Edward Feser has a blog post up that is highly relevant to much of the debate that takes place here at The Skeptical Zone between theists and non-theists.
Lazy shouts of “unfalisfiability!” against theological claims just ignore all this complexity — the distinctions that have to be drawn between empirical claims on the one hand and claims of mathematics, logic, and metaphysics on the other; between extremely general empirical claims and more specific ones; between philosophy of nature (which studies the philosophical presuppositions of natural science) and natural science itself; and between the testing of a thesis and the testing of the auxiliary assumptions we generally take for granted but conjoin with the thesis when drawing predictions from it.
So, falsificationism is a rather feeble instrument to wield against theology. And in fact, atheist philosophers have known this for decades, even if New Atheist combox commandos are still catching up.
OK, you go to your church and I’ll go to mine.
Depends. I have some difficulty believing that someone can deny that Christ existed, or that he was resurrected, and still be regarded as Christian. I don’t have any difficulty believing that people can both believe, and call themselves, whatever they choose. However, that makes communication difficult. I think there is no legitimate debate that the bible, both OT and NT, is chock full of the sorts of claims that are capable of empirical investigation, should anything of the sort happen today. I also don’t think there’s any legitimate dispute that Christians regard the bible as authoritative. And regard Christ as “real” in a physical sense.
Depends on what you are calling an idea.
I’ve read Ehrman at some length, and find him somewhat baffling. He admits the evidence for Jesus is terrible – that it’s WAY out of date when recorded, that it derives from a 50-year game of telephone, that there are simply NO indisputable records of any such person outside of religious texts, that Paul (in the 20,000 or so words of his that remain) never once mentions anything about Jesus the person – not his birth, his death, his ministry, his associates, nothing. Indeed, he says (to the Galatians) that his information doesn’t come from any person, or any witnesses, but SOLELY from revelation as informed by scripture. Paul regards this as making his gospel more credible. How times have changed.
And from all of this Ehrman concludes that …wait for it…. Jesus Christ certainly existed! As a demonstration of “informed faith”, Ehrman can hardly be beat — if faith is understood as a substitute for evidence. His positive evidence really consists of a couple of interpolations widely regarded as suspect.
ANYWAY, the issue here is whether NOMA is a realistic philosophical position, considering the very large number of claims made by most religions which are in principle subject to observation and test, and therefore fall within the purview of science.
Yeah, that gets old. Someone pops up and says there’s a god and he knows what that god’s intentions were. Then we examine the data, the data refute the purported intentions, which only shows that his god can do whatever it wants. Heads I win, tails you lose. And so, once again, we see that convictions not based on evidence cannot be altered by evidence.
(And I should point out that most people want something physically real to believe in, and Paul’s Christ never actually descended all the way to earth, but rather took human form and was killed in the lowest level of heaven. It’s not surprising that the religion took root once Jesus had become “mortalized”, given parents and experiences and friends. Which are amazingly different among the canonical gospels, especially considering how much each gospel writer copied from earlier ones, especially Mark.)
The Christians that I know, who don’t fit your definition, probably do accept the resurrection (and, for sure, some do). But they accept that this may have been an entirely spiritual (non-physical) resurrection.
I doubt it.
… at being a religion. Yes. Obviously, since the absence of religion is not a religion.
The claim that there is an immortal spirit that is the seat of your consciousness and personhood is an empirical claim. So these “spiriual” Christians religion still make scientific claims.
Besides, one can call oneself a Christian and be wrong.
I don’t think they are claiming that much. Rather, they believe they are asserting a view of the resurrection that they see as completely exempt from empirical examination.
Sure, if they really think that it literally cannot be examined by definition, then that’s how it is. I suspect most people really don’t believe in something like that. I suspect most people believe in something they think *really* happened. Otherwise they wouldn’t believe in the first place.
When I say that these are people that I know, I should add that I know them by their online presence. I have not personally met them. So what I know of their beliefs is limited by what they have posted online.
For at least one, it is quite clear that what is important to him about his Christianity is the community and moral teachings (such as “love your neighbor”). He is quite deliberately interpreting other things, such as the resurrection, in a way that allows him to affirm the creed of his Church while not contradicting anything that we know from science.
I understand and I’m not saying I don’t believe you, or them. I just don’t think people like that are particularly frequent.
It’s my impression that there are many, though they differ in what they do or don’t believe. But they are not proselytizing, so you don’t hear much of them. Except when they are discussing religious questions, they are pretty much indistinguishable from atheists or agnostics.
Here are Bennett’s great books on Kant:
http://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/philosophy/history-philosophy/kants-analytic
http://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/philosophy/eighteenth-century-philosophy/kants-dialectic-1?format=PB
I had to chuckle at your remark about “post-Kantian”.
Maybe you could trademark a new aphorism spinning off Whitehead:
‘All of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato’ … and a critique of Kant.
In any case, you are obviously in a higher league than I, regarding matters philosophical.
best
Flint,
I remember reading Ehrman differently than you present.
No matter – there is really nothing to discuss.
Yes, that was my reaction too. But it isn’t important enough for me to check.
Ehrman says he is agnostic, so Flint’s reference to “faith” doesn’t seem right.
My read of Ehrman is that he is talking about the best reading of history, based on the available evidence.
You are making a false equivalence. Darwin based his theory on actual evidence. Meyer and the other intelligent design creationists have none.
Jerry Coyne linked to a MacLean’s article that discusses exactly that.
I browsed through that article. I’m unimpressed.
Creationists repeatedly point to problems that they see with the evidence for evolution. And they claim that this proves creationism.
Mythicists repeatedly point to problems that they see with the evidence for Jesus. And they claim that this proves mythicism.
It is the same kind of flawed argument. Creationists fail to produce persuasive positive evidence for creationism. And mythicists fail to produce persuasive positive evidence for mythicism.
Personally, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. But, given the amount of evidence (admittedly weak) for Jesus, and the long history of traditional acceptance of this within our culture, it seems simpler and wiser to continue to tentatively accept the historicist view (such as that of Ehrman) and reject the mythicist view.
I’m not sure those are comparable. The lack of evidence for an historical Jesus seems to put the burden of proof on the positive claim that he actually existed.
In any case, it doesn’t matter to me personally except that I do find it interesting that there is literally no contemporary evidence supporting his existence.
It sounds like what C.S. Lewis called “Christianity and Water”. The vast majority of Christian believers are at least nominally affiliated with one of the major churches. And I am not personally aware of any large-membership Christian church which does not claim explicit divinity of Jesus of Nazareth or the fact of the bodily resurrection.
You may have some acquaintances who (like myself) restrict their interpretation of the New Testament to some pieces of useful life wisdom, but the fact remains that the majority of believers hold to a narrative of Christ’s life which makes definite empirical claims.
The fact that no tangible evidence is forthcoming from an unimportant corner of the Roman Empire should not be particularly surprising. Even by local standards of the time, an obscure rabbi being summarily executed by the Roman authorities during the Passover celebration in Jerusalem would have hardly excited much response except from within his small following.
I personally agree with Ehrman that he most likely did live, but the idea of evidence coming to light which could prove or disprove his existence is highly unlikely given the tumultuous history of the city from 70 CE on.
The assertion is not simply that an itinerant preacher existed, but that he came to the attention of the Roman governor, and that his birth triggered a genocide.
It’s not the existence of a preacher, but his interaction with the Romans that is questioned. Well that, and the the originality of most of the homilies. And the rather odd grafting together of the faith and works bits.
Do you have some objective criteria for what counts as “evidence” of the existence of a person?
Erhman’s theory on this is plausible in my opinion. A preacher with a small following making Messianic claims in the city during Passover could have piqued the interest of the authorities depending upon how it was conveyed to them.
Obviously false and most likely adapted from one of the “cleanses” detailed by Josephus in “The Jewish War”. Herod had at least 40 youths killed for taking down the Golden Eagle he had placed on the temple, and Archelaus had some 3000 Jewish citizens killed shortly after his ascension to the throne. Both of these events would have come around 4 BCE and probably provided convenient foundations for the NT tale.
Patrick,
Interesting article
Ehrman’s earlier book Did Jesus Exist? addresses some of these issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Did_Jesus_Exist%3F_(Ehrman)
I wasn’t aware of Ehrman’s latest tome: Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior
Sheeesh… talk about a prolific writer! I have not yet got to that one!
It would appear that Ehrman is writing a counter-point to John Dominic Crossan’s book The Birth of Christianity
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/jesus/johndominiccrossan.html
As far as I can make out, there really is no doubt that some itinerant and charismatic chap we now identify as Jesus Christ actually existed. The real question is whether or not that chap bore any resemblance to the later Gospel accounts which were written with an underlying political Agenda saturated with ulterior motive, as Elaine Pagels elucidates better than most.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Pagels
Clearly the evolution of the Jesus Myth is a story in itself that is very interesting.
Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1, 500 years is probably the most riveting account I ever had the pleasure to read.
https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061768941/jesus-wars
Somebody should make a movie of Jenkins’ book!
I’d settle for any mention by any of the historians who were writing in that general area anytime around 30 CE.
There’s just nothing.
So, is Heraclitus out, since there’s no contemporary mention of him?
Glen Davidson
As far as I can make out, there’s no evidence that any such person existed. On what do you base your lack of doubt?
I lack the necessary background to have an opinion on Heraclitus. I have read more extensively about Jesus and find the evidence lacking. That doesn’t mean he didn’t exist, it just means that there’s no evidence supporting the claim that he did.
If you know of some, I’d be interested in hearing it.
If you know of evidence of Muhammed outside of later sources, or of Buddha outside of later sources, I’d be interested in hearing it.
Why is this about Jesus, and not about Heraclitus and others who are known only from later sources and who are generally accepted as having existed, as well as likely to have made some of the statements attributed to same? Since we don’t have the Satanic Verses attributed by Muslim sources to Muhammed, should we presume that they never existed? Or is it more likely that they did?
Possibly historians take later claims too credulously, I don’t know. But the mythicists seem to hold to a standard different for Jesus while ignoring the fact that most historians really just hold Jesus’ existence to the same standard as claims of others’ existence, and thus judge it likely that he existed. Naturally, many claims about Jesus are doubted, as are those of Muhammed and Buddha.
Glen Davidson
Primarily because Heraclitus isn’t commonly referenced in support of denying reproductive rights to women, civil rights to non-heterosexuals, and decent science education to public school students.
Your core point about standards for historical proof are well taken, but Jesus is simply more important politically.
Again, not bad points. For me the most damning anti-evidence is Paul’s epistles. Reading those one would never get the impression that he was interacting with people who knew a literal Jesus.
Actually, some of the “writings” of Muhammad seem to have existed before he was born. At least that would be under serious consideration were it not for politics.
Buddha’s teachings would have the same relevance if they were generated by a computer program. They are not revelations.
The reason people get sticky about Moses and jesus and Muhammad is the claim that they revealed commandments directly from god about what people are required to do and what they are not allowed to do. Commandments that have the force of law in much of the world. To the point of death in some cases.
Certainly to the point of inconvenience.
Some people truly detest the implications (or at least what they think are the implications) of evolution, so they try to say that it never happened.
I just never thought that sort of response gave us either good science or good history.
Glen Davidson
I don’t think the analogy holds.
Creationist: There is no evidence for evolution!
Biologist: Here’s the evidence.
vs
Mythicist: There is no contemporary evidence for the existence of an historical Jesus!
Christian: [ crickets ]
Again, I’m not saying there is evidence Jesus didn’t exist, but there appears to be none that he did. If that gives some Christians conniptions, I’m not mature enough not to enjoy that.
Just think of all those people who must never have existed, according to this criteria. Have your parents been mentioned by any modern historians? Maybe you don’t exist.
p.s. I asked for objective, not for what you would settle for.
Oh, well. THOSE are objective reasons to doubt Jesus ever existed.
Crossword proof. In the case of Jesus, something in addition to warmed over Zoroastrianism. Resurrection cults are a dime a dozen.
This appears to be a dishonest Mythicist making a claim on a “skeptical” site that now has agreed to the burden of proof. LoL.
From what I can tell, the mythicist, like the birther (about Obama’s birth certificate) or truther (that 9/11 was an inside job) or creationist or Holocaust denier, demands an unreasonably high burden of proof for the claim being made.
I find those juxtapositions inapt.
Birth certificates are legally binding, regardless of whether they represent reality. People routinely accept the certificate for paternity, even though genetic testing shows a significant percentage of discrepancy.
We have vast quantities of evidence for the holocaust.
As for the Jesus stories, it depends on which ones. There are dozens of resurrection stories dating from long before AD. The Jesus narrative simply doesn’t cohere. It looks like a patchwork.
911 conspiracy theories look bogus to me, but in a thousand years, they will just look like business as usual. They are believed because bad behavior is typical of world leaders.
But then again, how far can you tell? What scholars like Richard Carrier do is rigorously apply Bayes’ Theorem to what is known. He begins by generously giving the existence of Jesus a high prior, since so many theological historians agree about it – despite that all of them are Christians. THEN he carefully examines everything written by Paul that has survived, since the later gospels (starting with Mark) show all of the attributes of myth of the period, and none of the attributes (well documented) of biography or history. The later gospels consistently do not identify their authors, do not cite ANY sources (though there’s a lot of copying from one to the next), and are resoundingly inconsistent about every detail of Christ’s life and death.
What’s interesting about Paul is that in the 20,000 or so words that survive, Paul never once says Christ existed on earth. Paul is pretty clear that his ONLY sources are scriptural prophesy and personal revelation. Paul’s writings reflect one common cosmology of the times – that there were multiple layers of heaven, each higher than the next. The lowest level was just above the atmosphere, but not higher than the moon (yes, this is explicit). According to Paul, Jesus descended from upper heaven to take on human form in the lowest heaven, where he was killed by demons in the lower heaven, in order to atone for the sins of mankind. He rose from that death (which he knew he’d do all along, being immortal) and return to upper heaven.
Interestingly, Paul is known to have written a great deal more than has been preserved. We can only speculate as to why so much of his writing was NOT preserved. Possibly it was lost in various wars of the time (especially the Jewish war of 70 CE). However, it IS known that there was a 50-year gap between Paul’s last known writing and Mark, a period during which NOTHING survives about the nascent Christian sect. And that as the canonical gospels (and Acts) were written, it was the sects most strongly motivated to create a mortal Jesus on earth who gained ascendency. There were at least 40 gospels known (some directly, from documents, and some indirectly from references in documents that survived). Four of these made the final cut, which occurred sometime in the 4th century.
So it’s interesting that much of Paul’s output was not preserved, especially considering that (1) Paul insisted Jesus never came to earth; and (2) the politically powerful sects had a vested interest in a physical, historical Jesus. Could writings of Paul where he makes this most explicit, have been excised? Nobody knows.
Most historians regard much of the tales of Jesus as unlikely, because such events would have attracted the notice of the many working historians of the day (Suetonius, Josephus. many others), none of whom made the slightest mention of any of it (though there is one sentence most historians believe was inserted into Josephus centuries later, inconsistent with the rest in both language and context – just kind of stuck in almost at random). And (the theory goes), IF extra-biblical sources did testify to Christ and his ministry, the church trying so hard to make him historical would have featured it prominently.
When you really start digging into all this, you find that the “evidence” of an earthly Jesus is not merely lost in the sands of time, it is quite deliberately manufactured by competing sects, each too strong to completely erase from history, but each wanting a somewhat different Christ.
And I haven’t even begun to delve into the interacting scriptural prophesies and known mythological characters (for example, Osiris, Mithra, Dionysus, Krishna and Jesus ALL were sons of gods, all had virgin births, all died and were resurrected). On the Rank-Raglan scale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rank-Raglan_mythotype) Jesus has a higher myth rating than almost anyone.
NOW, all of this is certainly not presented as, or intended to be, “proof”. It’s intended to introduce the possibility of doubt, and show that there are reasons for doubt which, taken all together, many find to be more compelling than the reasons for belief. YMMV.
Back here in the world of science, there is no “proof”. There is only the preponderance of available evidence. One must ask of historical events, which proposed explanations of those events fits best with what is known. Which narrative is most complete, most plausible. Of course, you can still laugh at this approach, and claim skeptics require “proof”.
Of course the analogy holds, so long as it actually deals with what was being analogized. I’m more than a little aware of why people want to deny Jesus’ existence altogether and also aware that they are frequently the same people who actually do deny that he existed.
There’s hardly any point in telling me why you use standards different from those normally used for historical figures when it comes to Jesus, it just isn’t relevant to using evidence the same across the board for historic figures. That was my point, as you should have recognized, and your shift to a different matter than was being discussed is hardly dealing properly with the matter.
Glen Davidson
I’m not aware of many non-religious historical figures who had a virgin birth, performed miracles, and were resurrected from the dead.
What historical figures are we being credulous about?
This is why I mentioned the Rank-Raglan scale .(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rank-Raglan_mythotype)
This scale has been applied, exactly the same way, to many historical figures. It is a single standard. READ about it.
You forgot that they had gods as parents. But there are many more factors to consider:
I think Jesus hits on 20 or 21 of these, depending on how loosely you interpret some terms!
Gee, way to shift the goalposts. Have to be non-religious figures and exactly the same claims as for Jesus, must they? Since I’m not supposed to see you as taking myself as being that dumb, good faith rule and all, I’ll just take it that your intelligence level is abysmal.
Well, I’m not playing that game whatever makes you deal with the issue so unreasonably. Either deal equitably with the evidence, or don’t. Just don’t go around saying that you’re merely interested in the following the evidence when you’re shifting matters to fit your preferences.
Glen Davidson
So what?
It’s hardly the historic standard.
Very selective, yet again.
Glen Davidson
What else does it say at the Wikipedia link? Oh yes:
A simplistic ranking, at best, and one that seemingly ignores the fact that one can be both historic and pick up a lot of mythic, heroic traits in the retellings. Many Greek heroes are thought to have done so, although unfortunately it’s rather hard to check on Greek myths.
Glen Davidson