The strange afterlife of Pontius Pilate

[Alien]

Perhaps they're aware - there's rather a lot of evidence to shore this up - of just how dodgy eyewitness testimony is when it comes to accurate reportage of fact.

So even if you stood there and watched it (apparently) happening you wouldn't believe it?

[Alien]

I'd say any claim like this would require close investigation: the problem arises in respect of Jesus of even knowing that  there was an event to investigate. Since the only reports are post-hoc (by decades) anecdotal accounts of uncertain provenance the start point would be to exclude the risks of bias, mistakes or lies in these accounts.

How has this been done to your satisfaction?

Except that the 1 Corinthians 15 account it believed to go back to the early years after Jesus' resurrection and even if it weren't it would be no later than about 20 years after it. In Galatians Paul tells us of his time he spent with Peter some years before. What do you think they discussed? The weather?

Do you think you would be able to remember seeing Jesus for 20-30 years if you saw him after his death?

Would you believe the resurrection happened if you were to have watched it actually (apparently) happen? This is a slightly separate subject to the items above as no-one in the gospels claims to have seen the resurrection happen, "only" that they met Jesus afterwards as individuals and groups on about a dozen occasions that we know of and that the tomb was empty.

[Shaker]

So even if you stood there and watched it (apparently) happening you wouldn't believe it?

I said what I said. In fact I said what David Hume said about miracles, in essence, which Gordon went on to say in his own words. Eyewitness testimony - as I think just about every and any law enforcement agency in the world is just about unanimously agreed upon - is woefully poor as a guide to veridical reality. Laws-of-nature-breaking alleged events are always far, far, far further down the list of possibilities than deliberate deception (i.e. conscious and explicit lies) or sincere mistake and misapprehension, but mistake and misapprehension for all that.

The truly, actually and genuinely dead don't return from such a state of deadness or deaditude. I have no seen no evidence - not a single and solitary scrap, anywhere, ever - that such a thing is the case or has ever occurred anywhere, any time, ever. I'm not referring here to death-mimicking conditions, of which there are various and several, but actual death, which I believe is the Christian claim about Jesus.

[Gordon]

Except that the 1 Corinthians 15 account it believed to go back to the early years after Jesus' resurrection and even if it weren't it would be no later than about 20 years after it. In Galatians Paul tells us of his time he spent with Peter some years before. What do you think they discussed? The weather?

Who knows? How do you know that they didn't exaggerate or fabricate propaganda for their cause? I don't, and I'd suggest nobody else does either, so these concerns are unresolved risks involving anecdotal accounts of uncertain provenance: 'pinch of salt' stuff.

Do you think you would be able to remember seeing Jesus for 20-30 years if you saw him after his death?

Only if I visited an undertaker pre-funeral: you're begging the question here, Alan.

Would you believe the resurrection happened if you were to have watched it actually (apparently) happen?

You are begging the question again, but even putting that to one side how do you know that the accounts of Jesus being resurrected aren't fiction: how could you ever know this?
 

This is a slightly separate subject to the items above as no-one in the gospels claims to have seen the resurrection happen, "only" that they met Jesus afterwards as individuals and groups on about a dozen occasions that we know of and that the tomb was empty.

So the story goes, Alan: but you are treating these claims as being historical facts yet you don't know that they aren't fiction: that they may be fiction is, at the very least, a clear risk to the extent that the resurrection claims are indistinguishable from fiction since it seems they can never be demonstrated to be historical fact. So, as I said, 'pinch of salt' stuff.

[Alien]

I said what I said. In fact I said what David Hume said about miracles, in essence, which Gordon went on to say in his own words. Eyewitness testimony - as I think just about every and any law enforcement agency in the world is just about unanimously agreed upon - is woefully poor as a guide to veridical reality. Laws-of-nature-breaking alleged events are always far, far, far further down the list of possibilities than deliberate deception (i.e. conscious and explicit lies) or sincere mistake and misapprehension, but mistake and misapprehension for all that.

The truly, actually and genuinely dead don't return from such a state of deadness or deaditude. I have no seen no evidence - not a single and solitary scrap, anywhere, ever - that such a thing is the case or has ever occurred anywhere, any time, ever. I'm not referring here to death-mimicking conditions, of which there are various and several, but actual death, which I believe is the Christian claim about Jesus.

This is why I've not been around for about a year. The same conversation as I used to have year after year. Now it might be me being wrong, I accept that, but I don't see much point in discussing the same stuff again and again, both of us putting forward the same arguments. However, this discussion has been started (despite it not having much to do with the original discussion).

1) Hulme did not take into account that we need to factor in the probability of there being evidence for the resurrection if the resurrection did not take place.
2) Dissing all eye-witness evidence just because they are eye-witnesses is daft. Eye-witness evidence is admissible in places like courts and particularly so if lots of people on lots of occasions saw something! If you are going to say that all the alleged eye-witnesses were wrong, you need to give a better explanation.

[Alien]

Who knows? How do you know that they didn't exaggerate or fabricate propaganda for their cause? I don't, and I'd suggest nobody else does either, so these concerns are unresolved risks involving anecdotal accounts of uncertain provenance: 'pinch of salt' stuff.

If you think they exaggerated or fabricated, why do you think that? What reasons do you have for not taking at face value the claim that the individuals and groups on about a dozen occasions were convinced they met up with Jesus, please?

Only if I visited an undertaker pre-funeral: you're begging the question here, Alan.

Nope, I'm asking you a question so I know if there is anything, any evidence which is worth putting forward.

You are begging the question again, but even putting that to one side how do you know that the accounts of Jesus being resurrected aren't fiction: how could you ever know this?

See first line above.

So the story goes, Alan: but you are treating these claims as being historical facts yet you don't know that they aren't fiction: that they may be fiction is, at the very least, a clear risk to the extent that the resurrection claims are indistinguishable from fiction since it seems they can never be demonstrated to be historical fact. So, as I said, 'pinch of salt' stuff.

See first line above.

[Rhiannon]

This is why I've not been around for about a year. The same conversation as I used to have year after year. Now it might be me being wrong, I accept that, but I don't see much point in discussing the same stuff again and again, both of us putting forward the same arguments. However, this discussion has been started (despite it not having much to do with the original discussion).

1) Hulme did not take into account that we need to factor in the probability of there being evidence for the resurrection if the resurrection did not take place.
2) Dissing all eye-witness evidence just because they are eye-witnesses is daft. Eye-witness evidence is admissible in places like courts and particularly so if lots of people on lots of occasions saw something! If you are going to say that all the alleged eye-witnesses were wrong, you need to give a better explanation.

So presumably you accept that the story of, say, St Winifred is also true - that she was decapitated and had her head and life restored to her. After all, there were apparently eye witnesses, we know where it happened, in fact you can visit her shrine at Holywell - there's documentary evidence as to her existence and apparently she did have a scar on her neck.

[Outrider]

If you think they exaggerated or fabricated, why do you think that? What reasons do you have for not taking at face value the claim that the individuals and groups on about a dozen occasions were convinced they met up with Jesus, please?

It's an extraordinary claim, and as such requires extraordinary evidence - the likelihood that a few people with a vested interested were reported after the fact by other people with a vested interest to have made claims that were actually false is significantly more likely than the possibility that this one claim of life after death is correct, whilst the other equally poorly evidenced claims are all incorrect.

Ultimately, even if you consider that the people involved were telling what they thought was the truth, and that this has been accurately reported after the fact, human fallibility is readily apparent in any episode of Derren Brown's shows.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Alien,

If you think they exaggerated or fabricated, why do you think that? What reasons do you have for not taking at face value the claim that the individuals and groups on about a dozen occasions were convinced they met up with Jesus, please?

You're missing it. There may well have been a person you call Jesus or similar, and there may well be records that accurately record that people met him. There's no particular reason to doubt that.

What's disputed here though is the likelihood of that person also being a man/god, and that the records we have of that status are not fabricated, exaggerated or just plain mistaken. Which incidentally is just what you believe the records of faiths in which you don't believe to be.   

[Gordon]

If you think they exaggerated or fabricated, why do you think that? What reasons do you have for not taking at face value the claim that the individuals and groups on about a dozen occasions were convinced they met up with Jesus, please?

Because people have biases, make mistakes and tell lies: they still do, as we saw from the Hillsborough enquiry. So where there are anecdotal reports of anything, including where the provenance is uncertain, then there is a risk of bias, mistake or lies.

I'm simply asking how you've meaningfully excluded these risks in respect of the NT accounts of the resurrection claim since unless you have then as evidence for what claimed these accounts are inadequate, since they can't be moved from a position of anecdotal claim to a position of established historical fact since the risks of bias, mistake or lies remain

So, if I may borrow from your post with an amendment, let me ask you this: What reasons do you have for taking at face value the claim that the individuals and groups on about a dozen occasions were convinced they met up with Jesus, please?

[Alien]

So presumably you accept that the story of, say, St Winifred is also true - that she was decapitated and had her head and life restored to her. After all, there were apparently eye witnesses, we know where it happened, in fact you can visit her shrine at Holywell - there's documentary evidence as to her existence and apparently she did have a scar on her neck.

Which eye-witnesses are they? Their accounts were recorded where and when? Where are the oldest copies of those accounts? Where are those copies? What effect did all this have?

[floo]

Seeing isn't always believing as I can attest. I have 'seen' some remarkable things in my 67 years on this planet. However, when what passes for my brain kicked in, I have questioned if what I thought I saw and reality were in cinque.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Alien,

Which eye-witnesses are they? Their accounts were recorded where and when? Where are the oldest copies of those accounts? Where are those copies? What effect did all this have?

That's some awful thin ice you're skating on my friend - exactly the same could be asked of the records on which you rely for your faith.

Either way though, it misses the point entirely. The fact is that there are lots of reasons to doubt any such ancient records because the authors had none of the tools available to them that we'd consider now to be basic tests of veracity. Even if tomorrow someone dug up a contemporary account of the resurrection, that would tell you nothing about the credulity of the author, how savvy he was at recognising conjuring tricks, the other supernatural stories he believed in just as readily etc. All it would tell you in fact is that Fred thought a resurrection was the correct explanation for what he saw.

And that's a pretty wobbly basis on which to rest a supposedly fact-based religious belief.

[Shaker]

This is why I've not been around for about a year. The same conversation as I used to have year after year. Now it might be me being wrong, I accept that, but I don't see much point in discussing the same stuff again and again, both of us putting forward the same arguments.

The reason that it goes round and around in circles is that you keep promulgating beliefs for which there is zero evidence, and we keep on pointing out this fairly elementary fact.

1) Hulme did not take into account that we need to factor in the probability of there being evidence for the resurrection if the resurrection did not take place.

I don't understand what you mean here. Evidence for something that didn't happen?

2) Dissing all eye-witness evidence just because they are eye-witnesses is daft. Eye-witness evidence is admissible in places like courts and particularly so if lots of people on lots of occasions saw something!

Leaving aside the poorly disguised argumentum ad populum at work here, you're not saying anything to challenge the established fact that eyewitness testimony can be and often is extremely shaky indeed.

If you are going to say that all the alleged eye-witnesses were wrong, you need to give a better explanation.

This has already been provided to you, multiple times by multiple people. Hume's point stands as validly as it ever did. We have abundant evidence that people lie. We have abundant evidence that people can be genuinely mistaken. We have abundant evidence that people can be biased. We have no evidence that any dead human being has ever come back to life. Therefore, in evaluating an alleged resurrection, we have to say that deliberate deception, sincere error and bias are orders of magnitude more probable than a reanimated corpse.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Alien,

Dissing all eye-witness evidence just because they are eye-witnesses is daft. Eye-witness evidence is admissible in places like courts and particularly so if lots of people on lots of occasions saw something! If you are going to say that all the alleged eye-witnesses were wrong, you need to give a better explanation.

Here’s a better explanation for you.

1. You’re attempting a negative proof fallacy. It’s for the claimant to show beyond reasonable doubt that the record is accurate, not for others to prove that it's not.

2. There is no eye-witness evidence. Such records as there are were written decades later, and so merely reported what eye-witnesses allegedly said.

3. There aren’t records from lots of eye-witnesses. What there actually is is effectively one record that says, “Fred and all his mates saw a resurrection”. In a court of law various witnesses would be given more credence than just one, but there wouldn’t be more credence given to just one because he said his mates saw it too.

4. In a court the witnesses wouldn’t be allowed to collude.

5. In a court there’d be the opportunity to cross examine in order to help eliminate the risk of bias, mistake, dishonesty etc. None of these things can be tested from the limited account we have.

6. In a court of law there’d be the opportunity to ask what else the witness thought to be true. If he also thought ten other superstitious beliefs to be true then his credulity would be taken into account.

7. In a court expert witnesses could be produced to present evidence about, say, drug-induced coma that would provide alternative explanations for the events that were supposedly witnessed.

And so on. 

Are you beginning to see the problem here?

Oh, and we didn’t go round and round before as you suggest. If someone asserts that 2+2=5 and is shown to be wrong, just repeating it doesn’t provide an alternative fact worth considering. The trick would be instead to attempt an argument that isn’t shown to be logically false.

[Gordon]

Which eye-witnesses are they? Their accounts were recorded where and when? Where are the oldest copies of those accounts? Where are those copies?

All fair questions, especially given the incredible nature of the claim - I suspect you're as sceptical as I given the claim is of recovery from decapitation. I'm equally as sceptical regarding the resurrection of Jesus claim for the same reasons.

What effect did all this have?

Irrelevant to the veracity of these accounts: what people made of these accounts, for whatever reasons, says nothing about the veracity of said accounts.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It's an extraordinary claim, and as such requires extraordinary evidence - the likelihood that a few people with a vested interested were reported after the fact by other people with a vested interest to have made claims that were actually false is significantly more likely than the possibility that this one claim of life after death is correct, whilst the other equally poorly evidenced claims are all incorrect.

Ultimately, even if you consider that the people involved were telling what they thought was the truth, and that this has been accurately reported after the fact, human fallibility is readily apparent in any episode of Derren Brown's shows.

O.

Yes but are you really factoring in that little word 'show'.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Yes but are you really factoring in that little word 'show'.

Of course. People are highly fallible in many ways - Derren Brown exploits those fallibilities, and then explains them (or at east tells you that that's what he's doing). Other showmen past and present though have been less honest.

The amount of possible fallibilities you'd have to be able to discount to think the resurrection story to be the most probably true is pretty eye-watering, but I guess that thing "faith" enables you to sweep all that under the carpet. What's odd though is the phenomenon of the Alien's of this world trying to argue it to be the other way around - no faith at all but a rational evaluation of the evidence, and then the faith bit sits on that. Seems all backwards to me, but there you go.   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Of course. People are highly fallible in many ways - Derren Brown exploits those fallibilities, and then explains them (or at east tells you that that's what he's doing). Other showmen past and present though have been less honest.

The amount of possible fallibilities you'd have to be able to discount to think the resurrection story to be the most probably true is pretty eye-watering, but I guess that thing "faith" enables you to sweep all that under the carpet. What's odd though is the phenomenon of the Alien's of this world trying to argue it to be the other way around - no faith at all but a rational evaluation of the evidence, and then the faith bit sits on that. Seems all backwards to me, but there you go.

You seem to have faith that what you see and hear on tv is straight up.
How can we know that.
Also strangely the Derren Brown experience asks us to believe two contradictory things firstly nothing is as it seems and I'm being straight with you.
It could all be pisstake so I can understand the appeal for some.

As for the resurrection........that is the craziest thing. The sort of thing that can only be believed if it's true.

[Gordon]

You seem to have faith that what you see and hear on tv is straight up.
How can we know that.

Context: we tend to know which programmes are fiction and those which aren't.

Also strangely the Derren Brown experience asks us to believe two contradictory things firstly nothing is as it seems and I'm being straight with you.

Not contradictory at all - you're being clearly told that what you are seeing is a trick and isn't literally true: this being the point of 'magic'.
 

It could all be pisstake so I can understand the appeal for some.

It's just entertainment, and a matter of taste.

As for the resurrection........that is the craziest thing. The sort of thing that can only be believed if it's true.

Only if you are highly credulous as regards this specific claim. 

[Shaker]

As for the resurrection........that is the craziest thing. The sort of thing that can only be believed if it's true.

I would just love to see explained the "logic" behind that one, Tertullian.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

You seem to have faith that what you see and hear on tv is straight up.
How can we know that.

Well that's weird. Are you suggesting that Derren Brown performs bona fide miracles only he pretends that he doesn't?

Seriously?

Also strangely the Derren Brown experience asks us to believe two contradictory things firstly nothing is as it seems and I'm being straight with you.
It could all be pisstake so I can understand the appeal for some.

And now weirder still. DB uses various techniques to facilitate his audience's willing suspension of disbelief, but he's quite open too about saying that they are techniques rather than kosher magic. 

As for the resurrection........that is the craziest thing. The sort of thing that can only be believed if it's true.

Wow. So now you're trying the line that if something seem batshit crazy but people believe it, then it can't be batshit crazy at all?

Do you apply this rule of Vlad principle only to the batshit crazy stuff that you think is true, or to batshit crazy stuff across the board that anyone else thinks to be true too?

[wigginhall]

I would just love to see explained the "logic" behind that one, Tertullian.

Well spotted.  I think the original in Tertullian is: 'Certum est, quia impossibile', it is impossible, therefore true.   Also translated as 'credo, quia absurdum est'.

As blue has just pointed out, this criterion is not applied outside Christianity, for example, go to India, where some people believe impossible things, e.g. levitation or translocation.  Are they therefore true?

[Shaker]

Well spotted.

Not a total dimwit, y'know

[Dicky Underpants]

Well spotted.  I think the original in Tertullian is: 'Certum est, quia impossibile', it is impossible, therefore true.   Also translated as 'credo, quia absurdum est'.

Lovely man, Tertullian, always worth quoting for a good argument, or as a representative of a good, loving human being, especially when speaking of women:
"Do you not realise that each one of you is an Eve....You are the Devil's gateway - because of you, even the Son of God had to die."