Is Mormonism so bad?

[Kishkumen]

I don’t think it requires conspiratorial thinking to conclude that there is no real guy Jesus. Atwill relies on a conspiracy. I don’t think Carrier requires intentional construction of a false narrative.

RI, thank you for your wonderful, illuminating post. You explain things so lucidly.

My one minor bone to pick would be on this point. I agree that Atwill and Carrier are quite different, the former literally having written a conspiracy narrative. I do see Carrier’s reasoning, taken as a whole, to lend itself to the formation of conspiracy narratives, inasmuch as the odds that his positive case for mythicism is true are extremely small. Moreover, the suppression of the mythical Jesus and concomitant manufacture of a fake living Jesus, including the altering of texts and insertion of fake evidence across many different ancient texts seem to require a massive conspiracy to pull off.

It is also quite like Mopologetics. In Mopologetics, every highly exceptional case has to be assumed to be the privileged possibility in order to protect the claim that Nephites existed or the Book of Abraham missing scroll existed. Here everything has to line up in just the right way to create the mythical Jesus movement that vanishes without leaving a trace, and the more likely reading of the aggregate of existing evidence has to be consistently denied.

[Kishkumen]

But, as Kishkumen has repeatedly pointed out, extraordinary claims were more routine and more readily applied to ordinary people in the ancient world than in the modern one. (Miracles recede as printing, photography, and video cameras advance.) And even today, if you heard Pete and Jimmy and some other co-religionists saying "We had a vision of Jimmy's brother in heaven after he died," which is pretty much the substance of the miraculous claims in Paul's work, you'd think they were deluding themselves or perpetrating a fraud, not that Josh never existed.

One of the most fascinating things to observe here is just how difficult it is for modern people to connect with the ancient mindset. It is difficult for everyone, including scholars of antiquity. The latter have the advantage of immersing themselves in the writings of ancient authors for decades. That does help one break through to greater understanding of the mindset of those who lived long ago in what was, in many ways, a quite different world with a different perspective or sets of perspectives.

But there are, since humanity is consistently human, many continuities, even with the advance of technology. Technology does pose a challenge for miraculous claims, but we cling to them because we like them. The will to believe in the extraordinary is very powerful.

Now, it is possible to make up miracles, but they very often spring from perceptions of things experienced that are subsequently distorted in the telling. I speak from personal experience. As an LDS missionary, I observed things that were collectively experienced and perceived to be miraculous. These things occurred in regular, everyday life, and all of the participants were normal people. Reporting these things inevitably led to their evolution as stories. The amplification of the stories and the challenges raised against them are all part of the phenomenon.

If you read the Gospel of Mark and only that Gospel, consciously stripping away the views of other accounts, you see a human preacher and exorcist who is executed by Roman authorities and whose body disappears from its tomb. No miraculous birth, no clear evidence of resurrection. The emphasis here is clearly on the human nature of Jesus, and his Markan story is even closer to those of other similar Mediterranean figures.

I contend that if this were all we had of Jesus, there would be no Christianity, and no one would spend much effort arguing he did not exist. They would almost certainly assume he did, and they would be correct.

Mark is most likely the first biography-like account of Jesus, and it is also the least mythological. We must factor this into our historical probabilities.

[Physics Guy]

Even today supernatural legends accrue around some real people. Chuck Norris actually was a tournament-winning martial artist and then a TV star, but the Internet is full of memes attributing powers to him that no-one could have (except Chuck Norris, of course). There was a movie making out Abraham Lincoln to be a vampire hunter. And I haven’t seen Wonder Woman 1984 but I’m guessing that in it she might interact with real historical figures.

These are all conscious fictions, of course. Nobody takes them seriously. They’ve been popular, though. People still like stories like that. Even now we don’t just say Pfft, Lincoln was real, vampires ain’t, so shut up.

And then there’s stuff like QAnon. Some people are happy to treat nonsense as news even now.

And even now religious devotees are happy to believe legends about their founders, though their founders were certainly real. L. Ron Hubbard healed himself from wounds and blindness, according to Scientologists. Joseph Smith ran miles with heavy gold plates and saw words on a stone in his hat, according to Mormons.

In a time when it was at least somewhat less clear what kinds of things could really happen, the line between myth and news was at least somewhat less sharp. And when there were no prospects of seeing rulers and heroes in person, or even on TV news, the line between legends and celebrities must also have been fainter.

The notion that only fake people ever appear in fake news makes no sense even now. It can’t have made more sense back then.

[Meadowchik]

Even today supernatural legends accrue around some real people. Chuck Norris actually was a tournament-winning martial artist and then a TV star, but the Internet is full of memes attributing powers to him that no-one could have (except Chuck Norris, of course). There was a movie making out Abraham Lincoln to be a vampire hunter. And I haven’t seen Wonder Woman 1984 but I’m guessing that in it she might interact with real historical figures.

These are all conscious fictions, of course. Nobody takes them seriously. They’ve been popular, though. People still like stories like that. Even now we don’t just say Pfft, Lincoln was real, vampires ain’t, so shut up.

And then there’s stuff like QAnon. Some people are happy to treat nonsense as news even now.

And even now religious devotees are happy to believe legends about their founders, though their founders were certainly real. L. Ron Hubbard healed himself from wounds and blindness, according to Scientologists. Joseph Smith ran miles with heavy gold plates and saw words on a stone in his hat, according to Mormons.

In a time when it was at least somewhat less clear what kinds of things could really happen, the line between myth and news was at least somewhat less sharp. And when there were no prospects of seeing rulers and heroes in person, or even on TV news, the line between legends and celebrities must also have been fainter.

The notion that only fake people ever appear in fake news makes no sense even now. It can’t have made more sense back then.

This is something I have thought about frequently for the last several years. Pop culture and celebrity does get very mythical. Even though it is perhaps more conscious, we do use fiction in many ways we use religion: to bond, to express our personal values, to speak about the nature of reality. Several years ago, knowing what we were dealing with personally, my doctor offered me anxiety medication. I turned it down, saying I had my "show," and I was not exaggerating. I just let my favorite sitcom loop throughout the day as I worked at home to offset the extraordinary anxiety.

With celebrities, it is not uncommon for people to build parasocial relationships, like they do with Deity. We listen to, respond to, and make plenty of head space for people in the public eye who have nothing more than a general knowledge that we, "the fans" exist.

This is in Mormonism too. I'll never forget when Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone spoke at a Tuesday devotional at BYU. Coming from Texas, it was very rare for me to be in the same room with a general authority and I was deeply impressed with the certainty that this man was my true friend. He along with other church authorities had a mythical quality, something the church had taught to me from my earliest awareness of people. The myth was projected onto the man and it was extremely powerful.

[dastardly stem]

But, as Kishkumen has repeatedly pointed out, extraordinary claims were more routine and more readily applied to ordinary people in the ancient world than in the modern one. (Miracles recede as printing, photography, and video cameras advance.) And even today, if you heard Pete and Jimmy and some other co-religionists saying "We had a vision of Jimmy's brother in heaven after he died," which is pretty much the substance of the miraculous claims in Paul's work, you'd think they were deluding themselves or perpetrating a fraud, not that Josh never existed.

Let's consider it a little more deeply. So some years after the purported life of Josh, Paul, as a believer in the teachings of Josh, decides to write down some letters to other believers exhorting, encouraging and declaring. In so doing, Paul tells some in his letter that he actually knew Josh's proposed brother, Jimmy, and declares he was witness to Jimmy's unfair death. So he writes and declares Josh God or God's son and says he was killed by authorities in Texas after having secluded himself and his scant followers in the barn of a ranch. The story continues, this Josh rose again, and while Paul was walking on his farm in Kansas, Josh appeared to him. He went that day from earnest Christian, persecuting the scant sect of Joshuaism, to a devoted follower.

Who has any obligation to think Josh really did live at some point? One could believe Josh lived and the story of his life was made up, or exaggerated. One could think there was no Josh at all, and the story of his life was made up by Paul, Jimmy...others? One could believe Josh lived and the story told about him are genuine, real history. who knows? For one thing Paul would never know if Josh actually had lived. Jimmy could have been lying or delusional and the personal visit could have been some weird dream.

So what would anyone do to settle the dispute or decide for themselves? Of course we'd need corroborating evidence to confirm the story. So on this, we are saying the story itself is not evidence. What we are doing is saying, is there evidence to corroborate the story? One would look at records, since we keep records in our world, and search for clues that Josh lived, that he lived where the events were said to take place, and that the time of his life fits.

If no one is able to find any records corroborating the story, nor the life of Josh, what is Paul and his following believing in? And since we only have, at this point, his letters telling the story, how can we consider them evidence that Josh lived at all?

On this example I think we show that the story of Jesus isn't evidence that Jesus lived. It's the story we're trying to find ways to confirm. In one sense it doesn't matter if some guy names Jesus, or Josh, really lived. But in another, in a way to confirm the events in the story it does matter. The problem with Jesus is we're using the proposal, Paul's letters, as the evidence that Jesus really lived. Now we could use some internal hints in Pauls' letters to say it's possible Jesus lived because they seem to fit time, place, context. But it's really weak evidence, if so. Paul simply could be writing in consideration of time, place, context.

Overall point, the evidence for Jesus actually having lived is really weak in the sum. And that's really all we're talking about here. Its so weak we know the story of his life could have been made up, incorporating myths and legends shamelessly. It certainly does appear in terms of ancient history there is some good reason to think Jesus lived, as we compare the historic record with other people of his era, but in the some that's based on really weak evidence. And unfortunately it's all we can go on for that era because well, we're so far removed and they didn't keep records much.

So far we have:

1. stories told about other people's stories regarding a magical man who purportedly lived 2,000 years ago.
2. A mention of Pilate in a record written decades after the purported life of Jesus and Pilate is found in other records.
3. A person after Jesus lived saying he knew a brother of Jesus--as it turns out a rather ambiguous reference since brother could mean fellow believer.

what am I missing?

[dastardly stem]

I am taking this piecemeal because I am on my phone.

I see this precisely like the Hamblin/Jenkins discussion. Hamblin was intent on getting Jenkins to read the experts who have given arguments, because evidence, though he claimed he had it, should not be expected as Jenkins expected it. You have to get all complex and nuanced to accept something as evidence, on Hamblin's point. I"m not feeling swayed. That hardly means I don't think you have good reason. I just haven't seen it. Or rather what I have seen seems to come up short.

stem, you are really reaching to see this as parallel to the Jenkins/Hamblin debate, especially since in this case Carrier is considered the crackpot. Jenkins had the evidence on his side. Hamblin did not. He had close to nothing. The difference here is that you and Carrier are denying evidence by a sleight of hand called historical Bayesian analysis.

Here is a simple comparison of the two cases:

Book of a Mormon chronological setting:
6th century BC-5th century AD

Gospels’ church chronological setting:
early first century CE

Book of Mormon ancient manuscripts/texts in Reformed Egyptian:
0

Gospels ancient manuscripts:
thousands, dating from the second century CE on

Book of Mormon, earliest text or fragment:
19th century translation

Gospels: a handful of second century fragments

Book of Mormon, time between events and text:
1,400 years

Gospels, time between events and earliest surviving texts:
100-170 years

Book of Mormon, corroboration in near-contemporary outside sources:
0

Gospels, corroboration in near-contemporary outside sources:
Philo (on Pilate), Paul, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and many others

I think it is clear why Jenkins does not need to waste his time on “subtle scholarship,” stem. There is nothing to argue about there. No sane, non-partisan historian would see the Book of Mormon case coming within a light year of the case for the historicity of the Gospels and Jesus.

On the other hand, most people who know ancient history and Biblical studies don’t waste their time on Carrier’s blinkered attempt to argue all of the evidence in favor of the historical Jesus away, and, yes, that does include the presence and activities of Pontius Pilate.

I've already explained why I see a connection and it has nothing to do with the probability of the Book of Mormon historicity vs Jesus historicity. It has to do with a discussion on evidence. This is mischaracterizing the conversation, Kish, as I agree wholly with the difference you lay out and have said so, already.

[dastardly stem]

Hello fellow trailer parkers. I ducked in to see how folks were doing and found this fun thread on one of my favorite topic: evidence. Just a couple of reactions.

Stem, the hearsay rule in law is a general rule that is riddled with dozens of exceptions. It’s a highly technical body of rules based, in part, on the notion that witnesses should be subject to cross-examination. That’s an issue of fairness, not necessarily reliability. And most of the many exceptions exist because the second-hand statements are made under circumstances that we consider reliable. So, it is a mistake to throw out anything other than eye witness testimony as unreliable. (In fact, the dirty little secret in law is that eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable.)

Agreed. I'm not sure why what I've said would be seen as disagreeing with this. Of course what we have is nothing near a possible exception as I see it.

Much of the evidence Kish refers to would not be considered hearsay in a courtroom. But historians don’t have the luxury of summoning historical figures into a courtroom and cross examining them. So, I’d suggest dropping the notion of hearsay from questions of history and instead go straight to trustworthiness.

The evidence Kish pointed to was the notion that Mark included Pilate in the story. I didn't say that was hearsay, just to be clear. On that I'd agree.

More generally, the conflation of evidence and proof drives me nuts. Evidence is a relationship between facts. If X being true makes it more likely that Y is true, then X is evidence of Y. Proof is a flexible standard we use to decide when a body of evidence is sufficient to support a conclusion. Different standards of proof are used in different contexts. I’m not a trained historian, so I’m not familiar with standards of proof used by historians.

I don't think I've conflated the two. Did I? My position was, what is the evidence. When presented I commented on whether it was good evidence, bad evidence or no evidence. I didn't talk proof. I don't mean to get defensive, but you addressed me and started in on a bunch of things I don't think I did. If I did, then it was certainly my mistake or my miscommunication, at the very least.

I find Bayes theorem helpful because it helps put evidence in perspective relative to other evidence. But I think we have to be careful how we use it when examining an entire body of evidence. Part of the strength of a body of evidence can consist of the way the individual pieces fit together. Taking the evidence one piece at a time can cause us to miss how the evidence, when taken together, tells a consistent and convincing story.

That’s not a criticism of the use of Bayesian reasoning, but a warning to make sure we apply it properly. I think the best method is not to examine each piece in isolation, but to look at the evidence as a whole, asking the question “Which hypothesis is most consistent with the evidence as a whole?”

The main problem I have with Carrier’s hypothesis is that I don’t think it explains the evidence better than the real guy Jesus hypothesis. The real problem is, as has been pointed out, the absence of any evidence that Jesus was originally understood to be a purely spiritual being. We have lots of non-orthodox accounts of Jesus, but none that support Carriers’ hypothesis. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence when we have reason to believe evidence should exist.

I’ve viewed Carrier as the test case for the no real guy Jesus hypothesis. He is a trained historian. And unlike most mythicists, he does focus on actual evidence. My main criticism of his critics is that they generally have not read and responded to his book On the History of Jesus Christ. If you read his blog, you’ll see that he changes his views over time, so I don’t think that criticisms based on earlier you tube presentations or articles are responsive to the the conclusions he reached and presented in his book. But if Carrier can’t make a plausible case that there was no real guy Jesus, I don’t think there’s a case to be made.

I don’t think it requires conspiratorial thinking to conclude that there is no real guy Jesus. Atwill relies on a conspiracy. I don’t think Carrier requires intentional construction of a false narrative.

Anyway, thanks to everyone. The one thing that’s clear to me is that I’m not acquainted with all the reasons historians like Kish find the evidence for real guy Jesus to be strong. I know we’ve done this topic many times, but I learn more each time.

My best to all.

Very interesting thanks.

[Physics Guy]

Who has any obligation to think Josh really did live at some point? One could believe Josh lived and the story of his life was made up, or exaggerated. One could think there was no Josh at all, and the story of his life was made up by Paul, Jimmy...others? One could believe Josh lived and the story told about him are genuine, real history. who knows? For one thing Paul would never know if Josh actually had lived. Jimmy could have been lying or delusional and the personal visit could have been some weird dream.

So what would anyone do to settle the dispute or decide for themselves? Of course we'd need corroborating evidence to confirm the story. So on this, we are saying the story itself is not evidence. [emphasis added]

No: on this we are saying the story itself is not proof. The whole point of Bayesian inference—and the whole task of history—is to weigh evidence that falls short of proof. Neither of them works if you just dismiss everything that falls short of proof as too weak to consider.

Overall point, the evidence for Jesus actually having lived is really weak in the sum. And that's really all we're talking about here. Its so weak we know the story of his life could have been made up, incorporating myths and legends shamelessly.

"We know it could have been made up" is not the same as "really weak evidence that it wasn't made up." That's confusing evidence and proof. Knowing something could have been made up just means that the probability of it having been made up is not completely negligible. You can't just say, "The probability that this story was made up is not less than 1%, therefore it must be at least 50%." No: it could be, like, 10%.

It's easy to recognise evidence so strong that it approaches proof and assign it some very high probability. It's also easy to recognise evidence that really is completely non-indicative of anything at all, and assign it a probability that does not change your Bayesian prior. It's really hard to come up with a sound probability estimate for anything in between those extremes. 80%? 65%? Who knows what's really appropriate, here?

That's why Bayesian history is a silly idea. You don't need Bayes to tell you that overwhelming evidence is overwhelming, and you don't need it to dismiss completely meaningless evidence, either. What you want Bayes to do, in history or anything else, is help you weigh evidence that's somewhere between. And those are exactly the cases where it's very hard to assign probabilities reliably just by subjectively estimating.

With real Bayesian statistics you're not estimating the probabilities subjectively. You're computing them from your ample quantitative data. You may worry about how good the data are but you're not just picking 80% instead of 65% on a whim. You've got a table of 100 data points and 73 of them are A rather than B, so you're at 73%.

You can't do that in history.

[Kishkumen]

No: on this we are saying the story itself is not proof. The whole point of Bayesian inference—and the whole task of history—is to weigh evidence that falls short of proof. Neither of them works if you just dismiss everything that falls short of proof as too weak to consider.

Yep! Exactly, and the inability to properly distinguish these things consistently is frustrating to work with.

[dastardly stem]

No: on this we are saying the story itself is not proof. The whole point of Bayesian inference—and the whole task of history—is to weigh evidence that falls short of proof. Neither of them works if you just dismiss everything that falls short of proof as too weak to consider.

Just to be clear that's not what I'm driving at there. I'm saying the story is what we have on Jesus...we don't have other pieces of evidence. For the Josh story we're saying the story told in Paul's letters, is what we're trying to verify with corroborating evidence. That'd be the best way for us to go. For Jesus all we have is the story to use as evidence. I agree. I'm not saying anything about proof, at this point. I don't know how that got mixed up in here.

"We know it could have been made up" is not the same as "really weak evidence that it wasn't made up." That's confusing evidence and proof.

To be clear, I'm not saying that. Not sure why you think I'm talking proof when I haven't mentioned proof. And I haven't equated the two statements you quoted. All we have is probability here.

Knowing something could have been made up just means that the probability of it having been made up is not completely negligible. You can't just say, "The probability that this story was made up is not less than 1%, therefore it must be at least 50%." No: it could be, like, 10%.

It's easy to recognise evidence so strong that it approaches proof and assign it some very high probability. It's also easy to recognise evidence that really is completely non-indicative of anything at all, and assign it a probability that does not change your Bayesian prior. It's really hard to come up with a sound probability estimate for anything in between those extremes. 80%? 65%? Who knows what's really appropriate, here?

That's why Bayesian history is a silly idea. You don't need Bayes to tell you that overwhelming evidence is overwhelming, and you don't need it to dismiss completely meaningless evidence, either. What you want Bayes to do, in history or anything else, is help you weigh evidence that's somewhere between. And those are exactly the cases where it's very hard to assign probabilities reliably just by subjectively estimating.

With real Bayesian statistics you're not estimating the probabilities subjectively. You're computing them from your ample quantitative data. You may worry about how good the data are but you're not just picking 80% instead of 65% on a whim. You've got a table of 100 data points and 73 of them are A rather than B, so you're at 73%.

You can't do that in history.

I think I largely agree here as well. Sounds like I confused something here, as you see it. I'm not following why you think I've said anything near conflating evidence and proof.