bacht

Good stuff Tharn. A common response at this point is that humans are exceptions to the universal processes of decay because God made us different. Possibly true, but so far unproven. Or, if it's just the incorporeal soul involved then physical decomposition is irrelevant. By definition spiritual phenomena are empirically unprovable, so this is strictly a matter of faith (and just how do ghosts retain the memories stored in our brain cells?)

Ercatli seems to be at the level of knowing his beliefs and some context for them, but not knowing why people believe what they do and what mental and emotional processes are involved.

Doug Shaver

Sure. No problem.

OK, let's go with that, at least for starters. We have: (1) the library identifies it as fiction, (2) nobody thinks it is anything but fiction, and (3) the book itself makes no claim to the contrary.

We get books nowadays from publishers. They produce many copies of any book that an author produces. The publishers send those copies to bookstores, libraries, and various other places. The bookstores and libraries sort them as fiction or nonfiction depending on what the publisher says they are. The publisher in turn usually relies on the author's word for whether to identify the book as fiction or nonfiction.

(Nonfiction, we might note in passing, doesn't mean "it's all true." Nonfiction just means "the author says it's all true." A nonfiction book can contain mostly falsehoods. Some publishers care about their reputation for selling only reliable nonfiction. And some do not.)

That accounts for (1) and (2). The libraries think it is fiction for the same reason everybody else thinks it is fiction. It's because the publisher says it is fiction. Furthermore, if anybody thinks, for any reason at all, that either the publisher or the author was trying to deceive the public, modern methods of communication and travel usually make it fairly easy for someone to check it out. Exposure of such deceit, especially in the case of a really popular book that is widely thought to be nonfiction, can be a really good career move for any journalist who does it successfully.

As for (3), some works of fiction do claim to be real. It's usually a stylistic gimmick, but occasionally the author is being intentionally deceitful. Every novel written in the first person is such a work, and many others are written in a style that imitates history or journalism. It is customary nowadays for a publisher to include an author's disclaimer at the front of any work of fiction declaring it to be a work of fiction, regardless of narrative mode, but this practice is very recent, historically speaking. In any case, a great many works of fiction are written in a manner indistinguishable from nonfiction. If you had a copy of such a book that lacked any authorial disclaimer and you had no knowledge of where you'd find it in a library and knew nothing about any common knowledge of its provenance, you would have no way of knowing, without doing a great of research, whether it was factual or not.

And now let's go back 2,000 years. There were no printing presses. There were no publishers. There were no bookstores. There were no journalists. Libraries were almost nonexistent, and the few there were didn't lend their books out. If you were alive then, you could not own a book unless you were rich enough to pay someone to hand-copy someone else's copy, which they in turn had to pay someone else to hand-copy. If you were the average Joe, you could not read anyway, and even if you could, you probably didn't own any books, and so the only ones you'd read were the ones your tutor used while instructing you.

In that situation, your knowledge about the author's intentions, or even who the author actually was, with respect to any book you may hear about is likely to be very iffy. And for us now, 2,000 years later, it's even iffier.

Doug Shaver

The fact that some group of scholars agree some on issue does not imply that there is a consensus of scholars on that issue. A consensus of scholars would be an agreement among most scholars having expertise relevant to that issue.

If not trusting a source means not presuming their infallibility, then I agree you should not trust anyone. If your position is simply that we're obliged to show some deference to people who have done more research than we hope to do ourselves, then I have no quarrel with that.

The problem is that with regard to the origins of Christianity, and the provenance of the documents that purport to inform us about those origins, there is almost no consensus among scholars having relevant expertise. Those experts who have done essentially the same research do not agree on what that research actually proves.

There is no consensus supporting what you believe, except among scholars who share a particular opinion about how Christianity got started. Those scholars are not a majority among all scholars having relevant expertist.

No, it is never valid for scholarly work, though it might be inevitable considering human nature. True scholarship is always ready to revise any opinions formed as a result of previous scholarship, including the scholar's own previous scholarship.

Methodological neutrality seems to lie in the eye of the beholder.

You're assuming a kind of symmetry between Christian bias and skeptical bias that cannot obtain. I am not here attempting to defend any particular scholar from accusations of bias, but true skepticism is not a bias. It is an effort to suppress bias as much as humanly possible. A skeptical analysis of historical data is an analysis that does not assume prior to investigation that the data will support any position. If some scholars say, "These documents prove X" and some other scholars say, "No, they don't prove X," it does not follow that the latter group conducted the study with an assumption that X is false.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. You seem to be suggesting that good scholarship must always support any consensus that might already exist. That just isn't true. Scholarship untaken with an assumption that it must reach a conclusion favorable to any opinion is not true scholarship.

And how do you identify those scholars? How do you know, when you read a scholar's work, that they have in fact "put their beliefs and assumptions aside"?

ercatli

Yeah, I probably am pretty ignorant of that work, whether blissful or not I'm not so sure. Just as long as people apply the conclusions equally to themselves and their own opinions as to others, I don't really mind.

ercatli

I would have thought there was a general consensus about your four points, though certainly not unanimity. But your conclusion is not one most of them draw. We need historical perspective to draw a conclusion, and I don't have it, except by reading those who do and learning from them. So I see no reason to change from my view (and the view of a majority of scholars as far as I can tell) that there is good historical evidence for many aspects of the life of Jesus, though certainly not for all, and certainly not enough to compel belief.

I think this is a poor example, sounds more like some of the crazy things in the later gnostic pseudo-gospels than the real thing. But here too we need historical perspective. It isn't valid to judge the actions of the past by the standards of the present. Historians tell us that Roman authorities thought Judea a backwater and historians were mainly concerned with imperial matters, not what they regarded as fanatics in a remote backwater.

Not necessarily more unusual, simply less appropriate. The miracles are said to be signs, but what would a flying pig be a sign of? I think it would send all the wrong messages! :devil1:

ercatli

It is easy on forums to post hastily and sometimes inadvisedly. "Hypocrisy" is a strong word, though I note with gratitude you qualified it with "apparent". Let me show you, if you are willing to be shown, that you are mistaken.

Firstly, you haven't quoted any time I said this, which is interesting, Have you got an instance? I cannot find one, though I vaguely recall saying something about the topic. Interestingly the only instance I could find of anyone suggesting John the son of Zebedee might be the author of John's Gospel was in fact you, here, when you said: "John, who according to tradition, was the son of Zebedee and apostle ..... calls Jesus "the Word"" So you linked disciple John with the author of John, and I was the one who said there was doubt about this, here, when I suggested you had made several doubtful assumptions, including: "did John write it or was it compiled by others?"

So your charge of hypocrisy loses on a technicality until and if you can produce the quote.

But perhaps I did say something that I can't find, so let me explain my view, expressed consistently on this thread.

1. I have said from the OP that my belief in Jesus is a two-stage process. The first stage is obtaining the best historical information available, and this must be from scholars who use objective methods. This has to be the starting point for two reasons. (1) I shouldn't assume any viewpoint is true to start with, but should get a neutral and balanced assessment. (2) In a discussion such as what we are having here, conflict resolution experts tell us that a major source of different conclusions is different information. So we must start with neutral information.

Thus I accept the general expert conclusion (it is not stated with as much certainty as many other matters we have discussed here) that John's Gospel is late, and was probably not written by the disciple John. But I also note and accept a growing recognition by scholars that portions of the Gospel are early and accurate.

2. Having obtained and accepted the best scholarly advice on these matters, I am then free, as you are, to draw conclusions about the matters left undecided by the scholars. A very minor one of these matters is the authorship of John's Gospel. A very long time ago I did some formal study which included study of John, and it is my conclusion that the author or source of the early portion of John's Gospel was quite likely to be John himself. But that isn't a historical "fact", just a minor and undogmatic conclusion.

So, can you now say where's the hypocrisy? Or are you willing to agree that I have been consistent on this matter, even if you disagree? Even if we cease the discussion at this point as you suggest, I would like to see this matter resolved please.

Thanks.

youngalexander

Good. I was using 'observed' in a technical sense. What we observe are 'observables', ie. things which can be measured. Measured means have an ordinal value of some sort (often a number, but not necessarily) attached to them.
It was not logic, it was a statement of fact. Supernatural means beyond scientific explanation, but that does not mean that we could not observe such a thing. Turning water into wine could readily be observed. My point is that it has not been so observed, and neither has any other supernatural event, when scientifically investigated. If a claim is made that a supernatural event has occured, but we cannot observed it, then the obvious response is - how then do we know that it has occured?

You are in effect claiming that 'there is another kind of knowledge'. The problem is that everyone can make a similar claim, and there is no distinguishing between them. That way lies chaos. Science distinguishes between these claims by invoking an independent arbitor - observable nature.

Qualia may be a valid philosophical idea, but is it valid scientifically? What do 'there is more' & 'appears to be more real' mean? How do you know that neuroscience cannot describe these experiences? Now, I would concede that neuroscience may not be able to do that at present, but this does not exclude the possibility for the future. In essence you are invoking the 'God of the gaps'.
An experience is an observation.

That may be Polkinghorne's view (altho I would like to see the context), I beg to differ for the reasons indicated above.

aa5874

So what was the sign of the 2000 swine?

IT would appear to me that you are actually claiming that the NT is fundamentally true. No matter how unrealistic an event with respect to Jesus seems, you appear to believe it must have or was likely to have occurred.

If you are not an advocate of inerrancy, then please show events about Jesus that are known NOT to have occurred.

ercatli

In fact you didn't prove it at all. The structure of your argument was something like this ...

1. Billions of dead bodies (of all species) have been observed rotting away without a single one of them ever ever ever coming back to life.
2. Therefore they can't.

Now it is quite obvious that 2 cannot be proven from 1, and this can be shown by a simple parallel argument.

1. Billions of people have lived and not one of them has been my grandchild.
2. Therefore I can't ever have a grandchild.

If you think your "proof" is valid, please set out the steps.

Again, this isn't correct, for two reasons.

1. That evidence is based on science, which is the study of natural processes. The most we can conclude is that if only natural processes are operating, dead bodies won't come back to life. But no-one, certainly not me, disputes that. The question is, are natural processes the only ones operating? That is a matter each of us has an opinion on, but which you haven't proved yet. You haven't supported your strong statement with proof.

2. Science works not just by observation, but by controlled experiment. Where is the experiment, what was the experimental design, that proved natural processes are all that are operating, and that dead bodies cannot (as opposed to "generally do not" ) come back to life?

You have taken a metaphysical statement of belief that can neither be proven nor disproven, that no non-natural processes occur, and tried to present it as a scientific statement, which it is not.

Obvious is sometimes a way of saying I believe it but can't prove it. It is not obvious to me, nor to billions of others, so why not show us the proof?

Let's make it clear. We are discussing things which each of us feels strongly, and would like to justify our position and show the other person to be mistaken. But claiming scientific proof and certainty where there is none is just a way of closing off the debate without demonstrating anything. If you have a proof of your assertions, then let's see it, but if not, it is more honest to admit that it is just your strongly held belief. I can accept that.

Best wishes.

Toto

I think you jumped the shark here. You parallel argument is not parallel, and your argument is not made in good faith.

In the first case, there are billions of dead bodies that constitute billions of experimental data points. At a certain point, Baysian statitistics would indicate that the probability of any dead body coming back to life approaches 0. When you add the understanding of life processes, you can be certain that dead bodies do not come back to life after 3 days.

In your fake parallel, you could have noted that billions of people through history have had grandchildren, therefore there is some possibility if not probability that you (or any other person) will have grandchildren.