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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Wed, 6 Dec 2000 14:18:19 GMT
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1200 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Jon Kozan writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > n.b. I'm no historian, and I'd love to have LFB chime in here, this is his
> > area of specialty.
Ack, my ears are burning! (Or are those my cloven hooves?) :)
Guilty as charged, at least as far as history generis.
> > 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.)
It's not so much that things can't be proven to occur as that
human language is made up of signifiers--and like the old "telephone
game," the meanings and implications can be lost. It's possible,
through misunderstanding or mistranslation (or simple variance of
standards) to believe, as an example, that Egypt was descending
into utter chaos and anarchy in 1881 and 1882 until Britain arrived
(which was, until around 1975, the prevailing view), but recent
reëvaluation with the voices of Egyptians included shows that's
just not true. Upon that belief in anarchy lies the entire moral
justification for British invasion and rule--not to mention a whole
constellation of changes that sprang forth--so it's not just what
happened, but what it meant. It's the meaning that has the big
proof issue.
> > 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.
Okay. Big big BIG beef. The West has never been fully honest
with itself as regards cliometry (the measure of history); we
still teach people that history is something certain and definite
that can be known through science--and that it is, therefore, a
"social science". It's not. It's a liberal art like language or
literature, not a "science" like sociology or even anthropology
(which I actually have some issues with as well, but that's another
rant for another day).
> > 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).
I'd like to know what this evidence is. The major thing
Alexander has going for him is a lot of variegated written
records (well, usually "carved" records). If you want to
go for a preponderance of evidence that a particular theo-
logical grandchild of the Essenes (who left the Dead Sea
Scrolls--but apparently BC) existed, you have to look for
circumstantial evidence or go to the Synoptic Gospels, which
were written between 50 and 100 years after Christ's death.
The problem is that when you add in circumstancial evidence
(an example being the mere existence of Pontius Pilate)
that's still not conclusive, and I think Alex would have
you there too.
> > 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.
Determining the veracity of allegory is always really difficult.
Allegory is not by definition false--nor is it necessarily true.
It can actually be both, just to infuriate you even more. The
issue comes up a lot for mediaeval writing, which is full of the
stuff, and in modern African history, when working with oral
tradition. By making something allegorical it's easier to recall,
and bear in mind that a lot of what's in the Bible was oral long
before it was written and then canonized. (If you want the stuff
that was deemed "not bloody likely!" for the OT, that's what the
Apocrypha is.)
The trouble is how one knows if allegory is correct or not.
That's done chiefly by comparing it with other accounts, with
the scanty physical evidence, and cultural context. The cultural
context is hard to do for the Bible--any of it--and the physical
evidence also doesn't say that much except to verify that places
and, occasionally, people existed. The major test then is the
comparison with other accounts, which aren't extant in anything
like a similar quantity. Someone with more knowledge than I of
print evidence from the early Christian centuries in the Levant
and Egypt should chime in, but otherwise I'm not aware of any
that doesn't draw directly from the Synoptic Gospels.
Now, those Pauline epistles...those are amazing, issues of
miracles being true aside. It's an excellent administrative
history of how a sect becomes a religion with broad appeal.
> > 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.
I'd argue that you do have faith--it's just pointing the other
way. (See the message I posted yesterday.) Not that this is
in any way impugning your reasoning, just pointing out that some
degree of faith is necessary to believe that science will keep
refining its explanatory power. To some degree we all have that
same faith, every time we flip a light switch or look at our
wristwatches.
> > 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.
Again, faith isn't necessarily pointing in one direction. A
miracle would not necessarily be proof of Judaeo-Christian theology.
I was once asked "what if Jesus and the Bible were in fact sent
and inspired by the lying Adversary--to trick mankind into not using
their God-given faculties to overcome evil?" It's an interesting
hypothetical.
> > 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.
No, not entirely. In its Enlightenment iteration, it owes one part
to Christian eschatology and one part to Greek philosophy (and its
Roman modifications). One could argue that anything which became
widespread after the Battle of the Milivan Bridge has Christianity
as parents, but in this case the "spur" was the rediscovery of
Greek thought and science, which had actually been kept alive by
the *Muslims*! (So maybe Islam is the forebear of science...?)
But science and advanced mathematics were around in India and China
long before Europe or west Asia. It was simply re-read through a
Judaeo-Christian lens.
Now the Scientific Method as relayed by figures from Bacon to Mill,
yes, that's informed by Christianity--but not all of science is
"The Scientific Method" regardless of how heavily that's played in
instruction. It had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere
wasn't entirely in the realm of religion.
> 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.
As far as Christianity--in fact, any of the religions of the
Book--requiring its history and events, that's 100% right. One
of the defining features of Judaeo-Christian religions is the idea
of linear time. We don't even think about it, the idea of progression
and nonrepetition are so entrenched in Western culture. (Only a
few concepts from earlier ideas of cyclical time have remained.)
> 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.
Ah, but how do we ever know the context? There's the rub.
> 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.
This term "meaning" is slippery. It needs some exposition.
Meaning of what, for whom? And "context"--what you're describing
isn't what I mean by context. I mean the context of the society,
the context of the political (petty and great) alignments, the
nature of Jewish theology at the time, and so forth. Historical
context. Without that, it's very easy for skeptics to poke holes
in the necessary conclusion you're drawing above.
The question is also one of what quality of evidence you're
demanding. For example, if we disallow the NT, what evidence
do we have of Jesus's acts and life? We may have enough for
his existence, location, and death, but that's about it. Not
enough to close the case, by a longshot--without the NT you
could more easily close the book on the Roanoke Colony. (To
be fair, in the last year someone's tried to do just that.
It's an interesting book, made up of...you guessed it, circum-
stantial evidence.)
> Second, the meaning of a fact or event is not inherent or arise naturally out
> of the bare fact or event.
There's no such thing as a "historical fact," as a note. This
is precisely for the reason you mention--what's hardest for folks
to grapple with is the realisation that *several* "meanings" (to
borrow your term) can come from the same event. However, those
meanings aren't necessarily visible to us in the present, and
sometimes the meanings that are given to us by printed sources
are dead wrong (see wayyyy back above for the Egyptian example;
if you only read the British sources, the impression is quite a
bit different than if you read the Egyptian sources as well, even
in translation.)
Objective meaning? There's no such beast, only consensus (to go
back to Larry's original point).
best,
LFB
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