Ship of Fools: Purgatory: Can Atheism develop an epistemology to live by?

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Thread: Purgatory: Can Atheism develop an epistemology to live by?

Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Justinian. You wrote '4: Because no one can know exactly what everyone else does, everyone's part of the truth is valuable and therefore everyone is inherently worthy of being protected and helped.'

So worth is measured by ignorance.

Backwards. Worth is measured by wisdom. If I was all wise then nothing directly from the epistemology (as opposed to moral philosophy) would mean that I should value others. The all-wise has no need for the insight of others.

quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
Oh come come Crossos. As an atheist you must know what it is you're affirming doesn't exist. Otherwise the question is simply irrlelevant and you don't have to have a view either way.

For me:

The omni-max God (omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent) doesn't exist. Omniscience alone is a paradox. (Omnipotence possibly isn't when you define it as relative omnipotence).

For that matter, although it isn't by definition impossible, I don't believe in the Hellenic pantheon either. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

There may be a Creator - but if there is then the creator is indistinguishable from a deistic one.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
1. As it stands is tautologous - reality means that which exists.

Physical reality exists independently of us. This doesn't say what doesn't, merely that physical reality does. And that this is a premise.

quote:
What about ideas - do they exist ? Software ? Words ? Moral values ?

If ideas exist does Aslan exist as an idea ?

Ideas have meaning. I would prefer not to use the same word for ideas existing as I do for physical reality existing as an idea existing because they are fundamentally different.

quote:
By the time you get to point 3., not only does understanding exist but it is divisible into pieces and the pieces are capable of being owned...

I'm sorry I didn't go into the same depth on what understanding was as Bertrand Russell went into in the Principia Mathematica on the much better defined subject of mathematics. If that there is a concept called understanding can't be assumed then Ecchim klad p!tang Ia! Ftaghn!

quote:
At 4., who is everyone ? Humans ? Thinking humans ?

Every being capable of formal operational thought and communication of this.

And as I said, it isn't the only measure of value, merely one that results directly from epistemology.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

@Hughwillrideme, this board has some very clear posting conventions. I can't be bothered to work out what you were replying and to whom. Just a heads up.

quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

The null hypothesis is always to reject that something exists. The alternative is invisible teapotism, invisible pink unicornism, and Pastafarianism all at the same time.

quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
Do I take it from your reply that you find some conceptions of God more credible than others?

Indeed. The Omnimax God (omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent) is something that not only does not but can not logically exist. A god, more akin to one of the Greek Gods; powerful but not omnipotent is at least not an inherent contradiction. To use an analogy - in a game of poker with a single deck of cards, no jokers, I can't see your cards. If you're telling me the Greek Gods exist you're telling me that you have a Royal Flush. I'm unlikely to believe you. If you're telling me that your Omnimax God exists, you're telling me that you have five aces in your hand. One is frankly unbelievable. But the other is impossible.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

anteater

Ship's pest-controller
# 11435

Posted

Croesus:

quote:
What would it take to convince you of the existence of these dieties whose existence you reject?

To try and focus this back to the OP, I would be interested to understand what might convince you of an ethical belief.

Obviously in the case of a positivist, I would hope to get some purchase by pointing out the similarity of ethical and religious beliefs, in order to undercut the demand for empirical truth. I now accept that this does not apply to all atheists, and not to yourself.

Still, it is interesting.

For myself I think that getting to a belief is a very imprecise process, and the nearest I can come to expressing it is that "it rings true", which is what most christians would say. The gospel message carries conviction with it - excpet that it just for the few.

But I suspect that many people who take up ethical stances (e.g. refusing to make use of animals to satisfy humans needs, pacifists, maybe even objectivists) could only say, that it is just something that convinces them, and in some cases they will feel justified in imposing the belief.

I have changed my view on a number of ethical and religious issues. Scientific facts are relevant but I still believe you can't get from is to ought.

NB the reviews of Sam Harris' book are not encouraging. To say it got panned is a bit daft, since one of the more critical reviews includes: "I enjoyed this book, and I recommend it highly." and a whole section entitled "Serious reservations about a good book". So hardly panned. (Russell Backford btw).

But from many reviews, it does seem that the Guardian comment is germane:

quote:
It's a pity the book is so bull-headed, because Harris's topic is an interesting one, and he himself is an interesting figure who brings together the disciplines of science, moral philosophy and contemplative religion. Unfortunately, he seems to see this as a zero-sum game, in which the competition must be killed. In fact, as Harris must know, the great religious traditions have interesting things to tell us about wellbeing, if we stop trying to punch their lights out.

Sadly I find it hard to benefit from overly polemic books. I suspect that rising bile does not improve rationality. Which applies equally strongly to religious books,

[ 19. June 2012, 14:57: Message edited by: anteater ]

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Schnuffle schnuffle.

Posts: 2538 | From: UK | Registered: May 2006 | IP: Logged

Drewthealexander
Shipmate
# 16660

Posted

@PreCambrian. The question is how you support the assertion that God does not exist. This doesn't depend on how the concept of God is expressed. You're saying that however the concept is expressed, the notion that God exists is unsustainable. There must therefore be some underlying reason for this assertion that would hold true whatever concept of God is proposed. What is that reason?

@Justinian. Thank you for tackling the question! You wrote 'To use an analogy - in a game of poker with a single deck of cards, no jokers, I can't see your cards. If you're telling me the Greek Gods exist you're telling me that you have a Royal Flush. I'm unlikely to believe you. If you're telling me that your Omnimax God exists, you're telling me that you have five aces in your hand. One is frankly unbelievable. But the other is impossible.'

i don't think you've got much further than another circular argument. Applying this to God you're saying that in a world in which it is impossible for a maximally great being to exist, a maximally great being cannot exist. Indeed so. But you haven't shown why it's logically impossible for a maximally great being to exist in this world. I'm afraid I'm still no clearer on how your atheism is grounded.

@Hugh. You replied to my 'atheism cannot tell us what becomes of consciousness after death' with 'Science has been unable, so far, to establish that consciousness exists after death* – it is therefore entirely appropriate that it is unable to describe something which is, at best, imaginary – that, truly, is the province of religion.
*subject to your definition of death of course'
Well we agree that this is an issue that cannot be removed by science. But it is, again begging the question if you say that science is the only methid availabke of establishing reality or truth. Our difference, then, is one of worldview.

Now it's the subject of another discussion, but I would recommend a serious study of the evidence for Christ's resurrection. You can apply the same criteria to this as you would to any other historical event. Of course, if you start from the view the resurrection could not have happened because dead men don't rise, then you have ruled out the possibility that your worldview may be incomplete. There was quite a good discussion of this on the Ship round about Easter.

@Anteater - apologies for high jacking your thread. I'll leave you in peace for a few days. So as not to disappoint PreCambrian perhaps I could leave you with a question. When your refer to morals, does your question make any distinction between subjective morals (subject to custom, practice, and context) and objective morals (values which are fundamentally true regardless of how widely they are held in practice)?

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SusanDoris

Incurable Optimist
# 12618

Posted

I've muddled the quotes and qb's and can't quite work out how to put it right - sorry.

quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:

quote:
Well, yes, but it would be unrealistic to expect that, all questions would be answered and in any case there will always be more questions raised.
I was actually referring to the possibility that there are things that the human mind can not comprehend. Much like a toad can't understand Shakespeare.

I've been thinking about this, but for me that analogy doesn't work. Since the human species has evolved and adapted the way it has, so that it has learnt to comprehend much about the vastness of the universe and the most microscopic quarks etc, whatever new thing or subject came up, words would be found to describe it and somebody would, sooner or later, comprehend it.

quote:
Of course, now would be a perfect opportunity to modify your previious statement and play the "we can't demonstrate the validity of scientism yet" card.

'Scientism' is quite a recently learnt word for me! I've just checked the wikipedia definition and I like the first simple description of it, so I think I'm happy to stay with that.
QUOTE]QB]

quote:
I mentally immediately insert the word 'imagined' before 'nature' here.

[/QUOTE]I'm sure you did. I suppose it is good that you are honest enough to air your presuppositions.[/QB][/QUOTE]
I can't see any point in not being honest! [Smile]

quote:
The materialist wy questions have or can hope to have scientific answers. The why are we here ones also have scientific answers actually, although there are still plenty of gaps.

I'm not sure that I follow you here, Susan. Could you expand? [/QB][/QUOTE]
I'll do my best and come back later on that one!
I sometimes wonder whether Ship of Fools should be prescribed by the medical world for all older people as a definite aid to keeping the brain cells exercised! [Big Grin]

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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007 | IP: Logged

Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Justinian. Thank you for tackling the question! You wrote 'To use an analogy - in a game of poker with a single deck of cards, no jokers, I can't see your cards. If you're telling me the Greek Gods exist you're telling me that you have a Royal Flush. I'm unlikely to believe you. If you're telling me that your Omnimax God exists, you're telling me that you have five aces in your hand. One is frankly unbelievable. But the other is impossible.'

i don't think you've got much further than another circular argument. Applying this to God you're saying that in a world in which it is impossible for a maximally great being to exist, a maximally great being cannot exist. Indeed so. But you haven't shown why it's logically impossible for a maximally great being to exist in this world. I'm afraid I'm still no clearer on how your atheism is grounded.

I actually have. In order to have a complete understanding of something your mind must be at least a step more complex than what you have understood. Unfortunately if you act on a system then you are a part of it. And nothing can be more complex than itself.

So a Deistic God who is omniscient about the universe (but outside it) is possible. (A Deistic God is also for all practical purposes irrelevant). A Theistic Omniscient God on the other hand isn't possible because if they act within a system they make themselves a part of that system.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

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HughWillRidmee
Shipmate
# 15614

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
@Hughwillrideme, this board has some very clear posting conventions. I can't be bothered to work out what you were replying and to whom. Just a heads up.

Thanks - I was trying to avoid excessive use of space - seems I over edited.

quote:
originally posted by Drewthealexander:
Our difference, then, is one of worldview

Of course - and from my perspective devoting time, effort and/or money to something (in this case religion) which
a) is unsupported by verifiable evidence,
b) is so variously understood by those who support it as to make shutting one's eyes and sticking a pin in the list seem almost a sensible way of choosing what to believe and
c) encourages the subordination of enquiry through the scientific method to the incurious stagnation of superstition

is daft.

quote:
originally posted by Drewthealexander: Now it's the subject of another discussion, but I would recommend a serious study of the evidence for Christ's resurrection. You can apply the same criteria to this as you would to any other historical event. Of course, if you start from the view the resurrection could not have happened because dead men don't rise, then you have ruled out the possibility that your worldview may be incomplete. There was quite a good discussion of this on the Ship round about Easter

Do you mean this

I’ve just spent 40 minutes skimming through all seven pages – so far as I could see there is no evidence whatsoever. The supporting statements seem to be
a) Christianity would fail if the resurrection didn’t take place – with the implication that since Christianity can’t fail the resurrection has to be real.
b) Some writings suggest that people thought that a resurrection had taken place and that means it did (or probably did at least).
c) The stories include a surprising degree of detail – as any story does as it passes through skilled storytellers, it’s the detail that makes fiction credible enough to retain interest.
There are several honest statements about belief but nothing that purports to provide factual confirmation.

c. 2000 years later people are apparently still able to believe in unlikely events for instance – and the article makes it clear that the church was established only forty years after Rizal's death.
To Rizalistas, Rizal is the incarnation of the Holy Spirit. They believe the man who was executed by a firing squad in Bagumbayan (now Rizal Park) in 1896 was but a spiritual transfiguration.
As proof, Rizalistas say that when Rizal’s body was exhumed in Paco Park, only a pair of shoes and a tree trunk were found.
They believe Rizal is still alive and lives deep in the forest of Mount Makiling

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

Posts: 894 | From: Middle England | Registered: Apr 2010 | IP: Logged

Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@PreCambrian. The question is how you support the assertion that God does not exist. This doesn't depend on how the concept of God is expressed. You're saying that however the concept is expressed, the notion that God exists is unsustainable. There must therefore be some underlying reason for this assertion that would hold true whatever concept of God is proposed. What is that reason?

Of course it depends on how the concept of god is expressed. (And perhaps you could show me where I made the statement you ascribe to me in your third sentence.) Why would I or anyone else wish to say that we don't believe in a god that no one has ever proclaimed in the first place? It would be completely pointless.

Equally I would be very surprised if you would say that your belief in God holds true whatever concept of god is expressed, although given that your latest statement is made in the context of my reference to Poseidon, Quetzalcoatl and Baal you do seem to be saying that those three are simply different expressions of the concept of God, which might surprise Elijah for a start.

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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."

Posts: 2314 | From: Croydon | Registered: Dec 2001 | IP: Logged

anteater

Ship's pest-controller
# 11435

Posted

Since this thread is inevitably ending up with

God exists
Oh no he doesn't
Oh yes he does
etc

Can I ask if any of us really know what we mean when we say God does (not) exist?

Turning again to ethics (and do they exist?) I would say that ethical discourse is essential to human existence, and is not reducible to any other discourse. And I would say the same about God. That discourse about and knowledge of God is essential to human existence, and is not reducible to any other for of discourse.

Does that mean God exists? Pass.

Some eminent theologians have questioned whether existence is a valid category for God. But that doesn't stop you being a believer.

[ 20. June 2012, 12:59: Message edited by: anteater ]

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Schnuffle schnuffle.

Posts: 2538 | From: UK | Registered: May 2006 | IP: Logged

SusanDoris

Incurable Optimist
# 12618

Posted

squibs

I've sent a pm to you in response to your question, as it's a bit of a ramble! [Smile]

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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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Russ
Old salt
# 120

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
I would prefer not to use the same word for ideas existing as I do for physical reality existing as an idea existing because they are fundamentally different.
[

I have some sympathy with this. It's necessary to be able to distinguish propositions such as:
- you can't copyright anything to do with a Loch Ness monster because the concept is already in the public domain
- the Loch Ness monster is part of Scottish culture, and culture is a real and important part of people's lives
- there is a real physical being corresponding to the concept of a Loch Ness monster.

But I was particularly interested in what such a framework would say about moral values, for comparison with what theists believe. Are such values only high-falutin' ways of expressing personal preference ? Labels we stick on behaviours we approve or disapprove of ? Or are there real moral standards that we should try to live up to ?

If we can't talk in terms of moral values existing, what's a better terminology for framing such questions ?

Best wishes,

Russ

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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas

Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I have some sympathy with this. It's necessary to be able to distinguish propositions such as:
- you can't copyright anything to do with a Loch Ness monster because the concept is already in the public domain
- the Loch Ness monster is part of Scottish culture, and culture is a real and important part of people's lives
- there is a real physical being corresponding to the concept of a Loch Ness monster.

But I was particularly interested in what such a framework would say about moral values, for comparison with what theists believe. Are such values only high-falutin' ways of expressing personal preference ? Labels we stick on behaviours we approve or disapprove of ? Or are there real moral standards that we should try to live up to ?

If we can't talk in terms of moral values existing, what's a better terminology for framing such questions ?

I think what we need to talk about is axioms, premises, degrees of knowledge, and more. A big part of what needs to be brought up is how likely our specific beliefs are to hold and how heavily grounded they are.

But earlier in this thread I managed to use epistemology to slide straight into ethics and the golden rule (this isn't the only way there - most things have an ethical dimension).

I used:
Premise: The physical world is real
Observation AND disproof by contradiction: No one can know everything.
Observation AND logical inference: Everyone has a different perspective and can communicate some of this
Unstated premise: Knowing and understanding things is good whatever your goal.

To get simultaneously through a rationalist and empiricist route from "The physical world is real" to "You should follow a version of the Golden Rule". Very little ungrounded there. And that is a moral standard we should try to live up to as much for self interest as anything.

--------------------
My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Premise: The physical world is real
Observation AND disproof by contradiction: No one can know everything.
Observation AND logical inference: Everyone has a different perspective and can communicate some of this
Unstated premise: Knowing and understanding things is good whatever your goal.

(Note that your first premise is irrelevant to the argument. The argument would work as well with Berkeleyan idealism.)
Anyway, even assuming that the argument from observation one can be filled out in such a way as to get to where you want to go...

Observation: I simply do not have time to listen to everyone to find out whatever they can communicate from their different perspective - let alone to sort out the wheat from the chaff.
Conclusion: the Golden Rule only applies to those from whom I am at least likely to have time to learn and sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Further, the unstated premise you need for the argument to work is not merely 'knowledge and understanding are good whatever my goals' but the much stronger 'knowledge and understanding are good in such a way as to override all my other goals'.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004 | IP: Logged

Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
(Note that your first premise is irrelevant to the argument. The argument would work as well with Berkeleyan idealism.)
Anyway, even assuming that the argument from observation one can be filled out in such a way as to get to where you want to go...

Observation: I simply do not have time to listen to everyone to find out whatever they can communicate from their different perspective - let alone to sort out the wheat from the chaff.
Conclusion: the Golden Rule only applies to those from whom I am at least likely to have time to learn and sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Observation 2: I might not have time but there will be someone who has time and cares about it. I'll let them sort it out and find who the expert is - I don't have to do everything first hand.

Observation 3a: Wikipedia works remarkably well - it was more reliable and comprehensive than Brittanica years ago and has only got better since.

Observation 3b: The letters page of the Daily Mail does not work very well. Or at least doesn't work towards the ends I want.

quote:
Further, the unstated premise you need for the argument to work is not merely 'knowledge and understanding are good whatever my goals' but the much stronger 'knowledge and understanding are good in such a way as to override all my other goals'.

I'll grant I've only established it as a principle. Not as a categorical imperative. My goals also have other consequences that I haven't gone into.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

Russ
Old salt
# 120

Posted

Your version of the Golden Rule may get as far as the Sixth Commandment in giving me a reason not to kill my neighbour. But it doesn't seem to prevent me torturing him to extract those details of his unique worldview that he's unwilling to share with me...
Best wishes,
Russ

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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas

Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Your version of the Golden Rule may get as far as the Sixth Commandment in giving me a reason not to kill my neighbour. But it doesn't seem to prevent me torturing him to extract those details of his unique worldview that he's unwilling to share with me...
Best wishes,
Russ

There is that. It's where you can get directly from epistemology, not to a fully formed theory of ethics. Torture leads to really crappy communication full of false inferences and being told what you want to hear rather than the truth. So torture is always a bad choice for gaining information.

I'm to be honest more worried about the partial encouragement in there for a would-be Mengele who decides not to torture people to gain information, but to torture people to increase diversity by adding "People who have been tortured by []" to the list of worldviews. There are many reasons not to do this - but they don't come straight from the epistemology.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

Squibs
Shipmate
# 14408

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:

quote:
But I can't see humans giving up trying to understand as much as possible though!
No one suggested otherwise.
Wait, wasn't that the whole point about the supposed superiority of theistic epistemology? That it provides answers beyond human understanding? Answers which, having been provided deus ex machina (deus ex regula?), we would no longer have to look for?

I merely proposed that the physical universe might well be stranger than the human mind can ever comprehend. And even if we weren't doomed to die on an individual level or as an entire species in a universe that will some day itself die, then I don't see why we should expect our minds, presumably birthed out of the chaos of blind natural forces, to be able to comprehend the more bizarre aspects of the universe. I think it is unwarranted gushing optimism to take the "we don't know yet" view an offer it as an answer. Specifically where "yet" implies time*brainpower=certain answer.

Furthermore, I don't know what an "answer beyond human understanding" would look like, or how we would distinguish between it and gibberish. I happen to think that the Bible answers certain questions, but also leaves a whole lot unanswered. Something I would expect from a book describing the interactions between God, an unfathomably powerful being very much interested in things like justice and salvation, and his finite creations, who, frankly, can't always tell the difference between their arse and their elbow.

What I've not said is that we should toddle off to our caves, ditching the attempt to get answers in the process.

As far as I can see, your words above bear no relation to what I was saying.

Posts: 1124 | From: Here, there and everywhere | Registered: Dec 2008 | IP: Logged

George Spigot

Outcast
# 253

Posted

Still thinking about the OP's excellent question. I'd love to gave one atheists viewpoint but it's not easy for me to answer, nor are a lot of the arguments given in the thread easy for me to follow as I have never stuided philosophy.

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C.S. Lewis's Head is just a tool for the Devil. (And you can quote me on that.) ~
Philip Purser Hallard
http://www.thoughtplay.com/infinitarian/gbsfatb.html

Posts: 1625 | From: Derbyshire - England | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

Squibs
Shipmate
# 14408

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
squibs

I've sent a pm to you in response to your question, as it's a bit of a ramble!

Thanks Susan. I'm away for a while but I'll try respond.

Posts: 1124 | From: Here, there and everywhere | Registered: Dec 2008 | IP: Logged

quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740

Posted

Yes, I thought a bit more about the OP, and it seems to me, (although I am not an atheist), that atheism is not a world view, nor a philosophically coherent body of ideas. This is not a criticism of it, by the way.

Atheists are people who do not believe in God, but apart from that, they may have very divergent views on reality and morality. There are Buddhist atheists, Hindu atheists, and of course, Christian atheists, plus no doubt many, who are none of the above, and have no particular ideas about reality.

So, I suppose the answer to the OP, is yes, they can, but they may often not do, and are not obliged to.

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011 | IP: Logged

Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Still thinking about the OP's excellent question. I'd love to gave one atheists viewpoint but it's not easy for me to answer, nor are a lot of the arguments given in the thread easy for me to follow as I have never stuided philosophy.

No one will shoot you for a personal reflection (as opposed to a philosophical argument). How about starting with this. We all sometimes feel a tension between what we feel we *ought* to do and what we *want*'to do. Why do you think we feel that tension and how do you personally resolve it? (Interested in what you have to say, but also an open question for anyone on the thread).

Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011 | IP: Logged

Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551

Posted

@Hugh: If you want some serious reflection on the resurrection, a good place to start is Gary Habermas, the Case for the Resurredtion of Jesus. NT Wright also wrote a ver long and detailed book on the issue. Both Wright and Habermas look at the resurrection as an historical problem. Wright in particular asks why people with the disciples's world view would conclude Jesus had risen.

As with any historical puzzle it's best to look at the evidence and see where it leads. What's the *best*'explanation of the evidence?

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'

Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011 | IP: Logged

Russ
Old salt
# 120

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Torture leads to really crappy communication full of false inferences and being told what you want to hear rather than the truth. So torture is always a bad choice for gaining information.

I'd question the "always". Starting from knowledge as a value, seems to me that one would conclude that torture is justified when the information thus gained exceeds the information available by other methods (allowing for quality as well as quantity of data).

Accepting your assertion that those instances may be fewer than one would think because of what one might call data quality issues, one might conclude that torture is often a waste of time.

But would you say that torture is morally wrong ? And on what basis ?

Best wishes,

Russ

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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas

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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
]I'd question the "always". Starting from knowledge as a value, seems to me that one would conclude that torture is justified when the information thus gained exceeds the information available by other methods (allowing for quality as well as quantity of data).

Accepting your assertion that those instances may be fewer than one would think because of what one might call data quality issues, one might conclude that torture is often a waste of time.

But would you say that torture is morally wrong ? And on what basis ?

Best wishes,

Russ

Of course I'd call it wrong! I'd call it wrong on the basis it non-consensually degrades and harms the victim with no positive result*.

I'd further, echoing John Woolman, call torture wrong because it degrades and harms the torturer to treat another human being that way and deny their status as a human being worthy of care. To torture someone or to order them tortured is therefore an act of moral, social, and epistomological self-injury.

* The positive result part being the difference between cutting someone's chest open and sewing it back together, and cutting their chest open to remove a cancer before sewing it back together. Few actions have no positive result in the right context.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

Hmm... I think at this point I should clarify something.

You can get to a vast proportion of the field of ethics from the Golden Rule. And to get to the Golden Rule all you need to do is have some system that says "All people are inherently valuable". It doesn't matter whether this is "Everyone has a unique viewpoint", "Everyone is a child of God", "Everyone can contribute things to society" or any of a dozen other ways.

But if you get there by only one way, your system of ethics is vulnerable to a lot of corner cases. 'Children of God' have a whole lot of vulnerable corner cases around the treatment of heretics + apostates, and when a good time to die is that someone dies in a state of grace. You are pointing out flaws in what happens if the only leg the golden rule stands on is epistemology. But just because that's one leg doesn't mean it's all of them.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
I merely proposed that the physical universe might well be stranger than the human mind can ever comprehend. And even if we weren't doomed to die on an individual level or as an entire species in a universe that will some day itself die, then I don't see why we should expect our minds, presumably birthed out of the chaos of blind natural forces, to be able to comprehend the more bizarre aspects of the universe.

You've obviously missed some of the imports of my posts on this thread - I've demonstrated that it is theoretically impossible for any entity that is an active part of this universe to understand it all. And that includes an incarnate creator who would thereby have to understand itself, making its mind at least one order bigger than itself.

On the other hand I'm going to quote Tim Minchin as to why a soft scientism works even if a hard 'Science Will Answer Everything' can't.

Throughout history. Every mystery. Ever solved has turned out to be. Not Magic.

It's also turned out to be Not God. And Not Theology. It's the difference between a methodology that is ultimately limited but has provided us with a vast string of successes and one that isn't theoretically limited but has provided us with no successes at all.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

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HughWillRidmee
Shipmate
# 15614

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Hugh: If you want some serious reflection on the resurrection, a good place to start is Gary Habermas, the Case for the Resurredtion of Jesus. NT Wright also wrote a ver long and detailed book on the issue. Both Wright and Habermas look at the resurrection as an historical problem. Wright in particular asks why people with the disciples's world view would conclude Jesus had risen.

As with any historical puzzle it's best to look at the evidence and see where it leads. What's the *best*'explanation of the evidence?

ok - I've only skimmed the linked paper - it probably sounds good to those who want it to be convincing - and conversely seems weak to those (like me) who don't.
Wright assumes that the events of crucifixion, burial and empty tomb etc. happened - without offering any justification other than they are in the gospels and then proceeds to attempt to build a case on that very poor basis. After all we know that the gospels also talk of other events which are generally doubted to have happened. The Romans were pretty good at recording census events, there is no record of the device used to suggest that Jesus’s birth was foretold by Micah (I understand that nowadays the verse and its context are generally believed to be a reference to a temporal king of Israel – not the Messiah) and, in any case, the Romans wanted to know where people could be taxed – not where their ancestors might have lived. Matthew claims “And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” – can you find the prophecy in the OT? Matthew and Luke disagree about the flight to Egypt. Surely its a generally accepted position that if you find errors/misunderstandings/falsehoods in any piece of writing you should treat unsubstantiated statements in the same document with caution. Josephus documented Herod’s life in some detail but apparently was unaware of the slaying of the boys under two years old etc. etc..

You could look at this
Which includes “Take, for example, the works of Philo Judaeus whose birth occurred in 20 B.C.E. and died 50 C.E. He lived as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher and historian of the time and lived in the area of Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish events that occurred in the surrounding area. Yet not once, in all of his volumes of writings, do we read a single account of a Jesus "the Christ." Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in Seneca's (4? B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) writings, nor from the historian Pliny the Elder (23? - 79 C.E.).”

As to why the stories could be believed – I don’t know and I doubt anyone can have enough sympathy to answer accurately - I also suspect that truth or otherwise often has little to do with whether something is believed (straight bananas?). There was no understanding of the scientific method amongst the general population – they were raised in superstition – the Judaism which Paul tweeked to provide a USP (Unique Selling Point) with its stories of miracles and prophecy. They readily accepted that holy men (not just one) could raise people from the dead, turn water into wine, heal the disabled (some think Benny Hinn still does). They had no real yardstick for critical thought; perhaps as so much was unexplained “goddidit” was as good an explanation as any other. If believing in yet another miracle was the price for getting a better future in the after-life – why not?

Frankly it’s a bit like arguing about whether Santa comes down the chimney head or feet first. If you believe in Santa it might be a good excuse for sectarian violence – if you don’t believe in Santa it seems rather silly. I don’t believe in Santa – although I suspect I’d really rather like to do so.

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

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George Spigot

Outcast
# 253

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Still thinking about the OP's excellent question. I'd love to gave one atheists viewpoint but it's not easy for me to answer, nor are a lot of the arguments given in the thread easy for me to follow as I have never stuided philosophy.
No one will shoot you for a personal reflection (as opposed to a philosophical argument). How about starting with this. We all sometimes feel a tension between what we feel we *ought* to do and what we *want*'to do. Why do you think we feel that tension and how do you personally resolve it? (Interested in what you have to say, but also an open question for anyone on the thread).

I don’t really feel much tension between ought and want at all. In fact I’ve been struggling to come up with examples. When it comes to wants it would be lots of sugary foods, playing computer games, orgasms…they are all easily had and guilt free. I guess on some level I’m aware that too much sugar is bad for me but it doesn’t really cause any tension.
I suppose I want to stay in bed when I ought to get my son to school and get to work. I feel that tension because I know what the practical results would be if he didn’t go to school and I resolve it by getting out of bed and taking him.
The last time I had a big moral dilemma was way back in my twenty’s but again the tension came from the knowledge of real world consequences of my actions.

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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
No one will shoot you for a personal reflection (as opposed to a philosophical argument). How about starting with this. We all sometimes feel a tension between what we feel we *ought* to do and what we *want*'to do. Why do you think we feel that tension and how do you personally resolve it? (Interested in what you have to say, but also an open question for anyone on the thread).

Like George I find this to be at least in part a reflection f someone selling you the idea that you are ill to sell you the cure. I have a couple of vices (I eat too much, I get angry at bad logic and people fucking up the world, and mostly sloth). But my last significant moral issue was "How much am I my brother's keeper?" and last November. (I would have been The Other Guy/The Girlfriend Stealer but declined to be). This was over six months ago. How to resolve it - imagine all perspectives, then give the girl some relationship counselling and tell her to fix her damn relationship by talking to her boyfriend.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

anteater

Ship's pest-controller
# 11435

Posted

quote:
I don’t really feel much tension between ought and want at all.

Blimey! A saint!! [Snigger]

Well let me think. It all depends on what you mean by "want" to do. At a fantasy level, I may want to do all sorts of things that are as predictable as they are unsuitable.

Do I really want that? I can see how you may say no to that. For example, I am quite self-centred, and part of me would like to just do WTF I fancy with no regards for others. But this may be a very small part of me.

I'm sure this would make me miserable.

But if we leave aside the cheap imitations of pensioners-behaving-badly, I still have a real desire for many of the more refined luxuries of life, without any conviction that this is what is ethically best. So I think I should use more of my resources in bettering the low of others instead of enjoying the pleasures of life.

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Schnuffle schnuffle.

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SusanDoris

Incurable Optimist
# 12618

Posted

I raised the question of the 'tension' between shoulds and wants with an old friend. Since we're both confident, old women [Smile]

we decided fairly quickly that the tension doesn't arise - we just get on and take the most practical, sensible decision!

She did, however, add one comment. When she was an FE teacher, she ran Assertion Training Courses for several years and she'd say to the students (usually older women who lacked confidence and wanted to rejoin the work force for example), that they should remember this sentence:'I will not should myself today.' At the start of the course, the first thing they had to do was to write down what it was they wanted; not what they thought their family/husband/friends told them they wanted. This often took a great deal of discussion and thinking.

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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551

Posted

@Hugh. The specific question is how we account for the diaciples' belief that Jesus rose from death against the background of their core beliefs in the time when they lived. As Wright points out, they *didn't* expect Jesus to return from death and had real problems in believing that he did. Individuals in first century Palestine (or first century anywhere for that matter) were much more familiar with death than we are, with much higher infant and young adult mortality rates, frequent military conflict and very public executions. The idea that it was easy for people to believe that dead men come back to life just doesn't fit the evidence. As a rule, dead people don't come back.

Mainstream New Testament scholarship accepts four essential facts around the end of Jesus's life and the beginning of the Christian movement - Jesus died, was buried, a day and a half later his tomb was empty and within weeks of his death large numbers of people claimed to have seen him alive. The historical question is how we account for this evidence of this event.

The idea that people lacked critical facilities to understand what happened doesn't really stack up. All they had to understand was that Jesus was dead, and that later he wasn't dead anymore. His executioners as well as his burial party could be given enough credit to understand what death looked like. Roman soldiers killed people for a living.

The suggestion that maybe Jesus didn't ever exist is as laughable to mainstream New Testament scholarship as creationism is to biologists. I've attached a couple of non Biblical sources for interest.

If you want to examine the evidence I've given you a start and recommended some further reading. If there's other reasons why you don't embrace Christianity that's another discussion. But if you want to reject the central claim of the Christian faith on the ground of lack of evidence, you might want to give the evidence some more serious consideration. As you said yourself in your reply, you don't immediately have an answer for why the disciples came to believe in the resurrection. Not to mention the generations of people since then, fully armed with critical tools to assess evidence, who have concluded that the best explanation for the evidence is that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the grave.

Best regards,

R

Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 AD)

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."

Flavius Josephus (37-97 AD), court historian for Emperor Vespasian:

"At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive." (Arabic translation)

Julius Africanus, writing around 221 AD, found a reference in the writings of Thallus, who wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean around 52 AD, which dealt with the darkness that covered the land during Jesus' crucifixion:

"Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun--unreasonably, as it seems to me." [A solar eclipse could not take place during a full moon, as was the case during Passover season.]

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HughWillRidmee
Shipmate
# 15614

Posted

@ Ramarius @Hugh. The specific question is how we account for the diaciples' belief that Jesus rose from death against the background of their core beliefs in the time when they lived. But we don’t know that they (if they existed) did so believe – we only have a selected group of later writings which claim that they did – and disagree about much of the detail as I recall.

Mainstream New Testament scholarship accepts four essential facts around the end of Jesus's life and the beginning of the Christian movement - Jesus died, was buried, a day and a half later his tomb was empty and within weeks of his death large numbers of people claimed to have seen him alive. The historical question is how we account for this evidence of this event. you use words like “facts” and “evidence” as though they were justified – none of the four “facts” are a thing that is known or proved to be true and your “evidence” amounts to third/fourth hand repetition of gossip – not something you would want allowed in court if you were on trial for a murder you didn’t commit.

The idea that people lacked critical facilities to understand what happened doesn't really stack up. All they had to understand was that Jesus was dead, and that later he wasn't dead anymore. His executioners as well as his burial party could be given enough credit to understand what death looked like. Roman soldiers killed people for a living. They didn’t have the scientific method and they did inhabit a world where many events could not be explained without recourse to the supernatural (thunder, volcanoes, mental and physical illness – clearly the work of a god or gods?). I suggest that, on average, they were much more pre-disposed to accept stories of the miraculous than we are today.

The suggestion that maybe Jesus didn't ever exist is as laughable to mainstream New Testament scholarship as creationism is to biologists. I've attached a couple of non Biblical sources for interest. You demonstrate that some people thought that a man called Jesus was wise and virtuous and that people called Christians were scapegoated – that’s a long way from proving the existence of that Jesus let alone ascribing any divinity. Saying that mainstream NT scholarship accepts the existence of Jesus (depending upon your definition of “mainstream”) is circular reasoning? – you may not consider Biblical scholar L. Michael White, to be mainstream of course but White writes that, so far as we know, Jesus did not write anything, nor did anyone who had personal knowledge of him. There is no archeological evidence of his existence. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his life or death: no eyewitness accounts, or any other kind of first-hand record. All the accounts of Jesus come from decades or centuries later; the gospels themselves all come from later times, though they may contain earlier sources or oral traditions. The earliest writings that survive are the letters of Paul of Tarsus, written 20–30 years after the dates given for Jesus's death. Paul was not a companion of Jesus, White writes, nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus before his death. Wikipedia – it’s quick.

If you want to examine the evidence I've given you a start and recommended some further reading. If there's other reasons why you don't embrace Christianity that's another discussion. But if you want to reject the central claim of the Christian faith on the ground of lack of evidence, you might want to give the evidence some more serious consideration. There are many reasons for not embracing Christianity – the behaviour of many of those who do so – the damage done to individuals and society by teaching belief as fact and encouraging the acceptance of unreason over reason (it was penicillin not prayer that saved my life) – the multiplicity of christianitys (all, perhaps bar one, must be, to greater or lesser degree, wrong.) The errors, contradictions and inventions in the Bible which force every christian to pick-and-mix their preferred text (or worse, delegate that choice to someone else) – the sheer silliness of combining concepts such as a loving/caring/moral god with original sin/salvation through faith in something so wreathed in obscurity that many rational people could never accept it/natural disasters (surely a caring god could have provided some sort of early warning system couldn’t it?). And all overshadowed by the great omission – there is no proper, demonstrable, undeniable (nor frankly even close to it) evidence for anything supernatural – not Santa, not the Easter bunny, not homeopathy, not chi, not therapeutic touch, not the gods of Ancient Greece or the Norse deities, not Islam. And equally, not Christianity. What do they all have in common – they require the acceptance of a lesser standard of evidence than the scientific method (hearsay, tradition, claims of authority and the absence of disproof are not evidence for anything) and require a massive dollop of belief. Belief may be OK – but how should one decide when it’s appropriate and when it’s not? Why Christianity over Islam (I don’t think there is any doubt that Muhammad existed) or a Cargo cult (the realities of the planes and their cargoes are undisputed) – heck Santa used to bring me presents and leave the mince-pie crumbs he dropped in his haste.

As you said yourself in your reply, you don't immediately have an answer for why the disciples came to believe in the resurrection. I don’t have an explanation as to why people believe that Muhammad is the last prophet of God or why others think that Xenu existed – does that mean that you think I should accept those ideas as true?

Not to mention the generations of people since then, fully armed with critical tools to assess evidence, who have concluded that the best explanation for the evidence is that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the grave. As with your N T Wright quote previously - if you start 90% of the way towards a spurious finishing post you are likely to achieve a dubious conclusion. Irrespective of that - any ideological argument based on superiority of believer numbers is no argument at all – so I won’t bother to point out that the number of people have not believed in the Christian ideology is much greater than the number of those who have done so.

You may be right in some or all of your beliefs, but if so that automatically means that many others (who are/were equally convinced of the rightness of their beliefs) are/were, in fact, wrong. Given that their strength of conviction was probably often at least equal to yours it would appear that your chosen belief is no more likely to be correct than anyone else’s belief (or lack thereof). Without decent evidence that any faith system is valid you, apparently, have taken a gamble – and may have had the good fortune to do so successfully; I learnt from Prince Monolulu not to back horses unless I knew they were going to win (as it seems he, at least once so did - and at 20/1 no less!).

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

Posts: 894 | From: Middle England | Registered: Apr 2010 | IP: Logged

SusanDoris

Incurable Optimist
# 12618

Posted

HughWillRidmee
Super post! It's a pity we do not have evidence of what the sceptics said at the time the stories started, because surely there must have been quite a few of them.

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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007 | IP: Logged

Dinghy Sailor

Ship's Jibsheet
# 8507

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
The idea that people lacked critical facilities to understand what happened doesn't really stack up. All they had to understand was that Jesus was dead, and that later he wasn't dead anymore. His executioners as well as his burial party could be given enough credit to understand what death looked like. Roman soldiers killed people for a living. They didn’t have the scientific method and they did inhabit a world where many events could not be explained without recourse to the supernatural (thunder, volcanoes, mental and physical illness – clearly the work of a god or gods?). I suggest that, on average, they were much more pre-disposed to accept stories of the miraculous than we are today. [/QB]

How about you provide some evidence for that? You're the one with very high standards of evidence after all.

News sells, novelty sells, ordinary life doesn't. As it was, "Man rises from dead" became the biggest news story ever, with the book going on to eclipse all the bestseller charts. From that evidence, I'd say that people knew very well that the dead didn't come back to life - Jesus' resurrection wouldn't have been such a story otherwise.

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Preach Christ, because this old humanity has used up all hopes and expectations, but in Christ hope lives and remains.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

@Ramarius, I believe the assertion that Jesus didn't exist to be slightly risible - after all why would anyone bother to invent a vaguely apocalyptic preacher when there were so many at the time.

But as for your sources:

Cornelius Tacitus was writing long after the events of Jesus' life - he was born 20 years later. What he shows there is that Christians exist. His off hand comment about Christ and Pontius Pilate (written about 80 years after the rough date of the crucifixion) could as easily refer to what the Christians claimed about themselves as what actually happened; I see no evidence that writing 80 years after the event he considered establishing the event rather than accepting it had happened to be of interest.

The passage you cite from Josephus is almost certainly a forgery and probably one perpetrated by Eusebius in the 4th Century AD; it explicitely claims Jesus to be the Messiah in the normal rendition which we know from Origen writing in the 3rd Century AD was not something Josephus believed. And the first reference to this passage is from Eusebius, the second in the 5th Century AD (not that Christian sources ignored the authentic parts of Josephus). Citing it just weakens your case.

And then going to Agapius' 11th Century translation into Arabic rathe than the 'original' greek for your Josephus opens up an entire second can of worms.

Now if you'd cited James the Brother of Jesus again by Josephus you'd have been on much firmer ground. As far as I know, that paragraph is not in dispute. And doesn't have stylistic markers (like a myserious switch from the third person to the first person) that stick out like a sore thumb.

Finally we come to Sextus Julius Africanus. Who is a lost source writing about a lost source - meaning that Thallus is obscured twice over. What's the oldest source we have for the contents of his writings? It's our good friend Eusebius, mysteriously the first person ever to have found the Testimonium Flavium in the writings of Josephus.

So that's one source that's so tangental about Jesus as to be irrelevant, one source that's almost certainly a forgery, and one source that we only have via the probable forger of the known forgery.

@Hughwillrideme: I'm with Dinghy Sailor here. Coming back from the dead is probably more believable in the 21st Century than it was in the first.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
The passage you cite from Josephus is almost certainly a forgery and probably one perpetrated by Eusebius in the 4th Century AD

It's almost certainly not by Eusebius. The text we have is corrupt at the point where Josephus describes Herod's death. Eusebius' text had been emended by a Christian scribe who thought he could use Acts to work out what it should have been. So our text of the Testimonium Flavianum must be independent of Eusebius' text.

I've seen this idea propounded by atheists on the internet: I don't think it would be countenanced by any serious classicist.

A rather better explanation (imo) of the state of the text as we have it is that it's the result of mixed authorship: marginal scribal annotations have been incorporated into the text on copying. It's comparable to the text of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 which clearly started life as an annotation in the margin and was then incorporated into the main text after verse 33 by one copyist and after 14:40 by another. If you read the text it looks very much as if it's written by two people - there's stuff in there that look as if it's by someone who thinks Jesus was an ordinary Jewish prophet.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004 | IP: Logged

Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's almost certainly not by Eusebius. The text we have is corrupt at the point where Josephus describes Herod's death. Eusebius' text had been emended by a Christian scribe who thought he could use Acts to work out what it should have been. So our text of the Testimonium Flavianum must be independent of Eusebius' text.

I've seen this idea propounded by atheists on the internet: I don't think it would be countenanced by any serious classicist.

A rather better explanation (imo) of the state of the text as we have it is that it's the result of mixed authorship: marginal scribal annotations have been incorporated into the text on copying. It's comparable to the text of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 which clearly started life as an annotation in the margin and was then incorporated into the main text after verse 33 by one copyist and after 14:40 by another. If you read the text it looks very much as if it's written by two people - there's stuff in there that look as if it's by someone who thinks Jesus was an ordinary Jewish prophet.

In short corrupt text was added by a scribe that was explicitely against the intent of the original author. The absence of this corrupt text in the copies Origen had seen was obvious - and Eusebius was certainly the first to popularise it.

Mixed authorship is a very polite way of putting something that not only would the original author not have written but stands in direct contradiction to his other views and against his style.

And what evidence do you have that "our text of the Testimonium Flavianum must be independent of Eusebius' text"?

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003 | IP: Logged

Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The text we have is corrupt at the point where Josephus describes Herod's death. Eusebius' text had been emended by a Christian scribe who thought he could use Acts to work out what it should have been.
And what evidence do you have that "our text of the Testimonium Flavianum must be independent of Eusebius' text"?

I repeat: "The text we have is corrupt at the point where Josephus describes Herod's death. Eusebius' text had been emended by a Christian scribe who thought he could use Acts to work out what it should have been."

Clearly that's not clear enough.

We've got two versions of Josephus for the Herod passage: Eusebius' quotations and a medieval manuscript text. Now Eusebius gives an account of Herod's death that largely agrees with Acts. The medieval manuscript gives a corrupt account of Herod's death that, anyway you amend it, is not what you get in Acts.

Hypothesis A: the medieval manuscript preserves the state of the passage as it existed in a common ancestor. Eusebius' quote has been altered from the common ancestory by somebody who, not understanding the text in Josephus, tried to correct it by reading the account of Herod's death Acts.

Hypothesis B: the medieval manuscript derives from a corruption of Eusebius' text and somebody then made matters worse by introducing elements that he got from goodness knows where.

Clearly Hypothesis A is much (overwhelmingly) more likely than Hypothesis B. But if Hypothesis A is true, then the Testimonium Flavianum must have been in the common ancestor. And therefore already existed by the time Eusebius got to it.

[ 27. June 2012, 14:05: Message edited by: Dafyd ]

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004 | IP: Logged

Ramarius
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# 16551

Posted

@Hugh. Having a gap between an event and its first extant written records is par for the course in ancient history. Tacitus, who I mentioned, wrote a number of historical works about the Roman Empire from the reign of Tiberius to Nero, AD 14-68. Tacitus wrote around 100AD. The earliest New Testament writings (Paul's letters) were written contemporaneously with the events they describe (what was happening in churches). Paul's earliest work, and therefore the earliest written reference to Christ, is from around AD 45. He's much closer to the events of Christ's life than Tacitus was to the Caesar's.

We also have to remember that the gospels and epistles are themselves historical source documents. New Testament scholars overwhelmingly agree that Jesus lived, was crucified by Pilate, that his tomb was empty, and that the conviction that he rose from the dead motivated early Christian witness. Even scholars who don't believe in the resurrection, start from these facts as an historical basis.

Now what about the background beliefs of the first believers (originally all Jews). As NT Wright notes, the Jews of the day believed in resurrection but in a very particular sense. Their expectation was that people would be resurrected at the last judgement. They didn't believe there would be the resurrection of odd individuals prior to that. Nor did they believe that their Messiah would be humiliated and executed by oppressors to the Jewish state. To make claims like this, as the early Christians did, ran counter to the widespread and deeply held beliefs of the day.

In fact, you wanted to start a global religious movement in the first century you really wouldn't start with the Christian gospel. It doesn't naturally appeal to mainstream Jewish belief for the reasons Wright gives. What of the more liberal wing of Judaism? The Sadducees weren't likely to be receptive (they didn't believe in any kind of resurrections), nor Greek Platonists (resurrected body? No thanks the idea was offensive since Platonists considered matter to be inferior to spirit). How about Roman soldiers? The problem for them was Christian particularism - they would run the risk of being accused of accepting a higher earthly authority than Caesar. If you think about it, if you wanted to design a global faith movement you wouldn't make one up that would naturally alienate all your potential audiences by having, as its core proposition a universal Messiah raised from death. And yet these are the very people who embraced the faith in droves.

I like the way Wright concludes his piece I linked to above '..as far as I am concerned, the historian may and must say that all other explanations for why Christianity arose, and why it took the shape it did, are far less convincing as historical explanations than the one the early Christians themselves offer: that Jesus really did rise from the dead on Easter morning, leaving an empty tomb behind him. The origins of Christianity, the reason why this new movement came into being and took the unexpected form it did, and particularly the strange mutations it produced within the Jewish hope for resurrection and the Jewish hope for a Messiah, are best explained by saying that something happened, two or three days after Jesus’ death, for which the accounts in the four gospels are the least inadequate expression we have.'

Now if you reckon you have a better explanation, let's discuss it. But if you can't find a better one, why not see where this one gets you?

Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011 | IP: Logged

Pre-cambrian
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# 2055

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
I like the way Wright concludes his piece I linked to above '..as far as I am concerned, the historian may and must say that all other explanations for why Christianity arose, and why it took the shape it did, are far less convincing as historical explanations than the one the early Christians themselves offer: that Jesus really did rise from the dead on Easter morning, leaving an empty tomb behind him. The origins of Christianity, the reason why this new movement came into being and took the unexpected form it did, and particularly the strange mutations it produced within the Jewish hope for resurrection and the Jewish hope for a Messiah, are best explained by saying that something happened, two or three days after Jesus’ death, for which the accounts in the four gospels are the least inadequate expression we have.'

NT Wright is not a historian, he is a theologian. Therefore I find his insistence of what historians "may or must say" less than convincing, and rather arrogant. He - and you - would probably be rather horrified to discover that proper historiographical method can rightly be described as a science, where there is rigorous scrutiny of the sources, and the motivations of their writers, in order to discern the facts, regardless of what we would like them to be. He offers no historical evidence to support his bald assertion that "something happened" which led to the consequences he mentions. Instead his starting point seems to be his desire to uphold his religious beliefs, and it is in the light of that desire that he interprets his sources, i.e. the complete antipathy of proper historiographical method.

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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."

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Pre-cambrian
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# 2055

Posted

Sorry "antithesis", but it is also antipathetic to proper historiographical method.

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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."

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Ramarius
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# 16551

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
Sorry "antithesis", but it is also antipathetic to proper historiographical method.

To study academic theology requires expertise in a number of disciplines - philosophy, classical history, classical languages, church history, sociology of religion and various types of theological expertise depending on your discipline (Biblical studies, dogmatics, history of thought). Top flight scholars such as Wright make academic contributions across a range of disciplines. If you want to read the historical sources he uses and how analyses them you need to buy one of his books.

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Drewthealexander
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# 16660

Posted

The most obvious and incontestable piece of evidence relevant here is the existence of the Christian church. The writings of the apostles are evidence of a faith movement that sprung up in the mid-late 30's AD which made certain claims about a man named Jesus. The way these claims were formulated we're such that, if Jesus was no more than a fabrication, they could be easily falsified. The preaching of the early Christian missionaries was that Jesus was publicly executed during the tenure of a named Roman governor, and that a group of religious leaders (some of whom are named) were complicit in his demise. If Jesus did not in fact exist, this would be falsifiable not only by the thousands of people who packed into Jerusalem for the Passover celebration, but also by the Jewish religious leaders who could very easily have asked the Romans to provide evidence of the non-execution of one Jesus son of Joseph. It's this easy falsifiability of the existence of Jesus that makes the notion that he wasn't an historical figure so utterly fanciful.

Then there is the question of the beliefs of the first century Jews with respect to the resurrection. NT Wright's analysis here is in his capacity as a professional New Testament scholar. And it should be pointed out that he is saying nothing controversial when he points out the way Christian belief in the resurrection diverged from the mainstream view. We could cite other scholars. Joachim Jeremias (Chair of New Testament studies at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, 1935 -1968) writes:
"Ancient Judaism did not know of an anticipated resurrection as an event in history. Nowhere does one find in the literature anything comparable to the resurrection of Jesus. Certainly resurrections of the dead were known, but these always concerned resuscitations, the return to the earthly life. In no place in the late Judaic literature does it concern a resurrection to doxa as an event in history." (Die alteste Schict der Osteruberlieferung" in Resurrexit, ed Edouard Dhanis p194 (1974).

Ulrich Wilckens (Professor of Theology University of Hamburg 1968-1981) confirms: "For nowhere do the Jewish texts speak of the resurrection of an individual which already occurs before the resurrection of the righteous at the end of time and is differentiated and separate from it; nowhere does the participation of the righteous in the salvation at the end of time depend on their belonging to the Messiah, who was raised in advance "First of those raised by God (1 Cor 15:20)." ("Aufersthung," Themen der Theologie 4 Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 1970 p 131).

If anyone has some evidence to the contrary they are,of course, welcome to supply it.

So here we have two foundational facts of the Christian faith - the falsifiable existence and execution of Jesus and the preaching of the early church which proclaimed a novel view of resurrection.

Ramarius asked why anyone would make up such a basis to a faith - one which any imaginable audience would find so obviously atithapetic.

Why indeed.

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Ikkyu
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# 15207

Posted

I have no problem with accepting the existence of a historical Jesus. The resurrection however is a completely different "ballgame".
To see why that is you only have to look at the evidently existing Joseph Smith.
Millions of people believe that he preformed feats that are obviously incredible. Like translating with divine aid nonexistent gold tablets coming from an nonexistent culture.
But people who saw him when he was alive died for believing he did such things. Just look at the history of persecution of the LDS church.
This is the same kind of evidence that is claimed as supporting the resurrection.
Also many people who saw Mohamed died in his name
to defend him.
So using the argument of some in this thread should we be Mormons or Muslims instead?
The Historical argument for the resurrection is
not stronger that the historical argument for the LDS claims or the claims of Islam.
If you claim that it is you should explain what is different. All tree claims rely on eyewitness testimony of people who died for their faith and whose beliefs are followed by millions to this day.

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HughWillRidmee
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# 15614

Posted

Been otherwise engaged recently

@Dinghy Sailor How about you provide some evidence for that? You're the one with very high standards of evidence after all.

News sells, novelty sells, ordinary life doesn't. As it was, "Man rises from dead" became the biggest news story ever, with the book going on to eclipse all the bestseller charts. From that evidence, I'd say that people knew very well that the dead didn't come back to life - Jesus' resurrection wouldn't have been such a story otherwise.

They didn’t have the scientific method

Depends of course on your definition of dead – was Lazarus dead (John 11:14), or Jairus’s daughter (Luke 8)? If so we have three cases in fewer years – No-one comes back from the dead today - although many are saved from apparent death by scientifically based resuscitation/faulty diagnosis etc..

You’re right about ordinary life not selling – it’s the ordinary need for Hope that sells – as many a salesman knows – hope as in greed, in wishful thinking, in the desire for power/wealth/influence/acceptance/sexual partners etc.. – and if one can’t have what one wants now then hope of a better life after death may seem to be all that’s left.

@ Ramarius Now if you reckon you have a better explanation, let's discuss it. But if you can't find a better one, why not see where this one gets you?
Because I’ve been there, absolutely genuinely, unconditionally, unquestioningly there – it got me to atheism.

To study academic theology requires expertise in a number of disciplines - philosophy, classical history, classical languages, church history, sociology of religion and various types of theological expertise depending on your discipline (Biblical studies, dogmatics, history of thought). Top flight scholars such as Wright make academic contributions across a range of disciplines. If you want to read the historical sources he uses and how analyses them you need to buy one of his books.
a) The conclusions he reaches are not self-evident – otherwise all equally erudite scholars would agree with him (unless you would define equally erudite scholars as those who agree with Wright - which would be circular reasoning and so you don’t, do you?)
b) Since most of us are not fluent in the disciplines you list we are to accept an argument from authority? Would it not be an odd god who only allowed a handful of very academically able people to penetrate the multiple layers of erudition in which it is cloaked?
c) There are different ways of arriving at evidence for truth – one is to start with the evidence and discover the, sometimes unwanted and/or inconvenient, truth, another is to start with the truth and discover the evidence; generally science uses the former and religion (including Wright from the bits you’ve quoted) the latter.

@ Drewthealexander So here we have two foundational facts of the Christian faith - the falsifiable existence and execution of Jesus and the preaching of the early church which proclaimed a novel view of resurrection
No - we don’t have facts things that are known or proved to be true – we have guesses based on unsupported evidence and the absence of disproof. There might be some merit to the assumptions if they were unique, but they are not – equivalent claims (falsifiable events and preaching something different) can be applied to many faiths – from Hinduism through Islam to Cargo cults and Scientology – I expect those more knowledgeable than I can add many more instances.

Ramarius asked why anyone would make up such a basis to a faith - one which any imaginable audience would find so obviously atithapetic I’m not bound by the limits of your imagination - see my response to Dinghy Sailor.

@Ikkyu – I couldn’t possibly fail to disagree less!

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

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Johnny S
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# 12581

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Like translating with divine aid nonexistent gold tablets coming from an nonexistent culture.
But people who saw him when he was alive died for believing he did such things. Just look at the history of persecution of the LDS church.
This is the same kind of evidence that is claimed as supporting the resurrection.

<snip>

The Historical argument for the resurrection is
not stronger that the historical argument for the LDS claims or the claims of Islam.

If you claim that it is you should explain what is different. All tree claims rely on eyewitness testimony of people who died for their faith and whose beliefs are followed by millions to this day.

I don't think it is quite the same though.

Joseph Smith and Muhammed claimed personal divine revelation. That is a subjective experience which they (presumably) sincerely believed.

However, Christians base their claims on eye witness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore either it happened or it didn't. Something happened that convinced these Jews to accept it as true. The re-reading of Judaism necessary for Christianity makes it highly unlikely that they were expecting it to happen and therefore much more suggestible.

The evidence you cite shows that people will die for their beliefs. Even sincerely held things that (I believe) are not true. I agree with all that. The fact that the disciples were prepared to die for their beliefs doesn't prove anything other than that they were convinced.

Yet we have no evidence that people are willing to die for what they know is not true. That places the resurrection accounts in a completely different category. These guys based their belief in objectively seeing a dead man alive again.

I think your position only stands if we discount any historical record of the disciples as eye witnesses of the resurrection. (I don't mean that we have to accept the gospel as 100% factually correct, I mean that if any sense of a historic tradition stands behind them your argument, ISTM, falls.)

So I think you have a point, and I also have questions about the resurrection accounts.... but, I do not think that LDS (or Muslim) evidence is of the same kind as for the resurrection.

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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Like translating with divine aid nonexistent gold tablets coming from an nonexistent culture.
But people who saw him when he was alive died for believing he did such things. Just look at the history of persecution of the LDS church.
This is the same kind of evidence that is claimed as supporting the resurrection.

<snip>

The Historical argument for the resurrection is
not stronger that the historical argument for the LDS claims or the claims of Islam.

If you claim that it is you should explain what is different. All tree claims rely on eyewitness testimony of people who died for their faith and whose beliefs are followed by millions to this day.
I don't think it is quite the same though.

Joseph Smith and Muhammed claimed personal divine revelation. That is a subjective experience which they (presumably) sincerely believed.

However, Christians base their claims on eye witness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore either it happened or it didn't.

Joseph Smith claimed he showed his neighbors the gold tablets that later "vanished" and got them to swear they had seen them.

You may think this establishes a fact, I don't.

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Johnny S
Shipmate
# 12581

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Joseph Smith claimed he showed his neighbors the gold tablets that later "vanished" and got them to swear they had seen them.

You may think this establishes a fact, I don't.

You seem to have misunderstood my post.

It concerns people who are willing to die for their beliefs:

1. I agree that it is possible to die for things that prove not to be true.

2. I agree that the example you cite proves nothing.

3. I was arguing that the resurrection falls into a different category though - if (and it is a big if because it requires the assumption that there were historic events standing behind the gospels, regardless of how accurately there were reported) hundreds of disciples reported seeing Jesus alive after he was definitely dead then:

either they were,

a) Deluded - unlikely for all of them to be deluded at the same time (ISTM). Especially since there was nothing in Judaism at the time that would make them very susceptible to the idea.

or

b) Deliberately lying - but then they wouldn't be willing to die for what they knew wasn't true.

To be clear, I'm not saying this proves anything. (There is always the possibility that the gospels were entire fabrications that have no oral tradition behind them at all.) Just that I don't think the evidence for the resurrection really is the same kind of evidence as for Joseph Smith.

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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Croesos. You wrote '. But either God interacts with the Universe, in which case we should be able to observe that interaction, or He doesn't, which is functionally the same as non-existence.'

It isn't logically the case that interactions must be observable. Consider a divine but infinitesimally small interaction in a chaotic system - no human agency could necessarily observe the change, the range of possible outcomes could be the same. God knows that which outcome will occur has changed, we still don't. (This assumes a widely held view that 'God doesn't compute - He knows').

More generally it would be odd to assume that the author of the universe is bound by its laws - including for example the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)

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