What is Philosophy?
Is it “unintelligible answers to insoluble problems”? (Henry Adams)
Is a philosopher “a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there”? (Lord Bowen)
Is philosophy “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing”? (Ambrose Bierce)
In a recent post a comment was made about how nice it was to have three trained philosophers engaged in making comments.
But is anyone else even paying attention? Does what these trained philosophers say even matter?
Isn’t it true that:
“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.” (William James)
“one cannot conceive of anything so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.” (Rene Descartes)
“The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” (Bertrand Russell)
Philosopher: “someone who doesn’t know what he is talking about but makes it sound like it’s your fault.”
Can any of our trained philosophers even offer a defense of philosophy beyond “it pays the bills”?
More specifically, what is the value of philosophy for an atheist?
[Changed Ambrose Pierce to Ambrose Bierce. HT: keiths]
Exactly how many eyewitnesses were there to the Apollo 11 moon landing?
Conspiracy theorists indeed.
Hi walto,
I don’t see where this is addressed specifically in Hengel’s book, there’s no subject index and no chapter title that would give an indication. I’d have to read it in the entirely but that’s probably not really necessary.
See this page:
http://www.tribunesandtriumphs.org/roman-life/roman-crucifixion.htm
How many? Apparently at least one survivor. 😉
The “we don’t know if Jesus existed” camp seems to be composed exclusively of those who wish that Jesus did not exist. Good to see where you stand Neil.
Patrick:
Pathetic attempt at a turnaround.
Patrick rejects any belief in God or gods then asks someone else to bail him out of his disbelief.
Mung,
If people say ‘you’re rejecting the wrong one’, it’s not unreasonable to ask what qualities the right one has, even if they reject that too.
Do you think that the the Jesus described in the bible existed (the walk on water miracle-worker), and what evidence other than the bible (obviously biased and written for political purposes at the time that are mostly opaque now without much research, and so has to be excluded) is there for that?
I can quote scientific studies that demonstrate the opposite. What can you reference to support this claim?
I think this points up something very important. The more improbable the events, the more and better evidence one needs. The amount necessary for, say convicting someone of assault, will hardly be sufficient for making a claim reasonable that somebody can break lots of physical laws and, you know rise from the dead. That he didn’t die or a few people were mistaken about seeing him bopping around later seems to me much more likely than that Jesus wasn’t as tough or resilient as the other guys mung tells us didn’t die from crucifixion.
Why accept the wackiest possible explanation?
On top of the book that I already referenced you might want to look at this
http://www.ehu.eus/elviragarciabajos/articulos/applied.pdf
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/672/art%253A10.3758%252FBF03199665.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.3758%2FBF03199665&token2=exp=1438432849~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F672%2Fart%25253A10.3758%25252FBF03199665.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Farticle%252F10.3758%252FBF03199665*~hmac=04815795220d7d8207ce315c38db9a6132afa2c98054415cbbf35bd23a77c09c
That Jesus was regarded by his followers to be a miracle worker is not controversial in historical scholarship.
The contemporary opponents of early Christianity of which there were many did not dispute these claims but ascribed the miracles to demonic activity or the like.
There is no evidence that any of the many early critics of Christianity ever put forward the notion that the miracles did not happen as far as I know.
peace
The thing is those studies ask people then and there what they saw. They don’t ask them to write down what they saw and then someone else spends several hundred years editing what they said to suit political purposes at the time.
Given that you don’t know what people saw or said at the time, and only have a heavily edited version of it, I’m not sure what point you are making.
If I’m in charge of editing the bible and want to promote christianity, the “eyewitness accounts” of nothing happening after the death of Jesus are the first things I’m going to edit out.
Your “eyewitness accounts” are nothing of the sort. That you can’t see this is incredible.
Really, you are comparing the individual memories of young children often “recovered” through hypnosis to the group recollection of more than 500 individuals?
The lengths conspiracy buffs will go to to protect their pet theory.
peace
Originally it was 5 people then an editor thought that 500 sounded better.
Disprove that.
1500 people witnessed that I can fly. Therefore I can fly, unless you can provide a convincing explanation as to why 1500 people would be mistaken that I can fly.
No, you can’t talk to any of them and no, you can’t see their original testimony, only my edited version of it.
Convincing? No? How about 2500 people instead? More convincing?
We have manuscript evidence that dates to the first century. These documents are public record you can see for yourself that no wide spread editing has taken place.
I only wish you all could hear how crazy you sound.
At any moment I expect to hear about the black helicopters
peace
fifth,
Do you believe that Joseph of Cupertino could fly?
If so, why?
If not, why not? There are eyewitness accounts!
fifth,
From the gospel of Matthew:
Do you believe that this actually happened?
Evidence of what? Hand written accounts by 500 individual people?
You are not, it seems, a student of history then. It’s sad when people like me know more about your bible then believers do.
Do you believe that Joseph of Cupertino could fly?
Good deflection. Now, about Joseph of Cupertino…..
The oldest manuscript of 1st Corinthians we have is from as early as AD 175. There is no evidence of editing. It reads just like the document we have in our Bibles today.
At this time there was no controlling political authority that could secretly dispose of the earlier original copy and replace it with new edited version there would have been many copies in circulation all through out the Roman empire if there would have been a edit of this magnitude surely some one would have noticed.
maybe they were all in on the conspiracy 😉
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Objective means that the evidence must be independent of the internal experience of the observer. It rules out claims like “I felt god’s touch.”
Empirical, from the dictionary, means “verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.”
You have presented nothing resembling objective, empirical evidence for your assertion that “Jesus is lord”, yet you continue to claim that you have done so. Doesn’t your holy book say something about bearing false witness? As I recall, it was against it.
well:
1 Corinthians 15:6
Where are the eyewitness accounts?
If I wrote down “X was witnessed by 1000 people” that is not an “eyewitness account” from me or 1000 people. Is this complex?
fifthmonarchyman,
No, we don’t.
Decades of the supposed time of the supposed events, by writers with political and theological goals and no particular commitment to accurate reporting.
That is simply not true. There are no remotely contemporaneous accounts of any of the putative events.
I have no reason not too my conclusion is based mostly on my confidence that Jesus is trustworthy.
Do you have specific evidence that this did not happen?
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
You should read the diatribes against them from the early church leaders. Your claim about them being “hundreds of years removed” is simply, demonstrably false.
This is going down a bit of a rathole, though. You claimed to have objective, empirical evidence for your claim that “Jesus is lord”. Let’s see it.
I believe lots of folks thought they saw him fly. I haven’t spent a lot time investigating this but I would not rule it out.
You can call me agnostic
peace
Mung,
We’re so fortunate to have you around to decide what views can and cannot be taken seriously. Are you in training to be a moderator at UD?
I don’t have a position on the historicity of Jesus. I simply find it very interesting that there is literally no contemporaneous evidence for his existence. The entire edifice is constructed on the equivalent of “My cousin’s girlfriend’s grade school teacher’s ex-husband’s boss said….”
The fact that credible historians of that time period can’t simply point to actual evidence of Jesus’ existence to refute the mythicist position speaks volumes.
fifth,
A few minutes ago you wrote this;
Now you’re telling us you believe that the earth vomited up a bunch of dead people who proceeded to walk around Jerusalem, where “many” saw them.
Mung,
Channeling kairosfocus now, Mung?
fifthmonarchyman seems to think that his conception of god is different from that of every other Christian, indeed every other theist, so that the reasons for not believing in those gods don’t apply to his particular god. It is eminently reasonable to ask for a definition of this unique god concept.
They illustrate that remembering is a creative process, and not a data retrieval process. They illustrate that emotions and social conditions can have strong influences on what is remembered.
I did not claim the Gnostics were hundreds of year removed I claimed their extant writings about Jesus’ life were hundreds of years removed. Jesus life is what we were talking about after all
There were Gnostics around much earlier but we don’t have any evidence that they ever met Jesus.
peace
OMagain,
This is an important point. I meant to reply to, I believe, Kantian Naturalist who described the evidence for Jesus being similar to that for Socrates. Whether or not that is accurate, no one that I know of ascribes supernatural behaviors to Socrates.
The interesting question, for me, becomes: How much of what is ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament is essential for it to be accurate to say that he actually existed? That is, if there were an itinerate rabbi wandering around early first century Jerusalem spreading some mild heresies, would that qualify as Jesus? Is claiming to be the son of god essential? Any of the miracles? The Sermon on the Mount? The crucifixion?
At this far remove, does the question “Did an historical Jesus exist?” even make sense?
Guys,
the claim was that I believed without or in spite the evidence. I think that has been convincingly discredited. I realize that none of you will ever be convinced by the evidence. But that says a lot more about you than it does about me or the strength of the evidence
so apparently you have no evidence at all that it did not happen and are instead are pulling out the it seems unlikely to me therefore it could not have happened card.
What would you think if I did that when it came to the evolution of biological structures?
And we wish you could see how crazy you sound.
You are making stuff up.
This is what it always comes down to. Your worldview demands that “supernatural” behaviors can not happen so therefore any report of what you deem to be supernatural behaviors must be false in your eyes by definition.
However
If Jesus is who he says he is his behaviors are not supernatural at all they are the standard by which we judge what is natural and what is not.
It’s just a case of two mutually exclusive but comprehensive worldviews. The only way to evaluate an all encompassing worldview is to see if it is internally consistent.
I think mine is and yours is not that is what the disagreement is really about
peace
If that is what you think my claim is you have missed the point entirely
peace
A rational person will either be convinced by evidence or present reasons why that evidence is unconvincing.
That you choose to ignore the latter says more about you then it does about anyone else or the evidence.
No, that’s your strawman.
Evidence is what convinces, not “reports”.
Now you are channeling WJM. Yes, nobody disputes that there are records where it is claimed many people witnessed him fly .
What I’m asking is if *you* think he can fly based on those records. You make a similar decision regarding Jesus, what’s so different here?
All we have as evidence for “Jesus is Lord” are reports.
All we have as evidence for Joseph of Cupertino’s ability to fly are reports.
Tell me why you are convinced by one set of reports and not the other? What’s the essential difference?
Except it’s not, as you can’t consistently decide on the basis of “eyewitness reports” for one thing and not another.
quote:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(Joh 1:14)
and
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
(2Pe 1:16)
and
Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
(1Co 15:8)
peace
fifth,
Do you believe that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse?
I have not decided on the basis of “eyewitness reports” the eyewitness reports are just one piece of evidence among many others. When it comes to Joseph of Cupertino all I have are reports so I’m agnostic till more evidence comes in.
peace
I’m still waiting to read 500 individual eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, rather then a report that “there were 500 people that witnessed it”.
Will you be providing those accounts or can you admit they don’t exist and 500 is no more convincing the 5000 or 50,000 would be?
A book that was written to convince people that Jesus was the son of god is not evidence that Jesus was the son of god you know.
Yesterday, I think it was, I suggested that a devout Christian might be thought of as engaging in disclosive vocabulary rather than discursive vocabulary: expressing how the world is felt and experienced from within the life of faith, as distinct from making claims that would be rationally binding on everyone else if they were true.*
There are many aspects to the quarrel between theists and non-theists. One aspect is over the status of religious language itself. By now I’ve seen the exact same script play out everywhere:
Theist: “I believe in God, why don’t you?”
Atheist: “what do you mean by God?”
Theist: “[something poetic and mystical — ‘Ground of Being,’ ‘Eternal Love,’ etc.]
Atheist: “stop being so vague! what exactly does that mean, what is the evidence for it, and what are the entailments of that concept?”
The atheist is treating the theist’s language as if it were discursive. When we are playing the game of giving and asking for reasons, we do demand evidence for our empirical judgments, and we do want to know the inferential consequences of the beliefs as well as the probable causal consequences of acting on the basis of those beliefs. That’s how we (should, ideally) reason in any question of public policy.
Notice, now, that the theist has two different responses — and I think that this is the point of divergence between “religious liberals” and “religious conservatives”. Religious liberals will retreat to affirming disclosive vocabulary: the affect-heavy, expressive dimension of religious vocabulary that approximates that of poetry, art, literature, music, and even dance. By contrast, religious conservatives will insist on discursive vocabulary, and using the whole apparatus of evaluating assertions (truth-claims) on the basis of evidence and inference.
Why this difference? It is because everyone implicitly acknowledges a core doctrine of the Enlightenment: only that which is genuinely rational can be binding on everyone. Since religious conservatives generally speaking do want public policy and state law to somehow reflect their religious convictions, it is imperative that those conviction have a rational form — and they know this. So they try very hard to put a rational form on their religious convictions, which means using the apparatus of evidence and inference.
But, unfortunately, religious conservatives have a “get out of jail free” card that they play quite often: when the game is not going as they like — when the evidence is not on their side or the inferences aren’t playing out as they like — they then retreat into insisting that their language is not discursive, but disclosive. (For example, a non-theist might accused of being “disenchanted”, “nihilistic”, in “despair”, or lacking an appreciation of “verticality”.)
The intellectual fraud here is that the religious conservative moves the goal-posts arbitrarily: she speaks discursively when she feels like it (because she wants social policy and law to reflect her doctrinal commitments) and then speaks disclosively when she feels like it (because the evidence and inference rarely go her way). This is why talking with a religious conservative is like playing tennis without a net.
Religious liberals face a different hurdle, because when they say things like “God is the ground of being” or “Through faith in Jesus we are liberated from the bondage of sin” or “We await the coming of the Messiah”, they are not making assertions like “It is going to rain today” but rather saying something more like “Love is like the lion’s tooth”. They are not playing the same kind of language-game as atheists expect them to play.
But it is a game that, since it not part of the game of giving and asking for reasons, cannot be a game that everyone must play. It is a private game (where “private” includes communities – so private in the political sense, not “within my own mind” sense). And this means that religious liberals are committed to a wholly secular language for law and public policy. Yet very few have been willing to see this commitment through all the way. The majority of religious liberals, like religious conservatives, want to have their cake and eat it, too.
(Though there are important exceptions to this generalization, such as the Quakers, Unitarian-Universalists, and in some cases, Reform Jews. Generally speaking, I think one sees in 20th-century Islamic societies a much greater rift between secularists who want to eradicate religion — and look to Ataturk, Nasser, Hussein, and Arafat as models — and religious reactionaries who follow Sayyid Qutb in their anti-secularism and anti-Westernism. I’m not aware of any religious liberals in Islam who affirm this peculiar Enlightenment-based Western European balance of a secular political sphere, a pluralistic public sphere, and a religious private sphere — but I’m sure they exist. And for all our sakes, I hope they do.)
* I’m pulling this distinction directly from Charles Taylor’s essay on Brandom, “Language Not Mysterious?” in “Reading Brandom”.
fifthmonarchyman,
No, the claim you made in response to my question about your assertion that “Jesus is lord” was:
If it turns out that you don’t, that’s fine. Believe what you like. Intellectual honesty does, however, require you to retract your claim to having objective, empirical evidence for your beliefs when you are unable to produce such evidence.
fifthmonarchyman,
No, it’s about you making a claim you have not been able to support.
fifthmonarchyman,
Quoting your scripture in support of the veracity of your scripture is singularly unconvincing.
When it comes to the 500 witnesses, it’s worth noting that the writer includes the phrase “most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (ESV, 1 Corinthians 15:6b )
Given earliness of this particular account, it’s worth noting that the author seems to take seriously the idea that these witnesses (a great number) are still alive and can presumably bear witness to what they experienced to anyone who asks them. Granted, not the 500 individual accounts a previous writer demanded, but certainly a little more going on than just one claim…
It’s also worth noting contra (there were 5) that the context saying ‘many are still alive’ isn’t the sort of language you’d use to describe 5 people.
Before you reply, Patrick, this isn’t quoting Scripture in support of the veracity of Scripture. It’s using the texts we have from the time as a historical lens to shed light on happenings from the time for our analysis. If the light illuminates something that stands up to critical inquiry, well and good.
Apparently I’m a little confused about your phrase “objective, empirical evidence” I think I’ve provided a ton of it and you seem to think I haven’t.
Perhaps you could give me some idea about what you actually are looking for
for example:
Do you have objective, empirical evidence for the existence of other minds? Please present it
Do you have objective, empirical evidence that the universe was not created last Tuesday but with the appearance of great age?
Please present it
I’m not trying to change the subject I’m just looking for clarification
The quotes were not in support of the veracity of scripture. They were in response to your claim that what we have is the equivalent of “My cousin’s girlfriend’s grade school teacher’s ex-husband’s boss said….”.
Whether these witnesses are lying is another question. Do you have any evidence that they were?
peace