Subject:
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Veracity, the historical record, and supernatural events
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 5 Dec 2000 21:29:04 GMT
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Viewed:
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1257 times
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OK, I want to clarify a bit more here in hopes that this will be the end.
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Jon Kozan writes:
> I appreciate your points in attempting to draw analogy -- between historical
> events and present day pseudo-events. And that is my only point in this. By
> the standard you require, no historical event can be proven to have occurred,
> despite witnesses, historians, and archeological evidence to support the
> events.
n.b. I'm no historian, and I'd love to have LFB chime in here, this is his
area of specialty.
Nothing that you did not personally witness can be "proven" to have
occurred, and if you posit the ability to be fooled, even some of what you
think you witnessed is questionable. (c.f. sleight of hand tricks, c.f. the
"false memory" phenomenon, children can often, when interviewed, come up
with memories that are known to be false, etc. etc. etc.)
Nevertheless we still can (and SHOULD) reason about what we believe the
historical record to be, based on our estimates of the veracity of the
evidence presented. This aligns with the scientific method.
When it's asserted that an event occured ( Alexander the Great and his
conquests, the last days of ordinary citizens of Pompeii, which plays
Shakespeare wrote and which he didn't, etc.) it is reasonable to examine the
evidence presented, and that evidence can include witnesses, historians
transcribing accounts of others, archeological evidence, carbon dating, tree
ring examination, etc. (as you allude)
So, it is meaningful to speak of history, and it is meaningful to shorthand
"X happened" when what we really mean is "there is a very high probability,
approaching certainty, based on the evidence we have so far, that X
happened, barring a worldwide conspiracy to distort the evidence of not-X
happening".
That's the scientific method at work, and it's reasonable when considering
things that are not alleged by anyone to be supernatural, to use the
scientific method and nothing else.
When a christian, or anyone else, asserts that Jesus lived ca 4 BC to 3x AD,
that's an ordinary claim, and is verifiable via ordinary means. I give it a
relatively high probability. I'm not competent to estimate exactly how high.
But I hold it about as likely as that Alexander the Great lived. That is,
very very very likely indeed.
When we examine claims of particular events, it's reasonable to examine how
likely it is that they happened. When a christian, or anyone else, asserts
that Jesus was crucified at the end of Passover of 3x A.D., again, it's a
fairly ordinary claim, and verifiable via ordinary means. However the
records are muddied up because there are people that want this claim to be
true more than, say, they *want* the claim that Alexander the Great to have
died on such and such a day of such and such an affliction to be true.
Nevertheless, I still assign a relatively high probability that it's true.
But "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
When christians assert that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he turned water
into wine, that he arose from the dead, and further assert that these are
events that admit of no natural explanation, our task bifurcates... first we
must verify that the thing happened, and then that there admits of no
natural explanation.
Here I find the record much much weaker. I dispute that many of these things
happened. Many of them are recorded in the bible and nowhere else. And we
haven't gotten a satisfactory answer from the christians in this discussion
as to whether the bible is literal truth, allegory, or some of each.
Whenever something in the bible (even an assertion of an ordinary event) is
disproved, or even brought into question, the christians tend to retreat and
say that particular passage is allegory. My copy of the bible is not
annotated by the HoG as to what parts are literal truth and what parts are
not, unfortunately. Further, we typically don't find large passages of
allegory in things such as granary records (used by historians to verify
other events) for example. Allegory is a sign that a record is of
questionable veracity and we should tend to discount it.
If "god said it, I believe it, that settles it" is your veracity standard
for the bible, you can't claim that its events actually happened, at least
not based solely on biblical evidence, so you are forced to say you
"believe" they happened, meaning that you're engaged in circularity.
I further dispute that *if* they happened that they admit of no natural
explanation. That latter is an important point as it requires proving the
negative. Just because I can't come up with an explanantion of why a
superconducting material levitates above a magnet even though it is itself
not magnetized, does not mean that one does not exist (this is a
hypothetical, I actually know why it levitates, but I couldn't offhand come
up with something I can't explain at some level or another, remember I'm
nifty!).
So science and the rules of evidence can speak to whether an event happened,
but cannot "prove" that the event was supernatural. Science can often
explain the formerly miraculous (we've known for an awfully long time that
thunder is not actually the gods speaking), but it takes faith to accept
that something I cannot currently explain in fact never can be explained.
That faith I haven't got.
That faith I haven't needed.
Note that I am not denying all possibility of your miracles, merely
asserting low probability based on evidence, then acknowledging that you may
not find evidentiary arguments reasonable in matters of faith. But again, if
you want to *prove* something to me, you will first establish premises
acceptable to me or buzz off.
> If you start at a position that refuses to accept contrary evidence,
> you cannot arrive at a new conclusion.
Fortunately, I haven't started at that position, and I've arrived at new
conclusions all the time.
Is the same true of christians? They insist that things are miraculous even
when explainable another way, and insist that trying to examine them
critically or explain them logically is somehow "wrong" as it interferes
with god's plan, and that fault lies with the explainer for trying to explain.
So I'd say not. In fact, christians refuse to accept contrary evidence of
things they've decided are miraculous. It interferes with their world view.
Further, while science is mute on religion (and therefore neutral)
christians are in fact enemies of science and the scientific method, when
you come right down to it. At least that's their track record.
"but still it moves" :-)
<insert Bill F. explaining that he repudiates what other christians did in
the past, please judge christianity by the ideal of what it says it stands
for, not by the results it has yielded... but those have paid attention to
my many rants know I judge outcomes, not intents>
++Lar
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Veracity, the historical record, and supernatural events
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| (...) Actually, the first claim is not even a miracle at all, I mean "born of a virgin". AFAIK, it is a rare but normal thing. I don't know how rare or frequent it is, but it can be faced from time to time, as a doctor said to me. Sometimes, the (...) (24 years ago, 6-Dec-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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