the apostles were given that power so that their testimony would be genuine. Apparently this is exactly what happened. Whenever jewish malcontents were around, they were exposed as exactly that.

The examples of refutation I provided are not so outrageously irrational as you seem to make them out.

Even though what the author writes is a chronicle of a person’s life? Where is this rule? Is there some international committee that has agreed upon this standard? I agree that your response can be the case. But it does not necessarily have to be the case.

Apparent to whom?

Given that the gospels tell essentially the same story, the life and ministry of Jesus, if Luke is historical wouldn’t they all be?

If this were true, there would be no need to list historical events.

Who is to decide what we trust and don’t trust? This is my point regarding the failure to mention infanticide of 10 - 30 babies in a miniscule, unimportant town or risen saints when that would be completely out of character for him. Yet these two points are used as evidence against the bible.

Then why are we using the lack of mention from him as evidence against another work?

And that makes it right?

No more so than extrabiblical accounts of pilate.

When I read back through your posts, I see that I indeed did not fully represent your point. I apologize. I omitted the fact that you don’t accept that pilate offered clemency to a felon because there is no precedent for such an act. I have responded by stating precedent is not required to make it true.

How so? I happen to disagree for obvious reasons. Should we break the quote down word by word so that we can see how it does support my point?

The only conclusion it reaches is that crossan is confused and mistaken, as I have pointed out more than once and point by point.

It’s similar enough.

I agree that this assertion is incomplete.

Not exactly. The mob may have contained jewish leaders, but not in it’s totality.

These weren’t “beliefs�. Apparently this was:
1. a custom for whomever was in political control
2. pilate sensing an unruly mob and realizing in the end it is of little or no consequence to him to execute one insignificant person. Sounds like an expected reaction from a leader of that era.

Again, you’re assuming (incorrectly) that the mob was entirely made up of people from the triumphal entry

As you yourself have stated, this would not be beyond his purview or disposition.

Your second sentence here supports his being wary of the situation and thus leading him to acquiesce to the easily realized demands of the mob.

I see. I must provide an example but you don’t need to just because you’re able to waive your hand.

You stop short of proving that they witnessed or were able to witness the event. You could have one million guards there but that doesn’t mean they saw this particular event.

if josephus is taken at his word, then he performed some sort of investigation to get all the information he wrote about. He couldn’t possibly have witnessed all the events he chronicled. Therefore, he is an example of someone performing an investigation to get information. The problem is, we don’t see any evidence of anyone coming to the conclusion (refuting Christianity) that would support the anti-christian case.

If you want to discredit Christianity, fine. Prove it. Otherwise why should anyone listen to you? Denying the claims requires proof that the claim is false, otherwise the refutation is meaningless. That is not me shifting the burden. That is someone being skeptical enough of your claims and conclusions (that you read from someone handed down from someone previous, etc) and not taking them at face value as many people do. That is someone actually wanting you to prove your case instead of accepting conjecture and speculation.

You are correct. Absence of written refutation helps the Christian cause because skeptics can’t prove:
• that Christians were able to destroy every single piece of evidence of refutation on earth (in fact we see the opposite, Christians preserving criticism)
• that anyone was able to outright successfully refute Christian claims
• that there is a precedent of untrustworthiness of Christian claims
• opponents of Christianity were unable to preserve those refutations
• that lack of refutation is anything more than tautology (we don’t see refutations because conditions such as lack of knowledge, disinterest, inability, etc. the belief that those conditions exist rests on the fact that we don’t find those arguments in existence)

having established the above, we know that the reason why we don’t see such a refutation is not because Christianity was too obscure. Christianity was known even in rome. We know that the reason is not because the specifics weren’t known because the jews certainly did. We know that the reason is not because no one cared enough because the jews certainly did.

Diogenes the Cynic

Why on earth should we expect to see refutations for mythological claims of aN obscure religious cult which had its origin in a destroyed city decades before? Who would be around to "refute" anything?

Tacitus seems to have known very little about Xianity, by the way. he didn't even know that "Christus" was a god.

Also, there is no way that Josephus would not have mentioned a mass act of infanticide by Herod. It would have been an extremely significant incident in Jewish history (and let's not forget that the incident would have to depend on an act of supernatural prophecy which makes the entire story laughable on its face. It's a deliberate literary echo of Exodus and nothing more. Also it contradicts Luke).

Christianity, such as it was in the 1st century, was by contrast to Herod, of no consequence whatsoever to Josephus.

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii, you seem to have forgotten what happened in 70 AD.

This was pretty unusual, even in the Roman Empire. The Jews and their kooky ideas on religion would have become the "talk of the town" in Rome for some time. This would have the effect of temporarily raising awareness of even relatively obscure sub-cults of Judaism, such as Christianity.

DramaQ

Ok, here’s what I think the problem is: In the sentence above, you used the word “never�. It changes the whole meaning of the question.

It’s the difference between saying:

“A boulder turned to butter in the Ottumwa, Iowa Public Library parking lot at 10:00 a.m. on February 13th, 1998.�

and

“A boulder turned to butter somewhere, once.�

Evidence – OR LACK of evidence - can be validly used for or against the first claim.

The second claim is logically fallacious and can NEVER be proved or disproved. (It is usually followed by the nonsensical “Then prove one NEVER turned to butter�.)

The problem, therefore, is NOT with using “lack of evidence as evidence� but in the nature of the claim you’re looking to prove.

So here’s the score:

“Lack of evidence� usable against Claim 1 – Yes.
“Lack of evidence� usable again Claim 2 – No, but who cares? It’s nonsense.

Hope this helps,
DQ

Amaleq13

bfniii,


I'm taking the time to respond, despite my earlier wave good-bye, because I've got some free time before my next meeting. Don't let that fool you, though. I still consider this "discussion" to be a waste of time because our views are so radically different. When two people cannot even agree on what constitutes relevant evidence or a rational argument, there seems no point in attempting to debate.

I offer the following clarifications only for the unfortunate individuals who have survived this thread to this point. I really doubt I will bother to reply to any future responses that continue to ignore points made repeatedly.

This is a very confused question and I'm not sure if it is supposed to refer to ancient "people" or modern skeptics. With regard to the former, if there were no eyewitnesses to an event, there would be no eyewitness claims. Therefore, there wouldn't be anyone to assert the opposite.

With regard to the latter, if the events were not witnessed by the claimant, the claim would either be hearsay or fiction. Doubting either, absent supporting evidence is clearly reasonable. Accepting either absent supporting evidence clearly requires faith.

We should critically examine all claims made by folks living in the 1st century. They did not necessarily share our definition of "history" and there was clearly a great deal of gullible acceptance of all sorts of bizarre claims.

We certainly have been over this which makes the question rather surprising. We noted that Josephus does seem to enjoy listing the crimes of Herod so this was probably the best chance to obtain external support for the unique story attributed to Matthew. Absent that support, there is no reason to ignore the apparent connection the author seems to trying to establish between Jesus and Moses.

I specified the 1st century later in the same post. Observing that Josephus wrote about "lots of stuff" does not answer the question.

Unfortunately for you, establishing a precedent is necessary to make your claim credible to me. Absent that evidence, it appears to me to be a specious attempt to support your faith.

You, again, incorrectly restate my position. We've been over this so many times it is becoming difficult not to wonder if your perpetual misunderstanding isn't deliberate obtusity. Your claim is that it is somehow significant and supportive of the historical reliability of the claims made in the Gospels that we have no written critique of those claims as they were made by early Christians.

The primary problem with this postion has been identified throughout this thread and, to date, has never been adequately addressed:

There is no evidence that early Christians were making the claims you insist would be refuted. Paul preaches about "Christ crucified" and "Christ resurrected" but fails to assert any of the Gospel claims you wish to be accepted as historically reliable. Tacitus and Pliny don't even exhibit knowledge of the resurrection let alone any of the Gospel claims you wish to be accepted as historically reliable.

Thus, the only "Gospel claim" for which evidence exists indicating it was made by early Christians is that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Given the rather large number of folks the Romans were crucifying, the former claim would not have been considered terribly unlikely and, therefore, not deserving of either investigation nor refutation. How one could refute that a particular person had not been crucified is another issue. That leaves the claim of resurrection and how anyone might investigate such claims so as to create a written critique has yet to be explained.

In conclusion, the argument from silence regarding the absence of recorded refutation of Gospel claims would appear to be entirely without merit.

There is no evidence of Jewish knowledge of the claims made by in the Gospels until well after those stories were written. One version of the Gospel story, however, claims that the Jews denied early Christian claims of Christ's resurrection by asserting the body had been stolen. Even if we don't accept the details of the story, and there seems to be plenty of reason to doubt it, we can still accept the suggestion that some Jews really were refuting the claim of resurrection by asserting the body had been stolen. Claiming that the refutation was not true doesn't change the fact that its existence denies your original assertion that we have none. Having an example of an early refutation of a Christian claim should make it obvious that the argument is without merit in any effort to establish the historical reliability of the Gospel stories. Early Jewish refutation does no more to deny the historical reliability of the early resurrection claim than an absence does to support it. Your argument from silence is entirely specious.

It was not offered to support such an assertion. It was offered as an example of the existing evidence which your argument ignores.

The absence of evidence supporting your argument, combined with its failure to address the existing evidence, is sufficient to deny the conclusion.

This completely ignores the point that your argument is founded on an assumption for which there does not appear to be any support: We have no evidence that early Christians were making any of the claims made by the Gospel stories EXCEPT "Christ crucified" and "Christ resurrected"!

The first would be difficult, if not impossible, to establish as untrue even if it was false but was such a mundane claim that it was likely accepted without question. The latter is clearly impossible to establish as untrue even if it was false given that, according to Acts, the claim wasn't even made publicly until over a month after the event.

The entire argument, from its fundamental assumption, is clearly without merit.

Unfortunately, we have ample evidence that similar claims were made by non-Christian healers so this really only speaks to the general credulity of the times than the validity of any claims made by the alleged miracle-workers.

I am perfectly happy to let any reader make that determination on their own but, IMO, they are ridiculous.

None of the Gospel authors have written a chronicle of Jesus' life. They are entirely silent about the vast majority of his life. At best, they have written a story about his ministry.

First, depending on what is meant by "essentially", they don't necessarily tell "essentially the same story". Second, the author of Luke claims to be recording "those things which are most surely believed among us" but that is not the same thing as actually writing a historically reliable record.

There would be such a need if they wanted to express their theological views of Jesus in a narrative.

It isn't the specific silence of Josephus but the silence of the entire extrabiblical record that fails to render credible these remarkable claims. Josephus is just a good place for Christians to have found support. Given what we know of Herod, the first claim is not inherently unlikely but, as was mentioned above, we can't ignore that the author seems interested in connecting Jesus with Moses. Deliberate fiction appears to be an entirely reasonable possibility since historical reliability cannot be established. The second claim is inherently unlikely so an absence of any support makes it entirely reasonsable to deny the truth of the claim.

No, that makes it obvious even to folks who allegedly share your faith (ie that the TF, as it stands, is the result of Christian tampering). The evidence that makes it obvious is what make the conclusion correct.

Apology accepted but it is important to note that Barabbas is not just a felon but convicted of sedition. A precedent for the notion that any Roman ruler allowed amnesty for such a criminal in respect for a religious holiday of a ruled populace is necessary to make the claim credible.

No, I'm assuming that the crowds who supported Jesus would be expected to voice their opposition to freeing Barabbas instead. This is only relevant to the observation that the entire scene is poorly written fiction since there is no reason to think any such offer was ever made.

I have no such desire. Discrediting your argument, OTOH, has been the point of my refutation and I will leave the determination of my success to anyone reading the thread.

That is incorrect as has been explained repeatedly by several people here. Asserting the claims requires evidence. Absent that evidence, it is entirely reasonable to either hold an agnostic position or deny the truth of the claim depending on the nature of the claim, itself. Mundane claims can simply be considered "unsubstantiated" but inherently unlikely claims can be dismissed as false. That you continue to deny this is an example of shifting the burden doesn't change the fact that it is. It isn't my case to prove. You asserted the Gospels were historically reliable so the burden is yours.

The absence of written refutation doesn't help your argument and skeptics of your argument don't have to "prove" anything.

The evidence from Rome does not suggest the Gospel claims were known. Therefore, the absence of refutation could very well be because the claims were not being made.

The only specific claims the Jews "certainly" knew was Christ crucified and Christ resurrected. According to one version of the Gospel story, they denied the latter. Evidence of Jewish knowledge of other specifics dates well after the Gospels were written so it does not help your case.

If the stories had been told, the Jews might have cared enough to dispute them. Unfortunately for your argument, you have offered no evidence that anything was known beyond the two assertions identified.

There is no evidence that the details from the stories told in the Gospels were being proclaimed before those texts were published. Therefore, we should not expect refutations of specifics that were not asserted.

bfniii

Interesting question. Would you agree that proof would be something that is repeatable and observable? For example, nuclear reactions are predictable, repeatable and verifiable. Would that not constitute as objective proof?

Meaningful would seem to be a value subjectively assigned by individuals.

Equal but opposite irrefutable proof that skeptics rely on for their case.

What you consider evidence is debatable. You claim that there is ample evidence refuting Christian claims. Your assessment of the evidence is a subjective judgment that is not applicable to everyone. Concordantly, the fact that you consider it reasonable is what makes it subjective.

You are free to deny it all you want. However, it is under the auspices of subjective judgment and not fact.

I have come to understand that quite clearly. In order for me to be correct, I need to draw the same conclusions you do.

I understand that that is your assessment of the state of the debate. I doubt everyone agrees with you.

You have yet to be able to quantify this statement. When you are able to show you have interviewed every scholar, everywhere, then these unsubstantiated statements will begin to have some meaning. I agree that Christian opposition is in the news more, but that doesn’t make it more numerous nor correct.

One thing you have yet to admit is that scholars, or anyone for that matter, who is on any side of the debate has faith that their conclusions are correct.

Continuing to mention the fact that the Christian view is a minute, dogmatic minority underscores an anti-christian bias because it is certainly not scholarly. It is actually discriminatory.

When another group of unnecessarily skeptical scholars parrot traditional criticisms, it is clear that they are indeed led by faith instead of rationally considering information.

exile

This is a very long thread and I haven't the strength to read through it all.

Could the main protagonists please summarise their position?

My own is

- There is evidence of the existence of someone called Jesus in the early 1st C
- He may have been crucified
- He had followers who claimed he worked miracles, and that he rose from the dead

Beyond that I don't think we can claim to KNOW very much. Either positively or negatively. There just isn't enough data - and there never will be.

I don't think we can take the synoptic Gospels as good evidence - any more than we could take a Mormon tract as good evidence of the angel Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith and dictating the Book of Mormon. (I always like to bring this up when Christian apologists suggest we should believe
what enthusiasts of a religious sect write as if it were a regular historical record)