Philosophy Now Forum

uwot wrote:Even if you take the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as historically accurate versions of what those four said, you cannot take them as perfect historical records of the life of Jesus, who I am quite willing to accept as an historical figure, because they contradict each other on numerous occasions. They are corrupted.

True, but we're hard-pressed to get any sort of "perfectly historical record" from the time, whether it's about Jesus or Augustus Caesar, so it may well be an unreasonable standard. In some cases, where the Gospels contradict themselves, we can still get sufficient accuracy to "know" this or that. And contradictions are not, in and of themselves, signs of corruption. They may simply be the all-too-common case of two individuals having conflicting stories about the event. Such was certainly the case regarding my recollection of the guy who swerved around me on the median and caused a wreck. I recalled him coming around on the right side, but the state trooper said the evidence pointed to something else. So no, my recollection wasn't "perfectly historical," but, combined with the recollection of the other driver, it was nevertheless sufficient to point to the "historical accuracy" of the wreck I was in along with many of the specific details. It would certainly not be evidence of a "corruption."

The scholarship surrounding Biblical narratives is reassuringly rigorous, to the point that a great many corruptions have been rooted out, giving us good to reason to think that (1) we know where most of them are and (2) that we can work around their presence. I won't go so far as to say we've found them all, but when it comes to an argument as to whether the Gospels are historically reliable, there's very little scholarship that gives us reason to doubt the reliability of the less fantastic claims.

(And none is to say you're arguing otherwise. I think your objection to "perfect historical accuracy" is a fair one.)

Even the "fantastic" claims, but which I imagine you probably mean things like miracles or resurrections, can't be rejected scientifically or historically, without the supporting supposition called "Uniformitarianism": namely, the belief that an interruption of natural laws is impossible, and history has thus always played out the same way.

But Uniformitarianism isn't easy to defend. To prove it completely would require scientific data of every event since the beginning of the world. Absent that data, the best the Uniformitarian can do is declare his faith-commitment to the idea. However, we should ask, "Why do you have that faith?" And there really isn't a deeper reason than that the Uniformitarian doesn't like the idea that scientific laws or natural patterns might not be utterly inviolable.

In addition, if there actually were any kind of Supreme Being, there would be absolutely no reason to suppose He could not choose to suspend a law or pattern of nature temporarily (i.e. perform a miracle), and then return things to their normal course. So there again the Uniformitarian would have to declare (again on faith, not sufficient proof) that there simply is no such Being. The only question, then, is not "Could God do a miracle?" ("Yes" is the self-evident answer in reference to a Supreme Being), but rather, "DID He do a miracle?"

If Uniformitarianism isn't true (and let's face it, we can't prove it is), then the claims of miracles are not "fantastic" in the sense of "being mere fantasies," but perhaps only "fantastic" in the sense of being really startling and amazing.

ReliStuPhD wrote:True, but we're hard-pressed to get any sort of "perfectly historical record" from the time, whether it's about Jesus or Augustus Caesar, so it may well be an unreasonable standard.

As far as I know, nobody claims that any history of Augustus Caesar is perfect, nor that anything he said should be taken as guide to how you live your life, or compel others to.
The way you use 'corruption' suggests it has a specific meaning in religious studies that is foreign to the vernacular, much as philosophical arguments aren't all blazing rows. By corruption, I mean that the events described are not precisely what happened.

ReliStuPhD wrote:In some cases, where the Gospels contradict themselves, we can still get sufficient accuracy to "know" this or that.

In my field, we too can be reassuringly rigorous. My understanding is that what we 'know' is the historical or empirical data and the degree to which it agrees with hypotheses or mathematical models. We don't, and never can know that our theories are The Truth. We don't know that General Relativity is true, for instance, but we do know it works.
With regards to historical figures, the one usually trotted out is Socrates. It doesn't particularly matter if we know that Socrates existed, like Jesus he didn't write anything himself. We do know that there are a mass of writings that claim to represent what he did and said. In this case it was the author of the main source of those that is said to have been the result of a virgin birth. The legend says that Plato's mother, Perictione, beautiful and aristocratic, was a virgin when her husband, Ariston, also very well connected, tried to force himself upon her. He failed and Apollo appeared before Ariston in a vision, which persuaded him to leave his wife alone until she gave birth to the god’s son. How much you choose to believe about Socrates or Plato is entirely up to you. We know the stories; we don't know if they are true.

ReliStuPhD wrote:And contradictions are not, in and of themselves, signs of corruption. They may simply be the all-too-common case of two individuals having conflicting stories about the event.

Again, I suspect this is your meaning of corruption, but at least one version of the story is untrue.

ReliStuPhD wrote:Such was certainly the case regarding my recollection of the guy who swerved around me on the median and caused a wreck. I recalled him coming around on the right side, but the state trooper said the evidence pointed to something else. So no, my recollection wasn't "perfectly historical," but, combined with the recollection of the other driver, it was nevertheless sufficient to point to the "historical accuracy" of the wreck I was in along with many of the specific details. It would certainly not be evidence of a "corruption."

It's an odd analogy. In the case of Jesus, it is not the wreck that is in dispute. I don't know whether he existed any more than I know that Socrates, or Augustus Caesar if you prefer, existed. It is the recollection of the guys who wrote the story which is taken by some to be The Truth, and that you agree is unreliable.

ReliStuPhD wrote:The scholarship surrounding Biblical narratives is reassuringly rigorous, to the point that a great many corruptions have been rooted out, giving us good to reason to think that (1) we know where most of them are and (2) that we can work around their presence. I won't go so far as to say we've found them all, but when it comes to an argument as to whether the Gospels are historically reliable, there's very little scholarship that gives us reason to doubt the reliability of the less fantastic claims.

As I said, I have no trouble accepting Jesus Christ as an historical figure, but as our main sources are riddled with fantastic claims, why should we trust any of them? Is there some scale on which the claims made become so fantastic that they are considered by your peers to be untrue? At what point does the corruption, in the vernacular, begin?

ReliStuPhD wrote:(And none is to say you're arguing otherwise. I think your objection to "perfect historical accuracy" is a fair one.)

It is so obvious as to be trivial.

Lemme see if I understand you, Immanuel Can:

Uniformitarianism cannot be proven.
A supreme being, capable of performing miracles, could perform miracles.
Anyone committed to the unprovable Uniformitarianism, that wishes to prove that miracles do not occur, has to prove that a being capable of miracles does not exist.
They can't.
Therefore miracles could be real.

Am I missing something?

Yes.

We need to note hat a positive claim made by the doubter is advanced as the starting point of the debate: i.e., that miracles are "fantastic."

In other words, the debate with the doubter claiming to know something. That means that it's his responsibility, if he's claiming to work rationally, of proving it.

So the argument against Uniformitarianism, as I have proposed it, is not a sort of free-standing proof offered to bolster belief in miracles. Instead, its an interrogation of the rationality of the claims of the doubter: it asks, "Does he have what he says he does in the way of disproof?"

That's an important note. Any positive defence of miracles would need to supply additional premises and claims. However, the present question is merely the negation of the validity of the skeptical claims, and that is a very easy one to defeat, as you can see. Yet the defeat of the skeptic's warrant is not being here asserted as automatic proof of miracles. At most, it reduces the playing field to level -- miracles may or may not have been done -- all it shows is that the skeptic is not telling the truth when he pretends he has rational warrant for deciding the issue before all inquiry.

Immanuel Can wrote:We need to note hat a positive claim made by the doubter is advanced as the starting point of the debate: i.e., that miracles are "fantastic."


In other words, the debate with the doubter claiming to know something.

I think you are tilting at windmills. Do you have an example of someone making an argument of that nature? Who exactly are you debating with?

Ah, the windmills are your own, I'm afraid. Earier, you write,

as our main sources are riddled with fantastic claims

Do try to stay up with the conversation, especially the things you have said yourself.

Do you have an example of someone making an argument of that nature? Who exactly are you debating with?

Read a bit above. You will readily note that I am simply responding very directly to ReliStuPhD's suggestion that maybe we have to dismiss certain elements of the Biblical text as "fantastic." (His very words.)

It's not a bad idea to read a few posts backwards, in order to find out what is being discussed when you arrive.

Immanuel Can wrote:Ah, the windmills are your own, I'm afraid. Earier, you write,

as our main sources are riddled with fantastic claims

Indeed.

Immanuel Can wrote:Even the "fantastic" claims, but which I imagine you probably mean things like miracles or resurrections,

By which logic the story of the resurrection is fantastic.

Immanuel Can wrote:Do try to stay up with the conversation, especially the things you have said yourself.

Quite.

Even the "fantastic" claims, but which I imagine you probably mean things like miracles or resurrections,

By which logic the story of the resurrection is fantastic.

Ummm...no, that's not logic, and not the warranted conclusion.

In fact, you have a very obvious non sequitur there. (A non-sequitur is a statement of conclusion that does not follow from a given premise or set of premises.) You will find that the actual conclusion that follows from my statement "...which I imagine you mean..." is "Therefore you [i.e. ReliStuPhd] imagine that the resurrection is fantastic." Don't forget the word "imagine" in there.

And don't ignore the word "probably." For if I'm wrong about ReliStuPhD meaning to refer to such miracles, then that word grants him every opportunity and right to modify my assumption simply by saying, "No, I was not referring to miracles or the resurrection."

So I'll defer to his judgment as to what he meant. As for me, neither my logic nor my beliefs warrant the conclusion you imagine.

uwot wrote:

ReliStuPhD wrote:True, but we're hard-pressed to get any sort of "perfectly historical record" from the time, whether it's about Jesus or Augustus Caesar, so it may well be an unreasonable standard.

As far as I know, nobody claims that any history of Augustus Caesar is perfect, nor that anything he said should be taken as guide to how you live your life, or compel others to.

Yes. We're in agreement here. My point was meant in the more generic sense that we shouldn't expect such histories of anyone during that period. Your point that no one is pushing Ceasar-worship on us is well-taken, however.

uwot wrote:The way you use 'corruption' suggests it has a specific meaning in religious studies that is foreign to the vernacular, much as philosophical arguments aren't all blazing rows. By corruption, I mean that the events described are not precisely what happened.

Right. When I speak of (or hear of) "corruption," I'm thinking of things like transcription errors and the like. That said, I do not think that "corruption"—even in the vernacular— is the correct word for "events described are not precisely what happened." Depending on what you mean by that, the appropriate term would either be "inaccurate" or, more strongly, "fabricated."

uwot wrote:

ReliStuPhD wrote:In some cases, where the Gospels contradict themselves, we can still get sufficient accuracy to "know" this or that.

In my field, we too can be reassuringly rigorous. My understanding is that what we 'know' is the historical or empirical data and the degree to which it agrees with hypotheses or mathematical models. We don't, and never can know that our theories are The Truth. We don't know that General Relativity is true, for instance, but we do know it works.
With regards to historical figures, the one usually trotted out is Socrates. It doesn't particularly matter if we know that Socrates existed, like Jesus he didn't write anything himself. We do know that there are a mass of writings that claim to represent what he did and said. In this case it was the author of the main source of those that is said to have been the result of a virgin birth. The legend says that Plato's mother, Perictione, beautiful and aristocratic, was a virgin when her husband, Ariston, also very well connected, tried to force himself upon her. He failed and Apollo appeared before Ariston in a vision, which persuaded him to leave his wife alone until she gave birth to the god’s son. How much you choose to believe about Socrates or Plato is entirely up to you. We know the stories; we don't know if they are true.

Once again, I think we agree. That said, the more mundane details in the Gospels are not made of the same stuff as legend (though they have certainly turned into such for some).

uwot wrote:

ReliStuPhD wrote:And contradictions are not, in and of themselves, signs of corruption. They may simply be the all-too-common case of two individuals having conflicting stories about the event.

Again, I suspect this is your meaning of corruption, but at least one version of the story is untrue.

Untrue or faulty? This is an important distinction, because it may well be true that Jesus both ov returned the tables in the temple and entered Jerusalem "triumphantly," even if Mark and john disagree on the chronology. That is to say, a faulty recollection may still be true on important details.

ReliStuPhD wrote:

ReliStuPhD wrote:Such was certainly the case regarding my recollection of the guy who swerved around me on the median and caused a wreck. I recalled him coming around on the right side, but the state trooper said the evidence pointed to something else. So no, my recollection wasn't "perfectly historical," but, combined with the recollection of the other driver, it was nevertheless sufficient to point to the "historical accuracy" of the wreck I was in along with many of the specific details. It would certainly not be evidence of a "corruption."

It's an odd analogy. In the case of Jesus, it is not the wreck that is in dispute. I don't know whether he existed any more than I know that Socrates, or Augustus Caesar if you prefer, existed. It is the recollection of the guys who wrote the story which is taken by some to be The Truth, and that you agree is unreliable.

Perhaps so. All I really wished to point out was that different recollections of an event do not, in and of themselves, undermine the historicity of the event. (You may not have said this, by the way, but I have heard it many times before.)

ReliStuPhD wrote:As I said, I have no trouble accepting Jesus Christ as an historical figure, but as our main sources are riddled with fantastic claims, why should we trust any of them? Is there some scale on which the claims made become so fantastic that they are considered by your peers to be untrue? At what point does the corruption, in the vernacular, begin?

It's a good question, but not one that (right now) concerns me overly much. For the most part, I am content to take the Gospels as historically reliable narratives where their account of things does not contradict with my understand of natural processes, etc.

uwot wrote:

ReliStuPhD wrote:(And none is to say you're arguing otherwise. I think your objection to "perfect historical accuracy" is a fair one.)

It is so obvious as to be trivial.

Agreed, which is why I was a bit surprised that you mentioned it.

Immanuel Can wrote:Even the "fantastic" claims, but which I imagine you probably mean things like miracles or resurrections, can't be rejected scientifically or historically, without the supporting supposition called "Uniformitarianism": namely, the belief that an interruption of natural laws is impossible, and history has thus always played out the same way.

But Uniformitarianism isn't easy to defend. To prove it completely would require scientific data of every event since the beginning of the world. Absent that data, the best the Uniformitarian can do is declare his faith-commitment to the idea. However, we should ask, "Why do you have that faith?" And there really isn't a deeper reason than that the Uniformitarian doesn't like the idea that scientific laws or natural patterns might not be utterly inviolable.

In addition, if there actually were any kind of Supreme Being, there would be absolutely no reason to suppose He could not choose to suspend a law or pattern of nature temporarily (i.e. perform a miracle), and then return things to their normal course. So there again the Uniformitarian would have to declare (again on faith, not sufficient proof) that there simply is no such Being. The only question, then, is not "Could God do a miracle?" ("Yes" is the self-evident answer in reference to a Supreme Being), but rather, "DID He do a miracle?"

If Uniformitarianism isn't true (and let's face it, we can't prove it is), then the claims of miracles are not "fantastic" in the sense of "being mere fantasies," but perhaps only "fantastic" in the sense of being really startling and amazing.

(I see that there was a bit of back-and-forth concerning this statement, but it's probably just easier if I respond to the first response to it.)

Yes, this is entirely true. If God exists and God has the ability to suspend the laws of nature as we understand them, then it is ridiculous to suggest God cannot suspend the laws of nature as we understand them. and yes, Uniformitarianism, as you've presented it here, is hardly worth considering as a viable challenge to miraculous intervention on God's part (if God exists). You've hit the nail on the head with your "only question" piece. No disagreements there.

So, to my point about the "fantastic" (which borrows from an earlier post by, I think, Blaggard) was simply to say that I am not inclined to be particularly skeptical to "non-fantastic" claims in the Gospels. The "fantastic" claims, insofar as I am skeptical of such claims in other scriptures, are ones on which I am less keen to defend the Gospel's historicity.

That's fair. After all, if "miracles" were some sort of routine manifestation of existing material laws, then there would be no reason at all to speak of them as any kind of "miracle." Since they would be (if true) highly unusual events, incredulity would be the completely normal reaction, and skepticism would be entirely warranted unless one confirmed the situation with one's own eyes.

Of course, even ancient mankind knew that. It was they who first classified things like blind people seeing or bread mysteriously appearing as "miracles." They did not do it because they were naive and pre-scientific, but because even they had enough pre-scientific common sense to be fully aware that these thing just do not ordinarily happen -- hence even they referred to them as "miraculous." They also had enough common sense to pass the stories about them down to us as records of "miracles," not of routine or expected natural events.

Now, we can argue over whether these events actually happened. But to do so, we would need to see what the heck actually *did* happen on those occasions. A mere inductive leap from "natural laws" to Uniformitarian faith will not bridge that empirical gap.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Even the "fantastic" claims, but which I imagine you probably mean things like miracles or resurrections,

By which logic the story of the resurrection is fantastic.

Ummm...no, that's not logic, and not the warranted conclusion.

If you allow that fantastic can refer to miracles or resurrections, then miracles or resurrections are fantastic in whatever sense you allow. The only reason I can think of for arguing that it doesn't follow, is that under those conditions it is tautologous and therefore doesn't need proving.
Which brings us back to:

uwot wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:We need to note hat a positive claim made by the doubter is advanced as the starting point of the debate: i.e., that miracles are "fantastic."


In other words, the debate with the doubter claiming to know something.

I think you are tilting at windmills. Do you have an example of someone making an argument of that nature? Who exactly are you debating with?

To doubt doesn't require any claim to knowledge. I personally doubt that the more fantastic claims in the new testament refer to historical events, but I don't know. Nor does anyone else.

uwot wrote:It's an odd analogy. In the case of Jesus, it is not the wreck that is in dispute. I don't know whether he existed any more than I know that Socrates, or Augustus Caesar if you prefer, existed. It is the recollection of the guys who wrote the story which is taken by some to be The Truth, and that you agree is unreliable.

ReliStuPhD wrote:Perhaps so. All I really wished to point out was that different recollections of an event do not, in and of themselves, undermine the historicity of the event. (You may not have said this, by the way, but I have heard it many times before.)

What is certain is that there are a number of texts that have been scrupulously examined over many years and that some people believe to be accounts, albeit slightly differing, of historical events. Some of those events are mundane and aren't worth seriously doubting. There may very well have been a bloke called Jesus; Immanuel Can and yourself, I gather, believe there was. So what?

If you allow that fantastic can refer to miracles or resurrections, then miracles or resurrections are fantastic in whatever sense you allow. The only reason I can think of for arguing that it doesn't follow, is that under those conditions it is tautologous and therefore doesn't need proving.

That too is illogical: the "imagine" in the premise refers to the speaker of the claim, not to me. Of course, the speaker can "imagine" whatever he wishes; but he cannot logically bind me to his premise by "imagining" on my behalf!

I imagine you understand now.