blastula

I haven't finished the Carrier debate, but I have heard the Ehrman one. Carrier says in his blog that afterwards, he thought of a Bayesian proof of his position. In the Ehrman debate, Craig attacks Ehrman using a Bayesian-like probability analysis, I think - I can't read probability math. You can see it in the transcript at the link. Craig says it's both "Ehrman’s Egregious and "Bart’s Blunder" to say that, respectively,

and
because Ehrman ignores the evidence for the resurrection (his "facts"). Craig is right, you can't ignore that evidence, but does his evidence make any difference anyway? It would only make a difference is if 1) there is a high probability that his evidence is reliable, 2) the probability of all possible natural explanations for the evidence is low enough compared to the low probability of a resurrection explanation. His biggest problem is that, even assuming the evidence is reliable, there are plenty of naturalistic explanations that each alone have a higher probability than a resurrection.

Ehrman responded by saying something like that, that even a "twin brother" explanation would be more probable than a resurrection. Ehrman did a good job overall with Craig's typical arguments (like the women witnesses).

Is there anybody here who buys Craig's arguments?

thedistillers

Erhman is not a philosopher, so perhaps his view on miracles needs to be a bit more sophisticated (and Craig jumped on that), but his intuition is basically correct; the probability of a miracle like the resurrection is so low that no matter what "facts" about ancient history Craig has, the probability would not change significantly. So Erhman is right to assume that when ancient history is concerned, a miracle will always be the least probable explanation no matter what "facts" we have.

blastula

Also, not to mention, that once you allow miraculous explanations, how do you determine which is the most probable among competing miracle stories? Maybe it was Elvis's time traveling ghost they were seeing?

By the way, I suppose Craig believes Elvis is alive/undead, because there's "multiple independent sources."

Loomis

Sure we do. Joseph of Arimathea is fiction too. His role in the story is to put ‘Jesus’ in a rich man’s tomb per Isaiah 53:9.

They intended to bury him with criminals,
but he ended up in a rich man’s tomb,
because he had committed no violent deeds,
nor had he spoken deceitfully.

skepticdude

Anybody wanna take bets that the video will be "drunk-teen-using-cell-phone" quality?

skepticdude

Hume wasn't wrong, we only learn from the pool of experience that we build up in our heads. We cannot meaningfully discuss "miracle", without proof that such can be real.

Just because Christianity can still be put on the defensive after admitting god's existence, doesn't mean it should be afforded those breaks.

It is perfectly legitimate to scoff at the notion of a miracle since by definition they are not susecptible to scientific proof, and thus should be classed with flying elephants and round squares and time travel.

It is even more absurd to suppose that embellishment does NOT occur in ancient religious histories.

This would be a good debate for Carrier to teach the Christian audience the reasons why the universally accepted rules of historiography make miracle-explanations the least likely.

Worse, talking about various details in the gospels, such as Joseph of Arimathea, grants them a default level of reliability, deserving of discussion and disagreement, when in fact the gospels nor Paul even deserve this much.

Since Carrier knows that Christians will always side with their emotional commitment to Jesus and not their intellectual position on the gospels, Carrier should speak against such self-delusion.

Lowder's paper on historical criteria would be useful. No historical criteria which historians agree on, will allow the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore the very criteria that allow this possibility are themselves uncertain and subject to disagreement.

show_no_mercy

Craig said he didn't want to argue about the historicity of the gospels and wanted to limit it to the question on whether the resurrection happened or not. In my opinion, Richard Carrier should have agreed to this but only on the condition that Craig, since they weren't relying on the reliability of the gospels, couldn't use any information found in the gospels. This renders these four "facts" inadmissible to the debate and Craig would only be able to rely on the epistles - where none of these "facts" are mentioned.

GakuseiDon

Yes, agreed. Without being able to show that the Gospels were reliable on the Empty Tomb, etc, Craig's case doesn't even get off the ground.

Out of interest, Craig discussed some of the pre-discussion he had with Carrier for the debate here:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/...rticle&id=6981

"When Landon Hedrick at Northwest Missouri State invited us to participate in a debate, Richard stated three topics on which he was willing to debate: (1) Are Moral Facts Evidence of God?, (2) Does God Care About Us?, and (3) Are the Gospels Historically Reliable? He did not want to debate the historicity of Jesus' resurrection without first discussing the last question. Since I thought, for the two reasons stated above, that the historical reliability of the Gospels was a poor topic for debate, I chose his topic on the foundations of morality. In time, however, people expressed such disappointment with this topic that Richard relented and agreed to debate the historicity of Jesus' resurrection on the condition that I would issue a statement that he could quote as to why I declined to debate the historical reliability of the Gospels...

So I agreed to go with the new topic and issued the statement quoted above. My use of the word "prefer" is meant merely to express my preference among the topics offered me for debate. I was given a choice, and I made one. It was Richard who refused to debate the resurrection until he felt sufficient pressure to do so.

Were my reasons for preferring the topic of the resurrection over the topic of the historical reliability of the Gospels illogical? I think not. With regard to (i), when Richard says, "defending the resurrection requires establishing a number of premises, including the reliability of the Gospel accounts," he needs to add, "with respect to specific events" (unless, as he notes, one plans to make a case for Jesus' resurrection without appeal to the Gospels, as my doctoral mentor Wolfhart Pannenberg in fact does1). If you're going to appeal to the Gospels in making your case, then obviously you need to show that the Gospels are reliable with respect to the specific events you are claiming to be historical. But a case for the historicity of the specific events underlying the inference to Jesus' resurrection doesn't depend on establishing the general historical reliability of the Gospels. This truth underlies the historical-critical method. The task of the critical historian is to sift the wheat from the chaff in order to discover the kernels of historical truth contained in a document. "

Which is fair enough. I was wondering why Carrier started talking about Barabbas and other unrelated topics -- I think he decided to go ahead with his own topic rather than the topic of the debate. That's not debating, that's proselytizing. Carrier did an exceptionally poor job in this debate.

Steven Carr

GDon is apparently saying that people can now write generally unreliable reports of his postings and he is perfectly happy for people to use these generally unreliable reports of his postings to get facts about what he believes.

After all, why should people show that their reports about him are generally reliable before demanding that these reports be accepted as factual?

Provided there is a 'kernel' of truth in them, what's the problem?

I am being unfair, of course.

It is OK for Craig to use generally unreliable reports when trying to see if Jesus was raised from the dead, but people should never write generally unreliable reports of GDon's postings and expect Don to still take you seriously.

The earliest Gospel, Mark, has the absurdity of the Romans allowing an executed criminal to be released each passover.

This guilty criminal being released on that year just happens to be called 'Son of the Father', while the real 'Son of the Father' is about to be killed, although innocent.

Just how much does the author have to signify that this is all myth and parable before Craig will stop claiming it is irrelevant that nobody can show any evidence of the existence of half the cast in Mark's Gospel , as that is all 'chaff' to be sifted from the 'wheat'

Toto

What's fair about Craig's sophistry? He won't debate the reliability of the gospels because he wants to use the underlying assumptions of the historical critical method, in particular the criterion of embarrassment, which assumes that there is some historicity of the gospels, without having to actually defend it. So he can rely on an argument based on the gospels but claim that he is NOT basing his argument on the reliability of the gospels. Craig missed his calling - he should be defending the AIG bonuses.

Carrier started talking about Barabbas because it is a clear indication that the gospels were not written as history. If the gospels do not even pretend to be history, there is no reason to think that the empty tomb is historical - is there? How else would one make this argument?

How the hell is this proselyzing?