Is Mormonism so bad?

[dastardly stem]

Not sure why you think I'm talking proof when I haven't mentioned proof.

The fact that you haven't mentioned proof is why it seems to me that you're confusing proof and evidence, stem. You keep denying that something is evidence, or calling it very weak evidence, just because it doesn't compel us to believe. It sounds as though you often say "evidence" when what you are really talking about is proof. You seem to deny that something is evidence, or call it very weak evidence, just because it falls short of proof.

Nah...I think it's fair to consider what is claimed to be evidence and decide if it is good evidence, weak evidence or not really evidence at all. I don't see how that has anything to do with proof. We're still talking somewhere in the realm of probabilities.

Identifying a possible scenario in which A could be false, in spite of some purported evidence B to support A, is a valid way to show that A is not proven. It's not a valid demonstration that B is not evidence for A. It's not even necessarily an indication that B is weak evidence. Far-fetched counterexamples don't have to be taken very seriously when you're weighing preponderance of evidence, even though they may be enough to torpedo a proof.

"Strong evidence that is still not strong enough by itself to convince me completely" is not a contradiction in terms. The grey zone of weighing likelihoods out of inconclusive evidence is exactly what both history and Bayesian inference are all about.

I'm in agreement. And I don't think I've said anything to contradict this type of thinking.

[Meadowchik]

To be fair, there is still subjectivity in the use of Bayes. The model of the system under study can contain errors, there can be observational measurement errors and then there can be overall errors in our understanding of the system.

Lem is the actual statistics person, so she would know more about this, but it is also my impression that you can't completely eliminate subjectivity with Bayes or anything else. The main advantage I see in Bayes over other approaches I know is that it is more flexible, and doesn't force you to impose inappropriate interpretations just because your tools are set up that way.

To me, though, the inevitability of subjectivity is why it's a bad idea to apply Bayesian inference in Carrier's way. Even when you've got a ton of quantitative data your conclusions can still be somewhat subjective. When you only have one sample of data, and so all your probabilities are just things you make up, then I just see no hope.

I'm willing to withhold judgement about the potentially emerging field. No need to throw it out over one criticised foray into it.

[Physics Guy]

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?

Didn't what you just said amount to this:

We have no obligation to believe Josh lived, one could believe otherwise, someone could have been lying, we'd need corroborating evidence to confirm the story ... and therefore these letters do not count as evidence at all.

Isn't that confusing evidence and proof?

[Physics Guy]

I'm willing to withhold judgement about the potentially emerging field. No need to throw it out over one criticised foray into it.

I could conceivably be convinced, too. Let's just say my prior probability that Bayesian history is bad is pretty high.

[Meadowchik]

I'm willing to withhold judgement about the potentially emerging field. No need to throw it out over one criticised foray into it.

I could conceivably be convinced, too. Let's just say my prior probability that Bayesian history is bad is pretty high.

Haha. Well we'll see if future papers might inspire a revision of your priors

[dastardly stem]

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?

Didn't what you just said amount to this:

We have no obligation to believe Josh lived, one could believe otherwise, someone could have been lying, we'd need corroborating evidence to confirm the story ... and therefore these letters do not count as evidence at all.

Isn't that confusing evidence and proof?

ALright. I'm seeing where you're coming from and I think I did confuse things there. Dammit! so it was my fault.

I was trying to communicate this: On the example: The story of Josh is known through one source: Paul's letters. For someone to read Paul's letters, I would think it would be most appropriate for that person, if he wished to find evidence for the story, to look for corroborating evidence outside the letters themselves. It'd be a good place to start. Since we're assuming this all happened in our day, on this example, we have a plethora of options to seek corroborating evidence. On the basis of the story itself? I don't see why anyone would find reason to accept Josh was a godly figure, immortal who came back to life. And if a search went out and there was no Josh, as explained, then there'd be no reason to accept Josh even lived.

Now to clarify, though, even finding corroborating evidence for the stories Paul wrote, may not prove Josh lived, nor that any story he included about Josh were true. It could be we mount enough evidence to, for all intents and purposes, prove Josh lived. But it also may be we end up with snippets of evidence which on the sum doesn't rise to the level of proving Josh lived. We may end up with a high probability that he lived. And that may or may not provide evidence for the events in the stories.

[huckelberry]

I'm willing to withhold judgement about the potentially emerging field. No need to throw it out over one criticised foray into it.

I could conceivably be convinced, too. Let's just say my prior probability that Bayesian history is bad is pretty high.

It was not too long ago we had a discussion about some fellow who used Beyesian analysis to show that the Book of Mormon was real history with some astronomically high degree of certainty.The discussion inclined to focus on the thought that accuracy of the results for the theorem depends upon the accuracy of the information and odds input. I thought Physics Guys initial comments about variable usefulness for different purposes and situations were pretty clear and useful.

I think historical Jesus questions involve a lot of information for which it is difficult to assign accurate likely hood numbers which is necessary in order to get very meaningful results from the Beyesian formula.

[Kishkumen]

To me, its safe and fair to say, we're talking along enough ago, we're talking an era with a paucity of confirming evidence and records, compared to say our modern era, so we're left with lower probability that named people from that era really lived in contrast to named people from the past 3 or 4 hundred years. So we'd have to say there's a lower probability that Alexander really lived, to use a previous mentioned example, than Napoleon. There's nothing problematic in that type of thinking, I don't think.

There is definitely something wrong with that type of thinking. If we are talking about a world in which 95+% of the people who live pass without mention because there is such a low level of literacy and documentation, when you find a person such as Alexander the Great, about whom we have contemporary eyewitness accounts, you would have to conclude with certainty that he did live.

With Jesus I would say we have the separation between Paul and the people Paul met in Jerusalem who were Jesus' associates. The odds that he lived are pretty damned good. Not Alexander the Great certain, but good.

A fine list of pieces particularly as we compare it to others of that era. But, I'd suggest, we'd still have to conclude something along the lines of its still less likely that Jesus lived than Joseph Smith. I mean Joseph Smith is a near 99% level while Jesus would be somewhere less. If less, then there is plenty of questions to explore, I'd think.

To the contrary, and I think this is where you get it wrong from the outset of this post, you should have to adjust your expectations of documentation according to the circumstances of the time. In other words, you don't run the odds unfavorably for not living after the invention of the printing press. We wouldn't say, "Well, we see a lot of people are talking about Publius after he died, but darn if he didn't live at a time when hardly anyone was mentioned, so that relative silence during his actual lifetime counts heavily against the chances that he lived."

I found out that I share the last name of a woman who participated in paranormal research in the early 1990s. Darn if I haven't found getting information on her difficult, and yet she co-wrote pieces with one of the leading researchers in that area. I finally figured out that this was her married name, so, if I am related to anyone there by blood, it is to her husband. Still the whole thing fascinated me--how in this modern era, with the internet, you could be closely connected to someone fairly well known for this research and yet hardly leave much of an accessible trail.

So, when we see people recorded in the way Jesus was, we don't go out of our way to exclude them from reality based on that level of evidence. As I said, if we did, we would erase so many people from history who did actually live. Moreover, we know what ancient fiction looked like, and the Gospels don't really fit those genres very well. There is a reason why the Acts of Paul and Thecla are deemed to be fictional, whereas the Gospels are not.

What I see in you is an unrealistic expectation about the kinds of evidence we should possess to validate the reality of people who lived in the past. I have to work with the kind of evidence we are likely to see for these people. You want the kind of evidence we see for a very few people who lived in antiquity. Where there are no records, there are still people.

With Joseph Smith I have no idea why you would allow 1% doubt for his existence. That's silly.

[dastardly stem]

There is definitely something wrong with that type of thinking. If we are talking about a world in which 95+% of the people who live pass without mention because there is such a low level of literacy and documentation, when you find a person such as Alexander the Great, about whom we have contemporary eyewitness accounts, you would have to conclude with certainty that he did live.

With Jesus I would say we have the separation between Paul and the people Paul met in Jerusalem who were Jesus' associates. The odds that he lived are pretty damned good. Not Alexander the Great certain, but good.

Sure. We're forced in that way of thinking because there is otherwise very little for us to comfortably rely upon from older eras. And I realize this is just going to be disagreeable on your line of thinking...but...as we know in our modern era, items we'd call evidence from the ancient world, aren't as heavily reliable now because we expect more reliable evidence for claims today, because we have them. When we start to rely on those older types of evidence in our modern world, we come to realize those pieces of evidence, if you will or if we can call them such, aren't very strong and have all too often mislead. That is precisely why the claims of ancient history should be taken with less certainty. We don't need to change the expectation (weighting it as though we should expect less from ancient claims to reach certainty simply because we can't possibly have as much, or the quality of evidence isn't as good), we can instead admit, there is less evidence to substantiate a claim from the ancient world, thus we are less certain. And that is not a bad thing, I don't think. It simply is the most honest way to approach it.

or I think that's how we should view it.

[Res Ipsa]

Hi Stem. What I wrote about hearsay was prompted by this exchange:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=562&p=14501&hilit=hearsay#p14501

You seemed to me to be saying that all the evidence we have that support the existence of real guy Jesus was hearsay. My intent was to suggest that (1) not all the evidence is technically hearsay and (2) hearsay is not a helpful concept in the context of interpreting historical evidence. It seemed to me it was getting in the way more than it was helping, and I wanted to suggest discarding it.

I thought I was commenting on the two points Manetho had raised, not all evidence for Jesus. Ah well. Misunderstanding it seems to me.

I tried to use "In general" as an indicator that I was no longer directing my comments to you. I should have been clearer. My apologies.

I do think folks have made arguments that would be interesting to discuss. As an example, I don't find this argument persuasive:

viewtopic.php?p=14416#p14416

We know that we ended up with a story about a real guy Jesus. The story had its origin at some point in time. It could have been during or shortly after the life of a real guy Jesus. Or it could have been, for example, an urban legend or tall tale that originated during the same period of time. In either case, it seems to me that there is little difference in the relative probabilities of the two hypotheses given that Pilate is part of the story.

The thing I puzzle over is how large is the difference between a mythologized real person and a mythological person? It doesn't seem that large to me, but I claim no training or expertise in how myths begin. Other puzzles include whether the wide range of written Jesus stories that we find are more consistent with a real guy Jesus or an invented Jesus. The answer isn't important to me, but trying to think about how to think about the evidence is a fun exercise for me.

Thanks. Similar thoughts here.

Misunderstanding works for me. It's endemic on message boards.