Subject:
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Re: 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 23:13:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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1272 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
An impressive chapter in the perspective of LAR. Certainly filled with valid
and compelling points for all to consider. I had to think hard before replying
in fact. Again, well written and indeed impressive.
> 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)
Footnote: there is far more historical evidence that Jesus lived than Alex (who
was much earlier).
> 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.
Footnote - I won't back off texts claiming allegory, unless the context of the
text clearly shows allegory - eg Jesus' parables, and Solomon's figurative
language regarding his lover.
> 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.
Perhaps you haven't thought you needed faith yet - but at least you haven't
shut the door on the future.
> > 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.
Hardly -
1st - Christianity gave birth to the scientific method, rather than restate my
postings on that, it's sufficient to say that science arose as a means of
better understanding the works of the Creator. Science has certainly been
twisted around by some to find Christianity offensive, but it's historical
parents are indeed Christian.
2nd - Science is not mute on religion at all. Christianity in particular is
empty without it's historical (you might say 'scientific') context. (Some)
Other religions may not need a historical context, but without the events that
the Bible and Christianity lay claim to - Christianity is void.
Science may not make any external claims to proving religion, but the evidence
(events) of Christianity is absolutely necessary for Christianity to have any
meaning.
- - -
The historical (scientific) method, pointing to the facts and evidence of them,
you've so adequately laid out above, however, misses a key point.
Facts and evidence have meaning only in their immediate and overall context.
First, historical facts and evidence have ultimate meaning only within and by
virtue of the worldview in which they're conceived. It makes no sense,
afterall, to claim to be the Son of God, and evidence it with a miracle, unless
there is a God and who has a Son and who can act in a given manner in the
natural world. Even supposing that the return to life of Jesus is a fact, it is
meaningless unless there already is a God.
Second, the meaning of a fact or event is not inherent or arise naturally out
of the bare fact or event. Nothing happens in a vacuum, for a event to have any
meaning it must have context. In a different context a historical fact
might not even be proof sufficient for Christianity. Thus in the context of
Lar's naturalistic worldview, the resurrection of Jesus' corpse is not a
miracle, but merely an unusual natural eventfor which there is no known
scientific explaination, although it prods scientists to come up with an
explanatory theory - a natural exaplaination. The meaning of an event, then,
is given to the event from a certain perspective.
-Jon
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