Spirituality

[Gordon]

You seem to be thinking that the Christianity of diverse and distributed groups two decades after the events is based on just one or two witnesses with a twenty year old story. When there were far more and the witnesses were still alive.

How do you know this to be the case with reasonably certainty?

If I told you that fifteen people saw me put diesel in the car this morning you don't have 16 reports confirming my claim: you only have one report, and even though putting diesel in a car is a relatively trivial event I could still be lying even though I said 15 other people saw me.

Has the penny dropped for you yet?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

How do you know this to be the case with reasonably certainty?

If I told you that fifteen people saw me put diesel in the car this morning you don't have 16 reports confirming my claim: you only have one report, and even though putting diesel in a car is a relatively trivial event I could still be lying even though I said 15 other people saw me.

I would investigate further of course.
Although there may be a bit of uncertainty around Jesus there is little historical uncertainty about St Paul.
These documents are dated to within two decades of the events they are letters or memos written to established communities spread out. There is archeological evidence of established communities and post apostolic letters both christian and non christian. The idea that the resurrection reports, the diverse and widespread communities based around the resurrection reports were cooked up in AD 50-58 is not only far fetched it ALSO SETS UP AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY WHICH NEEDS EVIDENCING.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

If I told you that fifteen people saw me put diesel in the car this morning you don't have 16 reports confirming my claim: you only have one report, and even though putting diesel in a car is a relatively trivial event I could still be lying even though I said 15 other people saw me.

Has the penny dropped for you yet?

Yes you could be lying that's why I would want to quiz these other 15 people. Names and addresses please.

[Gordon]

Yes you could be lying that's why I would want to quiz these other 15 people. Names and addresses please.

I was lying, Vlad: can you see the problem yet? If I could lie, albeit to make a point, is there not at least a possibility that early Christians might have lied to make their point?

Even if I was telling the truth, I wouldn't have the contact details of the witnesses since getting diesel is hardly a notable event, though in this day and age CCTV in the petrol station would probably be available: now, about these 500 witnesses or so you mentioned, do you have any contact details?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I was lying, Vlad

I suspected as much

can you see the problem yet?

Yes, Shit analogy on your part.

[jeremyp]

Yes, Shit analogy on your part.

It's not even an analogy, it's another example of exactly the same thing.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Yes these documents were written within living memory and are about a past event. Their target audience are established communities which had grown up over time and distributed at multiple sites in Pax Romana. These communities develop from groups adherent to the events in question.

You asked for evidence that the written record wasn’t contemporaneous, and I gave it to you. Your difficulty here is that not only do you have the inherent problem of the unreliability of eye witness accounts in general, nor only that the considerable passage of time allows for more errors to enter as stories are told and re-told, but also that the authors weren’t even the eye witnesses either. That’s your triple whammy of problems. And that’s before you even get to the problem of demonstrating a priori a “supernatural” in which supposed miracles could occur.

You’d have been better advised just to have said “thank you” and moved on. 

As with a lot of epistiolory, Christian and non Christian, we are only of course seeing what is extant. But that is a subsidiary point as to why something written at a later date can tell us about the past development of it’s context.

See above.

Ah yes, I thought this was where your error lay. The report is an epistle by someone who claimed to have met the apostles who were still around incidentally to long established communities which are distributed. Therefore the witnesses are still around and the reports are not long post date as there are established communities based on those reports. Think of this as people in 2020 discussing a movement set in motion in 2000.

Wrong again. If you think the author(s) took in-person statements from the witnesses rather than just wrote down the story they'd heard, then explain why – and then perhaps have a go at explaining why even if that was the case it would fix the various reliability problems you’d still have.   

I'd be glad to discuss the supernatural elements of this but so far we are dealing with already established communities of believers in an event/s 20 years previous and that is true regardless of whether we believe in the supernatural elements.

So now you’re shifting ground from “there were 500 witnesses” (presumably to avoid the problem that that does not mean there are 500 records – only one would b necessary that said “there were 500 witnesses) to “communities of believers”. Well yes, presumably there were communities of believers in all sorts of claims based on hearsay, credulity, a Zeitgeist in which miracle stories were commonly accepted in the absence of any other explanations etc. That doesn’t help you though, and the problem of establishing a “supernatural” is still an a priori one – not something you can just tack on at the end to make the story at least possibly true.       

That's too bad. Regarding taking your word for it that is rendered very difficult on account of you having an Essex post code.

Grow up.

Face palm. That's why I asked whether they had taken any photos.

Even bigger face palm – the point you’ve just missed or dodged is that claiming 500 witnesses doesn’t thereby add credibility to the story because still you’d have only one account that said that. This isn’t difficult to understand – even for you.

You seem to be thinking that the Christianity of diverse and distributed groups two decades after the events is based on just one or two witnesses with a twenty year old story. When there were far more and the witnesses were still alive.

True or not, we still have just the one account though. Are you now claiming that the author interviewed all the witnesses, then wrote down faithfully what they said? How would you know that?   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It's not even an analogy, it's another example of exactly the same thing.

Not really, the argument assumes zero recourse to eyewitness at this time.
However, This isn't just a case about a resurrection no matter how unusual that event is, this is about the life and death and the incarnation and the present eternal existence of Christ and the implications of these for mankind and the individuals concerned, conviction of one's alienation against God, ourselves and our fellow human beings etc.

[Gordon]

Not really, the argument assumes zero recourse to eyewitness at this time.

No it doesn't: I haven't argued that there were no witnesses. I've argued that you can't be sure if there were any, and even if there were you can't be sure how many because, taking the 500 you mentioned, you can't be sure this figure is accurate because of the risks of bias, mistakes or lies - you really are struggling with this, Vlad.

However, This isn't just a case about a resurrection no matter how unusual that event is, this is about the life and death and the incarnation and the present eternal existence of Christ and the implications of these for mankind and the individuals concerned, conviction of one's alienation against God, ourselves and our fellow human beings etc.

Thank you for the wee outburst of proselytising.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

You asked for evidence that the written record wasn’t contemporaneous, and I gave it to you. Your difficulty here is that not only do you have the inherent problem of the unreliability of eye witness accounts in general, nor only that the considerable passage of time allows for more errors to enter as stories are told and re-told, but also that the authors weren’t even the eye witnesses either. That’s your triple whammy of problems. And that’s before you even get to the problem of demonstrating a priori a “supernatural” in which supposed miracles could occur.

You’d have been better advised just to have said “thank you” and moved on. 

See above.



Wrong again. If you think the author(s) took in-person statements from the witnesses rather than just wrote down the story they'd heard, then explain why – and then perhaps have a go at explaining why even if that was the case it would fix the various reliability problems you’d still have.   

So now you’re shifting ground from “there were 500 witnesses” (presumably to avoid the problem that that does not mean there are 500 records – only one would b necessary that said “there were 500 witnesses) to “communities of believers”. Well yes, presumably there were communities of believers in all sorts of claims based on hearsay, credulity, a Zeitgeist in which miracle stories were commonly accepted in the absence of any other explanations etc. That doesn’t help you though, and the problem of establishing a “supernatural” is still an a priori one – not something you can just tack on at the end to make the story at least possibly true.       


Grow up.

Even bigger face palm – the point you’ve just missed or dodged is that claiming 500 witnesses doesn’t thereby add credibility to the story because still you’d have only one account that said that. This isn’t difficult to understand – even for you.


True or not, we still have just the one account though. Are you now claiming that the author interviewed all the witnesses, then wrote down faithfully what they said? How would you know that?

Hillside, You seem to be arguing from two angles here. An alternative history whereby The resurrection story is conjured by a small group of individuals in AD50-58 and argument from incredulity. The author is Paul. At the time of writing he had known multiple eyewitnesses for 20 or more years most of these were still alive. Now Paul is a clever man with an agenda of a holy God of truth and good. Imagine what a prize plonker he would look if the multitude of associates had blown the gaff and said Paul? That fucking lying nutter?

We know as a byproduct of the documents that there is a believing community which is established, widespread, discusses and debates that belief, is dynamic etc and it contains eyewitnesses. That doesn't have to be written down we can tell from the document.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Thank you for the wee outburst of proselytising.

Are you feeling some kind of pressure to convert?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Hillside, You seem to be arguing from two angles here. An alternative history whereby The resurrection story is conjured by a small group of individuals in AD50-58…

Nope. No-one has said that, when the story was finally written down, it was just conjured from thin air. Paul may well have been a proto folklorist recording faithfully the myths and stories of the communities he knew about. No-one has said either by the way that those communities didn’t genuinely belief these stories to be true, any more than the communities with the various resurrection stories that preceded it didn’t think their versions to be true too.   

…and argument from incredulity.

Yet another of your misunderstandings. The argument from incredulity is: “I cannot imagine how X could be true; therefore X must be false”. No-one is saying that the resurrection story must be false though. What’s actually said is that there are many possible, real world explanations for it that you have no means of eliminating.

Is your non-belief in my stories about the doings of leprechauns an argument from incredulity too? Why not?     

[quote[The author is Paul. At the time of writing he had known multiple eyewitnesses for 20 or more years most of these were still alive. Now Paul is a clever man with an agenda of a holy God of truth and good. Imagine what a prize plonker he would look if the multitude of associates had blown the gaff and said Paul? That fucking lying nutter?

See above. If Paul had written down accurately the version of the story that finally reached his ears, whoever told it to him would have had no ground for complaint. That doesn’t help you much though.   

We know as a byproduct of the documents that there is a believing community which is established, widespread, discusses and debates that belief, is dynamic etc and it contains eyewitnesses. That doesn't have to be written down we can tell from the document.

As there were countless other communities that believed just a much in their various myths and folk tales too. So?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

What exactly is the problem in accepting a possible purpose to life and the existence of an after-life?

The problem is two-fold: first, you claim these things as facts, not just as possibilities; second, for there to be a “purpose” you’d have to have a someone or a something a priori to decide what it is. You have a huge task to demonstrate such an entity before you can make conjectures about the supposed purposes it decides on.   

There is significant anecdotal evidence for the after-life...which itself probably indicates a purpose too.

Anecdotes are not evidence. You should know this by now.

I understand that you people are disillusioned with religions, their mythology and many of their negative effects on society. No problem about that. But that should not become a mental block that prevents any kind of intelligent philosophical speculation.

“We people” would actually just prefer something more than baseless assertions if you want us to take your claims seriously. We’ve already established too by the way that, so far at least, you haven’t provided any “intelligent philosophical speculations”. 

Scientism should not be the only system to understand the world and our lives.

That’s a straw man No-one here argues for scientism.

Merely saying that....'I don't see it' or 'Show it to me through any measurable means or an instrument'....are childish and unreasonable arguments.

And that’s another one. If you don’t think “measurable means” can do the job though, propose some other method to distinguish your claims from just guessing about stuff. You wouldn’t accept my unqualified assertions as facts without some means of verifying them; why should anyone accept yours?