Is the resurrection of Jesus supported...

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Goose

Is the resurrection of Jesus supported...

Post #1

Post by Goose »

OK. I'm starting a new thread because after posting my last response I can no longer see the last page of the original thread. This happened to me once before with a head to head vs Zzyzx. Perhaps the posts are too long? I don't know...

So I'm reposting my last response here and would appreciate it if Chaosborders would continue here.

Thx.

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Post #11

Post by ChaosBorders »

Round 7 Part One
Goose wrote: A) Not sure how you figure this solidifies enemy attestation.


On its own, it certainly is not perfectly solid. However, if Nicolaus got his information from Marc Anthony, then it is. If he did not, then there is no reason at all to believe Nicolaus has any bias in this matter and the assassination wins on that criterion instead.
Goose wrote:
B) What seems truly odd is that Cicero sent his buddies a copy of the 2nd Ph but didn’t send anyone else one. This is truly odd if we are to believe that Cicero actually intended to publish his 2nd Ph thus minimizing bias as has been claimed.
Even if for some strange reason he hadn’t intended to publish it, given that he implicates the people he’s sending it to in the assassination, that would serve as its own tendency to minimize bias.
Goose wrote:
C) Your speculations over Cicero’s intentions are noted. However, you can’t show he published the 2nd Ph therefore you can’t show he had reason to minimize his bias. It’s all speculation. D) Why would we assume it was given to the senate when we have no evidence that it was and an explanation from Yonge that suggests it was not?
You addressed only one of the four points I made, so let me restate:
“If the explanation is true, it leaves little room for doubt that Caesar was assassinated, rendering Cicero’s own motivation to be biased or not irrelevant. Also it even further solidifies enemy attestation.�

However, the explanation itself is naturally questionable. But if it is false, why would you assume that it wasn’t spoken to the senate like every other one of the speeches?
Goose wrote: Thus you cannot rightly assert or even imply the resurrection writers are unreliable solely on the grounds they were biased, something you’ve been trying to do throughout this thread.
Who said anything about solely?
Goose wrote: This source seems to draw the inference that there was a web of acquaintances that unified the chief literary figures (which includes Tacitus and Plutarch) during the day of Trajan. Tacitus wrote about 40 years after Plutarch so it is possible that Tacitus read Plutarch’s work, the later being a historian of Roman affairs. But I can’t prove it.
That source also says plainly that “it cannot be assumed from this that Tacitus and Pliny were associated with Plutarch.� Also, could you give some indication as to how you arrived at the conclusion Tacitus wrote 40 years after Plutarch when he died three years before him? I mean perhaps if you’re comparing Plutarch’s very earliest works with Tacitus’ very last that might be true. But as a broad statement it seems a little misleading.
Goose wrote: But that may not have been the best example. A better example of Tacitus’ bias is Tacitus himself. He calls Christians “superstitious� but in the opening paragraph of his Histories, without so much as batting an eye, he writes of the Emperor Nerva, “…the reign of the Divine Nerva…� His bias is further highlighted when Tacitus describes the prophesies surrounding Vespasian and implies they are superstition but then is careful not call Vespasian superstitious for retaining an astrologer to help him tell the future in Histories (book 2:78). Indeed one gets the impression that Tacitus himself believes the prophecies and omens surrounding Vespasian in Histories 2:78.
Fair enough.
Goose wrote: Everybody back then, as now, wrote with a bias.
Maybe, but you can’t actually show Nicolaus had reason to be regarding the assassination without solidifying enemy attestation.
Goose wrote: Using your reasoning you don’t have enemy attestation here either my friend. Nicolaus was not an enemy of Cicero regardless of where either of them may have received their info. What you have is an inference from Cicero’s writings as interpreted through later writers on the one hand and Cicero’s recording of what we think he may have heard Antony had said on the other. You also have Dio allegedly recording Anthony 300 years later. You aren’t even in the enemy attestation ball park using your standards. In the end, all you have is two reasonably early sources in Cicero and Nicolaus. Neither of whom we have a clue from where they received their data and both biased in how they report. And that’s all you really have for the assassination.
If Nicolaus received his info. from Anthony, he got it from an enemy of Cicero, which means enemy attestation certainly existed. If he didn’t, you have no case for bias and the assassination has a source that can’t be shown to have bias regarding that issue. It can’t be shown which is true, but either way the assassination wins on something.
Goose wrote: I’ve already made a case earlier that both Antony and Cicero have an interest in and benefit from affirming the assassination tale. It allows both of them an opportunity to accuse one another of the deed and in so doing create possible havoc for the other and gain a political edge as Caesar was well liked by the people. Considering the definitions above Cicero and Antony cannot be seen as truly enemy attestation in light of this.
Your case would require both Anthony and Cicero to have been morons, which neither of them was by any indication. The moment one of them tried to accuse the other of assassinating Caesar it would be much more sensible to just call them out on lying, which should be easily showable if Caesar was not actually assassinated. That would cause them to lose all credibility and give the accused plenty of political edge. Furthermore, could you please quote where you think Cicero accused Marc Anthony of assassinating Caesar? Even ignoring that the accused could gain an edge by calling the liar out on it, absolutely any third party who knew the truth and didn’t like either of the two could bring the truth out and destroy their credibility.

Your alternative hypothesis requires people with opposing interests to corroborate each other’s story and have absolutely no one who knows the truth tell on them. That is a conspiracy. What makes it even more ironic is that it would be a conspiracy to fabricate a political conspiracy.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:Paul and Peter, on the other hand, both benefit from the resurrection story. If either of them denied it as having occurred, their entire message would collapse. It is not in either of their best interests to deny the resurrection and, furthermore, they both sympathize with the message and cause that benefits from affirming the resurrection.
I disagree. I think it would have been in either Peter or Paul’s best interest to deny the resurrection. Firstly, affirming it and Jesus brought persecution. So it would have been in their best interest to deny it like Peter denied knowing Jesus just before Jesus’ trial. They gained nothing by affirming the resurrection itself other than persecution.
Nothing? They may have been persecuted some by outsiders, but instead of going back to lowly fishermen and such, eking out a living, they became respected leaders who had people selling property to bring them money. I’ll go into more detail later, but they gained a great deal by affirming the resurrection, the vast majority of it good.
Goose wrote: Secondly, Jesus was attracting a somewhat large following and Peter was affirming Jesus as the Christ well before the resurrection. So to assert “their entire message would collapse� without the resurrection is simply a gross overstatement to say the least.
1 Peter 1
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
1 Peter 3
21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
Seems pretty important to the message to me. How exactly do you impress people by saying “Hey, this guy said some things we think you should hear!� “What happened to him?� “Oh…well, he was brutally killed by the Romans.� Why would anyone listen? But if you add on “And then he came back to life!� it has a little more impact.
Goose wrote:Thirdly, Paul is the only author I’m aware of that explicitly hangs the truthfulness of Christianity upon the resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:14). To imply Peter believed the same thing without evidence is purely speculation. I would say the resurrection was certainly a monumental vindicating event and catalyst that caused cowards to transform into heroes that preached the Gospel and resurrection. But I don’t think the resurrection was as necessary as you seem to be implying.
Can’t really preach the resurrection if it didn’t happen…so half of what you have them preaching there is gone right off the bat. Peter states Baptism saves by the resurrection, so the whole salvation message seems to take a pretty serious hit. Peter states his readers believe in God through Jesus, and why would they do that if they didn’t think God had raised him from the dead? New birth into a living hope is done through the resurrection, so the whole born again and living hope aspects of the message are gone.
I mean really, how much is left without the resurrection, and why would many people listen?
Goose wrote:I don’t dispute that. But I think it a bit of a stretch to imply they were mortal enemies if that is where you are heading.
Anthony got him proscribed as an enemy of the state and had him hunted down, killed, and beheaded. Plutarch records him as having his dead body’s hands also cut off because they’d penned the Philippics against Antony. Though it seems a little far-fetched to me, Cassius Dio has a story of Antony’s wife pulling the tongue out of his head and jabbing it repeatedly as a final revenge for his power of speech. I don’t think it’s a stretch.
Goose wrote: Political rivals and antagonistic toward each other, certainly. But in the end they both had the success of Roman rule as a common objective. However, for the sake of argument I have no problem conceding Cicero and Antony meet a definition of enemy even though they didn’t start out that way.
They’re recorded as having never been on friendly terms, Cicero wrote an entire series of rather long speeches trying to destroy Antony’s character, and they tried to get each other killed, with Antony being rather more successful at it. They don’t just me a definition of enemy. They meet pretty much every definition of enemy I’ve ever heard of.
Goose wrote: And right after this Paul says about his later interaction with Peter…
But when [Peter] came to Antioch, I OPPOSED him to his face, because he was clearly wrong. For until some men came from James, he was in the habit of eating with the gentiles, but after they came he drew back and would not associate himself with them, being afraid of the circumcision party. The other Jews also joined him in this hypocrisy, to the extent that even Barnabas was caught up in their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I told [Peter] in front of everyone, "Though you are a Jew, you live like a gentile and not like a Jew. So how can you insist that the gentiles must live like Jews?" (Galatians 2:11-14)
It would seem Peter and Paul had a falling out. Maybe not to the same degree as Cicero and Antony. But Peter and Paul certainly disagreed on some important issues. Paul calls out Peter in public and opposes him, a little like Antony did with Cicero. Now, I don’t think Peter and Paul were mortal enemies and they may have even reconciled some time later. But they certainly fit the definition of antagonistic sources expressing agreement regarding an event – i.e. the resurrection.
Chaosborders wrote:Paul and Peter were not enemies by any commonly used definition of the word.
Yes they were.
Enemy wrote:1. one that is antagonistic to another; especially : one seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent
Antagonsim wrote:2b:actively expressed opposition or hostility
They had one argument. It may have been over an important issue, but one disagreement does not make two people enemies. Even a handful of disagreements do not make two people enemies. Have you never had an argument with your wife? Would you consider her an enemy? Would you consider the people on this forum all to be enemies? By your definition, most of the friends I’ve ever done any school work with would qualify as enemies. So would all of my family.

I don’t know anyone who uses the word enemy like that. I highly doubt you yourself actually use the word in such a way that most of the people you know are enemies (unless you just almost never disagree with people….) I’m pretty sure almost no one who doesn’t have severe paranoia actually uses enemy in such a manner. It is not a commonly used definition, and it certainly is not how historians (including apologetic ones) use the word. Please stop equivocating.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:Cicero and Anthony clearly were. Trying to paint Paul and Peter as enemies is equivocating.
I’ve not been trying to paint them with the same brush. My point has always been that if you tighten the definition of enemy to be a type of enemy in the mortal sense then first of all Cicero and Antony don’t even fully qualify.
Except that they do…and all I have to tighten the definition to is one that people actually ever seriously use.
Goose wrote: Here’s the bottom line on enemy attestation. If we are to narrow the definition of enemy and use the criteria for enemy attestation given above then I may not have enemy attestation between Peter and Paul. That’s fine. But you don’t have it either between Cicero and Anthony for two reasons:
1. Both Cicero and Anthony potentially benefit from affirming the assassination of Caesar.
The silliness of the scenario you present to try and make a case for this is further compounded by Cicero gloating over Caesar’s death. Hard to attack your opponent by accusing them of something you fully admit that you are happy happened. Further, I would really like you to quote where you feel Cicero accused Antony of it.
Goose wrote: Cicero never explicitly states Caesar was assassinated. Even if we grant that he does, you don’t have anything actually written by Antony for this. Thus, strictly speaking you do not have attestation directly from either Cicero or Anthony.
This is actually a pretty fair point if Nicolaus didn’t get his information from Antony. However, if you stop making that argument then there is no evidence Nicolaus was biased. So I either get solid enemy attestation, or I get a source with no apparent reason to be biased in this matter. Even then, though not absolutely certain, internal criticism would suggest Antony’s speech is legitimate. Due to the uncertainty surrounding the speech, I would not call it solid enemy attestation, but it’s more than the resurrection has going for it.
Goose wrote: No problem…
Goose in post 26 wrote:As for lists: If I were arguing from the Bible at this point I would cite Paul and Peter's opposition to one another (Galatians 2:11ff). But I don't need to cite the Bible for this. Eusebius confirms this opposition between Peter and Paul in chapter twelve of the first book of his Church History. Yet they both Paul and Peter agree on the resurrection.
I think you have a slight problem:
They say that Sosthenes also, who wrote to the Corinthians with Paul, was one of them. This is the account of Clement in the fifth book of his Hypotyposes, in which he also says that Cephas was one of the seventy disciples, a man who bore the same name as the apostle Peter, and the one concerning whom Paul says, When Cephas came to Antioch I withstood him to his face.
If you’re going off Eusebius, it seems that it is not even the same Peter.
Goose wrote: I'll also note the two extreme wings of the Marcionites and Ebionites (and the main stream proto-orthodox as well) that opposed one another and existed by the early second century. They all agree on the resurrection.
I’ll add the Ebionites may have even existed in the first century.
Per wiki: “The majority of Church Fathers agree that the Ebionites rejected many of the central Christian views of Jesus such as his pre-existence, divinity, virgin birth, atoning death, and physical resurrection.�
Per Catholic Encyclopedia: “Marcion denied the resurrection of the body, "for flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.�
Would you…like to try again? O.o
Goose wrote: Your post right before that where YOU first introduced the Bible…
in the first thread in post 23 Chaosborders wrote:The earliest mention of the resurrection of Jesus is believed to be in the first epistle to the Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4…
It was all your fault I’m afraid…
Fair enough, it does seem I referenced it first. But I also wasn’t the one who said he wouldn’t.
Goose wrote: Once you use the Bible for your side of the argument not only do you force me to rebut you by using the Bible, but you then give me permission to use it for my side as well as you concede it as an admissible source by using it.
There are so very many things wrong with this statement:
A) I wasn’t using it for my side of the argument. I referenced it to try and be fair to your side. Would you have preferred me to have simply said Cicero talked about the assassination a year out and then asked what your earliest source was? It would have been a rather underhanded thing to do given your assertion that you weren’t going to use the Bible, knowing that the earliest reference was in 1 Corinthians.
B) You made the argument 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 was actually a creedal passage that went back a lot earlier than the letter as a whole. That’s certainly understandable.
C) You then immediately use Paul, Mark, and John while also referencing Matthew, Luke, and 1 Peter on a separate point. Those weren’t rebutting my usage at all and even if you made the argument that I had conceded Paul was an admissible source to use by having referenced it, where’d the rest of them come from?
D) And again, I wasn’t the one who said he wasn’t going to use it. I never expected you to actually abide by that statement, but you shouldn’t make statements like that if you can’t follow through.
Goose wrote: Even then, you wouldn’t fully have that as you had to infer the assassination from Cicero’s writings.
If there is anyone in the audience who needs me to copy and paste the many paragraphs I have quoted from the 2nd Phillipic that refutes this constantly repeated and still inaccurate statement, please let me know.

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Post #12

Post by ChaosBorders »

Round 7 Part Two
Goose wrote: I want to begin this section by pointing out some of the reasons why using a statistical argument (or Argument from Probability) to determine if something should be taught as historical is fallacious:
Using a statistical argument is only fallacious if I use statistics fallaciously.
Goose wrote:
1. Favourable statistical results can be achieved depending upon how one selects the data.
Which is why I made a baseline of assassinations from wiki compared to an (over)estimate of ALL rulers that have ever lived. This is despite the fact there were probably far more assassinations in reality than listed on wiki as indicated by the extremely short periods of reign in many countries (such as Russia). I have been more than fair to the resurrection on this issue.
Goose wrote: 2. CB has essentially implied an event which has, in his words, an “inherent probability not significantly different from zero� would be prevented from being taught as historical.
Faulty inference about my implications, but I’ll take responsibility for poor wording that led you to that. In context:
The only reason they are sufficient to keep the resurrection from being taught as historically factual is that the resurrection itself has an inherent probability not significantly different from zero.
Given the surrounding context was discussing statistical matters, I thought it would be understood that I was talking about statistical significance. Apparently my assumption was mistaken and I should have been clearer that the resurrection does not have an inherent probability with a statistical significance distinguishable from zero. In other words, I was really just trying to reiterate that you haven’t actually shown the resurrection to be physically possible.
Goose wrote:The total number of assassinations in history out of the total number of people born in history yields the probability of an assassination at 1/64.75 million or 1.54x10^-8 (my calculations for this below).
However, even if we use the list of total assassinated people you gave in your previous post we get about 40 assassination accounts roughly over the same time frame up to 1 AD. If we trim it down to heads of state (which were generally Kings of territories) it is about half that, close to the number of resurrection accounts. So 40 total assassinations out of a possible 40 Billion people gives the probablity of a person in antiquity being assassinated to be about 1/1 Billion or 1x10^-9. Even if you had 1,000 assassinations in antiquity alone you are still at probability of 1/40 million or 2.5x10^-8. I would say that is a probability not significantly greater than zero, wouldn’t you?
I think I’ll just point out that if HALF of the assassinations you used were heads of state, perhaps it’s an indication that being a HEAD OF STATE is very RELEVANT INFORMATION regarding a person’s odds of getting assassinated? Why yes, yes I think it does... It doesn’t matter what the odds of any random individual person being assassinated are because Caesar was a head of state, which is a position with demonstrably greater odds of being assassinated.
Goose wrote:If we apply this same reasoning to the assassination CB must accept that the assassination of Caesar cannot be taught as historical. Not only are there other possible explanations but there are more probable explanations, such as Caesar dying of natural causes, that sufficiently detract from the assassination hypothesis.
And here the flaw in your reasoning is that Caesar dying of natural causes isn’t the alternative hypothesis. Caesar dying of natural causes AND people claiming he was assassinated AND all evidence suggesting he didn’t die of assassination was completely suppressed and lost to history is the alternative hypothesis. Dying by natural causes is just one of THREE necessary parts to that. Yes, it itself has a fairly high probability. But if you would like to do the leg work and try and do the research to show how much higher than zero the other two parts are, be my guest. I doubt the second part is significantly higher than the total number of assassinations being used and the third I have no idea how you would even begin to prove actually has a higher chance than zero. Unless you can actually show the third one has a higher incidence than zero (which is going to be rather hard due to its nature).
Goose wrote: 3) Another fallacy of arguing whether something should be taught as historical via an Argument from Probability is that statistical probability has absolutely nothing to do with actual historicity. Logically we cannot determine what should be taught as historical based upon probability. We intuitively understand this from the simple fact there are many events which we know to be statistically improbable but we also know are historical. Even though the probability of winning a 6/49 jackpot is low they are won. Even if one bought hundreds of tickets every month the probability of the same person winning the lottery five times over the span of 5 years like Seguro Ndabene has done are astonishingly low at something like 1/5.37x10^35. The probability of a person being struck and killed by lightning in any given year, as already mentioned, makes it very unlikely. Yet, Bethany Lott was sadly killed by lightening in 2010 only moments before she was about to be proposed to by her prospective husband. The probability of being struck by lightning 7 times in one’s life time is also very low and could be calculated to be around 1:3.72x10^26. Yet, Roy Sullivan was struck 7 times in his lifetime. Even though Roy worked outdoors the probability of being struck 7 times should prevent it from being taught as historical by CB’s reasoning. These events are improbable yet they are historical and they will be 2000 years from now.


The fallacy there is that although the odds of any individual being hit or winning in such a manner are very, very small, there are so many people playing the lottery that the odds of that happening at SOME point are actually quite good. Further, regarding the lightning strike, it is stated in the wiki that due to the nature of his work and where he lived, the normal odds do not apply to him. It should also be noted that the first four strikes he was in locations that are basically lightning rods.

Even ignoring that, you seem to be engaging in the same anachronistic reasoning that you argued earlier I shouldn’t use to show the absurd consequences of your own argument. If it was claimed in an ancient document that someone had been hit by lightning seven times, the odds of it being considered historically factual are exceedingly small.
Goose wrote: However, when I tried to present an “alternative hypothesis� to the assassination by presenting the hypothesis Caesar and Brutus may have got into a heated argument, possibly over a woman for example, that ended in bloodshed you shot it down by appealing to Cicero. Even though quarrels over a woman are not unprecedented in Hellenistic literature. And we all know love triangles can and sometimes do end in violence. Even when it involves brothers, see here and here.
As tempted as I am to show how slight the odds of a love triangle actually ending in violence are and then add in the clause of “all evidence of the truth was suppressed� to it, none of that really matters because if a woman killed him it’s still an assassination. The reasons aren’t relevant.
Goose wrote: You out right dismissed my hypothesis without argument (even though you have conceded elsewhere that the number of men involved was probably exaggerated). All you did was appeal to Cicero. He being a biased source with motive to lie. Further, Cicero contradicts his own story, was not an eyewitness, and reported hearsay from unknown sources. In this light, I see no reason to address CB’s “alternative hypotheses� for the resurrection near the end of his last post or any others he may offer. Especially when CB has conceded that “alternatives to the resurrection are all individually quite improbable.� I’ll do the same as CB has done with my alternate explanation for the assassination. I’ll ignore the improbability of the resurrection hypothesis and I’ll disregard how possibly unreliable the evidence that supports that hypothesis has been shown to be. Then I’ll appeal to that evidence anyway as an open and shut case. So we’ll keep this in mind when it comes time for the alternative theories for the resurrection.
Your first alternative hypothesis is basically a conspiracy theory. It requires someone to make up the story of the assassination, and then get everyone in a position to know the truth to go along with it. It’s up to you to show that your alternative hypothesis actually has a chance of happening even remotely equivalent to the chance of him just being assassinated. If you think you can do that, go ahead, but simply dismissing mine when I’ve actually put in the leg work to construct some odds doesn’t speak well of your position. Your second alternative hypothesis still meets the definition of an assassination. So it doesn’t really matter if you show that one to be nearly as likely as another kind of assassination.
Goose wrote: Game, set, and match for the resurrection…
You haven’t shown your alternative hypotheses for the assassination are even remotely close to that of an actual assassination. You haven’t countered my own alternative hypotheses, which since you haven’t actually proven the resurrection is even POSSIBLE, (and sadly may not even be able to), all have a greater probability. All you’ve done is try to and indicate that I’m using faulty statistics BY USING FAULTY STATISTICS. And in reality, I’m sure some of my numbers are inaccurate because I’ve tried to bias it as much in favor of the resurrection and against the assassination as possible without being flat out wrong just in case my calculations are faulty so as to illustrate that even biased in such a way the odds of someone being assassinated are STILL far, far greater than of someone coming back to life in absence of medical assistance (even when ignoring the confounding variables that make it impossible to say that it is even possible at all). If you have an issue with any particular calculation, please explain and we can work towards a more accurate one (though I strongly suspect any more accurate ones will only further hurt your position).
So no, it’s not game, set, and match for the resurrection. There’s a thread Zzyzx wrote that would be a good read before making more comments like this….
Goose wrote:Since 1982 there have been zero assassinations of presidents in the U.S.A. and several “returns from the dead� in the States during this time frame. Immediately you have a zero probability for assassinations during this time in the States. In fact, Reagan surviving his attempted assassination increases the probability of the hypothesis that Caesar survived an attempted assassination and died later due to some other factor.
And now you’re engaging in the very first statistical fallacy you pointed out was possible. I used deaths in the states because most of the ‘resurrections’ came from there and they keep very good death records. As such, it gave the resurrections the highest odds I reasonably could. However, assassination of heads of state occur all over the world, and records of the deaths of heads of state are kept worldwide. It would have been completely illogical to use just the U.S. to establish an assassination rate of the heads of state.

>>>Snip irrelevant rant on how low the odds of being assassinated are<<<
Yes, they are low. They are also clearly higher than zero. My poor word choice may have let you make the faulty interpretation that I meant anything with odds not much higher than zero shouldn’t ever be taught as historical, but that is not what I meant. Let me be clearer. You have failed to show a resurrection without modern medical assistance has a probability statistically distinguishable from ZERO. As such, all I have to do is show that there are alternative hypotheses whose component parts are all distinguishable from zero. Which I have done. And will do more. I have also shown that the odds of an assassination are higher than zero, which raises the bar and means you have to show the odds of your own alternative hypotheses are higher. Which you haven’t done or even tried to do.
Goose wrote: We should narrow the parameters to be fair. You are wanting evidence for the resurrection that a) doesn’t have any modern medical intervention whatsoever like Jesus b) where the dead person was tortured to death like Jesus c) where the person didn’t die again soon after resurrecting like Jesus and so on. In short, you are requesting that I verify Jesus’ resurrection with an account that fairly closely parallels Jesus. So I’m making the same request for Caesar’s assassination: an assassination that is: 1) of a head of state and 2) motivated by political reasons only and 3) by a group of politicians and 4) committed using daggers and 4) in the main meeting place of that government and 5) committed without any body guards interfering. When we do that, we begin to see the immense improbability of Caesar’s assassination in that there are very few assassinations, if any at all, that parallel it. If we keep the request at superficial levels of general assassinations and resurrections we have multipl documented accounts for both.
How someone died affects the odds of him getting back up. Whether there was modern medical intervention affects the odds of them getting back up. Whether the person could actually survive more than a few minutes affects the odds of it actually explaining any of the stories dealing with the resurrection. These are highly relevant details.

What Caesar’s occupation was affects the odds of assassination. But how he was killed doesn’t matter because it was beyond the scope of the debate. I don’t care if he was stabbed. Once established that he was assassinated, stabbing becomes very likely, but if he died some other way it really doesn’t matter regarding the scope of the debate. So it’s irrelevant. So is why he was killed, who killed him, where it happened, and why body guards didn’t stop them from doing it. If he was killed in his bedroom by a lover with brick it’d still meet the definition of assassination. Thus, though some of these details are likely, none of them are actually relevant.

So no, I do not feel the need to restrict the odds of assassination with details that are totally irrelevant to whether or not he actually was. If you would like to have a debate with someone that encompasses being stabbed to death by politically motivated senators in the main meeting place of the government while the body guards look on, you can go find someone willing to defend that position.
Goose wrote: Which would mean 70 out of the 93 Emperors died from something other than assassination. Thus the probability is greater that a Roman Emperor would die from something other than an assassination. This diminishes the assassination hypothesis.
Yes, now you just have to show the odds of people making up an assassination story, and the chances that the real truth will get buried, and you’ll be able to put together an actual alternative hypothesis. Being able to figure out the chances of the component parts shouldn’t be that hard if you really think the hypothesis as a whole has better odds than an actual assassination.
Goose wrote: Not so fast. Matthew reports:
�…the tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had died were raised. After [Jesus’] resurrection, they came out of their tombs and went into the Holy City and appeared to many people.� (Mathew 27:52-53)
Matthew doesn’t say how many were raised only that it was “many.� Was that 10? 100? 1000? 10,000? 100,000?
Really, an argument from ignorance is what you’re going with here? Even for the continued sake of argument, pretending that any other dead people were actually resurrected here at all, one would think a substantial zombie hoard descending upon Jerusalem would get more mention than a couple lines by one author. That being said, this is a perfect example of what the historical method is designed to exclude. If one chooses to have faith that God raised the dead, that is fine, but without hypothesizing God’s interference (which secular academic history cannot do), this is an absolutely ridiculous story and under your form of argument it could easily be taught as literally historically factual.
Goose wrote:Further I could appeal to Ezekiel 37:1-14 where it is claimed “a vast army…the people of Israel� were raised from the dead.Considering there is a precedent for the army of Israel alone to number into the millions in 1 Chronicle 21:5 (and who knows how many dead people there were up to that point in the nation of Israel) it increases the potential number of resurrections accounts astronomically.
Every commentary I’ve read on this book has this as a vision, not a literal event. Why would we assume there was an actual army of the dead? And do you not understand how absurd that sounds in the context of academic history?
Goose wrote:So you see, if we are to take bare bone (pun intended) assertions of assassinated Emperors and thus resurrections as well without having to prove them then the number of resurrection accounts from antiquity could be much, much higher. Possibly well into the many millions. Not so negligible any more, huh. So again, if you don’t have to prove your assassination accounts from antiquity, such as Roman Emperors, I shouldn’t have to prove resurrection accounts.
And for the sake of argument I was willing to humor you and give you some resurrections you don’t have to prove, but I’m going to have to ask you at least provide an actual number mentioned. You can’t use arguments from ignorance and a vision to get you millions of resurrections. That is absolutely ridiculous.
Goose wrote:Matthew 28:13-15 doesn’t give us the Jews denying the resurrection. It gives the Jews trying to explain the empty tomb and is thus enemy attestation to an empty tomb as you’ve noted. Like I said, there’s no record of anyone disputing the resurrection from the time of it happening.
Matthew chapter 27: 62-64 states:

62 The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63 “Sir,� they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.�
Then chapter 28 goes on:
12 When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14 If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.� 15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
Whether these conversations actually happened cannot be taken for granted, but it is quite clear from Matthew that the stories circulating among the Jews was that the disciples had come and stolen the body then told people he had been raised from the dead. This is a denial.
Goose wrote: But the fact that these disputes over the empty tomb were circulating early is good for the resurrection not harmful. It gives us enemy attestation for the empty tomb from a party that would not benefit from promoting it. It is also assurance that these claims were circulating very early during the time of witnesses to the events. On the other hand we don’t have this type of enemy attestation and assurance of early circulation with the assassination in the same way.
It’s not enemy attestation for the same reason that Cicero by himself doesn’t give us enemy attestation from Antony. The Jews could have just been being contrary without even believing there was an empty tomb and the writer of Matthew could have been distorting their words. The only way you get enemy attestation for the empty tomb from this is if I flat out get enemy attestation for the assassination from Cicero. I don’t suggest going this route since not only would it help my position more than yours, it would be a misapplication of enemy attestation on both sides.

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ChaosBorders
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Post #13

Post by ChaosBorders »

Round 7 Part Three
Goose wrote:
Goose wrote:Actually, there are apparently 25 documented cases since just 1982 of people being declared dead by medical professionals who subsequently returned to life without further medical intervention. It’s commonly called the Lazarus Syndrome.
Chaosborders wrote:Given medical errors kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people a year in this country, the possibility should not be ignored.
Red Herring. Lazarus Syndrome is not a medical error that kills people.
Chaosborders wrote:Especially given the existence of the condition called Cataplexy, leading cause of being buried alive and prematurely announced dead as a door nail. It affects to some degree close to 5 out of 10,000 people.
It’s not Cataplexy either.
What you took out was the part where you said: “A sceptic will no doubt argue that in all of these cases the people weren’t really dead, that they can be explained as merely some type of careless mistake perhaps.� I was addressing why it wouldn’t be unreasonable for someone to think a mistake might have been made and a cause of those mistakes. I am fully aware that Lazarus syndrome is not either of those (though some individual cases labeled in the press as Lazarus syndrome may well be).
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:But in the case of Lazarus syndrome, I certainly have no reason to argue these. It is your contention that it proves people can come back from the dead without medical assistance, but it doesn’t.
What I claimed is that: dead people have been reported to return to life without assistance after having been pronounced dead in a modern medical facility by qualified medical personnel on several occasions. Let’s keep clear what I have claimed. The examples of the Lazarus Syndrome show that dead people have returned to life spontaneously after medical intervention to prevent death had ceased.
Which is rather what makes it its own Red Herring. Jesus had no medical intervention applied.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:Firstly, each and every case of Lazarus syndrome came after a minimum of CPR being given.
We would expect medical professionals to perform at least a minimum of CPR if someone stopped breathing. It’s almost unavoidable.
Which is unfortunate given this adds a huge confounding variable that makes it impossible to show any of these people would have come back to life in absence of modern medical intervention.
Goose wrote: I’ve highlighted some words such as believed, thought, suggested, and likely. These are attempted explanations and could be valid explanations for some of the instances of the Lazarus Phenomenon. Fair enough. But there are no concrete answers as the medical paper I cited admits, “Various mechanisms have been suggested as explanation for the [Lazarus] phenomenon.� The reality is, no one really knows what causes the Lazarus Phenomenon. It’s not well understood why some people have spontaneously returned from the dead.
The prevailing medical opinion is that without the modern medical intervention, those people would not have come back to life. You can try and cast dispersions on that based on their word choice (which any researcher that isn’t overzealous really ought to use), but if you actually read the medical literature in depth, the opinion is quite solid. More than solid enough that you can’t just ignore the confounding variable and pretend it doesn’t exist. It may not seem fair, but the simple fact is that it has not and probably cannot be shown that is possible for someone to come back to life in absence of modern medical intervention. This is in contrast with assassinations, which have been shown to occur. Maybe not super often, but certainly with odds that have a statistical significance easily distinguishable from zero.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:CPR or ventilation was needed to save the patient. Because of underlying medical issues standard CPR or ventilation was too much for the patient and ‘killed’ them.
So CPR was needed to save the patient BUT CPR or ventilation was what actually “killed� them. :lol: At any rate, they were still dead regardless of what finally did them in. They then subsequently returned to life spontaneously.
But by no indication would they have without the CPR (or in some cases adrenal shots or other drugs). And by no indication did CPR nor modern drugs exist back when Jesus lived. Further, it does matter what finally did them in because not one of them died from any of the physically traumatic causes that someone can die from because of a crucifixion. If the only people coming back to life at all are those dying from very specific causes, the odds of Jesus just happening to die from those causes while being crucified also have to be factored in. That can probably be done. It can maybe even be shown that crucifixion would increase the odds of those specific causes. Unfortunately, even if you did that, you would still have to deal with the confounding variable of the modern medical treatment.

Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:But when CPR was ceased the pressure eased and the patients’ hearts restarted and breathing returned.
That’s an attempted explanation and could be valid in some of the cases. However, in each case the person was pronounced dead after resuscitation efforts failed, then the person spontaneously returned to life. This is indisputable.
And I don’t dispute it. But these cases don’t even begin to prove that a resurrection like Jesus’ is actually possible.
Goose wrote:[But they would have still been dead.
Further, there is an inherent and unavoidable degree of medical intervention to be expected for me to provide you with documented and verifiable medical cases of people dying and then returning to life. Unless of course you are satisfied with stories like this.


I’m naturally not satisfied with that because of the points they raise in that very article.
Attempts to document these “miracles� have not yielded conclusive results. In remote, rural areas it is not always clear if a person who was supposedly resurrected was really dead, or just deathly ill – perhaps in a coma.
there can be no doubt that many false teachers and charlatans have claimed outlandish miracles as a part of their ministry.
The confounding variable of medical intervention is indeed unfortunate, but no unbiased academic researcher can simply ignore it. Even if they did ignore it, the factors of physical trauma and the need to live long enough without medical intervention for the resurrection to explain any of the stories supposedly stemming from it would still be 1.95882453e-16 even if one accepted Zach Dunlap and Val Thomas as remotely comparable examples and ignored all of the confounding variables in their own cases. I don’t think you can even show any of the alternative hypotheses to have lower odds than that.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:Furthermore, I can find only a single possible exception where the patient did not require significant medical treatment following their ‘resurrection’ to not immediately drop dead again.
Of course most of them probably received medical care after returning from the dead. In most cases they were already in a hospital for crying out loud.
Which is why I’m willing to overlook the medical care Val Thomas received since there is no indication that she would have immediately dropped dead again without it (though whether that is because she genuinely didn’t need it or because of shoddy reporting is questionable). However, in the Lazarus syndrome cases, it is quite clear additional care was necessary and they were in no condition to actually move or talk or anything else the resurrected Jesus was reported to have done.
Goose wrote: In each case the medical treatment had ceased once they were pronounced dead. Then they came back to life spontaneously in the absence of active medical assistance attempting to bring them back from the dead. Medical treatment leading up to death and medical treatment after a resurrection are inherently unavoidable in a medical facility. How would I show a verifiable medical case taking place in a medical facility where there is equipment used to determine death and medical personal qualified to pronounce death without at least having some medical intervention taking place? I can’t even in principle meet this standard. It is a paradox.
Which is unfortunate, but not my problem. A resurrection like Jesus’ cannot be shown to be possible without modern medical intervention. Whether this is because it is genuinely impossible or because of the confounding variables cannot be determined. Because of this uncertainty, it cannot be said that the likelihood of it occurring is actually greater than any of the alternative hypotheses. As a result, it cannot be stated with even the slightest certainty that Jesus actually resurrected from the dead. And because it cannot be stated as having happened with near certainty, it should not be taught as a literally factual event in secular history classes.
Goose wrote: The irony of course is that if we are fair and look at the number of assassinations over this same time frame since 1982 from these same counties listed I can’t find even one single successful assassination of a head of State in the U.S., the U.K., Belgium, or even Columbia. Which would give assassinations a probability of zero over this time frame using the same data sources. A low probability of 5.598X10^-7 is still better than a zero probability.
Why would I use the same countries for the assassination? All of the resurrections listed took place in the countries I used except for the country whose population I threw out because they don’t keep good death records. I could have just used the population of the entire planet, but I felt that wouldn’t be fair to the ‘resurrections’. This was the very highest probability I could fairly give to the resurrection. But records of the deaths of heads of state are kept worldwide and assassination records come from worldwide. I have no reason of any kind to restrict assassinations just to countries where cases of Lazarus syndrome have been recorded. Your attempt to do so in order to diminish the assassination is a classic example of the very first statistical fallacy you pointed out is possible.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:Perhaps ‘observed’ was too strong a word. Given 4 out of 44 of the leaders of my country have been assassinated and 10 others have had attempts of assassination made on them, I may have been engaging in a bit of availability heuristic thinking when writing that. However, it is still considerably more likely for a leader to be assassinated than for someone to resurrect themselves.
This line of argument also works against you because in my country there have been no assassinations of Prime Ministers. Even Britain has only ever had one Prime Minister assassinated. Setting aside the implications of what this says about our respective countries based upon this line of argument the probability of an assassination in certain countries is either zero or close to zero.
In certain countries, yes that is probably true. But the recorded probability in the Roman Empire is 25% not even including Caesar. If I were going to pick a single country, I’d pick the one he was actually ruler of….

Goose wrote: Okay, let’s look at those assassinations. The first thing I noticed in reviewing each case is not one of your assassinations presented even remotely parallels Caesar’s in the details. You’ve got plane crashes, rockets, suicide bombers, guns and so on.
And if Caesar’s method of assassination mattered that would be a problem. The only thing particularly relevant though is “Are heads of state assassinated at a higher rate than non-heads of state?� and “How often are heads of state assassinated?� The case can certainly be made that the advent of modern weapons has potentially made it easier to assassinate people, which is why I don’t rely on the 1% rate I calculated for modern day assassinations of heads of state and prefer the much smaller baseline rate. However, regardless of the method the answers to the questions are still “Yes, heads of state are assassinated much more often than other people and at much, much higher rate than people coming back to life even just using your far looser than necessary criteria of merely occurring once medical intervention has ceased.�
Goose wrote: The second thing I noticed is that there aren’t that many at a total of about 11 as compared to 25 cases of the Lazarus Phenomenon over the same time frame.
It was 12 leaders and was out of about 1200 leaders. Even if you dispute a few of them, that’s no excuse for trying to use the wrong population. Pointing out the potential abuses of statistics does not give you a license to flagrantly abuse them yourself. If you were going just by any people assassinated you have
38 in Columbia
alone in the first 8 months of 2008.
Goose wrote: The third thing I’ll note is that most if not all of these cases come from countries that rank on the lower end of the Human Development Indexed with the exception of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel. Which doesn’t prove anything in itself but it does inherently raise the issue of the accuracy in reporting and documenting the assassinations. After all, similar reasoning is applied to ancient texts is it not? If I were allowed to expand my resurrection cases to countries low on the HDI as well my list could be longer. A case in point. Surpise Sithole from Mozambique claims to have personally raised 4 people from the dead. The ministry he is part of claims to have raised over 100 people.
The assassinations were widely publicized and thoroughly investigated. There may be a couple you can dispute, but the thoroughness of reporting on the death of the most important person in the country is not the same as reports on politically insignificant persons.
Goose wrote:
  • 1. The cause of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s plane crash remains a mystery. It could have just been an accident. I dispute this as a legitimate assassination.
Fair enough.
Goose wrote: 2. I dispute Rajiv Gandhi as he was killed by a suicide bomber that also killed 14 others. He may have been nothing more than collateral damage in a terrorist attack. I won’t dispute the Indira Gandhi assassination.
At 10:10 p.m., the assassin Dhanu approached him and greeted the former Prime Minister. She then bent down to touch his feet and detonated an RDX explosive laden belt tucked below her dress.
He was the target and it would still have met the definition of assassination even if he hadn’t been the main target.

Goose wrote: 3. There seems to be much dispute over Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. Despite this I won’t dispute this one.
Considering the dispute centers around who assassinated him, not on whether he was assassinated, it’s just as well you don’t dispute it.
Goose wrote: 5. I dispute Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira assassinations. There seems to be some confusion over who was responsible for the plane being shot down. They may both have been collateral damage as the actual target could have been one or the other or another passenger such as the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan military.
They shot down the presidential jet. It doesn’t matter who it was, that was an assassination. Let’s look at the definition of assassination again since this seems to be an ongoing issue.

Per Wiki: An assassination is the murder of a prominent or public figure, usually by surprise attack and for political purposes.
Per Merriam Webster: To murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons.
Per Dictionary.com: To kill suddenly or secretively, esp. a politically prominent person; murder premeditatedly and treacherously.
Per Wordnetweb.princeton.edu: Murder of a public figure by surprise attack
Per YourDictionary.com: To murder (esp. a politically important or prominent person) by surprise attack, usually for payment or from zealous belief
Per British Postal Museum: A murder of someone who is often prominent politically

None of those definitions require the person to have been specifically targeted, nor do they require the reasons to have been political, and half of them don’t even absolutely require the victim to have been politically important. But regarding all of them, a head of state who was murdered was assassinated. End of story.
Goose wrote: 9. I dispute Ranasinghe Premadasa’s assassination. He was killed in a suicide bombing. He may, again, have merely been the victim of a terror attack.
The police said the bomb exploded seconds after bodyguards stopped a man on a bicycle as he rode toward the President.
It doesn’t really matter since he was still murdered which still makes it an assassination, but when you stop someone biking towards the president and a few seconds later everything blows up, it’s not a hard inference to make.
Goose wrote: 10. I dispute Thomas Sankara’s assassination. He was killed in a coup where 12 other officials were also killed. It sounds more like an execution than an assassination.
Due to the nature of the execution making this not a surprise attack, I’m willing to give this to you even though by at least some commonly used (evidenced by their use by wiki) definitions of assassination he was.
Goose wrote: I reckon you have maybe 6 cases that could be considered assassinations, none of which resemble Caesar’s.
I reckon I have ten, after giving you two of them. And none of the surrounding details of Caesar’s death inherently affect the probability of a leader being assassinated.
Goose wrote:6 out of 1,200 or a probability of 1/200 from primarily countries with reputations for this type of violence still yields a measly 0.005 or 0.5%.
Even that would still be 8931 times more likely than coming back to life even in the manner of the Lazarus cases.
Goose wrote: Hardly, probable. If we trimmed this down to assassinations in higher developed countries since 1982 you have maybe one, Yitzhak Rabin. Whereas I have multiple resurrection accounts from highly developed countries.
Why would I limit assassinations to highly developed countries?
Goose wrote: Also in reviewing these cases I noticed how contradictory and inconclusive the evidence really was. Most of these assassinations have multiple conspiracy theories surrounding them. In most cases, who did it, why they did it, and even how they did it remains a mystery.
And none of those things are relevant as to whether or not the person actually WAS assassinated.
Goose wrote: Even if you somehow managed to get it up to 1% you are just moving the furniture around on the Titanic. You aren't seriously implying a 1% chance of something happening is probable are you? :blink:
I don’t have to show its probable all on its own. I just have to show it’s more probable than the alternative hypotheses. The alternative hypotheses are conspiracy theories and I don’t think you can actually prove them to have a higher chance than zero, thus the assassination is considered considerably MORE probable than the alternative.
Goose wrote: You don’t want to have to prove that it is possible to assassinate a head of state where it is 1) by stabbing (which is inherently more difficult than offing someone from a distance using a high powered sniper rifle for example), 2) at the main place where and when that government convenes, 3) in plain view of other witnesses, 4) with no resistance from security personnel (very unlikely in a large meeting), and 5) committed by a large group of politicians (which makes it even more improbable). All factors that directly affect the probability of Caesar’s assassination.
All of those factors are dependent upon an assassination having taken place in the first place. You can maybe make a case that high powered technology makes modern day assassinations easier, but that is why I’m using the baseline rate of less than one in a thousand opposed to the much higher modern day rate of almost one in a hundred. Most (possibly all but I’m unsure and don’t feel like looking up every one of them again) of the modern day assassinations occurred in front of witnesses. If the assassination occurred in a different fashion then the altered narrative would have be factored in, but if the assassination didn’t happen at all that would have to be done anyways in addition to inventing the assassination in its entirety and suppressing the fact Caesar hadn’t actually been killed at all. As such, there is no difference between the alternatives on these details and so they are irrelevant.
Goose wrote:But you want me to prove it is possible for a person that had been like Jesus, in your words, “tortured to death� could then “come back to life without modern medical equipment in any sense of the word.� You don’t see just a teensy weensy double standard there?
The issue of how a person died and whether they received modern medical attention is medically relevant to the issue of whether or not they CAN come back to life. The issue of whether someone was stabbed to death or shot to death is not relevant to whether or not they are dead.

What is more, Nicolaus gives an entirely plausible explanation that explains most of those factors:
But the majority opinion favored killing him while he sat in the Senate, where he would be by himself since only Senators would be admitted, and where the many conspirators could hide their daggers beneath their togas. This plan won the day.


That would explain both the need to use knives, the location, and why body guards didn’t interfere.
Goose wrote:You don’t seem to be disputing the facts 1-8. The resurrection has the potential ability to explain a wide range of facts above with great power and no additional hypotheses. You need another explanation that more powerfully explains more than the listed facts 1-8 above without having to invoke other hypotheses thus becoming ad hoc if you do.
I could potentially dispute a couple of them as facts, but the point of scope isn’t about explaining facts so much as it is about explaining the claims that have been made. I dispute that the resurrection explains the first claim. I also think there are a lot of claims made by varying sources that are not explained by the resurrection. I have addressed this some with a couple alternative hypotheses, which you have tried to hand wave away.
Goose wrote:Additionally, if plausibility is a precluding factor for the resurrection at this point for criteria 2-3 then it is for the assassination as well.
Are you capable of actually explaining why you feel an issue is a problem for the assassination or is just saying “it is for the assassination as well� the extent of your ability? This has been a common theme throughout this debate. Please make an actual argument instead of just trying to reflect mine without any explanation as to how you figure it is applicable.
Goose wrote:It’s not a double conspiracy. It’s simply the theory that someone made up a tale of Caesar being assassinated. It’s far more probable than an actual assassination of a head of state that has by your calculations a probability of 1/1081 or 9.25x10^-4.
Made up a tale of Caesar being assassinated and convinced at least Cicero of this less than a year after the assassination took place and managed to suppress all evidence to the contrary while successfully implicating a large chunk of senate by the time Nicolaus started researching it. Possible, but I don’t think you can show that to be anywhere more likely than 1/1081.
Goose wrote:I think the multiple examples I’ve given show it is possible for a person to return to life after being dead.
Which was never disputed given that there was modern medical intervention.
Goose wrote:And I think that is all I really need to show to allow the resurrection to be taught as historical.
That is because you’re biased.
Goose wrote:You are just raising the bar again once a request has been met.
If I ever implied that showing less than a resurrection in absence of modern medical intervention is possible was sufficient, I apologize. But I am not raising the bar. That is THE BAR. I have suggested that even ignoring the very important confounding variable of the preceding medical treatment you still have such ridiculously low odds that they don’t beat the alternative hypotheses. You haven’t even met that far lowered burden of proof. If you did it wouldn’t matter regarding the actual teaching of history since it would still be lower than THE BAR, but I personally would at least be somewhat impressed.
Goose wrote:You are expecting another impossible standard that can’t even be met in principle.
They’re not my personal standards. This is what academic history demands. That they can’t be met is precisely why resurrections in ancient history cannot be taught as historically factual.
Goose wrote: Why would we expect there to be a documented case of a person dying in a medical facility where medical personal were present without there being any attempt to either keep the person from dying or revive them after they stop breathing by at the very least administering CPR? Can you think of how I could meet this standard even in principle? It’s basically a paradox - doctors that stand around and watch someone die in hospital and don’t do anything about it. Then once the person returns from the dead on their own the doctors do nothing about that either. Can anyone say law suit?
It’s a very unfortunate confounding variable. If you ever figure out a way to adequately control for it and still show it as possible for someone to come back to life without medical treatment, you will probably become a very rich man.
Goose wrote: They absolutely are. If I have to provide evidence that someone can return to life “without modern medical equipment in any sense of the word� after being “tortured to death� then you absolutely must prove an assassination like that of Caesar’s is probable.

In your case you can’t even show it as possible. There is nothing in the surrounding details of Caesar’s death that makes it impossible. Stabbing kills people. Senators are people and people are perfectly capable of killing people. People are as capable of dying in the seat of the government and in front of witnesses as anywhere else. Each individual component can be shown to be possible. Most of them aren’t even slightly relevant as to whether or not someone was killed, but even if they were, they can all be shown to be possible.
Goose wrote:Cicero does not explicitly state Caesar was assassinated. We’ve been over this.
Yes. We have. By most definitions of assassination, Cicero has explicitly stated that Caesar was assassinated.
Goose wrote: Further, all you are saying here is that because Cicero, a biased source with motive to lie, reporting hearsay, allegedly states Caesar was assassinated he was therefore assassinated and all of my more probable explanations such as Caesar dying by natural causes are to be waived aside.
You have a point. If Cicero were the only one talking about the assassination, its occurrence would be questionable. But he’s not. Your alternative hypothesis has to deal with the assassination claims. Simply arguing that it is more probable he died of natural causes does not do this.
Goose wrote: That’s okay though. It allows me to do the same with all your pet theories for the resurrection.


My alternatives dealt with the scope and even added to it some. I’ve pointed out why yours was flawed. If you feel mine need work feel free to address them.
Goose wrote: Each scenario I’ve given of Caesar dying by 1) natural causes 2) an accident or 3) even a heated argument with Brutus over a woman, for instance, that escalated into bloodshed are inherently more probable than an assassination. It is simply astonishing you do not recognize this.
I recognize the inherent probability of someone dying from something other than an assassination is higher. But you have not shown that someone dying from something other than assassination, having someone then make up a tale about them being assassinated, and the truth of how they actually died getting suppressed despite them being the most powerful person in the nation has a higher chance than someone having been assassinated and having it reported as such.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote: Still, within the scope of the debate the only important thing is whether it is plausible for a leader to end up assassinated.
Then the only important thing is whether it is plausible for a person to return to life after being dead. I’ve shown that it is. To request any more from the resurrection shows a double standard on your part.
None of the details surrounding Caeser’s death effect whether or not someone can be killed. Whether or not there is modern medical intervention has a direct effect on whether or not someone can come back to life. Relevant information is accounted for. There’s no double standard on my part.
Goose wrote:Are you serious? You think an actual assassination is more plausible than someone simply making up a tale of an assassination given the low probability of 1/1081 of any leader from across history actually being assassinated and 1/64.75 million chance of a person from the general populace being assassinated? Think of all the people and resources that would be needed for an assassination and all that would need to go right for it to be successful. Then think of how easy it is to just sit in your chair and make up a tale and tell it to someone. Then they tell it to someone and so on. People do this all the time.
The individual component of making up an assassination tale isn’t by itself less implausible than an assassination. But the ability to get that tale, which implicates a large number of the senate, accepted as the standard truth by everyone by the time Nicolaus wrote about it? Without so much as the slightest mention in any historical source of even the possibility that he wasn’t actually assassinated? Not so plausible.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:However, alternatives to the resurrection are all individually quite improbable.
Then there is not really much point in addressing them is there. Especially since the historical evidence falsifies them.
Really? How does the historical evidence falsify the possibility of Cataplexy? And it may be implausible, but it’s entirely possible, which is far more than can be shown of the resurrection.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote: To that end, let’s get started. Let the fun part begin…
Sorry to spoil your party but…
Chaosborders wrote: The first to be explored will be the ‘didn’t die’ category…Jesus, a psychopath… Having successfully faked his own death...
I’ll stop you right there and do what you did to me when I proposed the hypothesis Caesar got into a quarrel with Brutus over a woman that ended in bloodshed. I’ll just appeal to the evidence regardless of how unreliable you think it is.
That particular alternative hypothesis would still be an assassination, so perhaps you would like to try another one?
Goose wrote:
in his first letter to the Corinthians the apostle Paul wrote:Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and he was buried… (15:4)
Gospel of Mark wrote:And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last… And when [Pilate] learned from the centurion that [Jesus] was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. (15:37, 45)
All of these alternative hypotheses would have the appearance of death as far as outsiders are concerned. As such, assertions of death like these would not actually detract from the hypothesis’ power to explain the scope.
Goose wrote:
Gospel of John wrote:But when [the soldiers] came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness--his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth--that you also (19:34-35)
Water? Really? Is it medically possible for someone to be stabbed and have water pour out of them? At any rate, this equally hurts the resurrection as well because not one of the resurrections you’ve shown involve anything remotely equivalent to someone having a gaping side wound that has blood pouring out of it.
Goose wrote:Using your reasoning from earlier if the text states something then it is true and your pet theory is “completely rejected.� Therefore, Jesus was dead as a door nail.
Not true. Just in need of explanation. My alternative hypotheses explain them just as well as an actual death with the exception of one that hurts the resurrection as well.
Goose wrote:The Journal of the American Medical Association agrees with me…
Journal of the American Medical Association wrote: Jesus of Nazareth underwent Jewish and Roman trials, was flogged, and was sentenced to death by crucifixion. The scourging produced deep stripelike lacerations and appreciable blood loss, and it probably set the stage for hypovolemic shock as evidenced by the fact that Jesus was too weakened to carry the crossbar (patibulum) to Golgotha. At the site of crucifixion his wrists were nailed to the patibulum, and after the patibulum was lifted onto the upright post, (stipes) his feet were nailed to the stipes. The major pathophysiologic effect of crucifixion was an interference with normal respirations. Accordingly, death resulted primarily from hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. Jesus’ death was ensured by the thrust of a soldier’s spear into his side. Modern medical interpretation of the historical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead when taken down from the cross. (JAMA 1986;255:1455-1463)
Did any of the Lazarus victims die of blood loss or hypovolemic shock? Experiments done by Dr. Frederick Thomas Zugibe indicate exhaustion asphyxia is not a likely cause of death. Pretty sure it’s the only possible cause though that one would have a slight chance of coming back from. If he died of blood loss, unless he had the unheard of ability to spontaneously regenerate blood, he could not have come back to life. Period. At any rate, I agree that if Jesus went up onto the cross and had remotely the level of torture some of the Gospel accounts (though not Mark) had him enduring, he was almost certainly dead by the time he came down. Which is why we’ll move in to some alternative hypotheses that assume he died (though you most definitely have not shown resurrection to be more likely than the ones I’ve posited already).
Goose wrote:If one wants credible evidence for this it inherently involves some medical intervention. It just goes with the territory and is unavoidable.
And it is unfortunate that it’s unavoidable because it makes your case impossible to prove.
Goose wrote:Further, for you to establish Caesar’s assassination it needs to be shown that it is possible for an assassination of a head of state to occur where it is by stabbing
Stabbing can kill people. 29% of the 839 homicides in England and Wales in 2005 were done through stabbing.
Goose wrote: at the main place where and when that government convenes
Is there something special about the main place where and when the government convenes that would make someone invulnerable to harm? If not, it is possible for someone to be assassinated there.
Goose wrote: in plain view of other witnesses,
Many of the list of assassinations I gave fit this one.
Goose wrote:with no resistance from security personnel,
Who seem to have been reported to have not even been in the room.
Goose wrote:and committed by a large group of politicians.
Politicians are certainly not incapable of violence as this shown by this case.

If all of the details are true, there is nothing about any of them which make them impossible. If they are not true, since making up any individual detail would have to happen whether an assassination occurred or not, they are not particularly relevant. Details only matter when they differ between alternatives.
Goose wrote:This might only require the person to be alive for a few minutes. There are multiple cases like this.


This would have to be conjoined with many of the same cognitive distortions and such that could be responsible for the tales with a more probable root cause, such as cataplexy, misdiagnosis, or subsequent misidentification of a twin or similar looking brother. It is quite possibly the most likely if there was an actual resurrection, but it strips the hypotheses so far back that the alternatives just have to have a single more likely root cause to get the distortion ball rolling.
Goose wrote:Jesus’ resurrection is unique in many ways that increases the improbability.


So much so that you can’t even show it to be possible.
Goose wrote:But then so is Caesar’s assassination unique and highly improbable.
I can show that each individual part is possible. But any individual part that might have been made up would have had to have been made up under either alternative, rendering most of the individual parts irrelevant. If you think you can show that making up a story about an assassination and suppressing a natural cause of death is more likely than an actual assassination, be my guest.

Goose wrote:Hey, maybe Caesar was misdiagnosed as dead too. Maybe he survived the assassination and died later of a heart attack. Yeah, that’s probably what really happened because misdiagnosis happens and it is more probable a head of state will die of natural causes anyway.
Maybe, but misdiagnosis of death is less likely than even the baseline rate for assassinations. It is not, however, less likely than resurrection.
Goose wrote:In the end, Chaosborder’s, and others like him, would like to accept the assassination of Julius Caesar as being worthy of being taught as historical and reject the resurrection of Jesus.
Exactly who are others like me?
Goose wrote: Yet he has no historical basis for this.
Except the entire section of historical reasoning.
Goose wrote: The evidentiary support for the assassination has been shown to be no better than for the resurrection on any single criterion and on some criterion even worse than the resurrection.
Except either enemy attestation or bias (take your pick) on source criticism, a few on internal criticism, and historical reasoning pretty much in its entirety by a large margin.
Goose wrote: Further, there is no better single explanation that combines both scope and explanatory power than the resurrection.
Except for the ones I offered.
Goose wrote: The probability of an assassination is very low, not significantly greater than zero.
From a statistical standpoint, the probability of the assassination is distinguishable from zero. That is not the case for the resurrection. I’m impressed you managed to get half a round from my leaving out a word, but I trust most of the readers understood what I meant and will not be persuaded by these arguments.
Goose wrote: Depending upon what statistical data we use an assassination can be shown to be even less probable than a resurrection.


Yes, if you purposefully manipulate the data you can bias it in such a way so as to show that.
Goose wrote:Thus the assassination should not be taught as historical by Chaosborder’s own reasoning.
I could see how you might arrive at that conclusion as a result of my faulty assumption that you would understand I was speaking within the context of statistics. However, that is not my actual reasoning. If I had not left out that word and you had still tried to make these arguments it would have been an active straw man. As it is, the fault lies with my unintentional ambiguity and for that I apologize. Unfortunately, though I am somewhat to blame for the confusion, you’ve still spent most of this round arguing against a position I don’t actually hold.
Goose wrote: Fundamentally he must employ a double standard to accept the assassination and reject the resurrection.
There is no double standard. Include relevant information. That is the standard. If you feel you can make a stronger case for why the surrounding details of the assassination are actually relevant to the chances of someone being assassinated, make your case and we can revise the numbers accordingly. Of course, if you make a stronger argument for including surrounding details as relevant that would decrease the probability, then I’ll have to make a stronger case for including relevant details that I intentionally left out that would increase the probability. I left them out because they’ll be a pain to research and felt there was no need, but if it becomes apparent that there is I’ll put in the leg work.

However, if ultimately you can show that the alternative hypothesis for the assassination has a greater likelihood, then the reasonable conclusion is that it isn’t near certain and shouldn’t be taught as historically factual.

Regrettably, demonstrating that the assassination shouldn’t be taught as a literal historical fact wouldn’t prove that the resurrection should be. Also unfortunate is that the alternative hypothesis to the assassination has a component with a similarly damaging confounding variable that will make it next to impossible to show.

This is an unfortunate by-product of how academic history is currently done, but it is a necessary one to prevent as many Type II errors as possible without throwing all of history out the door to prevent every possible Type I error.

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Post #14

Post by ChaosBorders »

Round 7 Part 4

Though I really shouldn’t bother since you’ll likely just hand wave them away like you did the last ones, I would like to now address further alternative hypotheses to the resurrection that assume Jesus did indeed die on the cross.

First let’s look at Paul. Paul’s case is likely the same whether the resurrection occurred in actuality or not, so isn’t particularly relevant. But I wish to address what Paul had to gain besides persecution by affirming the resurrection.

For this we will first outline some of the scope that needs to be explained. The first part of the scope is that he persecuted Christians, and according to him in the first chapter of Galatians:
13 For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14 I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
It isn’t clear, as is often stated these days, that he actually had any Christians killed. But according to Acts he did approve of one being killed and had many thrown in prison. Further, his self-assessment is that he is zealous (and I think few would disagree that he was not clearly a passionate man). He also portrays himself (and is portrayed) as an upright Jew.

Then something happens. He later claims it to have been a vision from God. Now, from a faith perspective this is reasonable to believe. But from a purely historical perspective God cannot be factored into it. As such the possible explanations are numerous. Mild stroke, perhaps. Or mental breakdown. My personal favorite though is lightning strike (ironically).
Whatever the cause, it left him incapacitated for days. Then along comes Ananias. The exact events are never told by Paul. But if Paul attributed his recovery in any many to Ananias, a Christian, it sets the ball rolling for HUGE cognitive shifts.

Firstly, unless Paul was a psychopath he would have felt an enormous amount of guilt. He’s been actively persecuting these people, wanting them to get killed (possibly actually helping get some of them killed) and one helps him out. The amount of guilt that would have led to in most people is incredible.

People don’t handle guilt well. It is an incredible motivator and there are only a small handful of ways people deal with it. The first is punishment. Paul, being a devout Jew, just got struck down by something. He’s going to be wondering why and a natural thought may be that he’s being punished for his persecutions. This is a misattribution, but given his beliefs would make sense to conclude. But since the ‘punishment’ occurred before he decided anything he’d done was wrong, rather than alleviating guilt this may well have just intensified it. The thought “I was punished because I deserve to be punished� ends up forming and he’s still left with the guilt.

Another method is forgiveness. Now he may well have received forgiveness from Ananias, and assurances from him of God’s forgiveness through Christ, but the people he actually harmed are all dead or in prison. Of course if he alleviates the guilt even in part by accepting Ananias’ assurances of God’s forgiveness, then he has to accept the message that Ananias is giving him, which already would likely lead to a person as passionate as Paul to spreading the message.

The last couple ways are of alleviating guilt is sincere remorse and making amends. Both of those are consistent with Paul then dedicating his life to serving Christ.

This scenario does not likely change whether the resurrection physically occurred or not, so it probably isn’t directly relevant to the issue of whether it happened. But I wanted to put it forth because Paul almost certainly had more to gain than persecution. If he had guilt, one of the greatest motivators known to man, because someone who was part of the group he was persecuting helped him, most of the ways to alleviate that guilt are consistent with his then dedicating his life to Christ.

But now let us turn to the Apostles, who are much more relevant to whether or not the resurrection occurred or not. First let’s see some of the scope.
These men left their homes, jobs, and any family members they might have had behind to follow this preacher. They traveled with him for a few years. He may or may not have made claims during that time that he would eventually be crucified and raised from the dead. If he did, most likely he was mentally ill (exploring the mad angle of Lewis’ Trilemma now), which is probably less likely than later writers putting those words in his mouth. However, it would certainly increase the likelihood of the following scenario.
Jesus gets crucified. Even the more optimistic option of him surviving that due to misdiagnosis or cataplexy probably are not significantly higher than one in a million. So most likely he was dead as a doornail. Now what would happen if Jesus didn’t come back to life?

Cognitive Dissonance. Huge, huge amounts of it. This guy they’ve been following around for years just died, and then nothing happened. They were misled, tricked, foolish, and they’ve basically ruined whatever lives they’ve had because of it. This creates a huge cognitive inconsistency that they have to deal with. There are a few ways to deal with cognitive dissonance, and a couple of them can easily lead to what is recorded.

One method is changing the behavior leading to the dissonance. Unfortunately for them, the behavior took place in the past. They can’t go back and time and get the last few years of their life back. It’s a sunk cost, and logically they should ignore it, but humans rarely ignore sunk costs. They feel the need to justify their past effort and this just leads to even more dissonance when in reality that past effort was a waste of time. This becomes even worse when that effort was voluntary, which by all indication it was.

So they can’t alleviate dissonance this way, which leads to a couple other methods of getting rid of the dissonance. They can change the cognition of “He didn’t come back like he said he would� to “He was resurrected� or they can add a cognition such as “I can still use this to do good (for someone).�
We’ll explore the second possibility first. Whether he turned out to be crazy or not, Jesus said some pretty cool things, which may well have appealed to his followers despite the disappointment of him not coming back to life. Some of his followers could have seen the potential to use that message to do good anyways, while others might have decided they did not want to return to their previous lives the pathetic failures they basically were, and go along with it for the respect that came with being leaders in the new church. Either way it would help reduce the dissonance and would also be consistent with Self-Affirmation Theory.

This hypothesis is relatively plausible (imo more so than the hypotheses where Jesus lives), but I prefer the one where at least some of them actually end up genuinely believing in the resurrection. However, though I’ve gathered some of the research for it already, I want to be more thorough on that one and as such will wait to go into details until the next post.

Goose

Post #15

Post by Goose »

Round 8 – part 1


Regarding Cicero and minimizing his bias…
Chaosborders wrote:Even if for some strange reason he hadn’t intended to publish it, given that he implicates the people he’s sending it to in the assassination, that would serve as its own tendency to minimize bias.
This line of reasoning fails miserably. How could it be considered minimizing bias to name names already in circulation? Names of people that probably were already boasting of having something to do with it, even if they hadn’t?
in the 2nd Philippic Cicero wrote: On the contrary, their names immediately became familiar to everybody! I should sooner say that some men had boasted in order to appear to have been part of that conspiracy, though they had in reality known nothing of it, than that any one who had been an accomplice in the deed could possibly have wished to conceal their part in it.
Apparently, in some circles some people wanted to be named.
Chaosborders wrote:You addressed only one of the four points I made, so let me restate:
“If the explanation is true, it leaves little room for doubt that Caesar was assassinated, rendering Cicero’s own motivation to be biased or not irrelevant. Also it even further solidifies enemy attestation.�
There’s always room for pesonal doubt. And I'm not sure why you feel I didn't address this. At least if I didn't, I'm pretty sure I've addressed the points in this post. (BTW, I moved the points about enemy attestation to the enemy attestation section.)
Chaosborders wrote:However, the explanation [from Yonge] is naturally questionable. But if it is false, why would you assume that it wasn’t spoken to the senate like every other one of the speeches?
Because it was NOT spoken to the senate and there is evidence for this. In regards to his 2nd Philippic Cicero wrote to one of his closest friends, Atticus:
Cicero wrote:As to whether [my speech – the 2nd Philippic] is to be kept locked up or published, I leave the decision to you.
If it had been delivered to the senate as a speech, there would be no need to deliberate on whether to lock it up or publish it as it would have already been out there in circulation so to speak. If Cicero really wanted the 2nd Philippic to be published and felt it was wholly truthful why didn’t he just simply have it published? Why did he apparently leave it up to Atticus to decide? Why does Cicero tacitly acknowledge that maybe the 2nd Ph should be locked up and not be published? Why all the hesitating? What was Cicero hiding? :-k

Do you have even a shred of evidence that it was delivered to the senate or published? Or is all you have a self serving circular assumption that he did?


Regarding minimizing bias in Christian writers…
Goose wrote:Thus you cannot rightly assert or even imply the resurrection writers are unreliable solely on the grounds they were biased, something you’ve been trying to do throughout this thread.
Chaosborders wrote:Who said anything about solely?
You implied it…
in Round 3 (post 25) Chaosborders wrote:Bias goes towards the establishment of whether the source is reliable.
If you presented criterion other than bias that shows the resurrection writers were unreliable I must have missed it. Criterion that if it were applied to the assassination writers would not show the assassination writers unreliable as well.
Goose wrote:Everybody back then, as now, wrote with a bias.
Chaosborders wrote:Maybe, but you can’t actually show Nicolaus had reason to be regarding the assassination without solidifying enemy attestation.
Oh boy, around and around we go… :roll: I’ve given evidence that Nicolaus reports in a biased manor which has nothing to do with enemy attestation. You even conceded it.


Criteria of Enemy Attestation…

(note: I’ve shuffled a few points around to put them under their respective headings for coherency)

First, enemy attestation between Cicero and Antony:
Chaosborders wrote: On its own, [enemy attestation] certainly is not perfectly solid. However, if Nicolaus got his information from Marc Anthony, then it is.
Not by the standard you expect for the resurrection. Cicero and Nicolaus probably never even met let alone were enemies of one another.
Chaosborders wrote: If he did not, then there is no reason at all to believe Nicolaus has any bias in this matter and the assassination wins on that criterion instead.
False. I’ve given evidence that shows Nicolaus reports in a biased minor. You conceded this when you wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:Were it by itself, I would even say that is a decent case for bias.
Where Nicolaus received his data is irrelevant to the fact that Nicolaus reports in a biased manor and is therefore biased.

You don’t get it both ways here. You don’t get to lower the bar for enemy attestation to allow it between Cicero and Nicolaus who, in your words, “were not enemies by any commonly used definition of the word.� Then raise the bar again to reject enemy attestation between Peter and Paul. Surely you see the double standard you are erroneously trying to apply here.
Chaosborders wrote:If Nicolaus received his info. from Anthony, he got it from an enemy of Cicero, which means enemy attestation certainly existed.
Except it didn’t exist between Nicolaus and Cicero because they weren’t enemies, your standard not mine.
Chaosborders wrote:If he didn’t, you have no case for bias and the assassination has a source that can’t be shown to have bias regarding that issue. It can’t be shown which is true, but either way the assassination wins on something.
We haven’t really got the foggiest from where Nicolaus received his data. So there’s no good reason to think he necessarily received it from Antony or an enemy of Cicero. Nicolaus also knew Augustus and Augustus was sympathetic to Cicero. It’s all speculation. However, what we do unquestionably know is that Nicolaus reports in a biased manor and can therefore be seen as a biased source. What exactly do think the assassination wins on here?

Goose wrote:I’ve already made a case earlier that both Antony and Cicero have an interest in and benefit from affirming the assassination tale. It allows both of them an opportunity to accuse one another of the deed and in so doing create possible havoc for the other and gain a political edge as Caesar was well liked by the people. Considering the definitions above Cicero and Antony cannot be seen as truly enemy attestation in light of this.
Chaosborders wrote:Your case would require both Anthony and Cicero to have been morons, which neither of them was by any indication.
It doesn’t require them to be morons, though they may have been. It only requires them to be motivated to smear the others credibility. Not a stretch considering they were politicians on the quest for power.

To illustrate this idea that making claims about a rival was beneficial consider the letter of Brutus to Cassius:
Brutus wrote:][Antony] is afraid that, if our claims should have met with even moderate support, no part would be left for him to play on the political stage.
These men knew that even claiming something about one’s rival a had potential effect.

Caesar dies and everyone begins jockeying for power. Political rivals see an opportunity to use Caesar’s death to their own political advantage as a rumour has emerged that Caesar was killed. Antony makes damaging accusations about Brutus and Cicero, Cicero being his main political rival. Cicero fires back and makes accusations against Antony. It was all about political power. These guys would say pretty much anything to gain it.
Chaosborders wrote:The moment one of them tried to accuse the other of assassinating Caesar it would be much more sensible to just call them out on lying, which should be easily showable if Caesar was not actually assassinated
Sure they could call each other out on lying. But how would they prove it was a lie? They could mount a rhetorical defence as Cicero does against the accusations he has heard Antony has made. But the damage was already done by the accusation. The accusation alone, whether true or not, if it could gain some support was enough to damage.
Chaosborders wrote:That would cause them to lose all credibility and give the accused plenty of political edge.
Not if they were willing to risk being called a liar. If they believed the lie itself would give them more of a political edge than not lying there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t try.
Chaosborders wrote:Furthermore, could you please quote where you think Cicero accused Marc Anthony of assassinating Caesar? Even ignoring that the accused could gain an edge by calling the liar out on it, absolutely any third party who knew the truth and didn’t like either of the two could bring the truth out and destroy their credibility.
It doesn’t seem these guys were too concerned about credibility considering they were apparently running around assassinating their leader, boasting about it, and conspiring against one another.

But to answer your request of quoting where Cicero implicates Antony…

From Cicero’s 2nd Philippic:
in ch 14 Cicero wrote: beware, I pray you, O [Antony], of what must be your own case, as it is notorious that you, when at Narbo, formed a plan of the same sort with Caius Trebonius; and it was on account of your participation in that design that, when Cæsar was being killed, we saw you called aside by Trebonius. But I (see how far I am from any horrible inclination towards,) praise you for having once in your life had a righteous intention; I return you thanks for not having revealed the matter; and I excuse you for not having accomplished your purpose. That exploit required a man.

And if anyone should institute a prosecution against you [Antony], and employ that test of old Cassius, “who reaped any advantage from it?� take care, I advise you, lest you suit that description. Although, in truth, that action was, as you used to say, an advantage to everyone who was not willing to be a slave, still it was so to you above all men, who are not merely not a slave, but are actually a king; who delivered yourself from an enormous burden of debt at the temple of Ops; who, by your dealings with the account books, there squandered a countless sum of money; who have had such vast treasures brought to you from Cæsar’s house; at whose own house there is set up a most lucrative manufactory of false memoranda and autographs, and a most iniquitous market of lands, and towns, and exemptions, and revenues. In truth, what measure except the death of Cæsar could possibly have been any relief to your indigent and insolvent condition? You appear to be somewhat agitated. Have you any secret fear that you yourself may appear to have had some connexion with that crime? I will release you from all apprehension; no one will ever believe it; it is not like you to deserve well of the republic; the most illustrious men in the republic are the authors of that exploit; I only say that you are glad it was done; I do not accuse you of having done it.
If Cicero really did not intend to accuse Antony of being involved in Caesar’s death, as Cicero claims, why does Cicero take the time to build the case for why Antony would have “reaped any advantage from it�? Obviously, Cicero did mean to implicate Antony and possibly drag him into it, even though he did it rhetorically. At any rate, Cicero does accuse Antony of being glad which has the possibility of creating havoc for Antony as Caesar was popular with the people. Thus there exists a motive for both Antony and Cicero to potentially gain from affirming the assassination of Caesar. Antony who potentially benefits by accusing Cicero of being involved and Cicero who potentially benefits by accusing Antony of being glad (and possibly involved) cannot be seen as enemy attestation under the preceding definitions.

Chaosborders wrote:Your alternative hypothesis requires people with opposing interests to corroborate each other’s story and have absolutely no one who knows the truth tell on them. That is a conspiracy. What makes it even more ironic is that it would be a conspiracy to fabricate a political conspiracy.
Not exactly. It requires people that didn’t witness the event to either fabricate a story or perpetuate/promote one that could be used for their own personal gain. C’mon, you’ve argued along the same lines regarding the resurrection and you know it.

But if you wish to rule out all conspiracy theories as possible historical explanations I’m okay with that. Just let me know.
Goose wrote:I don’t dispute that. But I think it a bit of a stretch to imply [Cicero and Antony] were mortal enemies if that is where you are heading.
Chaosborders wrote:Anthony got him proscribed as an enemy of the state and had him hunted down, killed, and beheaded. Plutarch records him as having his dead body’s hands also cut off because they’d penned the Philippics against Antony. Though it seems a little far-fetched to me, Cassius Dio has a story of Antony’s wife pulling the tongue out of his head and jabbing it repeatedly as a final revenge for his power of speech. I don’t think it’s a stretch.
If these later accounts are true they would support the argument below that Cicero and Antony’s had some type of working relationship which took a serious turn for the worse at some point apparently after the death of Julius Caesar. Which coincidently was around the time the ensuing jockeying for power between Cicero and Antony, accompanied by the subsequent accusations, began.

But more to the point at hand of proscription and mortal enemies. I think you are over simplifying the complex nature of political relationships into a false dichotomy of either friends or mortal enemies. It’s not as clear cut as you would like to believe, where Antony wanted Cicero on the proscription list and this therefore is evidence they were mortal enemies. As you’ve noted Cicero was executed for being declared an enemy of the State and not necessarily for being a personal enemy of Antony alone. This is demonstrated by the fact that Antony wanted more than just Cicero on the list. It is further demonstrated by the fact that Lepidus supports the proscription of Cicero where Augustus opposed it. While commenting on the proscription list created by Augustus, Lepidus, and Antony, Plutarch tells us something we intuitively understand. That men will do almost anything when they are ultimately motivated by power:
Plutarch wrote:So far did anger and fury lead [Antony, Augustus, and Lepidus] to renounce their human sentiments, or rather, they showed that no wild beast is more savage than man when his passion is supplemented by power. (Parallel Lives, Life of Cicero 46:6)
If the quest for power was the real motive for having Cicero on the list it is difficult to properly infer that Cicero’s proscription is evidence Cicero and Antony were mortal enemies of one another.

Moreover, Proscription was also used to replenish the state treasury. Considering there were 200 names on the list the real motive to add Cicero to the list was just as likely because of the potential for economic gain.
Goose wrote:Political rivals and antagonistic toward each other, certainly. But in the end they both had the success of Roman rule as a common objective. However, for the sake of argument I have no problem conceding Cicero and Antony meet a definition of enemy even though they didn’t start out that way.
Chaosborders wrote:They’re recorded as having never been on friendly terms, Cicero wrote an entire series of rather long speeches trying to destroy Antony’s character, and they tried to get each other killed, with Antony being rather more successful at it. They don’t just me a definition of enemy. They meet pretty much every definition of enemy I’ve ever heard of.
Again, I don’t think you are taking into account the complexity of politics. Just because rival politicians attack one another’s character it does not logically follow that they are “enemies� in the sense you seem to want it to mean.

The wiki article you used tacitly supports this idea that Cicero and Antony were not always enemies when it states, “The two men [Cicero and Antony] had never been on friendly terms and their relationship worsened after Cicero made it clear that he felt Antony to be taking unfair liberties in interpreting Caesar's wishes and intentions.� Firstly on this point, it does not logically follow from they had “never been on friendly terms� they were therefore enemies. Secondly on this point, “their relationship worsened� implies they had some type of relationship at some point however strained or unfriendly it may have been. I’ll show this in a moment.

To top it all off the assertion Cicero and Antony were “recorded as having never been on friendly terms� is false. It seems at some point they were on amicable terms before a falling out somewhat like Peter and Paul.

Taken from Cicero’s 2nd Philippic:
in ch. 20 Cicero wrote: You [Antony] came from Gaul to stand for the quæstorship. Dare to say that you went to your own father before you came to me. I had already received Cæsar’s letters, begging me to allow myself to accept of your excuses; and therefore, I did not allow you even to mention thanks. After that, I was treated with respect by you, and you received attentions from me in your canvass for the quæstorship.
Do mortal enemies treat each other with respect and assist one another’s political interests? Sounds to me like they had an amicable working relationship at some point.
in ch. 24 Cicero wrote: When victorious, you [Antony] returned with the legions from Thessaly to Brundusium. There you [Antony] did not put me to death. It was a great kindness! For I confess that you could have done it.
If Antony and Cicero had always been enemies and never been on any type of amicable terms why didn’t Antony kill Cicero when he had the chance? Do real enemies extend mercy and kindness to one another?

Still think Cicero and Antony were never on amicable terms? I think they were at some point and their relationship, though probably never a good one, completely disintegrated when Caesar died. Probably because they began accusing one another in an effort to gain power. It makes sense.

You see, political relationships are complex. The relationship between Cicero and Antony isn’t as simple as you are implying. And I think I’ve shown they weren’t necessarily always enemies in the sense you are implying.

Goose wrote:Here’s the bottom line on enemy attestation. If we are to narrow the definition of enemy and use the criteria for enemy attestation given above then I may not have enemy attestation between Peter and Paul. That’s fine. But you don’t have it either between Cicero and Anthony for two reasons:
1. Both Cicero and Anthony potentially benefit from affirming the assassination of Caesar.
Chaosborders wrote:The silliness of the scenario you present to try and make a case for this is further compounded by Cicero gloating over Caesar’s death. Hard to attack your opponent by accusing them of something you fully admit that you are happy happened. Further, I would really like you to quote where you feel Cicero accused Antony of it.
Calling it “silly� is not a rebuttal. Cicero isn’t gloating as if he killed Caesar, though he seems to think it is better for the Republic that Caesar is dead. Cicero is defending himself against accusations he has heard that he was directly involved in Caesar’s death, probably for fear of reprisal, while still keeping face with his friends by morally supporting the deed. Cicero is the classic politician, playing both sides of the fence. Cicero uses Caesar’s death and subsequent rumours of assassination to attack his opponent, Antony, by also accusing him of being possibly involved in something that will potentially have bad consequences for those thought to be involved. A thing that he thinks will also happen to be beneficial for the Republic – that is Caesar’s death. Why is that so “silly�? Can you actually make a cogent counter argument rather than just pooh-poohing this scenario?
Goose wrote:2. Cicero never explicitly states Caesar was assassinated. Even if we grant that he does, you don’t have anything actually written by Antony for this. Thus, strictly speaking you do not have attestation directly from either Cicero or Anthony.
Chaosborders wrote:This is actually a pretty fair point if Nicolaus didn’t get his information from Antony.
It’s not just a fair point. It’s the bottom line that prevents you from having enemy attestation between Cicero and Antony if we are going to be narrow in our definitions as you seem to want to be with enemy. You don’t have attestation directly from Antony, period. Therefore, strictly speaking, you don’t have enemy attestation for the assassination.
Chaosborders wrote:However, if you stop making that argument then there is no evidence Nicolaus was biased.
Yes there is. And you conceded there is.
Chaosborders wrote:So I either get solid enemy attestation, or I get a source with no apparent reason to be biased in this matter.
As I’ve shown you get neither without also giving the resurrection enemy attestation. Sticking your fingers in your ears, shaking your head, and continually asserting you do doesn’t make it so.
Chaosborders wrote:Even then, though not absolutely certain, internal criticism would suggest Antony’s speech is legitimate. Due to the uncertainty surrounding the speech, I would not call it solid enemy attestation, but it’s more than the resurrection has going for it.
Hardly, as we have and shall see.


Now enemy attestation between Peter and Paul:
Goose wrote:I disagree. I think it would have been in either Peter or Paul’s best interest to deny the resurrection. Firstly, affirming it and Jesus brought persecution. So it would have been in their best interest to deny it like Peter denied knowing Jesus just before Jesus’ trial. They gained nothing by affirming the resurrection itself other than persecution.
Chaosborders wrote:Nothing? They may have been persecuted some by outsiders, but instead of going back to lowly fishermen and such, eking out a living, they became respected leaders who had people selling property to bring them money. I’ll go into more detail later, but they gained a great deal by affirming the resurrection, the vast majority of it good.
That’s right, they gained nothing, except persecution, by affirming the resurrection itself.

Firstly, they didn’t need to become a Christian to become a respected leader where people brought them stuff. They could have done that in their own Jewish community, like Paul did as a Pharisee.

Secondly, the money that was given was distributed to those in the Christian community that were in need (Acts 4:35), not so the apostles could have it for their personal gain. Christians were outsiders and depended upon the Christian community for support. The story of Ananias (Acts 5:1-11) would suggest that the Christian community (including the apostles) feared retribution from God if they tried to keep money that was intended for the work of the church.

Thirdly, they went from eking out a living as fishermen to eking out a living as out casted and persecuted apostles on the run from authorities constantly in need of food and shelter. Not exactly an upward career move. Would you seriously argue for instance that Paul had a better quality of life as a persecuted apostle than as a Pharisee?

Fourthly, even if they did gain anything personally it wasn’t necessarily because they affirmed the resurrection, that is a non-sequitur.

Chaosborders wrote:<…snipped resurrection quotes from 1 Peter for brevity…>
[The resurrection] Seems pretty important to the message to me.
You aren’t addressing my point that Jesus was attracting a somewhat large following and Peter was affirming Jesus as the Christ well BEFORE the resurrection. And no one has said the resurrection wasn’t important. It’s just not as important as you make it out to be by erroneously asserting that “their entire message would collapse� without the resurrection.

I’ll also note you quote only from 1 Peter here. Are you acknowledging 1 Peter as authentically Petrine?
Chaosborders wrote:How exactly do you impress people by saying “Hey, this guy said some things we think you should hear!�
One doesn’t need to rise from the dead in order to gain a devout following of people that listen to what one has to say.

People were believing in Jesus and the message before the resurrection:
At once Jesus reached out his hand, caught him, and said to him, "You who have so little faith, why did you doubt?" As they got into the boat, the wind stopped blowing. Then the men in the boat began to worship Jesus, saying, "You certainly are the Son of God!" (Matthew 14;31-33)
When Jesus had come to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" They said, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, "But who do you say I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!" (Matthew 16:13-16)
Chaosborders wrote: “What happened to him?� “Oh…well, he was brutally killed by the Romans.� Why would anyone listen?
There are a number of reasons why people might believe the message of Christ that have nothing to do with the resurrection:
  • 1. Jesus fulfilled messianic prophecy.
    2. He spoke truth.
    3. He spoke with authority.
    4. He claimed to be the Son of God/Son of Man.
    5. He performed other miracles such as healing the blind and raising Lazarus.
Chaosborders wrote:But if you add on “And then he came back to life!� it has a little more impact.
Of course the message has “a little more impact� with the resurrection, that goes without saying. The resurrection was like the exclamation point (!) on the end, the final vindication of Christ’s claims. But the message would not have been rendered entirely void without the resurrection as you seem to be implying. Thus there was not the absolute need to affirm the resurrection. So it cannot be claimed they needed to affirm the resurrection thus they were biased towards it. The irony is that you are living proof of this. You don’t seem to accept the historicity of the resurrection yet you call yourself a Christian. Presumably you have some faith in Christ and believe at least some aspects of the Christian message. Don’t you?
Chaosborders wrote:Can’t really preach the resurrection if it didn’t happen
Exactly!
Chaosborders wrote:I mean really, how much is left without the resurrection, and why would many people listen?
Dude, thousands of people were listening well before the resurrection!
Chaosborders wrote: Paul and Peter were not enemies by any commonly used definition of the word.
Goose wrote:Yes they were.
Enemy wrote: 1. one that is antagonistic to another; especially : one seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent
Antagonism wrote: 2b:actively expressed opposition or hostility
Chaosborders wrote:[Peter and Paul] had one argument.
It doesn’t appear to be merely an argument Peter and Paul had in Antioch. It appears to be a major argument or falling out where Paul opposed Peter in public. This makes them enemies under the above definitions from Merriam-Webster’s. I’m sorry you don’t like that.
Chaosborders wrote:It may have been over an important issue, but one disagreement does not make two people enemies. Even a handful of disagreements do not make two people enemies. Have you never had an argument with your wife? Would you consider her an enemy?
Clearly you’ve never been married. :lol:
Chaosborders wrote:Would you consider the people on this forum all to be enemies?
Not all of them. But in a matter of speaking, yes, I would consider a few of them to be enemies. Though I certainly would NOT want to see them dead or anything bad happen to them.
Chaosborders wrote:By your definition, most of the friends I’ve ever done any school work with would qualify as enemies. So would all of my family.
Dude, it’s not my definition. It’s Merriam-Webster’s. If you disagree with it you should take it up with them. Further, are you seriously arguing that family members, or friends, could not become enemies because of a heated argument? Unfortunately, it does happen.
Chaosborders wrote:I don’t know anyone who uses the word enemy like that.
Your personal limited experiences of how the word enemy is used is irrelevant. If Merriam-Webster is not enough maybe the words of your favourite scholar will be:
Speaking of the Ebionites Bart Ehrman wrote:Wherever [the Ebionites] name came from, the views of this group are clearly reported in our early records, principally written by their enemies who saw them as heretics. (Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus pg. 155.).
The enemies of the Ebionites were the orthodox church fathers that opposed the Ebionites’ views. They weren’t mortal enemies.

That’s right, Chaosborders favourite scholar who, in Chaosborders own words, is one of the most accredited biblical scholars alive just gave me enemy attestation not only between Peter and Paul by the use of enemy in the sense of opposing one another but also between the Ebionites and Orthodox!
Chaosborders wrote:I highly doubt you yourself actually use the word in such a way that most of the people you know are enemies (unless you just almost never disagree with people….) I’m pretty sure almost no one who doesn’t have severe paranoia actually uses enemy in such a manner. It is not a commonly used definition, and it certainly is not how historians (including apologetic ones) use the word. Please stop equivocating.
It’s irrelevant how you and I use the word in our daily language. And I’m not equivocating as shown by the definitions from Merriam-Webster and the quote from Ehrman I’ve provided. I’ve proven your assertion false and shown Peter and Paul meet a definition of enemy. I’m sorry that you don’t like it.

Further, the way in which you are erroneously trying to narrow the use of “enemy� as it suites your argument is not in line with how historians use “enemy attestation� anyway. Don’t you remember the definitions of enemy attestation YOU provided? Here, allow me to refresh your memory.
quoting Paul L. Maier Chaosborders wrote:The criterion of enemy attestation is satisfied when an antagonistic source expresses agreement regarding a person or event when it is contrary to their best interests to do so.
quoting Mary Jo Sharp Chaosborders wrote:If testimony about an event or person is given by a source who does not sympathize with the person, message or cause that benefits from the affirmation, then there is reason to believe the testimony’s authenticity
Chaosborders wrote:I think you have a slight problem:
They say that Sosthenes also, who wrote to the Corinthians with Paul, was one of them. This is the account of Clement in the fifth book of his Hypotyposes, in which he also says that Cephas was one of the seventy disciples, a man who bore the same name as the apostle Peter, and the one concerning whom Paul says, When Cephas came to Antioch I withstood him to his face.
If you’re going off Eusebius, it seems that it is not even the same Peter.
Even if we assume it was not the main Cephas, i.e. the main apostle Peter, I still have enemy attestation between whoever the other Cephas was and Paul. Both being apostles and affirmers of the resurrection, yet at conflict with one another.

However, the conflict between the key apostles Peter and Paul was well known. I could appeal to Jerome and Augustine to name two if you find Eusebius problematic. In a letter to Jerome challenging his understanding of the conflict between Peter and Paul Augustine clearly reports the conflict was between the key apostles Peter and Paul, not some other lesser known Peter:
Augustine wrote: For if the Apostle Paul did not speak the truth when, finding fault with the Apostle Peter, he said: “If you, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why do you compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews�?
Moreover, if the conflict had been between Paul and some other lesser known Peter (or Cephas I should say) it would likely not have received the attention from later writers trying to explain it.


Now Enemy attestation between Ebionites, Marcionites, and Orthodox:
Chaosborders wrote:Per wiki: “The majority of Church Fathers agree that the Ebionites rejected many of the central Christian views of Jesus such as his pre-existence, divinity, virgin birth, atoning death, and physical resurrection.�
Again, your favourite scholar Bart Ehrman disagrees with wikipedia. He says the Ebionites believed the following regarding Jesus' resurrection:
Bart Ehrman wrote:This [Jesus] did in faithful obedience to his calling; God then honored this sacrifice by raising Jesus from the dead and exalting him up to heaven, where he still waits before returning as the judge of the earth. (Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus pg. 155-156.)
Ehrman seems to think the Ebionites believed in Jesus’ resurrection.

So does Joseph B. Tyson. He writes, “[The Ebionites] believed also in [Jesus’] resurrection and his future return as Messiah.� (Joseph B. Tyson, The New Testament and Early Christianity,1984, p.366)

If Ehrman and Tyson aren’t enough, here are some of the church fathers writing’s against the views of the Ebionites. Ebionites were deemed heretical by the orthodox for certain views such as denying Christ’s divinity but they are not recorded as denying the resurrection of Jesus. Pay special attention to Irenaeus’, Eusebius’, and Jerome’s comments about the Ebionites affirming the resurrection.

I also forgot the Jewish-Christian sect of the Nazarenes (though in fairness the Nazarenes may have been the ancestors of the Ebionites). The sect of the Nazarenes are first mentioned in the Book of Acts ch 24. Jerome, in the Epistle to Augustine, tells us the Nazarenes, who he seems to think had similar beliefs to the Ebionites, affirmed the resurrection:
The adherents to this sect are known commonly as Nazarenes; they believe in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary; and they say that He who suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again, is the same as the one in whom we believe. But while they desire to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither the one nor the other.
As an additional point Jerome tells us in Against the Pelagians that the Gospel according to the Hebrews was used by the Nazarenes (as well as the Ebionites). Jerome also says in De Viris Illustribus that this Gospel affirmed the resurrection of Jesus.
Chaosborders wrote:Per Catholic Encyclopaedia: “Marcion denied the resurrection of the body, "for flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.�
Would you…like to try again?
:roll: Nice out of context try. You missed this part:
Regarding Marcion’s doctrine the Catholic Encyclopaedia wrote: But even in hell Christ overcame the Demiurge by preaching to the spirits in Limbo, and by His Resurrection He founded the true Kingdom of the Good God.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia continues on regarding Marcion’s doctrine:
Marcion denied the resurrection of the body, "for flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God", and denied the second coming of Christ to judge the living and the dead, for the good God, being all goodness, does not punish those who reject Him; He simply leaves them to the Demiurge, who will cast them into everlasting fire.
Marcion rejected the resurrection of the body, meaning the general bodily resurrection of all believers in the end times – it being rooted in Jewish (OT) belief. Marcion accepted the resurrection of Jesus as he accepted Paul’s letters and an edited version of Luke. There’s no record from church fathers that I’m aware of where he is condemned for rejecting the resurrection of Jesus.

So we have multiple opposing enemy groups in the Ebionites (Nazarenes?), the Marcionites, and the orthodox that all affirm Jesus’ resurrection. As a side note here, if you wish to dispute any of these Christian groups affirmed the resurrection then in so doing you strengthen the case that the resurrection was not an essential component for the Christian message to spread and be successful thus reducing bias in affirming it. In other words, it was not absolutely necessary to affirm the resurrection to ensure the success of the religion. By arguing these groups did not affirm the resurrection but rather denied it would also further strengthen the case against your claim that the entire message would “collapse� if the resurrection were denied.

Summary on the criterion of Enemy Attestation..

Again, the bottom line is that you cannot claim enemy attestation between Cicero and Antony without also allowing enemy attestation between Peter and Paul if you are to be fair. In any case even if we allow enemy attestation between Cicero/Antony and Peter/Paul I also have enemy attestation for the resurrection between the Ebionites and orthodox church fathers. This gives the resurrection one more layer of enemy attestation over the assassination. Even if we allow your double standard to be applied and dismiss enemy attestation between Peter/Paul but allow it between Cicero/Antony I still have enemy attestation between the Ebionites and orthodox thus producing a draw between the resurrection and assassination on the criteria of enemy attestation.

CB’s digression...
Goose wrote: Once you use the Bible for your side of the argument not only do you force me to rebut you by using the Bible, but you then give me permission to use it for my side as well as you concede it as an admissible source by using it.
Chaosborders wrote:There are so very many things wrong with this statement:
A) I wasn’t using it for my side of the argument. I referenced it to try and be fair to your side. Would you have preferred me to have simply said Cicero talked about the assassination a year out and then asked what your earliest source was? It would have been a rather underhanded thing to do given your assertion that you weren’t going to use the Bible, knowing that the earliest reference was in 1 Corinthians.
B) You made the argument 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 was actually a creedal passage that went back a lot earlier than the letter as a whole. That’s certainly understandable.
You were trying to show a win on a particular criterion. The point I was arguing was that you were wrong in what you had claimed which was:
in post 23 Chaosborders wrote: [1 Corinthians 15:3-4] is dated to between 53 and 57 AD, at minimum two decades after the event is reported to have occurred. This compared to Cicero mentioning it less than a year after the event. Hands down the assassination has the closer source.
So, to show you were wrong and did not win this criterion based upon your argument I was forced to reference the Bible.
Chaosborders wrote:C) You then immediately use Paul, Mark, and John while also referencing Matthew, Luke, and 1 Peter on a separate point. Those weren’t rebutting my usage at all and even if you made the argument that I had conceded Paul was an admissible source to use by having referenced it, where’d the rest of them come from?
I referenced them in context to the criterion of number of independent sources strengthen the message. The point of me doing so was really to show the landslide of independent literary sources for the resurrection in comparison to the assassination. But I didn’t need to show a landslide on that criterion anyway, my bad. Because you had originally gone as far out as Plutarch for the assassination on that criterion I didn’t need the Bible for my Argument (A) to remain sound and to at least tie on that criterion as I had Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp for the resurrection cancelling out Cicero, Nicolaus and Plutarch for the assassination.

However, in your next post, 25, YOU were the one that FIRST began quoting the Bible (from Matthew and John) to support your argument on Christians and lying. Later in the same post, 25, you went on to attack the historical reliability of the gospel accounts and specifically that of John via historical criticism as though the resurrection were losing to the assassination on some criteria. What was I to do there, just ignore it?
Chaosborders wrote:D) And again, I wasn’t the one who said he wasn’t going to use it. I never expected you to actually abide by that statement, but you shouldn’t make statements like that if you can’t follow through.
I’m sorry you feel I let you down. But in fairness I was perfectly willing to follow through and actually looking forward to doing so as a challenge. And I was following through right up until the point YOU made an erroneous statement regarding the Bible. And let’s not forget YOU first quoted from the Bible to support an argument for one of the criterion and then attacked the reliability of the Bible. Thus, you conceded the Bible as an admissible source by quoting from it for support of an argument and thus forced me to use it to defend my argument.

But considering you never expected me to not use the Bible I’m not sure why you feel it necessary to bring this up. This diversion smacks more of sour grapes than anything else.
Goose wrote:Even then, you wouldn’t fully have that as you had to infer the assassination from Cicero’s writings.
Chaosborders wrote:If there is anyone in the audience who needs me to copy and paste the many paragraphs I have quoted from the 2nd Philippic that refutes this constantly repeated and still inaccurate statement, please let me know.
All you need to do to make this go away is quote where Cicero explicitly states “Caesar was assassinated� as you have erroneously claimed he did on numerous occasions. If you can’t, then you are inferring it. When will you get this?

By the way, Cicero states:
[Brutus and Cassius] are not homicides then.
If they are not homicides then they did not kill Caesar. If they did not kill Caesar then he was not assassinated (at least not by Brutus and Cassius).

Goose

Post #16

Post by Goose »

Round 8 – part 2 (see above for part 1)


Historical Reasoning and Arguments from Probability…
Chaosborders wrote:Using a statistical argument is only fallacious if I use statistics fallaciously.
Which you have done. I’ll point out where as we go along. But don’t feel bad. It’s inevitable. Hence the caution that should be taken when drawing inferences from statistical arguments.
Goose wrote:1. Favourable statistical results can be achieved depending upon how one selects the data.
Chaosborders wrote: Which is why I made a baseline of assassinations from wiki compared to an (over)estimate of ALL rulers that have ever lived. This is despite the fact there were probably far more assassinations in reality than listed on wiki as indicated by the extremely short periods of reign in many countries (such as Russia). I have been more than fair to the resurrection on this issue.
No you haven’t. You fallaciously use a limited data set restricted to leaders which tend to have a higher rate of being assassinated than people from the general populace. Then you compare this to resurrections using a much more expanded data set from the general populace. This gives the superficial appearance that Caesar’s assassination is more statistically probable than Jesus’ resurrection. If we were to look at total assassinations out of total population we get an inherent probability not significantly different from what we would get for resurrections.

Let’s not forget that even using a baseline of rulers of even half what you calculated, at let’s say 100,000 rulers, and over estimating the number of assassinations, at let’s say 1,000, yields a measly probability of 1/100 or 1%. Yet you believe this is enough to make the assassination good enough to be taught as historical even though there are more probable hypotheses. It’s a bit ironic don’t you think?
Chaosborders wrote: Given the surrounding context was discussing statistical matters, I thought it would be understood that I was talking about statistical significance. Apparently my assumption was mistaken and I should have been clearer that the resurrection does not have an inherent probability with a statistical significance distinguishable from zero. In other words, I was really just trying to reiterate that you haven’t actually shown the resurrection to be physically possible.
This is poor reasoning. Very low statistical significance, or whatever you are now calling it, does not allow us to infer the resurrection is physically impossible. You were trying to show that from the general populace over history a resurrection doesn’t have an inherent probability with a statistical significance distinguishable from zero even though it distinguishable from zero in that it is not zero. And I showed by this same reasoning assassinations in the general populace over history have a probability of 1/64.75 million or 1.54x10^-8 which also does not have an inherent probability with a statistical significance distinguishable from zero.
Chaosborders wrote:I think I’ll just point out that if HALF of the assassinations you used were heads of state, perhaps it’s an indication that being a HEAD OF STATE is very RELEVANT INFORMATION regarding a person’s odds of getting assassinated? Why yes, yes I think it does... It doesn’t matter what the odds of any random individual person being assassinated are because Caesar was a head of state, which is a position with demonstrably greater odds of being assassinated.
First off, heads of state aren’t even close to being half of all assassinated people. I counted over 900 assassinated people on the wiki list since 1000BC. You gave the estimate of around 185 heads of state assassinated in history.

But so what if they were half? The fact is assassinations, whether a head of state or prominent person, are improbable. As I’ve shown an assassination at 1/64.75 million or 1.54x10^-8, to use your words, “does not have an inherent probability with a statistical significance distinguishable from zero.� Even assassinations of heads of state themselves aren’t much more probable by your estimations at 1/1081.

Not to mention, the fact they are heads of state also lowers the odds back to be in line with the general populace because they have the means to increase security to such a point that an assassination becomes no more or less probable than any other important person. In other words, the greater the potential for an assassination, the greater the efforts to prevent the assassination. It tends to balance out. Therefore, your attempt here to limit the statistical data to only heads of state for your argument from probability is fallacious. We should be using data for assassinations from the general populace and weigh it against total population, as you’ve done with the resurrection, to get a fair comparison in probabilities. And in so doing we get such incredibly low probabilities for both events that it means nothing to say they do not have a statistical significance distinguishable from zero as neither event does.

Further, I could argue along the same lines anyway. A large portion of the resurrection accounts from around the time of Christ involve Jesus and his disciples. We have two cases where Jesus (not including himself) raised to life a dead person, a young girl and Lazarus. And one more case with Peter (Acts 9:40) for a total of 3 resurrections. By your reasoning this is very RELEVANT INFORMATION and must be taken into consideration. Jesus wasn’t just some random person then. He and his disciples apparently had some greater ability to raise dead people. Therefore, the odds Jesus was raised are greater. In fact, Jesus and his disciples were successful on 3 out of 3 attempts. This gives a probability that Jesus was raised from the dead as 1/1 or 100%.

By narrowing the data selection, as you have done with narrowing the data to heads of state only, we can both achieve more favourable results. Hence the fallacy in arguing what should be taught as historical based upon statistical probability.

Goose wrote:If we apply this same reasoning to the assassination CB must accept that the assassination of Caesar cannot be taught as historical. Not only are there other possible explanations but there are more probable explanations, such as Caesar dying of natural causes, that sufficiently detract from the assassination hypothesis.
Chaosborders wrote:And here the flaw in your reasoning is that Caesar dying of natural causes isn’t the alternative hypothesis. Caesar dying of natural causes AND people claiming he was assassinated AND all evidence suggesting he didn’t die of assassination was completely suppressed and lost to history is the alternative hypothesis.
Okay fine. Now let’s apply your reasoning to the resurrection. Your hypothesis isn’t merely that Jesus didn’t really die. Your hypothesis is that Jesus didn’t die AND people close to him claiming he did AND Jesus himself claiming he did AND all the evidence he didn’t die was completely suppressed and lost to history.
Chaosborders wrote: Dying by natural causes is just one of THREE necessary parts to that. Yes, it itself has a fairly high probability. But if you would like to do the leg work and try and do the research to show how much higher than zero the other two parts are, be my guest. I doubt the second part is significantly higher than the total number of assassinations being used and the third I have no idea how you would even begin to prove actually has a higher chance than zero. Unless you can actually show the third one has a higher incidence than zero (which is going to be rather hard due to its nature).
In other words, we should just rule out conspiracy theories as they are more improbable than an actual improbable event taking place, do you agree?
Chaosborders wrote: The fallacy there is that although the odds of any individual being hit or winning in such a manner are very, very small, there are so many people playing the lottery that the odds of that happening at SOME point are actually quite good.
Actually you are committing the fallacy. On the one hand you understand what should be taught as historical cannot be based upon probability as there are very improbable events that we know are historical. Yet you wish to dismiss the resurrection on an argument from probability. Then you try to allow the assassination on an argument from probability even though it has been shown to be improbable by your own admission and there exist more probable explanations. Further, what you have stated here cuts both ways anyway. The large number of total deaths in history gives good odds that at some point there will be someone who resurrects.
Chaosborders wrote: Further, regarding the lightning strike, it is stated in the wiki that due to the nature of his work and where he lived, the normal odds do not apply to him. It should also be noted that the first four strikes he was in locations that are basically lightning rods.
Okay so that would increase the odds of Roy Sullivan being struck by lightning 7 times. But nowhere near enough to give it a statistical significance distinguishable from zero. Even if we rule out the first four strikes it’s about a 1/2.44x10^11 chance of being struck the remaining 3 times. Not to mention we could come up with other more probable explanations. Thus by your standards to accept Roy Sullivan’s story as having a probability great enough to be taught as historical you must engage in the fallacy of Special Pleading.
Chaosborders wrote: Even ignoring that, you seem to be engaging in the same anachronistic reasoning that you argued earlier I shouldn’t use to show the absurd consequences of your own argument.
That’s because we were looking at evidentiary standards and expectations. And those are different for ancient events for obvious reasons. You are now trying to argue from probability using modern stats. I’m doing the same thing. If you would rather stick to ancient stats let me know.
Chaosborders wrote: If it was claimed in an ancient document that someone had been hit by lightning seven times, the odds of it being considered historically factual are exceedingly small.
But the dismissal, then, of that claim as historical would not be based upon objective historical reasoning or methodology. The dismissal would be because one just didn’t personally believe it.
Chaosborders wrote: As tempted as I am to show how slight the odds of a love triangle actually ending in violence are and then add in the clause of “all evidence of the truth was suppressed� to it, none of that really matters because if a woman killed him it’s still an assassination. The reasons aren’t relevant.
Yes they are relevant. If Brutus killed Caesar because he got into an argument with him over a woman and it ended in bloodshed, then Caesar wasn’t assassinated as it wouldn’t have been premeditated.

Further, the love triangle hypothesis is possible and thus it is a candidate as a potential explanation. You must refute it as you expect me to refute all the alternate hypotheses for the resurrection as incredibly improbable as they may seem. Lastly, you basically dodged my main point here anyway which was that you dismissed my alternate hypothesis purely by appealing to Cicero.
Chaosborders wrote: Your first alternative hypothesis is basically a conspiracy theory.
And so are yours for the resurrection.
Chaosborders wrote: It requires someone to make up the story of the assassination, and then get everyone in a position to know the truth to go along with it.
Ditto for alternate resurrection hypotheses. Let’s not forget that your alternate resurrection hypotheses have similar dynamics as they require someone to make up the story of the resurrection, and then get everyone in a position to know the truth to go along with it too. The irony of course is the more you argue against the probability of alternate assassination hypotheses for these reasons you also inadvertently argue against the probability of alternate resurrection hypotheses. You make my job easier. Thank you.
Chaosborders wrote: It’s up to you to show that your alternative hypothesis actually has a chance of happening even remotely equivalent to the chance of him just being assassinated.
I’ll do this in more detail later in this round. But quickly, death by natural causes is the number one cause of death for leaders and the general populace. Even taking the stats of Roman Emperors natural causes is the leading cause of death. Further, I’ve already pointed out how you argued for the ease and frequency by which people lie.
Chaosborders wrote: If you think you can do that, go ahead, but simply dismissing mine when I’ve actually put in the leg work to construct some odds doesn’t speak well of your position.
In fairness, I didn’t just out right dismiss your hypothesis. I refuted it by appealing to the evidence because you refuted mine the same way. It is unfortunate you feel upset about that but I don’t think you have a basis to grumble about it now.
Chaosborders wrote: You haven’t shown your alternative hypotheses for the assassination are even remotely close to that of an actual assassination.
Actually, you need to show that an assassination is more probable than dying of natural causes. Using this list we get the following stats about how Roman Emperors died…
[mrow]Manner of death[mcol]number of deaths[row] natural causes [col]37 [row] assassination [col]15 [row] murdered[col]11 [row] unknown [col]10 [row]in battle[col]8 [row] suicide [col]6 [row]executed[col]6[row]Total[col]93
Even though Romans apparently had a propensity to assassinate their leaders as compared to other cultures the leading cause of death, by a fairly large margin, of Roman Emperors was still natural causes. Even if we grant every murdered Emperor as an assassination the total of assassination is 26 and still less than death from natural causes. Heck, even if we lump in the unknowns into the assassination pool it still not more than death by natural causes. Thus the most probable way that Julius Caesar died was due to natural causes, not assassination. You’ve already made the case for the high probability of lying.
Chaosborders wrote: You haven’t countered my own alternative hypotheses, which since you haven’t actually proven the resurrection is even POSSIBLE, (and sadly may not even be able to), all have a greater probability.
But you haven’t shown Julius Caesar’s assassination is even possible either. And thus my other explanations that are shown to be possible all have an inherently greater probability using your reasoning.
Chaosborders wrote: All you’ve done is try to and indicate that I’m using faulty statistics BY USING FAULTY STATISTICS.
I’ve done much more than that. I’ve shown there are very improbable events that we know to be historical. Your reasoning would fail these events as being worthy of being taught as historical even though they are historical. Thus your reasoning is faulty. Further, I’ve shown an assassination is statistically improbable and does not have a statistical significance distinguishable from zero. I’ve further shown there are other hypothesis that have greater probability. Yet you argue that the assassination should be taught as historical where the resurrection should not. Thus you engage in Special Pleading. I’ve shown your reasoning faulty and exposed your bias.
Chaosborders wrote:And in reality, I’m sure some of my numbers are inaccurate because I’ve tried to bias it as much in favor of the resurrection and against the assassination as possible without being flat out wrong just in case my calculations are faulty so as to illustrate that even biased in such a way the odds of someone being assassinated are STILL far, far greater than of someone coming back to life in absence of medical assistance (even when ignoring the confounding variables that make it impossible to say that it is even possible at all). If you have an issue with any particular calculation, please explain and we can work towards a more accurate one (though I strongly suspect any more accurate ones will only further hurt your position).
You can fudge the stats in favour of assassinations as much as you want to. But adding a few dozen assassinations here or a couple hundred there is fruitless. You need to increase assassinations by orders of magnitude to even began to make a case that they are probable or that they have a statistical significance distinguishable from zero.

Let me demonstrate. Even if you used half your original estimate of 200,000 total leaders in history, you get 100,000. And even if you managed to somehow find 1,000 assassinated leaders (increased from your original estimate of 185) you are still only at a pathetic 1% probability of an assassination. Heck, even if you somehow managed to find 10,000 assassinated leaders that gives you a 10% probability and you would still not have an inherent probability that we would call probable.
Chaosborders wrote:So no, it’s not game, set, and match for the resurrection. There’s a thread Zzyzx wrote that would be a good read before making more comments like this….
You entirely miss the point of my comment. If you are merely going to appeal to the Cicero, a biased source reporting hearsay, as an open and shut case for the assassination then I can do the same thing for the resurrection. Hence game, set, and match for the resurrection…
Chaosborders wrote:And now you’re engaging in the very first statistical fallacy you pointed out was possible. I used deaths in the states because most of the ‘resurrections’ came from there and they keep very good death records.
Using the same countries and time frame as for the Lazarus Phenomena (since 1982) we have zero recorded assassinations and 25 resurrections. Resurrections have a better probability given these data parameters. There was no fallacy on my part.
Chaosborders wrote:As such, it gave the resurrections the highest odds I reasonably could. However, assassination of heads of state occur all over the world, and records of the deaths of heads of state are kept worldwide. It would have been completely illogical to use just the U.S. to establish an assassination rate of the heads of state.
Sure, if you expand the parameters beyond the countries where there have been Lazarus cases to the whole world since 1982 you then have some cases of assassinations. But then I have much more resurrections cases than 25 if we expand the data parameters to the whole world. I have 100 claimed resurrections from one ministry in one country alone.
Chaosborders wrote:>>>Snip irrelevant rant on how low the odds of being assassinated are<<<
Yes, they are low. They are also clearly higher than zero.
The probability of resurrections are higher than zero too my friend. You just don’t personally think they are high enough to be significantly distinguishable from zero. Which is odd considering they are distinguishable from zero in that they are not zero. But I suppose strictly speaking you are correct. Assassinations are “higher� than zero, to the tune of a generously high 1% probability. :lol:
Chaosborders wrote:My poor word choice may have let you make the faulty interpretation that I meant anything with odds not much higher than zero shouldn’t ever be taught as historical, but that is not what I meant. Let me be clearer.
You call it clarification, but it appears to be back pedaling. You know if you had meant that then that would mean assassinations, lightning strikes, lottery winners and a whole host of other things could not be taught as historical even though we know they are historical.
Chaosborders wrote: You have failed to show a resurrection without modern medical assistance has a probability statistically distinguishable from ZERO.
And you have failed to show an assassination that parallels Caesar’s has a probability statistically distinguishable from ZERO. At any rate, all I need is one case and it becomes “statistically distinguishable from zero� in that it is no longer zero. And I provided multiple modern cases of this already in my last post and more in this one.
Chaosborders wrote: As such, all I have to do is show that there are alternative hypotheses whose component parts are all distinguishable from zero. Which I have done. And will do more.
And I’ve done the same for the assassination.
Chaosborders wrote: I have also shown that the odds of an assassination are higher than zero, which raises the bar and means you have to show the odds of your own alternative hypotheses are higher.
Yeah, you raised the bar to what was it again? Oh yes, a whopping 1/1081. :lol: Even if you got your odds up to 1/100 my alternate hypothesis for the assassination blow the doors off that.
The big pink elephant in your room is that your argument also fails Caesar’s assassination as being able to be taught as historical…
Chaosborders wrote:How someone died affects the odds of him getting back up. Whether there was modern medical intervention affects the odds of them getting back up. Whether the person could actually survive more than a few minutes affects the odds of it actually explaining any of the stories dealing with the resurrection. These are highly relevant details.
I’m not disputing that. But the details surrounding an alleged assassination also affect the odds of whether that person was not only actually killed but whether they were killed in the in manner reported. Thus affecting whether it can even be considered an assassination in the first place. Why on earth you feel you are exempt from this regarding Caesar’s death, if the resurrection isn’t, is beyond me.
Chaosborders wrote:What Caesar’s occupation was affects the odds of assassination. But how he was killed doesn’t matter because it was beyond the scope of the debate. I don’t care if he was stabbed. Once established that he was assassinated, stabbing becomes very likely, but if he died some other way it really doesn’t matter regarding the scope of the debate. So it’s irrelevant. So is why he was killed, who killed him, where it happened, and why body guards didn’t stop them from doing it. If he was killed in his bedroom by a lover with brick it’d still meet the definition of assassination. Thus, though some of these details are likely, none of them are actually relevant.
This is just horrible, horrible reasoning. You have NOT established Caesar was assassinated, that’s the whole point of the debate by comparison! You are assuming he was assassinated thus you Beg the Question. It would be like me arguing that once it is established Jesus rose from the dead all the surrounding details are likely or irrelevant. Please tell me you see the obvious circularity in your reasoning!

The manner of killing directly affects the probability of the person having actually been killed. Stop and think about this logically for a moment. Think about all the inherent additionally difficulties associated with repeatedly stabbing someone. In a knife attack the victim has an opportunity to resist and even fight back making success less likely. Considering Caesar was a General in the military it’s reasonable to assume he may have had a little combat experience if not at least some training on how to defend himself. The victim has greater opportunity to escape in a stabbing – they could escape once they see the knife or during the attempt itself. The victim may be wearing heaving clothing making lethal penetration more difficult. Add to this the difficulty in penetrating muscle and bone with a knife. The unsettling images and sounds associated with getting up close and personal with a person being brutally stabbed might be significant enough to prevent any rational personal from not only attempting a stabbing in the first place but following through with it once it began.

Then there is the whole issue of the sheer number of people involved in Caesar’s assassination. Setting aside the immense difficulty in getting that many people on board with an assassination in the first place there is also an exponential increase in the probability that someone would confide in Caesar the details of the plot with every person added.

And don’t even get me started on having to get past body guards or fend them off while also trying to stab the victim.

There are a number of factors involved in a stabbing that make an assassination by stabbing much more difficult and thus inherently much more improbable.

Chaosborders wrote:So no, I do not feel the need to restrict the odds of assassination with details that are totally irrelevant to whether or not he actually was. If you would like to have a debate with someone that encompasses being stabbed to death by politically motivated senators in the main meeting place of the government while the body guards look on, you can go find someone willing to defend that position.
But the details aren’t irrelevant for the assassination of Caesar if the details for Jesus’ resurrection are relevant. If the details aren’t irrelevant then the only relevant detail is that Jesus was dead. I also do not in this case need to defend the position that it is possible to return from the dead without medical assistance or time frames of death either. I only need to defend the position that it is possible to return from the dead. You can’t escape this without engaging in a double standard.
Goose wrote:Which would mean 70 out of the 93 Emperors died from something other than assassination. Thus the probability is greater that a Roman Emperor would die from something other than an assassination. This diminishes the assassination hypothesis.
Chaosborders wrote:Yes, now you just have to show the odds of people making up an assassination story, and the chances that the real truth will get buried, and you’ll be able to put together an actual alternative hypothesis. Being able to figure out the chances of the component parts shouldn’t be that hard if you really think the hypothesis as a whole has better odds than an actual assassination.
It’s not that hard. Component one is that death by natural causes is more probable than assassination. You’ve conceded that one. Component two is that people lie, you’ve spent enough time arguing for this in this thread for you to accept the probability of that component. The real truth doesn’t have to be buried. It only needs to be lost to us. Again, I’ll go into more detail later in this round.

Chaosborders wrote:Really, an argument from ignorance is what you’re going with here?
It’s not an argument from ignorance. Matthew 27 just says “many� were raised. The point being there are potentially many more resurrections from antiquity than what you have counted.
Chaosborders wrote:Even for the continued sake of argument, pretending that any other dead people were actually resurrected here at all, one would think a substantial zombie hoard descending upon Jerusalem would get more mention than a couple lines by one author. That being said, this is a perfect example of what the historical method is designed to exclude. If one chooses to have faith that God raised the dead, that is fine, but without hypothesizing God’s interference (which secular academic history cannot do), this is an absolutely ridiculous story and under your form of argument it could easily be taught as literally historically factual.
If it shouldn’t be taught as historical it should be excluded because it doesn’t pass a reasonable historical method. Not because someone doesn’t believe it could happen.

At any rate, to stay on point here I could raise the same evidentiary objections regarding ancient claims of assassinations being mentioned by only a few later writers. You don’t want to have to prove assassinations from antiquity to make it seem more probable that Caesar was assassinated as that was a apparently a common fate of Emperors. That’s fine. Then I shouldn’t have to prove resurrection accounts from antiquity either.
Chaosborders wrote:Every commentary I’ve read on this book has this as a vision, not a literal event. Why would we assume there was an actual army of the dead? And do you not understand how absurd that sounds in the context of academic history?
How Ezekiel 37:1-14 sounds to you is irrelevant though I will concede this particular passage in Ezekiel seems to be in the context of a vision. So I’ll withdraw it as evidence.
Chaosborders wrote:And for the sake of argument I was willing to humor you and give you some resurrections you don’t have to prove, but I’m going to have to ask you at least provide an actual number mentioned. You can’t use arguments from ignorance and a vision to get you millions of resurrections. That is absolutely ridiculous.
You don’t have to worry about humouring me. The cold hard reality is there aren’t that many assassinations OR resurrections throughout history. They are both rare events. If you don’t have to prove the assassination accounts you use as support I shouldn’t have to prove the resurrection accounts.

Chaosborders wrote:Matthew chapter 27: 62-64 states:
62 The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63 “Sir,� they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.�
This would be enemy attestation that Jesus predicted his own death and time of resurrection.
Chaosborders wrote:Whether these conversations actually happened cannot be taken for granted, but it is quite clear from Matthew that the stories circulating among the Jews was that the disciples had come and stolen the body then told people he had been raised from the dead. This is a denial [of the resurrection].
Not necessarily. Think about this logically. The chronology of events here places the Jews devising their plan with the guards around the very same moment the women who discovered the empty tomb were on their way to tell the disciples.
Matthew wrote: So [the women] quickly left the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" They went up to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Stop being afraid! Go and tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and there they will see me." While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and told the high priests all that had happened. So they met with the elders and agreed on a plan to give the soldiers a large amount of money. They said, "Say that his disciples came at night and stole him while you were sleeping. If this is reported to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. This story has been spread among the Jews to this day.
(Matthew 28:8-15)
It’s too early for actual reports to have even been circulating that Jesus had been seen alive. If the Jews are denying the resurrection in Matthew 28 they are denying it before the disciples have even seen the risen Jesus and thus denying it before it has even been claimed to have happened by the followers of Jesus. In other words, how can one be thought to be denying a claim when it is done a priori before that actual claim has even been made and the evidence reviewed?
Chaosborders wrote:It’s not enemy attestation for the same reason that Cicero by himself doesn’t give us enemy attestation from Antony. The Jews could have just been being contrary without even believing there was an empty tomb and the writer of Matthew could have been distorting their words.
If this is true then you lose the only potential source of anyone denying the resurrection during the time, not that you had it to begin with though.

Additionally, Brutus while addressing Antony sometime after Caesar’s death is reported to have said, “That we have from the beginning fixed our eyes on peace.� Was Brutus denying the assassination?
Chaosborders wrote:The only way you get enemy attestation for the empty tomb from this is if I flat out get enemy attestation for the assassination from Cicero. I don’t suggest going this route since not only would it help my position more than yours, it would be a misapplication of enemy attestation on both sides.
No problem, I can sacrifice enemy attestation here as I don’t need it to establish the empty tomb. But even if we grant enemy attestation here for the empty tomb and in so doing also grant it for the assassination the resurrection would still win on enemy attestation. The resurrection has it between the individuals Peter and Paul and the groups of the Ebionites and orthodox. Thus, on enemy attestation the resurrection out numbers the assassination two counts to one.

Goose

Post #17

Post by Goose »

Round 8 – part 3 (see above for parts 1 and 2)

Historical Reasoning Criteria 1-7:

Chaosborders wrote:Which is rather what makes it its own Red Herring. Jesus had no medical intervention applied.
So what? And none of your assassinations were by stabbing.
Chaosborders wrote:Which is unfortunate given this adds a huge confounding variable that makes it impossible to show any of these people would have come back to life in absence of modern medical intervention.
This is patently false as I’ve shown with some cases.

I would also like to address a claim you previously made that I didn’t catch the first time. You claimed “each and every case of Lazarus syndrome came after a minimum of CPR being given.� Please document this because this case for instance doesn’t have any mention of CPR. Not to mention her return to life was about a day later. If the return to life had had anything to do with the cessation of CPR or ventilation she would have probably returned to life within a few minutes.

Additionally, you acknowledge the impossible standard created. A standard that can’t even be met in principle. On the one hand you won’t accept stories like this because by your own admission the objections would be the same as the article which states, “Attempts to document these “miracles� have not yielded conclusive results. In remote, rural areas [of Arica] it is not always clear if a person who was supposedly resurrected was really dead, or just deathly ill – perhaps in a coma.� So I give cases of resurrections where the person was pronounced dead by trained medical professionals (to help ensure we know they were in fact dead) and subsequently returned to life spontaneously – i.e. the Lazarus Phenomena. But then that is not acceptable because, well, they involve medical professionals which inherently by definition brings some type of medical intervention as there are medical professionals involved.

Here’s how it usually goes. The general belief held by sceptics usually starts with the circular assumption that dead people always stay dead. Then cases are given where a person is reported as dead but returns to life. These are typically dismissed by the sceptic. Why? Because, as you have done, it is objected the person may not really have been dead. Why is that objection raised? Because dead people stay dead (it’s circular). However, in anticipation of this objection I have provided documented medical cases of people being pronounced dead by trained medical personnel (to medically verify death) and then spontaneously returning to life. But this is not acceptable to you because there is medical intervention, however minimal it may have been, at some point and thus it is concluded they came back to life only because of the medical intervention because, well, dead people always stay dead unless there is medical intervention. The bar is then raised and the argument becomes dead people stay dead unless there is medical intervention. But I can’t falsify this argument using your standards because in order to verify death (overcoming the first objection) you will probably demand nothing less than declaration of death from trained medical personnel using modern medical equipment. But this brings by definition at least a minimum of some medical intervention even if it is as minimal as laying in a hospital bed so a trained medical person can make an assessment of death. Thus you create a circular and non-falsifiable argument based on a personal standard that can’t even be met in principle. This shows the irrationality of your position.
Chaosborders wrote:The prevailing medical opinion is that without the modern medical intervention, those people would not have come back to life.
The facts seem to contradict opinion then. These folks returned to life spontaneously after medical intervention ceased. They didn’t return to life because of medical intervention.
Chaosborders wrote: You can try and cast dispersions on that based on their word choice (which any researcher that isn’t overzealous really ought to use), but if you actually read the medical literature in depth, the opinion is quite solid. More than solid enough that you can’t just ignore the confounding variable and pretend it doesn’t exist.
No, the opinion is not solid. That’s the problem. They don’t really know what causes the Lazarus Phenomena. If you think the medical community has something more solid than what is believed to cause the Lazarus Phenomena I’d like to see it. The fact is no one really knows what causes it.

Further, one of the articles you cited based their opinions upon only 89 cases that were, “retrospectively reviewed� in 1996. The final conclusion drawn was, “Rapid ventilation of patients during cardiopulmonary resuscitation [CPR] should be avoided. Simply discontinuing ventilation transiently (for 10 to 30 seconds) during cardiopulmonary resuscitation, while observing the patient for the return of circulation, should be considered when electromechanical dissociation is present.� In other words, all that is generally required to prevent death from CPR or ventilation is avoiding rapid ventilation and discontinuing ventilation for a few seconds during CPR. This was known in 1996, if not earlier. Have there been Lazarus cases since then involving CPR? Yes there have. So in cases after 1996 it would be erroneous to necessarily conclude that it was CPR or ventilation that “killed� them and then the cessation of CPR which caused them to return to life.
Chaosborders wrote:It may not seem fair, but the simple fact is that it has not and probably cannot be shown that is possible for someone to come back to life in absence of modern medical intervention.
False. Here and here.
Chaosborders wrote:This is in contrast with assassinations, which have been shown to occur.
Sure assassinations, generally speaking, have been shown to occur just as resurrections. What you haven’t done is even come close to showing that an assassination like Caesar’s has been shown to occur. After all the bluster I’m still waiting… :whistle:
Chaosborders wrote:Maybe not super often, but certainly with odds that have a statistical significance easily distinguishable from zero.
�Easily distinguishable from zero�? Are you serious? You have to go pretty far down a line of zeros before assassinations become easily distinguishable from zero. :lol:
Chaosborders wrote:But by no indication would they have without the CPR (or in some cases adrenal shots or other drugs). And by no indication did CPR nor modern drugs exist back when Jesus lived.
This just simply is not true. I’ve provided at least two cases where there was no CPR or drugs mentioned and then death and then subsequent return to life.
Chaosborders wrote:Further, it does matter what finally did them in because not one of them died from any of the physically traumatic causes that someone can die from because of a crucifixion. If the only people coming back to life at all are those dying from very specific causes, the odds of Jesus just happening to die from those causes while being crucified also have to be factored in. That can probably be done. It can maybe even be shown that crucifixion would increase the odds of those specific causes. Unfortunately, even if you did that, you would still have to deal with the confounding variable of the modern medical treatment.
Daniel Ekechukwu died by trauma and returned to life without any medical help before or after.
Chaosborders wrote:And I don’t dispute it. But these cases don’t even begin to prove that a resurrection like Jesus’ is actually possible.
Of course they don’t fully establish Jesus’ resurrection because Jesus’ resurrection is unique. But then every resurrection is unique in some way as is every assassination. So likewise with the assassination of Caesar and the cases of assassinations you provided.
Chaosborders wrote:I’m naturally not satisfied with that [case of a resurrection] because of the points they raise in that very article.
Attempts to document these “miracles� have not yielded conclusive results. In remote, rural areas it is not always clear if a person who was supposedly resurrected was really dead, or just deathly ill – perhaps in a coma.
Can you show the man wasn’t really dead without the circular assumption that he wasn’t dead?
there can be no doubt that many false teachers and charlatans have claimed outlandish miracles as a part of their ministry.
I have no doubt that false teachers and charlatans have claimed stuff including that a person was not really dead when they were.
Chaosborders wrote:The confounding variable of medical intervention is indeed unfortunate, but no unbiased academic researcher can simply ignore it. Even if they did ignore it, the factors of physical trauma and the need to live long enough without medical intervention for the resurrection to explain any of the stories supposedly stemming from it would still be 1.95882453e-16 even if one accepted Zach Dunlap and Val Thomas as remotely comparable examples and ignored all of the confounding variables in their own cases. I don’t think you can even show any of the alternative hypotheses to have lower odds than that.
But those cases, and others I’ve given, move us in the direction of Jesus’ resurrection being at least possible. Again, you are switching back and forth between possibility and probability.
Chaosborders wrote:Which is why I’m willing to overlook the medical care Val Thomas received since there is no indication that she would have immediately dropped dead again without it (though whether that is because she genuinely didn’t need it or because of shoddy reporting is questionable). However, in the Lazarus syndrome cases, it is quite clear additional care was necessary and they were in no condition to actually move or talk or anything else the resurrected Jesus was reported to have done.
I would agree there was post resurrection medical care for some and maybe even most of the Lazarus cases. Where are you getting this notion that all required serious post resurrection medical care? Please back this assertion with documentation.
Goose wrote:In each case the medical treatment had ceased once they were pronounced dead. Then they came back to life spontaneously in the absence of active medical assistance attempting to bring them back from the dead. Medical treatment leading up to death and medical treatment after a resurrection are inherently unavoidable in a medical facility. How would I show a verifiable medical case taking place in a medical facility where there is equipment used to determine death and medical personal qualified to pronounce death without at least having some medical intervention taking place? I can’t even in principle meet this standard. It is a paradox.
Chaosborders wrote:Which is unfortunate, but not my problem.
Actually it is your problem because you have created it as you are demanding this level of proof by questioning whether someone was really dead if they return to life.
Chaosborders wrote:A resurrection like Jesus’ cannot be shown to be possible without modern medical intervention.
Don’t you see the absurdity in your statement here? It’s difficult to show a resurrection like Jesus’ because it’s pretty hard to find cases of death by crucifixion anymore. But Daniel Ekechukwu did die by trauma. Can you show a modern assassination that parallels Caesar’s to show that his assassination was possible? It is only fair.
Chaosborders wrote:Whether this is because it is genuinely impossible or because of the confounding variables cannot be determined. Because of this uncertainty, it cannot be said that the likelihood of it occurring is actually greater than any of the alternative hypotheses. As a result, it cannot be stated with even the slightest certainty that Jesus actually resurrected from the dead. And because it cannot be stated as having happened with near certainty, it should not be taught as a literally factual event in secular history classes.
So an event must be near certain now to be taught as historical? Really? Please prove with near certainty Caesar’s assassination as opposed to him dying of natural causes.
Chaosborders wrote:Why would I use the same countries for the assassination? All of the resurrections listed took place in the countries I used except for the country whose population I threw out because they don’t keep good death records. I could have just used the population of the entire planet, but I felt that wouldn’t be fair to the ‘resurrections’. This was the very highest probability I could fairly give to the resurrection. But records of the deaths of heads of state are kept worldwide and assassination records come from worldwide. I have no reason of any kind to restrict assassinations just to countries where cases of Lazarus syndrome have been recorded. Your attempt to do so in order to diminish the assassination is a classic example of the very first statistical fallacy you pointed out is possible.
We keep the countries from which we derive data for assassinations and resurrections the same to keep the data parameters the same giving a fair comparison. I’ve restricted my data primarily to Lazarus Cases because they are generally only cases that are documented in highly developed countries. Some cases that of resurrections reported in lower developed countries may not be allowed because of poor standards for documentation, poor education levels, and increased levels of corruption and so on. The same could be said for assassinations reported in those same countries.

The irony of course is that you are the one abusing stats by expanding and contracting the data parameters when it helps your argument.
Chaosborders wrote:In certain countries, yes that is probably true. But the recorded probability in the Roman Empire is 25% not even including Caesar. If I were going to pick a single country, I’d pick the one he was actually ruler of….
See what I mean? Now you move from appealing to American Presidents to appealing to Roman Emperors. Setting aside the fact these “assassinations� of Roman Emperors suffer all the same evidentiary problems as Julius Caesar does you miss the point. Which is that you are only selecting data that gives a superficial appearance that Caesar was probably assassinated. You are drawing stats from countries where assassinations are reported more often as evidence that Caesar was probably assassinated while ignoring the fact that some countries report zero assassinations showing that assassinations are not even possible let alone probable. It’s the very fallacy I had written about.

You are further ignoring that 40% of the Emperors died of natural causes as compared to assassinations at 25% (which is a generous estimate for assassinations). Even in the Roman Empire where reports of assassinated Emperors seemed more common it was statistically more probable that an Emperor would die by natural causes than assassination.
Goose wrote:Okay, let’s look at those assassinations. The first thing I noticed in reviewing each case is not one of your assassinations presented even remotely parallels Caesar’s in the details. You’ve got plane crashes, rockets, suicide bombers, guns and so on.
Chaosborders wrote:And if Caesar’s method of assassination mattered that would be a problem.
But it does matter for a whole host of reasons.
Chaosborders wrote:The only thing particularly relevant though is “Are heads of state assassinated at a higher rate than non-heads of state?�
All that would show is that the probability of a head of state being assassinated is greater than non heads of state. In itself it doesn’t show Caesar’s assassination to be probable or more probable than a resurrection. Applying this same reasoning to the resurrection all I need to do is narrow the data as you have done. The only thing particularly relevant then is Do resurrections associated with Jesus occur at a higher rate than resurrections not associated with Jesus? Which they do.
Chaosborders wrote:The case can certainly be made that the advent of modern weapons has potentially made it easier to assassinate people, which is why I don’t rely on the 1% rate I calculated for modern day assassinations of heads of state and prefer the much smaller baseline rate.
Here you acknowledge that more modern methods of assassination make it easier. If modern methods make it easier, then ancient methods (i.e. stabbing) make it more difficult. If stabbing is more difficult then it inherently has a lower probability of success.
Chaosborders wrote: However, regardless of the method the answers to the questions are still “Yes, heads of state are assassinated much more often than other people and at much, much higher rate than people coming back to life even just using your far looser than necessary criteria of merely occurring once medical intervention has ceased.�
Firstly, this all depends on how one selects the data and how loose the definition of assassination one uses. Since 1982 there have been 25 documented cases of people spontaneously returning to life after being dead. There wasn’t a single assassination of a head of state from the same countries in the same time frame. Though the resurrection rate in these countries was low, the assassination rate in these same countries was zero with these data parameters. It’s not until you expand the data parameters out to a global scene that you have cases of assassinations. But then this gives me many more resurrection cases to work with as well. Secondly, even if assassinations occur at a higher rate than resurrections, assassinations of heads of state have been shown to be very improbable at 1/1081. Though distinguishable from zero they do not have a statistical significance distinguishable from zero. Assassinations on a general populace level are even more improbable. Thus the assassination of Caesar cannot be taught as historical and neither can assassinations in general. To argue otherwise is Special Pleading.
Goose wrote:The second thing I noticed is that there aren’t that many at a total of about 11 as compared to 25 cases of the Lazarus Phenomenon over the same time frame.
Chaosborders wrote:It was 12 leaders and was out of about 1200 leaders. Even if you dispute a few of them, that’s no excuse for trying to use the wrong population. Pointing out the potential abuses of statistics does not give you a license to flagrantly abuse them yourself. If you were going just by any people assassinated you have 38 in Columbia alone in the first 8 months of 2008.
This little lecture is priceless considering the way in which you’ve been abusing statistical arguments yourself. But I did not abuse stats here on this point anyway. There were about a dozen reported assassinations of heads of state globally since 1982. There were 25 cases of resurrections in the same time frame (not on a global level). Expressed as a real number, resurrections outnumber assassinations and thus as events occur more often. What exactly did you think was being abused here? By the way I’ve got 100 reported resurrections by one ministry alone in Mozambique.
Goose wrote:1. The cause of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s plane crash remains a mystery. It could have just been an accident. I dispute this as a legitimate assassination.
Chaosborders wrote:Fair enough.
This is a problem for the assassination hypothesis. This shows that there are assassination claims, even in modern history, that cannot rightly be considered an assassination. This makes one wonder how many other assassination claims throughout history were not necessarily legitimate assassinations either.

Chaosborders wrote:[Rajiv Gandhi] was the target and it would still have met the definition of assassination even if he hadn’t been the main target.
You don’t know he was the real intended target. You are inferring he was.
Chaosborders wrote:Considering the dispute centers around who assassinated him, not on whether he was assassinated, it’s just as well you don’t dispute [Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination].
That’s because I was being generous. If you don’t know for sure who killed him how can you know why he was killed? If you don’t know why he was killed how can you know it was an assassination and not just an accident of some type? How do you know the killer was of sound mind? If the killer was not of sound mind is it really premeditated murder? If it is not premeditated murder can it really be called an assassination?
Chaosborders wrote:They shot down the presidential jet. It doesn’t matter who it was, that was an assassination. Let’s look at the definition of assassination again since this seems to be an ongoing issue.
But you don’t know for sure whether the real intended target was Juvénal Habyarimana or Cyprien Ntaryamira therefore the other one may simply have been a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time – hardly an assassination. Not to mention this “assassination� involving jets and missiles is about as far removed as one can get from the details surrounding Caesar.
Chaosborders wrote:Per Wiki: An assassination is the murder of a prominent or public figure, usually by surprise attack and for political purposes.
Per Merriam Webster: To murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons.
Per Dictionary.com: To kill suddenly or secretively, esp. a politically prominent person; murder premeditatedly and treacherously.
Per Wordnetweb.princeton.edu: Murder of a public figure by surprise attack
Per YourDictionary.com: To murder (esp. a politically important or prominent person) by surprise attack, usually for payment or from zealous belief
Per British Postal Museum: A murder of someone who is often prominent politically
The underlying common denominator in all of these definitions is the premeditation to murder a specific prominent person. If one were to kill President Obama accidentally or as collateral damage of another intended target it cannot rightly be considered an assassination. If you cannot prove the intended victim was the political figure in question you cannot rightly call it an assassination. This is why I reject many of the alleged assassinations you’ve provided as supporting the probability of Caesar’s assassination. Not to mention not a single one is even remotely anything like Caesar’s. You still have not even come close to showing his assassination possible let alone probable.
Chaosborders wrote:None of those definitions require the person to have been specifically targeted,
Yes they do. That’s what makes it premeditated. That’s what makes it an assassination and not something else.
Chaosborders wrote:nor do they require the reasons to have been political, and half of them don’t even absolutely require the victim to have been politically important. But regarding all of them, a head of state who was murdered was assassinated. End of story.
Not quite. Firstly, if you cannot prove the leader in question was intended to be murdered then it cannot rightly be called an assassination. Secondly, in some cases such as a state of war it is not necessarily murder to kill another person. That is, it is not necessarily unlawful to kill one’s enemy or the leader of the enemy’s country in a state of war, thus it would not be murder. Thus it would not be an assassination.

But I can play this definition game too. Resurrect is defined as…
1. Thefeedictionary.com:
To bring back to life; raise from the dead.
2. dictionary.com:
to raise from the dead; bring to life again.
3. Merriam-webster.com:
to raise from the dead
Nothing there about medical intervention. Only that there is a return to life after death. You feel obligated to only prove the low burden that Caesar fulfills the general definition of an assassination where a prominent person is killed. Fine. In fairness then, it is only necessary that I meet the low burden of a general definition of a resurrection – where there is a return to life after death. It is not, therefore, necessary for me to prove Jesus’ resurrection is possible or probable in relation to any of the surrounding details such as lack of modern medical intervention. I only need to prove it is possible to rise from being dead. Which I have done.
Chaosborders wrote:It doesn’t really matter since [Ranasinghe Premadasa] was still murdered which still makes it an assassination, but when you stop someone biking towards the president and a few seconds later everything blows up, it’s not a hard inference to make.
Maybe the bomber was carrying the bomb for some other reason or intended target and it detonated by accident at the wrong time near the President.

Chaosborders wrote:I reckon I have ten [assassinations], after giving you two of them.
You could have 100 and it wouldn’t make any meaningful statistical difference.
Chaosborders wrote: And none of the surrounding details of Caesar’s death inherently affect the probability of a leader being assassinated.
They affect the probability that Caesar was assassinated.
Chaosborders wrote:Even that would still be 8931 times more likely than coming back to life even in the manner of the Lazarus cases.
So what? A resurrection is not as unlikely as other events known to be historical. Further, 0.5% probability (even 1% probability for that matter) is very low. To then argue that this is a high enough probability to teach an assassination as historical when there exists more probable explanations and the resurrection should not be taught as historical is absurd.
Chaosborders wrote:Why would I limit assassinations to highly developed countries?
For the same reasons I suspect you probably want resurrection accounts from highly developed countries. Do I really need to rattle off a list of reasons as to why? I thought it would be self evident. But if you are willing to expand the data parameters to lower developed countries that’s fine as it gives many more resurrection accounts.
Chaosborders wrote:And none of those things are relevant as to whether or not the person actually WAS assassinated.
Of course they are hence the debate over whether the person in question was assassinated in the first place. For instance, was Princess Diana murdered in a plot or did she die by accident? For the life of me I can’t understand why you don’t recognize this.
Chaosborders wrote:I don’t have to show [the assassination is] probable all on its own. I just have to show it’s more probable than the alternative hypotheses.
It’s game over for you then because you won’t be able to that.
Chaosborders wrote:I’ve shown other hyothesis to be more probable. The alternative hypotheses are conspiracy theories and I don’t think you can actually prove them to have a higher chance than zero, thus the assassination is considered considerably MORE probable than the alternative.
But the alternative hypothesis that Caesar died of natural causes is far more probable even using only the stats of Roman Emperors. If we expand out the data to include all leaders in history an assassination is even less probable as compared to death by natural causes. If we expand out the data further to the general population it gets much worse. Not to mention you kind of proved this alternative hypothesis is more probable by yourself where you showed how often people engage in lying.
Goose wrote:You don’t want to have to prove that it is possible to assassinate a head of state where it is 1) by stabbing (which is inherently more difficult than offing someone from a distance using a high powered sniper rifle for example), 2) at the main place where and when that government convenes, 3) in plain view of other witnesses, 4) with no resistance from security personnel (very unlikely in a large meeting), and 5) committed by a large group of politicians (which makes it even more improbable). All factors that directly affect the probability of Caesar’s assassination.
Chaosborders wrote:All of those factors are dependent upon an assassination having taken place in the first place.
No, you have it backwards and Beg the Question. The historicity of the assassination of Caesar being taught depends upon an assassination taking place under those factors.
Chaosborders wrote:You can maybe make a case that high powered technology makes modern day assassinations easier, but that is why I’m using the baseline rate of less than one in a thousand opposed to the much higher modern day rate of almost one in a hundred.
Actually, you’ve been flip-flopping back and forth from baseline rates of Roman Emperors to American Presidents to leaders since 1982 to total leaders in history as it suites your argument (though in fairness I made the request you keep modern examples to post 1982 to be fair to the Lazarus cases). At any rate when you stick to 1/1081 the assassination of Caesar, and all other assassinations, are shown to be very improbable with more probable hypotheses existing and thus it should not be taught as historical. It’s the big pink elephant in your room.
Chaosborders wrote:Most (possibly all but I’m unsure and don’t feel like looking up every one of them again) of the modern day assassinations occurred in front of witnesses. If the assassination occurred in a different fashion then the altered narrative would have be factored in, but if the assassination didn’t happen at all that would have to be done anyways in addition to inventing the assassination in its entirety and suppressing the fact Caesar hadn’t actually been killed at all. As such, there is no difference between the alternatives on these details and so they are irrelevant.
This is incoherent. Are you saying there is no difference between whether Caesar was assassinated and whether an assassination was invented therefore the details are irrelevant?
Chaosborders wrote:The issue of how a person died and whether they received modern medical attention is medically relevant to the issue of whether or not they CAN come back to life. The issue of whether someone was stabbed to death or shot to death is not relevant to whether or not they are dead.
Yes it is relevant. It is inherently much more difficult to kill someone by stabbing thus making an assassination by stabbing inherently more improbable. Hopefully by now this is beginning to sink in…
Chaosborders wrote:What is more, Nicolaus gives an entirely plausible explanation that explains most of those factors:
But the majority opinion favored killing him while he sat in the Senate, where he would be by himself since only Senators would be admitted, and where the many conspirators could hide their daggers beneath their togas. This plan won the day.
That would explain both the need to use knives, the location, and why body guards didn’t interfere.
Sure, if we are to accept the words of Nicolaus, a biased source reporting hearsay 60 years after the event, at face value then this would be evidence that there were no body guards present to interfere.

However, if we are to accept Nicolaus on this point I have two comments. One, you then have no good reason to reject the resurrection writers without showing your bias.

Two, you must also accept the remainder of Nicolaus’ account which makes it seem unlikely that:

1) Nicolaus is a reliable source

2) Caesar would be present at the senate that day without body guards let alone even present at the senate at all…
  • 1. Nicolaus wrote:[Caesar’s] friends were alarmed at certain rumors and tried to stop him going to the Senate-house, as did his doctors, for he was suffering from one of his occasional dizzy spells. His wife, Calpurnia, especially, who was frightened by some visions in her dreams, clung to him and said that she would not let him go out that day.
    Nicolaus tells us there were rumours, presumably of plots against Caesar, already in circulation and made known to Caesar by his friends. Caesar’s wife is spooked by premonitions. His doctors try to stop him because he was not feeling well.
    2. Nicolaus wrote:Before [Caesar] entered the [senate] chamber, the priests brought up the victims for him to make what was to be his last sacrifice. The omens were clearly unfavorable.
    Even the priests give Caesar bad omens that day.
    3. Nicolaus wrote:Those of the murderers present were delighted at all this, though Caesar's friends asked him to put off the meeting of the Senate for that day because of what the priests had said, and he agreed to do this.
    Caesar’s friends are spooked because of the omens. Even Caesar apparently gets spooked enough to call off the senate meeting that day.
    4. Nicolaus wrote:But some attendants came up, calling him and saying that the Senate was full. He glanced at his friends, but Brutus approached him again and said, 'Come, good sir, pay no attention to the babblings of these men, and do not postpone what Caesar and his mighty power has seen fit to arrange. Make your own courage your favorable omen.' He convinced Caesar with these words, took him by the right hand, and led him to the Senate which was quite near. Caesar followed in silence.
Yet, despite ALL the warnings, despite the fate of other previous Roman leaders, despite the fact that CAESAR HAD ALREADY AGREED TO POSTPONE THE MEETING, Nicolaus reports Julius Caesar takes absolutely no precautionary measures whatsoever and naively goes to the senate chamber anyway. Caesar apparently had no body guards with him. No weapon for self-defence. He took no precautions such as checking senators for weapons as they entered the chamber or having them searched before he would enter. No delaying of the meeting for a day or two as his friends had already convinced him to do. Caesar did nothing precautionary. In fact, Nicolaus reports that Caesar was led to the senate chamber by the hand following in silence like an unsuspecting, gullible and naïve child. Do you seriously believe Caesar would do what Nicolaus reports? Even Cicero was smart enough not to enter the senate when he heard rumours Antony might do him harm. Not to mention Caesar’s friends are near but either do not accompany Caesar to the Senate (why wouldn’t they?) or accompany him but do absolutely nothing to interfere with the assassination once it begins.

It’s all a bit farfetched and melodramatic don’t ya think? :blink:

Goose wrote:You don’t seem to be disputing the facts 1-8. The resurrection has the potential ability to explain a wide range of facts above with great power and no additional hypotheses. You need another explanation that more powerfully explains more than the listed facts 1-8 above without having to invoke other hypotheses thus becoming ad hoc if you do.
Chaosborders wrote:I could potentially dispute a couple of them as facts, but the point of scope isn’t about explaining facts so much as it is about explaining the claims that have been made. I dispute that the resurrection explains the first claim. I also think there are a lot of claims made by varying sources that are not explained by the resurrection. I have addressed this some with a couple alternative hypotheses, which you have tried to hand wave away.
Scope is the ability to explain a large spectrum of historical facts that are relevant. The larger the spectrum of relevant historical facts explained the larger the scope and the stronger the hypothesis. Other hypotheses might explain one or even several of the facts 1-8 (or other facts). For instance, the Stolen Body hypothesis would explain an empty tomb. But that hypothesis wouldn’t explain why the disciples believed Jesus appeared to them or Paul’s or James’ conversion. The “didn’t die� hypothesis (a.k.a the Swoon Hypothesis) might explain the disciples’ belief Jesus appeared to them alive. But it would not explain Paul’s or James’ conversion. One would need additional ad hoc hypotheses to explain those other historical facts. Thus making the alternative hypotheses increasingly less probable as more and more unlikely hypotheses are stack upon one another.

Chaosborders wrote:Made up a tale of Caesar being assassinated and convinced at least Cicero of this less than a year after the assassination took place and managed to suppress all evidence to the contrary while successfully implicating a large chunk of senate by the time Nicolaus started researching it. Possible, but I don’t think you can show that to be anywhere more likely than 1/1081.
Yes I did. But now apply this reasoning to the resurrection. A tale of a resurrection that convinced at least 11 disciples, several women, the church enemy Paul, and the sceptic James all within only days of Jesus’ death. All evidence to the contrary, if there was any, was successfully suppressed by the time folks like Luke were investigating a few years later.
Chaosborders wrote:If I ever implied that showing less than a resurrection in absence of modern medical intervention is possible was sufficient, I apologize. But I am not raising the bar. That is THE BAR.
The bar is to show that someone can return to life after being dead, just as it is for you to show that a leader can be assassinated. If the bar is a resurrection in absence of modern medical intervention for the resurrection of Jesus then the bar is an assassination that closely parallels that of Caesar. Is this sinking in yet?
Chaosborders wrote:I have suggested that even ignoring the very important confounding variable of the preceding medical treatment you still have such ridiculously low odds that they don’t beat the alternative hypotheses. You haven’t even met that far lowered burden of proof. If you did it wouldn’t matter regarding the actual teaching of history since it would still be lower than THE BAR, but I personally would at least be somewhat impressed.
Ditto for the assassination. You give me a verifiable case of head of state that was assassinated by many politicians, using daggers/knives, in the main meeting place of the government, where the victim did not fight back, did not try to escape, and body guards did not intervene and I’ll at least forget about the fact there are more probable explanations for Caesar’s death.
Chaosborders wrote:They’re not my personal standards. This is what academic history demands. That they can’t be met is precisely why resurrections in ancient history cannot be taught as historically factual.
Yes, some of them are your personal and circular standards. Prove me wrong by quoting a professional historian that has EVER used the standard that anything that does not have a “probability statistically distinguishable from zero� in context to what can and cannot be taught as historical. Quote it and the source. Furthermore, your personal standards reveal a bias because those same standards flunk the assassination of Caesar and other events we know are historical.
Chaosborders wrote:It’s a very unfortunate confounding variable. If you ever figure out a way to adequately control for it and still show it as possible for someone to come back to life without medical treatment, you will probably become a very rich man.
I have shown it to be at least possible. Casn you show it to be impossible?
Chaosborders wrote:In your case you can’t even show it as possible.
Possibility is different than probability. Virtually anything is possible. Not everything is probable. Are you now arguing it is impossible that Jesus rose from the dead?
Chaosborders wrote:There is nothing in the surrounding details of Caesar’s death that makes it impossible.
And I would NOT argue the details makes his assassination impossible. I would never argue that something is impossible unless it were logically impossible. I argue that the details of Caesar’s assassination makes it very improbable.
Chaosborders wrote:Stabbing kills people.
People also survive stabbing attacks. Even ones involving 26 blows. This girl survived an attack of 35 blows. Considering Caesar apparently had physicians available that would be familiar with how to treat sword wounds from battles, it is not a stretch to think he may have survived the attack. Especially if the attack only involved one or maybe two assassins. If there were many assassins as reported then this complicates the picture further making it unlikely that many more people would have been involved in the plot without directly informing Caesar beforehand thus foiling it.
Chaosborders wrote:Senators are people and people are perfectly capable of killing people.
Truism.
Chaosborders wrote:People are as capable of dying in the seat of the government and in front of witnesses as anywhere else.
They are capable, yes. But less likely to attempt it directly in front of many witnesses. Witnesses being present make it more unlikely for fear of being caught, fear of being later identified, and the potential for by-standing witnesses to foil the attempt by interfering.
Chaosborders wrote:Each individual component can be shown to be possible.
Of course each component is possible. No one is arguing they are not. However, with each additional component comes an increasingly greater degree of difficulty and therefore increased improbability of success. In other words, the probability of Caesar’s assassination cannot be measured purely on whether or not it is claimed Caesar was assassinated and meets the general definition of an assassination. If that is enough then it should be enough Jesus was claimed to have risen from the dead. The probability of Caesars’s assassination must be measured by whether or not it is likely an assassination like Caesar’s happened. You are expecting the same of the resurrection are you not?
Chaosborders wrote:Most of them aren’t even slightly relevant as to whether or not someone was killed, but even if they were, they can all be shown to be possible.
They are very relevant to the probability of Caesar’s assassination. Again, I just can’t understand why you don’t recognize this.
Chaosborders wrote:Yes. We have. By most definitions of assassination, Cicero has explicitly stated that Caesar was assassinated.
No he hasn’t. Quote where Cicero states, “Caesar was assassinated� and I’ll donate 500 tokens to you. I promise.
Goose wrote:Further, all you are saying here is that because Cicero, Caesar a biased source with motive to lie, reporting hearsay, allegedly states was assassinated he was therefore assassinated and all of my more probable explanations such as Caesar dying by natural causes are to be waived aside.
Chaosborders wrote:You have a point. If Cicero were the only one talking about the assassination, its occurrence would be questionable. But he’s not.
Okay, so you have Cicero, a biased self contradicting source with motive to lie reporting hearsay, AND another biased source contradicting Cicero and reporting hearsay 60 years later, Nicolaus. How is that any better? Because these sources apparently affirm Caesar’s assassination Caesar was assassinated. Does that about sum it up?
Chaosborders wrote:Your alternative hypothesis has to deal with the assassination claims. Simply arguing that it is more probable he died of natural causes does not do this.
The assassination claims were invented stories in my hypothesis. People lie and invent stories don’t they? Not to mention of course your alternate resurrection hypotheses need to deal with resurrection claims as well.
Chaosborders wrote:My alternatives dealt with the scope and even added to it some. I’ve pointed out why yours was flawed. If you feel mine need work feel free to address them.
Your “didn’t die� hypothesis is shown false by the evidence as confirmed by JAMA. The “didn’t die� hypothesis is a non-starter.
Chaosborders wrote:I recognize the inherent probability of someone dying from something other than an assassination is higher. But you have not shown that someone dying from something other than assassination, having someone then make up a tale about them being assassinated, and the truth of how they actually died getting suppressed despite them being the most powerful person in the nation has a higher chance than someone having been assassinated and having it reported as such.
Okay, let’s lance this boil shall we...
  • 1. The first component – Caesar died of natural causes. I’ve provided the stats on this already using Roman Emperors (which is in your favour as they show a higher rate). You’ve conceded it is more probable that Caesar died of natural causes anyway.

    2. The second component – someone made up a tale of an assassination. Setting aside all the argument you put forward to show Christians lie you argued yourself in a previous post the frequency and ease with which people lie:
    in post 7 Chaosborders wrote:People lie- Even the most conservative studies indicate people lie at least once a day. Other studies indicate people lie as much as 2-3 times for every ten minutes of conversation…Many of those lies are white lies that may even be psychologically beneficial, but with the exception of some autistic people, it is a given that any human being without brain damage over the age of 3 or so is going to engage in some manner of deceptive behavior. Unfortunately, some of that deceptive behavior is harmful and meant to take advantage of others. This is observed in present day with a rate of roughly ten percent of the population each year having some manner of fraud being perpetrated against them.
    Further you even conceded it isn’t less implausible for someone to make up a tale of an assassination:
    Chaosborders wrote:The individual component of making up an assassination tale isn’t by itself less implausible than an assassination.
    If it isn’t less implausible it must be at least as plausible. Thus you inadvertently concede the very strong probability, at least better than 1/1081, of second component of my hypothesis, which is that someone made up a tale of an assassination.

    3. The third component - the truth was suppressed/lost. As far as data showing Caesar did die by natural causes and not by assassination being suppressed it doesn’t necessarily require intentional suppression, though certainly not unprecedented in the ancient world. Most of ancient history has simply been lost to us over time. We’ve maybe even lost more than we’ve kept. Entire ancient libraries containing tens of thousands of texts were unfortunately destroyed. Though quite substantial in volume virtually all the works of Nicolaus, with the exception of a few fragments, have been lost. We’ve lost all of Atticus’ work and much of Cicero’s. So there is a good chance, at least better than 1/1081, that any data suggesting Caesar didn’t die by assassination has just simply been lost.
Thus each individual component of the theory that Caesar died of natural causes and a tale of his assassination was invented are more probable than an actual assassination. Therefore, using your reasoning the assassination cannot be taught as historical.

But if you are willing to rule out conspiracy theories for the resurrection I’m happy to rule out conspiracy theories for the assassination as well. When you argue against the immense improbability of conspiracy theories for the assassination you also inadvertently argue against the same regarding the resurrection.

Goose

Post #18

Post by Goose »

Round 8 – part 4 (see above for pats 1-3)


Alternate hypotheses:
Chaosborders wrote:Really? How does the historical evidence falsify the possibility of Cataplexy?
Well, anything is possible, even Cataplexy. Just like it is possible Caesar died in a dispute with Brutus over a woman. It’s also possible Caesar survived his assassination, fled into hiding, and years later was trampled to death by a herd of stampeding elephants. But see the JAMA article for why Cataplexy it is not probable.
Chaosborders wrote:And it may be implausible, but it’s entirely possible, which is far more than can be shown of the resurrection.
So you are arguing the resurrection of Jesus is impossible. How do you know it is impossible. Please support this position.
Goose wrote:I’ll stop you right there and do what you did to me when I proposed the hypothesis Caesar got into a quarrel with Brutus over a woman that ended in bloodshed. I’ll just appeal to the evidence regardless of how unreliable you think it is.
Chaosborders wrote:That particular alternative hypothesis would still be an assassination,
No it wouldn’t as it would not have been premeditated.
Chaosborders wrote:so perhaps you would like to try another one?
Okay, death by natural causes.
Chaosborders wrote:All of these alternative hypotheses would have the appearance of death as far as outsiders are concerned.
Not according to JAMA.
Chaosborders wrote:Water? Really? Is it medically possible for someone to be stabbed and have water pour out of them? At any rate, this equally hurts the resurrection as well because not one of the resurrections you’ve shown involve anything remotely equivalent to someone having a gaping side wound that has blood pouring out of it.
Yes, this would make it increasingly improbable. Just as the details of Caesar’s assassination make it increasingly improbable.
Chaosborders wrote:Not true. Just in need of explanation. My alternative hypotheses explain them just as well as an actual death with the exception of one that hurts the resurrection as well.
No they don’t. Your “didn’t die� hypothesis doesn’t explain the conversion of Paul or James. Nor does it explain why the disciples believed.
Goose wrote:The Journal of the American Medical Association agrees with me…
Journal of the American Medical Association wrote:Jesus of Nazareth underwent Jewish and Roman trials, was flogged, and was sentenced to death by crucifixion. The scourging produced deep stripelike lacerations and appreciable blood loss, and it probably set the stage for hypovolemic shock as evidenced by the fact that Jesus was too weakened to carry the crossbar (patibulum) to Golgotha. At the site of crucifixion his wrists were nailed to the patibulum, and after the patibulum was lifted onto the upright post, (stipes) his feet were nailed to the stipes. The major pathophysiologic effect of crucifixion was an interference with normal respirations. Accordingly, death resulted primarily from hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. Jesus’ death was ensured by the thrust of a soldier’s spear into his side. Modern medical interpretation of the historical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead when taken down from the cross. (JAMA 1986;255:1455-1463)
Chaosborders wrote:Did any of the Lazarus victims die of blood loss or hypovolemic shock?
Maybe. Does it matter as long as they were dead? If it matters then it matters if any heads of state since 1982 died by stabbing involving many politicians. Did any?
Chaosborders wrote: in Experiments done by Dr. Frederick Thomas Zugibe indicate exhaustion asphyxia is not a likely cause of death. Pretty sure it’s the only possible cause though that one would have a slight chance of coming back from. If he died of blood loss, unless he had the unheard of ability to spontaneously regenerate blood, he could not have come back to life. Period. At any rate, I agree that if Jesus went up onto the cross and had remotely the level of torture some of the Gospel accounts (though not Mark) had him enduring, he was almost certainly dead by the time he came down. Which is why we’ll move in to some alternative hypotheses that assume he died (though you most definitely have not shown resurrection to be more likely than the ones I’ve posited already).
Then you concede your didn’t die hypothesis doesn’t even get out of the starting blocks.
Chaosborders wrote:And it is unfortunate that it’s unavoidable because it makes your case impossible to prove.
Not impossible. Just more difficult as the standard is quit high by only using documented medical cases. It makes it difficult to prove just it is difficult for you to prove a head of state could be 1) stabbed to death by 2) many senators in 3) the main meeting place of the government where 4) there was no interference from bystanders or body guards and when there was 5) rumours circulating of a plot beforehand.
Chaosborders wrote:Stabbing can kill people. 29% of the 839 homicides in England and Wales in 2005 were done through stabbing.
Not quite. The wiki article wrote:
Of the 839 homicides in England and Wales in 2005, 29% involved sharp instruments including knives, blades and swords.
It doesn’t say they were killed by stabbing, though I would agree that stabbing can kill.

However, this is funny because after all the rhetoric and lectures about abusing stats what do you do here? That’s right, you abuse stats (again)! Let’s set aside for a moment that the source of the stats in the wiki article is not properly cited. Let’s assume they are accurate. We’ll further set aside the fact that these stats actually work against you by showing that the vast majority (71%) of homicides occur in England/Wales without the involvement of sharp instruments. Now here’s the ironic part. You use stats mainly of youth aged 15-18 from Wales and England only. These are taken from the general populace for homicidesto support the premise that it is possible for a head of state anywhere and at any time to be assassinated by stabbing. Which is inherently more difficult, due to the close proximity to a head of state required for stabbing and higher security, than some 15 year old punk stabbing some other punk in an ally. But thanks, that was worth the price of admission! :lol:
Chaosborders wrote:Is there something special about the main place where and when the government convenes that would make someone invulnerable to harm?
Yes.
  • 1. Generally there is a highly increased level of security in these venues to prevent assassinations and other disturbances.
    2. The participants are generally limited to government officials, supporting staff, and security personnel who are known thus lowering the probability that an assassin can enter the venue.
    3. Though it wouldn’t be a public place per se there would be ample witnesses present if the government were convening thus making it less likely an assassin would attempt a strike for fear of interference from witnesses or being later identified.
    4. The presence of witnesses always presents the possibility of interference thus lowering the actual chance of success. Especially when the method of killing is by stabbing.
All of these, plus probably others not mentioned here, are mitigating factors that decrease the probability that an assassination would occur at the main place where and when the government convenes.
Chaosborders wrote:Many of the list of assassinations I gave fit this one [of being in plain view of witnesses].
Many? There were only two from what I remember and they were the terrorist bombers which are stretches to even count as assassinations in the first place.
Chaosborders wrote:[Security personnel] seem to have been reported to have not even been in the room.
Yeah, by a guy with a bias reporting hearsay 60 years later. It seems very unlikely they weren’t in the room don’t you think? At least unlikely they weren’t in close proximity (maybe standing just outside the room?) where they could hear Caesar’s cry for help and stop his assassination.
Chaosborders wrote:Politicians are certainly not incapable of violence as this shown by this case.
That case supports violence, yes. But Caesar’s assassination? Ummm, no, not even a little bit. That case actually supports my arguments against the probability of Caesar’s assassination. What it showed is that Brooks beat Sumner only when the chamber was almost empty to avoid witnesses, one of my premises. Compare this to Caesar’s assassination where the assassins apparently did it with a full chamber of bystanders according to Nicolaus. It also showed that other senators tried to help Sumner, something we would expect to happen, another one of my premises. Compare this to Caesar where there was no interference or help offered to Caesar even from his friends. Further, there was only one senator directly involved in the actual assault on Sumner, a premise of one of my alternate hypothesis. Compared to Caesar’s assassination where there was reported to be as many as 60 men involved in the actual assassination. Further, Brooks didn’t kill Sumner nor was he even trying to. Thus showing that senators, though capable of violence in a senate chamber, would not attempt to murder another politician there for reasons that should be obvious.
Chaosborders wrote:So much so that you can’t even show it to be possible.
I think I have shown it is at least possible. But I would agree it is not statistically probable just as Caesar’s assassination is not probable. If you are arguing it is impossible please back it.
Chaosborders wrote:I can show that each individual part [of the assassination] is possible. But any individual part that might have been made up would have had to have been made up under either alternative, rendering most of the individual parts irrelevant. If you think you can show that making up a story about an assassination and suppressing a natural cause of death is more likely than an actual assassination, be my guest.
Of course you can show the individual parts are possible. Just as I can for the resurrection.

I’ve noticed you have been switching back and forth between probability and possibility. However, I trust you are aware these are fundamentally two different arguments. It is possible to win a 6/49 lottery 1,000 consecutive times. However, it is not statistically probable. It is possible Caesar was assassinated, however it is not statistically probable. It is possible Jesus was resurrected, however it is not statistically probable. As long as something is logically possible it is possible. But possibility is not to be confused with probability, which you seem to be doing.
Goose wrote:Hey, maybe Caesar was misdiagnosed as dead too. Maybe he survived the assassination and died later of a heart attack. Yeah, that’s probably what really happened because misdiagnosis happens and it is more probable a head of state will die of natural causes anyway.
Chaosborders wrote:Maybe, but misdiagnosis of death is less likely than even the baseline rate for assassinations.
Are you joking? The baseline rate for an assassination was 9.25x10^-4 using your estimations. You argued how easy it was to misdiagnose death, how often misdiagnosis of death occurred, and wrote of the baseline for misdiagnosing death:
Chaosborders wrote:Dr. Franz Hartman compiled 700 cases with prevalence given as much as one-tenth. (This estimation is far, far higher than was probably true, but it is rather indicative that it occurred with considerably more regularity than it does now).
Even if it wasn’t as high as 1/10 it is by your reasoning more probable than an actual assassination at 1/1081.
Goose wrote:In the end, Chaosborder’s, and others like him, would like to accept the assassination of Julius Caesar as being worthy of being taught as historical and reject the resurrection of Jesus.
Chaosborders wrote:Exactly who are others like me?
Those that argue as you do. Thought that would be self evident.
Goose wrote:Yet he has no historical basis for this.
Chaosborders wrote:Except the entire section of historical reasoning.
Which using your reasoning also fails the assassination of Caesar and other events known to be historical.
Goose wrote:The evidentiary support for the assassination has been shown to be no better than for the resurrection on any single criterion and on some criterion even worse than the resurrection.
Chaosborders wrote:Except either enemy attestation or bias (take your pick) on source criticism, a few on internal criticism, and historical reasoning pretty much in its entirety by a large margin.
You don’t have enemy attestation my friend without giving it to the resurrection as well. If I don’t have it with Paul and Peter, your buddy Bart Ehrman at least gave it to me with the Ebionites. Bias came out equally existing on both sides with possible motives to minimize, which you conceded. Can’t think of a criterion on internal criticism where the assassination won. Please cite it if you think it did. Historical reasoning showed Caesar’s assassination should not be taught as historical as it was statistically improbable with other more probable hypotheses existing.
Goose wrote:Further, there is no better single explanation that combines both scope and explanatory power than the resurrection.
Chaosborders wrote:Except for the ones I offered.
Hardly, as we’ve seen.
Goose wrote:The probability of an assassination is very low, not significantly greater than zero.
Chaosborders wrote:From a statistical standpoint, the probability of the assassination is distinguishable from zero.
Yes, but a resurrection is distinguishable from zero too.
Goose wrote:Depending upon what statistical data we use an assassination can be shown to be even less probable than a resurrection.
Chaosborders wrote:Yes, if you purposefully manipulate the data you can bias it in such a way so as to show that.
This cuts both ways. Hence the inevitable fallacy of arguments from statistical probability.
Goose wrote:Thus the assassination should not be taught as historical by Chaosborder’s own reasoning.
Chaosborders wrote:I could see how you might arrive at that conclusion as a result of my faulty assumption that you would understand I was speaking within the context of statistics. However, that is not my actual reasoning. If I had not left out that word and you had still tried to make these arguments it would have been an active straw man. As it is, the fault lies with my unintentional ambiguity and for that I apologize. Unfortunately, though I am somewhat to blame for the confusion, you’ve still spent most of this round arguing against a position I don’t actually hold.
You can try to cover this monumental double standard and flaw in your reasoning by playing the semantics game if you wish. It might fool the uninitiated.
Goose wrote:Fundamentally he must employ a double standard to accept the assassination and reject the resurrection.
Chaosborders wrote:There is no double standard. Include relevant information. That is the standard.
If after everything we have discussed you still cannot see how you are applying a double standard and faulty reasoning I don’t think there is much more I can do.
Chaosborders wrote:However, if ultimately you can show that the alternative hypothesis for the assassination has a greater likelihood, then the reasonable conclusion is that it isn’t near certain and shouldn’t be taught as historically factual.
I’ve shown that by a long shot. So let’s stop beating around the bush here shall we? Are you conceding the assassination of Julius Caesar should not be taught as historical or not?


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Chaosborders wrote:Now what would happen if Jesus didn’t come back to life?
We can only speculate. It probably wouldn’t have been claimed that he did though. Christianity would probably still exist in some form or another as one doesn’t need to return from the dead to found a major world religion. Add to this before the resurrection Jesus already had followers, could draw a reasonably large audience, and performed other miracles as proof.
Chaosborders wrote:Cognitive Dissonance. Huge, huge amounts of it. This guy they’ve been following around for years just died, and then nothing happened. They were misled, tricked, foolish, and they’ve basically ruined whatever lives they’ve had because of it. This creates a huge cognitive inconsistency that they have to deal with. There are a few ways to deal with cognitive dissonance, and a couple of them can easily lead to what is recorded.
Actually cognitive dissonance would not lead to the belief Jesus was resurrected. In fact, the theory of cognitive dissonance supports the resurrection. I’ll get to that.
Chaosborders wrote:So they can’t alleviate dissonance this way, which leads to a couple other methods of getting rid of the dissonance. They can change the cognition of “He didn’t come back like he said he would� to “He was resurrected� or they can add a cognition such as “I can still use this to do good (for someone).�
First, this was a group of people that were Jews. Devising a new religion where converts would not only be put in harm’s way but also be lead away from traditional Jewish beliefs and the Jewish community would hardly have been considered changing their cognition to “do good (for someone).�

Secondly, cognitive dissonance is a self contradictory explanation in this case anyway. The main idea behind the theory is that people try to reduce conflicting ideas that are held simultaneously. So you are hypothesizing that the disciples replaced “He didn’t come back like he said he would� with the LIE that “He was resurrected� introducing further conflicting ideas regarding lying. It makes more sense that the disciples would seek to reduce dissonance by finding some other explanation. For example, your source states dissonance follows a pattern which is:
…one desires something, finds it unattainable, and reduces one's dissonance by criticizing it.
For the disciples to move from “He didn’t come back like he said he would� to “He was resurrected� would contract this pattern of reducing dissonance. An example of reducing dissonance and following this pattern would be the disciples criticizing Jesus as a false prophet and not worth following anyway if they didn’t truly believe he returned from dead.

Thirdly, looking at a case that has a few similarities in When Prophecy Fails where a group of doomsdayers are faced with the reality their prophecy of the end of the world has not happened they reduce their dissonance by changing the prophecy (or their belief) entirely. Thus confirming the predictive power of the theory of cognitive dissonance – that people change their belief or actions when faced with conflicting reality. The doomsdayer cult did NOT react by affirming the prophecy as having actually happened which would not reduce dissonance but would rather increase it. Clearly the theory of cognitive dissonance does not apply to the disciples of Jesus as they believed Jesus had appeared to them and thus from their perspective the prophecy was confirmed by reality. In other words, the theory predicts the disciples would seek to reduce their dissonance by changing their beliefs about Jesus’ prediction to return from the dead if they did not believe Jesus had actually returned from the dead.
Chaosborders wrote:We’ll explore the second possibility first. Whether he turned out to be crazy or not, Jesus said some pretty cool things, which may well have appealed to his followers despite the disappointment of him not coming back to life. Some of his followers could have seen the potential to use that message to do good anyways, while others might have decided they did not want to return to their previous lives the pathetic failures they basically were, and go along with it for the respect that came with being leaders in the new church. Either way it would help reduce the dissonance and would also be consistent with Self-Affirmation Theory.
Accept this wouldn’t account for Paul’s or James’s conversion. As I’ve stated and shown, no other explanation has the scope and explanatory power as the resurrection.

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