Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 12-20-2011, 05:28 AM

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Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

How precisely do you mean that I have persistently exhibited a remarkable indifference to the evidence?

I didn't say you were ignoring evidence.

Well I am not sure what your saying.

Toto · 12-20-2011, 09:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

THAT IS NOT THE NULL HYPOTHESIS

I commenced another thread before this thread entitled Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of Jesus in which the following table was presented, and which has been discussed ad nauseum on this thread:

Simplest Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of Jesus

+100 = Jesus was historical

================================================== ===
ZERO = The fence upon which to balance .....
================================================== ===

-100 = Jesus was not historical

I have consistently presented a ZERO = The fence on which to balance in all the many renditions of this table in this thread, and this zero hypothesis is what I am consistently refering to when I added the third logical option between the positive and the negative hypothesis.

This has nothing to do with the formalized defintion of the null hypothesis used in statistical hypothesis testing. It never had anything to do with the null hypothesis in statistical hypothesis testing, and your comment above is out of bounds. I have used a similar expression consistently to represent something else entirely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

The NULL hypothesis, the Starting Point, is the Consensus that the NT is NOT historically reliable.

I have above argued that what I have termed the zero or the null hypothesis is empty. It represents many things such as "insufficient evidence" and "dont really know" and "the answer is unknowable" and "who gives a fig" and "unknown" and is the fundamental starting point of blissful ignorance.

The zero or null hypothesis exists for every single item of evidence and all its infinite combinations and permutations.

However I am trying to identify a specific type of null hypothesis that is the result of selection NEITHER the positive or negative historicity hypothesis as discussed above. It is also not the null hypothesis as defined in the formalized system of hypothesis acceptance testing, as I have outlined above to Toto.

Between a positive historicity hypothesis (e.g. "The James Ossuary is a genuine historical artefact") and the negative historicity hypothesis (e.g. "The James Ossuary is not a genuine historical artefact") I am allowing a zero assessment for those who provisionally either do not know, have insufficient evidence, couldn't care less, think the answer is unknowable, or with to start the investigation of the James Ossuary without any preconceived hypothesis regarding (positive or negative) historicity.

Is this any clearer?

It is clear that you don't know anything about hypothesis testing or logical argument.

Null is not zero. Don't confuse them.

Your scheme of trying to assign a percentage to the probability that a piece of evidence is genuine has not just been discussed here - it has been rejected.

You still have not come up with a concrete example of how your approach sheds any light on any historical question.

Toto · 12-20-2011, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

The evidence is not infinite.

Anything and everything may be admitted as evidence. Whether it is relevant or not is another question. Textual sources while obviously finite, can be examined word for word against other textual sources and other evidence items. When you contemplate these permutations and combinations, they quickly start to become exceedingly large. Do we agree on this?

No, we do not. The surviving evidence relating to Christian origins is pathetically sparse. That is why the methodology for evaluating it looms so large.

Quote:

I received the following response at a history forum, and post it below (again) for your edification and perhaps discussion. ...

Provide a citation, please.

J-D · 12-20-2011, 12:15 PM

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by Toto

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Originally Posted by mountainman

If you cannot deny that Paul could have been a figment of early Christian imagination then you cannot deny that the hypothesis that Paul was not an historical figure may in fact be true, irrespective of any arguments. In case you missed bits of this thread it is about what is POSSIBLE, not probable. I am not interested in rating the hypotheses, and am only interested in identifying them. How many times must I repeat myself? Who has comprehension problems with this?

Stop repeating yourself. If you have to repeat yourself so often, consider that there is some sort of communications failure, and it is possible that you are at least partly at fault.

No one here, including Doug, has denied that there is a possibility that Paul's letters were forged in the name of a fictional person. But that is not the most likely explanation.

I will take on board all above except that last statement on the basis of what I wrote above. My intention in this thread was to try and (impartially) explore the hypothetical possibilities associated with the various theories.

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You can waste a lot of time identifying all of the mere possibilities.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

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Originally Posted by mountainman

In case you missed bits of this thread it is about what is POSSIBLE, not probable.

A list of mere possibilities, without regard to probability, would be infinitely long.

Yes I agree. In fact there may be an infinite series (P1, P2, P3, ... Pn) of such associated with every "what, who, when, where, how and why" question an investigator asks each of the evidence items E1, E2, E3, ... En. In one sense the evidence itself is infinite, because it includes all combinations and permutations of its elements. Hopefully we have agreement on this issue.

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Originally Posted by Doug

To what end are we supposed to try to compile such a list?

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Originally Posted by Toto

And you are not saying anything worth discussion if you just identify a case as a possibility without discussing how you would establish it.

I have introduced a schematic and some conventions in this thread.
N/A

I find it useful in this discussion because it depicts an iterative process.
Others may disagree with the process or some with the terminology.
I have sought to achieve some form of agreement in the schematic
and have revised it a number of times during this discussion.
It is meant to provide a background for the discussion.

Here is one claim restated after all this discussion ...

the fundamental positive or negative historicity hypothesis about evidence items (En)

I attempted to introduce an idea or a principle above about just one of these infinite number of hypotheses (P1, P2 ... Pn) which might be formulated against one specific evidence item (En). Let's call it the fundamental positive or negative historicity hypothesis for that specific item of evidence.

It is represented by the selection of one, from an antithetical pair of hypotheses which cannot both be historically true - or by the null statement "Dont know or unknown or unknowable etc. The default position can in fact be taken as "I dont know" for all the items of evidence En.

I have cited above from the WIKI page on the Historical method the core principle:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Core Principle of the Historical Method

Any given source may be forged or corrupted.

Strong indications of the originality of the source increase its reliability.

The idea is this. Amidst the infinite series of hypotheses against every single element item En there will exist the "Fundamental (+/-) Historicity Hypothesis" related to the historicity of the evidence. The evidence we have has already been classified into a range of evidence categories discussed above (e.g. people, mss, coins, grafiti). Therefore this fundamental historicity hypothesis may have to be slighly modified to suit the category of the evidence. For people (purported historical identities) it takes this form:

Where evidence item (En) here is a person X (e.g. En = Jesus; En+1 = Paul, etc )

Positive Historicity Hypothesis: "X existed in history"
Negative Historicity Hypothesis: "X did not exist in history"

(NB: Null or Zero Hypothesis: "Dont know or unknown or unknowable etc.")

My claim is that the (+/-) historicity hypothesis must be addressed by any investigator who is examining every single item of the evidence, and is thus a fundamental concept to be understood. In the diagram this would appear against every item of evidence En. It applies especially for those investigators who for some strange reason suspect that the received "history of christian origins" contains within it a not insignificant distribution of negative evidence. (e.g. forgeries, fabrications, heresiological veneers, etc).

I am not expecting unconditional agreement on this idea, but the reason that I have attempted to discuss it here is because I see it as a very foundational principle in the field of ancient history, and one that is particularly relevant to questions surrounding "the history of christian origins".

It can't be a foundational principle in the field of ancient history when nobody in the field of ancient history follows it.

On the contrary, at post # 404 I have argued that it is in fact ALWAYS used, quite often in an implicit form, in the field, and asked two questions (one for Jesus and the other for Paul) about its universal use, and asked for any counter-examples where it could be shown it was not used. After discussing Carrier, Doherty, Detering and Hoffman, we see that they all make reference to it in one form or another.

You say that you have argued this, and you have argued this. You also say that we see this, but we do not see this. What you have argued is not what we see.

aa5874 · 12-20-2011, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

..... The surviving evidence relating to Christian origins is pathetically sparse. That is why the methodology for evaluating it looms so large.....

No, it is NOT sparse.

The Jesus cult called Christians ORIGINATED in the 2nd century or at least AFTER the Fall of the Jewish Temple just exactly as the Evidence suggest.

It is people who have pathetically PRESUMED that the Jesus cult of Christians started in the 1st century who have Zero EVIDENCE and ASSUME the Evidence is Sparse.

We have lots of EVIDENCE:

1. Philo

2. Josephus.

3. Suetonius.

4. Tacitus.

5. Pliny the younger.

6. Justin Martyr.

7. Aristides.

8. Minucius Felix.

9. Lucian

10. Celsus.

11. The Short-Ending gMark (gMark without the resurrection appearance of Jesus).

12. Theophilus of Antioch.

13. Athenagoras of Athens.

14. The Muratorian Canon.

All these writers SUPPORT the theory that the Jesus cult of Christians was UNKNOWN before the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE.

mountainman · 12-20-2011, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

THAT IS NOT THE NULL HYPOTHESIS

I commenced another thread before this thread entitled Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of Jesus in which the following table was presented, and which has been discussed ad nauseum on this thread:

Simplest Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of Jesus

+100 = Jesus was historical

================================================== ===
ZERO = The fence upon which to balance .....
================================================== ===

-100 = Jesus was not historical

I have consistently presented a ZERO = The fence on which to balance in all the many renditions of this table in this thread, and this zero hypothesis is what I am consistently refering to when I added the third logical option between the positive and the negative hypothesis.

This has nothing to do with the formalized defintion of the null hypothesis used in statistical hypothesis testing. It never had anything to do with the null hypothesis in statistical hypothesis testing, and your comment above is out of bounds. I have used a similar expression consistently to represent something else entirely.

It is clear that you don't know anything about hypothesis testing or logical argument.

It is clear that you dont read what I write.

mountainman · 12-20-2011, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

If you think you have something worth discussing, please take one concrete example and demonstrate why your plan clarifies or elucidates anything about it.

The positive and negative historicity hypothesis that I have outlined above as directly applicable to each and every item of evidence is thus applicable to question of the historical existence of Jesus (or Paul, etc).

The general plan is that the question "Did Jesus exist in history" may be explored and managed by the exploration of two antithetical hypotheses that can be made about the historical existence of Jesus - "Jesus existed in history" and "Jesus did not exist in history".

According to the iterative process I have diagramized, exploring the positive historicity hypothesis implies setting the hypothesis that "Jesus existed in history" as provisionally true, and then examining all other evidence, and all other hypotheses about all other evidence using this hypothesis. Exploring the negative historicity hypothesis implies setting the hypothesis that "Jesus did not exist in history" as provisionally true, and then examining all other evidence, and all other hypotheses about all other evidence using this hypothesis.

It is logical that only one of the positive and negative historicity hypotheses can be true. It therefore follows that - all other things being equal - the theoretical conclusions derived by the process described above can be compared in terms of which best explains all the evidence.

mountainman · 12-20-2011, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Your scheme of trying to assign a percentage to the probability that a piece of evidence is genuine has not just been discussed here - it has been rejected.

Then it has not been understood and has been rejected in error. Carrier on the historicity of Jesus states that it is "very probable Jesus never actually existed as a historical person" and I expect him, at least in the appendices of his new book, to uses Bayesian theory and come up with a percentage figure. Are you going to reject Carrier's scheme as well?

mountainman · 12-20-2011, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

The evidence is not infinite.

Anything and everything may be admitted as evidence. Whether it is relevant or not is another question. Textual sources while obviously finite, can be examined word for word against other textual sources and other evidence items. When you contemplate these permutations and combinations, they quickly start to become exceedingly large. Do we agree on this?

No, we do not.

Then you do not understand the implications of what I have written above (bolded) and I have no inclination to continue to correct your faulty reasoning.

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The surviving evidence relating to Christian origins is pathetically sparse.

It still carries a great weight.

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That is why the methodology for evaluating it looms so large.

Hence this thread about the hypotheses of positive and negative historicity. The methodology up until recently for a great number of the contributors to this field relied partly on discussing a whole stack of "CRITERIA" (including the "Criterion of Embarassment") which have since been demonstrated to be fallacious logic.

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I received the following response at a history forum, and post it below (again) for your edification and perhaps discussion. ...

Provide a citation, please.

Here is the response-in-thread.

The substance bears repetition:

Quote:

Originally Posted by sulla1 at historum

A fascinating question, Jack; thanks for asking

History's method is quasi-scientific; more exactly, it is as scientific (rigorous) as it can possibly be, given its particular circumstances.

Given that strict scientific methodology (i.e. up to double blind controlled trials plus metanalyses) is inherently impossible for History, the postulates of the historical hypotheses (often miscalled "theories") are subject to what is often called "mental experiements", in a nutshell rigorously controlled "what-if" speculation.

The traditional scientific methodology is reversed in one critical point; the results of the "mental experiment" (i.e. the present conditions of the issue at hand) are known in advance; it is the "methodology" of such process which is trying to be logically induced from such results.

In fact, the results are essentially the only potentially truly objective part of the process; ergo, extreme rigor is required for recording such results.

The process as a whole is superficially similar to pure philosophical research, given the ostensible relevance of logical reasoning (actually shared by any scientific discipline).

The critical difference is that, contrary to pure philosophical research and analogous to any scientific discipline, the method of History is restricted by the regular rules of evidence; the core falsifiable criteria of Popper are required too.

Even if in principle any past may be considered "History" in practice it is regularly restricted fundamentally to the study of the recorded (basically written) development of humankind; ergo, it is no surprise that the History method so often tends to overlap with the methodology of several other Humanities, notably anthropology and sociology.

For example, there are myriad hypotheses on the Fall of the Roman Empire.

All of them naturally begin from the easily verifiable hard fact that the Roman Empire doesb't survive to this day... or mostly, because some institutions like the Catholic and Orthodox churches ostensibly evolved directly form remnants of such empire. Such survival (i.e. one of the objective results of the process) even if limited, couldn't be ignored for any valid hypotheses on this process.

Besides, even the most superficial review will show how problematic the lack of consensus on the very definition of the studied results of this process may be, i.e. the "Fall"; some authors are ostensibly talking about the fall of the city of Rome, some others about the political conquest of the Roman empire by alien invaders, some other of the social collapse of the Western half of the empire, some others about the end of the Classical civilization as a whole, and so on.

More explicitly related to the "mental experiments" of the methodology of historical research, plenty of the purported explanations on why the Western Roman Empire "fell" are plainly unviable, simply because they fail to explain why did the Eastern side survived to the same process; the evidence of such survival (the results of such process) is still relevant and verifiable to this very day.

Hope this stuff may be helpful

Toto · 12-20-2011, 02:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

...
It is clear that you dont read what I write.

Unfortunately, I cannot put you on ignore.

What you have presented is far from what Carrier is doing with Baysian statistics. Perhaps you will get to that point, but you are not there yet.

Quote:

According to the iterative process I have diagramized, exploring the positive historicity hypothesis implies setting the hypothesis that "Jesus existed in history" as provisionally true, and then examining all other evidence, and all other hypotheses about all other evidence using this hypothesis. Exploring the negative historicity hypothesis implies setting the hypothesis that "Jesus did not exist in history" as provisionally true, and then examining all other evidence, and all other hypotheses about all other evidence using this hypothesis.

This is what most people do, without your elaborate diagrams and algebraic formulae.

Apologists say - if Jesus did not exist, how did Christianity start? Why would they die for a lie? And this proves the existence and the divinity of Jesus for them.

Mythicists say - if Jesus existed, why is there no mention of him in a contemporary record?

There's no iteration here. You just pick what you think is the most dramatic unexplainable factoid that your preferred theory can explain, and dwell on it.

But this has been done. It's not going to get you anywhere to repeat this. You've wasted this entire thread beating around the bush, talking about postulates when you might have meant hypotheses, misusing the technical term Null Hypothesis.

Baysian statistics takes this to another level.

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