Is Mormonism so bad?

[Philo Sofee]

Dastardly
Does this mean I'm saying its likely Jesus didn't live because of this story? No. It means the evidence presented doesn't appear to be good evidence, if evidence at all. And I grant again, I could simply be wrong, confused and lost because I don't have your expertise. Great, if so. I'm running down the wrong road in life then.

Oh my gosh dude. There is no such thing as a wrong road in life. Life is for our experience, road or wilderness. Just because you have a different outlook does not mean you are on a wrong road man. The entire world was on the wrong road (supposedly, though without them Jesus wouldn't mean much to anyone yeah?) yet Jesus kept right on truckin... Being in agreement with someone or other has fundamentally nothing to do with whether you are in your spiritual groove or not. That is not a good measure of which to set yourself against.

If your truth is going to be based on what others believe, then you won't ever get to the truth. That is your path alone, whether anyone else agrees with you or not. It isn't based on majority rules.

[Manetho]

All I"m saying is, let's evaluate the evidence for this one.

One more time, we have:

• An author who personally knew the people who knew Jesus, who wrote about Jesus several times

• An author who lived through the controversy surrounding the execution of Jesus' brother, who wrote about that

• Multiple detailed and embellished accounts of Jesus' life that all place his death in a very specific window of time, the earliest of which was written about 40 years after that time

All those sources treat Jesus as a human. Most of them are from Christians, but one is not. To eliminate the evidence of the first one, Paul, Carrier has to assert that the multiple references to Jesus that refer to him being born to a human woman, being a direct descendant of King David, and having a brother whom Paul had met, actually mean something different than what they seem to mean. To eliminate the evidence of the second, Josephus, Carrier asserts that there's actually a multiple-step scribal error in the transmission of Josephus' text, in which a reference to somebody else becomes a reference to the same brother whom Paul met. To eliminate the evidence of the third, the gospels, Carrier has to assert that an originally mythical figure named Jesus has been inserted into this very specific window of time, for reasons that I still haven't seen explained.

The pieces of evidence are different enough from one another that Carrier has to construct three independent explanations for why they don't mean what they seem to mean. That is the opposite of parsimonious.

The parsimonious explanation would be that the point that all those sources agree on — that Jesus-who-was-called-Messiah lived in the early first century — is correct. The first and third sources treat Jesus as a miraculous figure, but we don't need to agree with them there, not only because miracles are improbable but because we can see miracle stories attaching to other figures in the same time period who definitely did exist.

In fact, it gets worse for Carrier, because there is not a single source from the ancient world that treats Jesus as a mythical figure. As Christianity grew, all kinds of perspectives on him sprang up, from insulting stories (Celsus claims he was a bastard) to weird mystical constructs about the nature of the cosmos (the "Gnostic" sects of Christianity claims Jesus revealed all kinds of esoteric wisdom on that topic), but they all agree that he was on earth in Judea in that same timeframe, even the docetic Christian sects, which claim he was a spirit who temporarily appeared to be a human in order to visit Judea in that timeframe. Jesus mythicists have chosen to assert the one thing about Jesus that none of the ancient sources ever say!

Now, Carrier doesn't have to address those later sources, because assuming the mythicists are right, once the ball got rolling on the idea that Jesus was a human being, everybody in subsequent generations would have been responding to that idea. But what mythicists don't explain is where the original belief in a mythical Jesus went. There were all kinds of odd Christian sects in the first few centuries AD, and proto-orthodox Christians went out of their way to rebut them, because in their eyes these sects were evil heresies. But the heresiologists never mention the idea that Jesus did not exist in the time and place where all the sources agree he did. According to Carrier, the mythical Jesus sect existed just long enough to give rise to the forms of Christianity centered on a first-century preacher, and then disappeared without a trace — except in the letters of Paul, which, according to Carrier, are actually about the mythical Jesus even though they don't actually look like they are. A sect that emerges and then conveniently disappears is also not parsimonious. It's an entirely unnecessary construct, unless you simply want Jesus to be mythical.

[Kishkumen]

I swear the mythicist argument is almost as bad as the QAnon hysteria. For some reason, these days a lot of people are finding these conspiracy-like narratives and arguments very attractive. I have to confess that I like discussing how minimal the case for the historical Jesus is compared to someone like Alexander the Great, mostly because Christian apologists claim the case for Jesus is just as good. But this idea that Jesus did not exist, while amusing, is really out to lunch. It belongs with a lot of other mental sludge out there, and often you see these things pushed in the same social circles and online communities. The few times I have dealt with mythicists in real life, they were fanatical. We live in mad, mad times.

Thanks for your lucidly articulated objections to Carrier, Manetho.

[dastardly stem]

]

One more time, we have:

• An author who personally knew the people who knew Jesus, who wrote about Jesus several times

• An author who lived through the controversy surrounding the execution of Jesus' brother, who wrote about that

Thanks, Manteo, before we get too deep into this I'm going to reflect on this for a minute, if you don't mind. What you wrote here is the definition of hearsay. There's a reason in our modern day we don't consider hearsay evidence. Its way too easily fabricated. The reason why we're stuck with things like hearsay to explain history is because we don't have anything else. Its also why history can be so debatable and uncertain. In terms of history 2000 years ago? We're lucky to have hearsay on many things.. but again as we see it in our modern era, hearsay is not evidence.

• Multiple detailed and embellished accounts of Jesus' life that all place his death in a very specific window of time, the earliest of which was written about 40 years after that time

Its be a stretch, to say the least, to call this evidence as well. But I'm interested to continue onto your explanation.

All those sources treat Jesus as a human. Most of them are from Christians, but one is not. To eliminate the evidence of the first one, Paul, Carrier has to assert that the multiple references to Jesus that refer to him being born to a human woman, being a direct descendant of King David, and having a brother whom Paul had met, actually mean something different than what they seem to mean. To eliminate the evidence of the second, Josephus, Carrier asserts that there's actually a multiple-step scribal error in the transmission of Josephus' text, in which a reference to somebody else becomes a reference to the same brother whom Paul met. To eliminate the evidence of the third, the gospels, Carrier has to assert that an originally mythical figure named Jesus has been inserted into this very specific window of time, for reasons that I still haven't seen explained.

I don't think that resembles Carrier much at all. But as I said this isn't about Carrier, its about evidence presented, at least at this point for me. And I'd be stuck suggesting hearsay isn't evidence.

Carrier's explanations for those pieces of evidence are entirely independent. The pieces of evidence are different enough from one another that he has to construct three separate explanations for why they don't mean what they seem to mean. That is the opposite of parsimonious.

I really don't think you've given Carrier a fair say and I'm not really feeling the desire to defend him. But I would suggest that which you say is evidemce--that is hearsay, isn't really evidence in our modern vernacular. History may treat these points as good pieces to explain history but again from that era that's the best we have and if history we can't do much more than explain what we have, piece the data together and draw a story.

The parsimonious explanation would be that the point that all those sources agree on — that Jesus-who-was-called-Messiah lived in the early first century — is correct. The first and third sources treat Jesus as a miraculous figure, but we don't need to agree with them there, not only because miracles are improbable but because we can see miracle stories attaching to other figures in the same time period who definitely did exist.[/quote

That may be but again I'd be interested in evidence.

In fact, it gets worse for Carrier, because there is not a single source from the ancient world that treats Jesus as a mythical figure. As Christianity grew, all kinds of perspectives on him sprang up, from insulting stories (Celsus claims he was a bastard) to weird mystical constructs about the nature of the cosmos (the "Gnostic" sects of Christianity claims Jesus revealed all kinds of esoteric wisdom on that topic), but they all agree that he was on earth in Judea in that same timeframe, even the docetic Christian sects, which claim he was a spirit who temporarily appeared to be a human in order to visit Judea in that timeframe. Jesus mythicists have chosen to assert the one thing about Jesus that none of the ancient sources ever

Again that's not Carrier. He has a different take and id have to go find that and bring it here. But doing so puts me stuck on Carrier when you wanted to talk evidence of jesus' life.

Now, those later sources Carrier doesn't have to address, because assuming the mythicists are right, once the ball got rolling on the idea that Jesus was a human being, everybody in subsequent generations would have been responding to that idea. But what mythicists don't explain is where the original belief in a mythical Jesus went. There were all kinds of odd Christians sects in the first few centuries AD, and proto-orthodox Christians went out of their way to rebut them, because in their eyes these sects were evil heresies. But the heresiologists never mention the idea that Jesus did not exist in the time and place where all the sources agree he did. According to Carrier, the mythical Jesus sect existed just long enough to give rise to the forms of Christianity centered on a first-century preacher, and then disappeared without a trace — except in the letters of Paul, which, according to Carrier, are actually about the mythical Jesus even though they don't actually look like they are. A sect that emerges and then conveniently disappears is also not parsimonious. It's an entirely unnecessary construct, unless you simply want Jesus to be mythical.

I'll leave you to contend with Carrier. But claiming people after Jesus thought he lived as a matter of their religious devotion doesn't supply evidence. Anyway, ill shut it off for tonight and get back when I have time. Thanks for your thoughts on Carrier.

[Manetho]

But as I said this isn't about Carrier, its about evidence presented, at least at this point for me. And I'd be stuck suggesting hearsay isn't evidence.

I keep talking about Carrier because to figure out how the belief in Jesus emerged, you have to compare hypotheses. Simply asserting "hearsay isn't evidence" isn't enough, and moreover, it's disingenuous. Hearsay isn't evidence in a court of law, where a high burden of proof is required of the prosecution because we don't want to convict innocent people. But in your ordinary life, if you read some written account from the 1960s or something, where a guy named Paul writes about meeting with Pete and Jimmy, both of whom knew Jimmy's brother Josh, you would probably assume that Josh existed, even if the details about Josh might be embellished. (And then you have the independent account of Joe, who otherwise has no connection to these people, saying "Yeah, Jimmy got executed because he wouldn't stop talking about his brother Josh.")

Maybe you really do go through life thinking that people you hear about thirdhand don't even exist, but I doubt you really do that. You would only doubt Josh's existence if you thought the people who talk about Josh had a compelling reason to invent him and could explain how they did so. And then we have to compare that hypothesis to the null hypothesis: Josh actually existed.

[dastardly stem]

But as I said this isn't about Carrier, its about evidence presented, at least at this point for me. And I'd be stuck suggesting hearsay isn't evidence.

I keep talking about Carrier because to figure out how the belief in Jesus emerged, you have to compare hypotheses. Simply asserting "hearsay isn't evidence" isn't enough, and moreover, it's disingenuous. Hearsay isn't evidence in a court of law, where a high burden of proof is required of the prosecution because we don't want to convict innocent people. But in your ordinary life, if you read some written account from the 1960s or something, where a guy named Paul writes about meeting with Pete and Jimmy, both of whom knew Jimmy's brother Josh, you would generally assume that Josh existed, even if the details about Josh might be embellished. You would only doubt Josh's existence if you thought the author, or Pete and Jimmy, had a compelling reason to invent him. And then we have to compare the hypothesis that Josh was deliberately invented versus the null hypothesis: Josh actually existed.

Id say you're exactly right on this point. We can easily accept mundane claims of some random dude having lived. Because well random people exist. But if we suspect Josh did not exist, as every story about him proved incredible and there is reason to think Peter, Jimmy and Paul all wanted to create or promote a religion with Josh as an immortal one then we'd need more than hearsay to support the claim Josh lived. Particularly if the story of Josh's life resembled other myths. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[Manetho]

But if we suspect Josh did not exist, as every story about him proved incredible and there is reason to think Peter, Jimmy and Paul all wanted to create or promote a religion with Josh as an immortal one then we'd need more than hearsay to support the claim Josh lived. Particularly if the story of Josh's life was resembled other myths. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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.

[Res Ipsa]

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.)

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.

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 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.

[Physics Guy]

Confusing “proof” and “evidence” is a problem. You can pick holes in practically anything; almost no evidence is ever so ironclad that you can’t imagine a far-fetched scenario in which the evidence would in fact be misleading.

To say, “Well, but it could have been X” is an important insight IF you’re assessing a purported mathematical proof that is supposed to hold with absolute certainty. It’s not true at all, though, that everything which could have been possible is equally likely. The whole point of Bayesian inference is to weigh evidence that is not decisive, to assess the preponderance. If you keep reverting in your odds to 50/50 for everything that is short of 99/1, you’re not doing Bayes, you’re just being obstinate.

This is again the basic problem of not having real statistics. Bayesian inference is a statistical method. The probabilities involved are supposed to be measured or computed from data, not guessed. It’s not supposed to be a subjective judgement call whether this was 50/50 or 99/1.

As soon as you’re allowing any subjective fudging in your input probabilities you’ve really gone off the rails. You can sometimes push your luck a bit, if you’re really careful about making good estimates. If you keep casually sweeping evidence away down to 50% just with a wave of your hand, you’re completely abandoning real Bayesian analysis and just using its form to camouflage special pleading and stonewalling.

[Meadowchik]

Of course as it is Hamblin had a much steeper hill to climb in providing evidence for the Book of Mormon, but Hamblin too couldn't help himself but to point out that whathisname isn't considering all the expert writeups about it and suggested too much is being asked for when one asks for evidence. Ancient history has to be done with minimal evidence because otherwise we can't really claim to know much of anything, we can't be clear enough to claim Pythagoras really lived and the like.

One more thing, in case anyone who really wants to think through these matters more carefully is reading. The problem with the Book of Mormon is that it is a hapax legomenon, which literally means, "something that is said once," but in this case, metaphorically speaking, a complete outlier alone on an island without any supporting material of any kind.

The case of Jesus is completely different. If in Jesus we saw something that totally did not fit the archaeological, linguistic, or historical context in any way, we could conclude quite comfortably that he was made up. The truth is quite the opposite, but it takes people who know something about these disciplines and take them seriously, as they are policed by their peers, over many generations, to build up a good case.

The case has been well made by others. The story of Jesus fits so well that it boggles the mind to imagine any person making him up. The other figures reported in the story fit the context so well, and are affirmed by other sources, as, by the way, is Jesus. (Putting aside the way people seek to erase the Testimonium Flavianum and other, similar things.)

Where do we find ANYTHING concerning the Book of Mormon that comes ANYWHERE close? The Book of Mormon is OBVIOUSLY not ancient.

Where are the plates?
Where are other plates like them?
When have they been examined?
Where are the Reformed Egyptian texts on any other material?
Where is the evidence of ancient Christianity in the New World before the arrival of Spaniards?

Yes, it screams not ancient. If it is not ancient, then there is no Nephi. 99 to 1 odds or better that he never existed. The case for Jesus?

Mentioned in numerous ancient texts (attested in literally thousands of copies, a few going back to the second century CE), some written within roughly two decades of his death by someone who met Jesus' associates.

SOMEONE WHO MET JESUS' ASSOCIATES!

If you can't see the probability differences there, then heaven help you. Seriously.

The Book of Mormon is not a text written in antiquity. Jesus is most (90/10 odds?) likely a person who really did live in the first half of the first century CE in ancient Palestine. Both of those things are abundantly clear.

I cannot spend a lot of time with this at the moment, and have only been able to scan here and there, but I can understand and agree with this point. The probability of the Book of Mormon being historical is negligible. The probability of a historical Jesus is magnitudes greater.

My attitude is that, whether Jesus was a real person or not, it is clear that he was considered so early on, and that shared belief is a major part of our shared history.

By the same token, within Mormonism, The Book of Mormon was/is considered historical to a relatively small number of people early on and now, and that shared belief shapes real lives. Yet the historical significance of Jesus-belief still vastly overshadows the historical significance of Book of Mormon belief.