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.

Goose

Post #2

Post by Goose »

Edit: I'm breaking my last post into two. I think it was too long as a single post and causing problems...

First half of Goose's round 5...
Appeal to Authoity wrote:If there is a significant amount of legitimate dispute among the experts within a subject, then it will [be] fallacious to make an Appeal to Authority using the disputing experts. This is because for almost any claim being made and "supported" by one expert there will be a counterclaim that is made and "supported" by another expert. In such cases an Appeal to Authority would tend to be futile. In such cases, the dispute has to be settled by consideration of the actual issues under dispute. Since either side in such a dispute can invoke experts, the dispute cannot be rationally settled by Appeals to Authority.
I suggest Chaosborders reviews the above fallacy as he had made it multiple times in his last post. In cases where he merely cites the name(s) of a scholar as support for his position I'll assume he cannot address the actual argument presented.



Regarding Chaosborders attempt to reduce my argument (A) to the absurd...
Goose wrote:Here is Tacitus' account of the blind man being healed via Vespasian. How does this reduce my argument to the absurd?...
Chaosborders wrote:In the context of academic history miracles, the supernatural, and the impact of any God or gods is automatically excluded as the result of the process of historical reasoning. Most likely I will only get to internal criticism in this post and historical reasoning will have to wait until the next post, at which point I will go into greater detail as to why this is the case. However, for now I will simply point out that the logical conclusion of your argument’s form is the allowance of many events, this being one example, that are most reasonably labeled fables, propaganda, hoaxes, etc. to be taught as literally factual events.
There is no logical reason for the process of historical reasoning to automatically exclude a supernatural explanation or a miracle. The process itself argues to the BEST explanation that has both scope and power. To automatically exclude a supernatural explanation or miracle claim a priori because it is a supernatural explanation or miracle claim is circular logic. Surely Chaosborders recognizes this. So the only way he can reduce my argument to the absurd in this manner is if he firsts commits the fallacy of circular reasoning.
Chaosborders wrote:Further, your argument’s form relies on what is already being taught as literally factual, which is often a VERY different thing than what SHOULD BE (which I have already argued in previous posts are events that pass through historical methodology created by experts in the field and you have ignored as ‘irrelevant’) as the result of politics. So your argument’s form allows sweeping in such stories as Vespasian’s miracle through comparison against other events that may not themselves be true.
You are correct my argument relies on what is already taught as factual. My underlying assumption is that what is taught as historical in secular history has already passed through the historical method. If you would like to argue that there are things currently being taught in secular history classes as literally factual, such as the assassination of Caesar, that should NOT be because they would not pass the historical method, be my guest.
Chaosborders wrote:It broadens the things that could be taught as literally factual extensively, and in doing so can be allowed to teach two mutually exclusive events so long as each side has more support than a third party event that is taught as literally factual. This is its most fundamental flaw, though even by your argument (which given you set it up so that you could, shouldn’t even be difficult for you to ‘prove’ at all) the resurrection seems not to be overwhelming the assassination as greatly as one would expect.
You tacitly acknowledge the resurrection is overwhelming the assassination. Thank you. I agree. And thus my argument is sound. Logically, you have no choice but to accept its conclusion.

Look. Let's lance this boil to prevent any more whining. Simply replace where my argument says "another historical event" with "the assassination of Julius Caesar." Thus it would read:

Argument (A):
1. If the historical evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus is at least as good as the historical evidence for [the assassination of Julius Caesar] that is taught in secular history classes as a literally factual event, then the resurrection of Jesus should be considered sufficiently substantiated using historical evidence and be taught as a literally factual event in secular history classes as well.
2. The historical evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus is at least as good as the historical evidence for [the assassination of Julius Caesar] that is taught in secular history classes as a literally factual event.
3. Therefore, the resurrection of Jesus should be considered sufficiently substantiated using historical evidence and be taught as a literally factual event in secular history classes as well (via modus ponens).

Now if you would like to argue that the assassination doesn't pass an historical method or it is not taught in secular history classes as literally factual, be my guest.



Regarding Dio's recording of Antony's oration...
Chaosborders wrote:Not entirely uncritically. James Anthony Froude writes in his biography of Caesar, Caesar:A Sketch (1879), “Dion Cassius ‘can hardly have himself composed the version which he gives, for he calls the speech as ill-timed as it was brilliant.’� I am a more skeptical person than Froude, but if one reads the speech and compares it to the other material available it would seem to cohere to the character presented for Mark Antony exceedingly well. So if Dion is a fraud, he really is a remarkable one.
I think you apply scepticism to the resurrection sources but appear to be quite forgiving on the assassination. For instance. You assert that Dio's speech coheres with the character of Mark Anthony presented in other material. What other material would that be? I'd wager if we dig we'll find out it's circular reporting. Something you seem to think the resurrection sources are guilty of. I'll also note that you feel as long as the character presented in one source coheres with the character presented in other material this is enough to establish reliability in the case of Antony's oration by Dio. That alone gives me the reliability of almost every source for the resurrection.



Regarding Cicero...
Chaosborders wrote:Unless someone in the audience speaks up and also does not feel Cicero is being explicit, I am inclined to think you are merely being stubborn on this point, as I earnestly do not know how someone with above high school level reading comprehension skills can read the 10th and 11th paragraphs and not think Cicero is stating Caeser was assassinated.
Let's put it this way. Where does Cicero explicitly state "Caesar was assassinated" as you claim he does? Quote it.
Chaosborders wrote:No, I argue as if [the Second Philippic] was circulated among the senate. I know that it was not an actual ‘speech’. However, for your assertion
It wasn't circulated amongst the senate either. If you think it was provide your evidence.
Chaosborders wrote:Perhaps you would care to source yourself, given:
2nd Philippic (pamphlet, conceived as a senatorial speech, 24 October 44[4], possibly published only after the death of Cicero): Vehement attacks on Mark Antony including the accusation that he surpasses, in his political ambition, even Lucius Sergius Catilina and Publius Clodius Pulcher. Catalogue of the "atrocities" of Mark Antony. It is the longest of Cicero's Philippic speeches.
You are right. We don't really have any idea when it was published. I should have written, "And apparently [the Second Philippic] possibly wasn't published until after Cicero's death." Can you show it was published before Cicero died? If not we have no reason to assume it was published before Cicero died.
Chaosborders wrote:“Possibly published only after the death of Cicero� certainly is not a conclusive statement that it wasn’t. Further, it is stated as being conceived 24th of October 44 so I don’t see how a delay in its publication would render my points irrelevant in the least.
Your points revolve around the assumption the Second Philippic was in circulation among all the accused and other senators while Cicero was alive. You haven't established this. At this point it's merely a self serving assumption.
Goose wrote: I'm of the opinion that Antony and Cicero unequivocally agree Caesar was killed. And that's about all they agree on.
Chaosborders wrote:And I don’t see how anything else is relevant.
Being killed doesn't necessarily imply an assassination. We've been over this.
Chaosborders wrote:How exactly would they be aware that things were being made up? Unless you specifically state someone as being a witness who wasn’t, how is anyone going to disprove there were “five hundred unnamed witnesses�? It’s not remotely similar to accusing someone of ASSASSINATING THE EMPEROR.
Paul names more than just an anonymous five hundred witnesses. Paul writes, "[Jesus] was buried, he was raised on the third day in keeping with the Scriptures-and is still alive!-and he was seen by [Peter], and then by the twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Next he was seen by James, then by all the apostles, and finally he was seen by me, as though I were born abnormally late." So Paul explicitly names Peter, James (the Lord's brother), and the "twelve" which are understood to be the disciples. Further, you are again assuming Cicero publicly accused certain senators of assassinating Caesar. He didn't.
Chaosborders wrote:My apologies, but could you extrapolate here? I only see you as remotely having a point if the writers are making up the named witnesses, but in this statement it seems that it is assumed the named witnesses do indeed believe the resurrection occurred, so I am not sure what your point is.
For example, Paul writes that Jesus had returned from the dead and named the witnesses, such as Peter, in a letter that was intended to be circulated. Don't you think Paul would have been discredited if it were not true? We have evidence that the disciples taught the resurrection and were persecuted for their belief in it. Don't you think Peter would have taken action against Paul if it were not true what Paul had written? Especially considering we have evidence that Peter was worried about the consequences of being associated to Jesus.
Goose wrote:Unlike Cicero who seems reluctant to come right out and directly accuse by naming names and didn't actually speak his accusations in public.
Chaosborders wrote:Hardly seems reluctant to me:

End of paragraph 10 and paragraph 11
Whose name was there which was not at once made public? I should sooner say that some men had boasted in order to appear to have been concerned in that conspiracy, tho they had in reality known nothing of it, than that any one who had been an accomplice in it could have wished to be concealed. 10 Moreover, how likely it is, that among such a number of men, some obscure, some young men who had not the wit to conceal any one, my name could possibly have escaped notice? Indeed, if leaders were wanted for the purpose of delivering the country, what need was there of my instigating the Bruti, one of whom saw every day in his house the image of Lucius Brutus, and the other saw also the image of Ahala? Were these the men to seek counsel from the ancestors of others rather than from their own? and out of doors rather than at home? What! Caius Cassius, a man of that family which could not endure, I will not say the domination, but even the power of any individual,—he, I suppose, was in need of me to instigate him? a man who, even without the assistance of these other most illustrious men, would have accomplished this same deed in Cilicia, at the mouth of the river Cydnus, if Cæsar had brought his ships to that bank of the river which he had intended, and not to the opposite one. Was Cnæus Domitius spurred on to seek to recover his dignity, not by the death of his father, a most illustrious man, nor by the death of his uncle, nor by the deprivation of his own dignity, but by my advice and authority? Did I persuade Caius Trebonius, a man whom I should not have ventured even to advise? On which account the republic owes him even a larger debt of gratitude, because he preferred the liberty of the Roman people to the friendship of one man, and because he preferred overthrowing arbitrary power to sharing it. Was I the instigator whom Lucius Tillius Cimber followed? a man whom I admired for having performed that action, rather than ever expected that he would perform it; and I admired him on this account, that he was unmindful of the personal kindnesses which he had received, but mindful of his country. What shall I say of the two Servilii? Shall I call them Cascas, or Ahalas? And do you think that those men were instigated by my authority rather than by their affection for the republic? It would take a long time to go through all the rest; and it is a glorious thing for the republic that they were so numerous, and a most honorable thing also for themselves.
Really? We aren't even told by Cicero what it is he is referring to here when he says "that conspiracy." We must infer it is the assassination. No where here does Cicero state any of these named people assassinated Caesar. Again you are inferring it. You wouldn't have any concrete idea what Cicero was even speaking about here if it were not for later writers such as Nicolaus and Plutarch.
Chaosborders wrote:Yeah, and I’d circulate it too. While I was still alive [if someone were making up stories about me that could potentially get me in trouble or persecuted].
Right. Because that is the natural thing to do if the stories are false. Accordingly, we have no such accounts regarding the resurrection. No one such as Peter, for example, writing, "Wait a minute, I never witnessed Jesus alive like Paul says I did."



Regarding Nicolaus...
Goose wrote: What kind of evidence would you like [that Nicolaus got his data from Antony]?
Chaosborders wrote:A professional historian’s opinion supporting yours, at the least, would be quite nice
You call that evidence? I can't meet your demand because historians don't know where Nicolaus got his data. It could have been Joe the bartender for all we know. For some reason this doesn't seem to bother you...
Goose wrote: I've already provided an argument for why Nicolaus got his data from Antony.
Chaosborders wrote: And I have asked for evidence. Your personal opinion does not qualify.
Why not? A second ago you were willing to accept personal opinion as evidence. Further, I've not merely given my opinion. I've given an argument. I'll concede it may not be a cogent argument. Nicolaus may have also received his data from Augustus. But even then Nicolaus is still getting his data from the same pro-Caesar vein.
Goose wrote: Where do you think Nicolaus got his data if not from Mark Antony?
Chaosborders wrote:Any younger senators involved, servants, etc. might be plausible candidates. Anyone they told are also possibilities.
Talk about a shot in the dark. In other words you haven't got the foggiest where Nicolaus got his data. Maybe it was the pool boy...

So let's see. I've provided an argument that Nicolaus probably received his data, or at least some of it, from Antony based upon the premise that Antony was Nicolaus' employer. I'll concede this may not be a cogent argument as the evidence that supports Nicolaus being the tutor comes from Sophronius and is very late. But it is at least something to go on. And my argument here is more cogent than your argument that, well, it could have been almost anyone. Well duh! Your argument is basically a truism. Apparently it is acceptable to you that Nicolaus' source of data remains a mystery. Go figure...
Chaosborders wrote:And Cicero rejoices at his slaying. If it were not for him, just maybe the hypothesis that Anthony made up the assassination for political reasons to make Caesar look like better and passed it on would hold some tiny amount of weight. As it is, there is no reason to consider that as evidence without a professional historian backing you up.
Cicero's reaction is irrelevant. You haven't countered my argument and the evidence provided that Nicolaus reports in a biased manor. You've had two opportunities to rebut this but keep dancing around it.



Regarding the criterion of enemy attestation...
Chaosborders wrote:If there is anyone in the audience who actually feels he gets enemy attestation, please comment in the Peanut Gallery on what you feel is valid and I will address it. Otherwise I am not going to waste my time or the audiences rebutting this.
Dodging this argument by appealing to the Peanut Gallery doesn't make it go away. The argument stands.

However, if you wish to change your mind now and be more rigid in the application of the definition of enemy attestation that's fine. I will too. Strictly speaking the assassination doesn't have attestation from Cicero OR Antony. What you have is an inference from Cicero (as interpreted through later writers) on the one hand. With Cicero's version of what he claimed Antony said and Dio writing 300 years later on the other hand. No enemy attestation there either I'm afraid.



Regarding factors that minimize the tendency to be biased in Christian writers...
Chaosborders wrote:If one is biased, and their convictions are strengthened, that does not help minimize their bias. It just makes them more biased.
Bad logic. It makes them more convicted not necessarily more biased.
Chaosborders wrote:The majority of those at the extremes end up getting banned or leaving quickly. Further, those whose faith were damaged sufficiently are not likely the ones writing, and their writings are not likely to be preserved given the churches early penchant for book burning. That persecution can have the opposite effect means there is no reason to assume it minimized the bias of the writers.
This does not negate the fact that persecution can help minimize bias.
Chaosborders wrote:Bearing false witness is not a prohibition against all lying, as 1 Kings 22: 19-23 can make clear.
19 Micaiah continued, "Therefore hear the word of the LORD : I saw the LORD sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. 20 And the LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?'
"One suggested this, and another that. 21 Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
22 " 'By what means?' the LORD asked.
" 'I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,' he said.
" 'You will succeed in enticing him,' said the LORD. 'Go and do it.'
23 "So now the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The LORD has decreed disaster for you."
The point of 1 Kings 22 being God will use whatever means he chooses to accomplish his will. This does not give a green light to Christians to lie which you seem to be arguing it does. It's as though you are arguing Christians use 1 Kings 22 as a good for the goose, good for the gander type argument to allow lying. And I know of no Christian or theologian that does. Do not bear false witness means do not give false testimony whether in court or anywhere else. That is, do not lie, full stop. Christians are instructed by Jesus to not give false testimony and therefore instructed not to lie. I can't imagine how anyone would not see this as a motivation to minimize the tendency in Christian writers to be biased or lie. Which is all I need to meet the criteria's request to restore the credibility of Christian writers that are biased.
Chaosborders wrote:Visions were a lot more culturally accepted then. Although I would prefer to into more detail once I get to the historical reasoning part of historical methodology, for now I will leave it at being that if the first few genuinely believed they saw Jesus resurrected as the result of varying potential neurological and psychological causes, and said so, then later details end up getting filled in as the result of cultural practices and other pretty standard neurological phenomena (which I can extrapolate on, but would also prefer to do when going over historical reasoning in the next post).
Nice dodge. The issue of visions is a Red Herring at this point. Apparently, you do not dispute that claiming someone had returned from the dead, if in fact he had not, would have been considered a lie in the first century ANE as it would be now.
Chaosborders wrote:How late were these Christian writers though? I’m certainly not suggesting all of the books are pseudepigraphical, but if accepted at the start, some can (and most scholars believe have) end up being misattributed to the wrong person and ascribed evidentiary value when there is no reason to believe they actually have much, if any at all.
It still remains that your premise is false as relatively early Christian writers did not accept pseudepigraphy as a practice. Therefore, Christians did not accept as a practice this form of "lying" as you claim they did.
Chaosborders wrote:More importantly, however, is that it establishes many among the early Christians did not think of it as lying to make up stories or details that conveyed a moral truth. I can give both a list of works that made it into the Bible and even more extensive that were kept from becoming cannon, though some of which were circulated for hundreds of years in some areas.
Another non-sequitur. It does not logically follow that historical claims such as the resurrection or details surrounding it were "made up" because stories, such as parables, were made up to convey a moral truth.
Chaosborders wrote:Not really, unless you actually have some accredited historians who think otherwise, the authenticity of Cicero’s writings are pretty well established. Probably has something to do with being able to analyze and compare over fifty speeches and eight HUNDRED letters.
Circular. Demonstrate with evidence Cicero wrote his letters and they were not pseudepigraphical.
Chaosborders wrote:No doubt, which is why I’ll never argue the details surrounding the assassination should be taught as literally factual.
Fine. I'm not arguing here that the details surrounding the resurrection should be taught as literally factual either. Thus, by your reasoning, pseudepigraphy is moot and irrelevant to the debate.



Regarding Chaosborders complaints about my form of argument...
Chaosborders wrote:The assassination itself I feel has enough support that it’s worth using as a comparison as we move through historical methodology, but I would like to point out that the more you try to undermine the assassination the more you show just how insignificant the burden of proof is for teaching something as literally factual when using your argument.
I smell sour grapes. What I'm accomplishing by this form of argument is to show how good the evidence for the resurrection really is. And we are discovering through this process of comparison to the assassination, which is by ancient standards very well supported evidentially and considered an undisputed historical fact, the evidentiary support for the resurrection measures up very well. I'm also showing how the type of sceptical reasoning often used against the resurrection when applied to the assassination causes similar problems for the assassination as it would for almost any other event from antiquity.
Chaosborders wrote:Further, if you undermined it sufficiently that it could be declared as not being well enough supported to be taught as literally factual, then by your own argument it does nothing to show that the resurrection should be taught as literally factual.
The evidentiary support for Caesar's assassination, by ancient standards, is very strong. So strong in fact that I would contend very few if any other events from the same era are as well supported. In other words, if the assassination is not well enough supported to be taught as an historical fact then almost nothing from that time would be.
Chaosborders wrote:As I have tried to point, that it IS taught in history does not mean it SHOULD be taught in history (and given I am in quite an ABYSMAL history course right now to fulfill my state requirements, I can find more than a few examples of things being taught that are blatantly false).
It sounds like you want to argue the assassination of Julius Caesar should not be taught in secular history classes as historical. Is that where you really want to go now?
Chaosborders wrote:So without a standardized way to determine whether the assassination itself is worth teaching, your argument becomes one of constantly shifting goal posts by its very nature.
Patently false. I've set the bar very high and left it there by using the assassination as the goal line. I'm struggling to think of another event from around the same period that would be better evidentially supported (not including the resurrection) than the assassination of Caesar. Can you think of one? If the assassination isn't worth teaching as literally factual because it lacks enough evidentiary support then I'm afraid very little from a similar era will be.
Chaosborders wrote:Thus regarding all of your statements along the lines of “this can be applied to the assassination as well,� firstly I would ask that if you really think so, find some accredited historians who agree, as I am sure I can find some backing my position if you would like, and secondly, even if you can, at a certain point it becomes extremely counterproductive as eventually I can just concede that the assassination is too unreliable to teach as literally factual and you’re right back to square one.
The writing is on the wall now and you are about to be check-mated. If you would like to argue the assassination is not well supported enough or too unreliable to be taught as factual be my guest. Like I wrote earlier:
Goose in post 22 wrote:Maybe [Chaosborders will] be telling us soon that he doesn't believe Caesar was assassinated.
But don't feel badly. This is usually the fall back position of sceptics of the resurrection when the evidentiary support is compared to other historical events from a similar era. The resurrection is so well supported evidentially that you must either accept its historicity or go down the absurd path of rejecting the historicity of most of antiquity in order to be consistent.



More on bias...
Chaosborders wrote:Bart Ehrman

<...snipped Chaosborders off topic blurb about the life history of Ehrman and his credentials for brevity...>

...This is rather indicative of either a failure to understand how academia works, or that your bias makes you unable to accept expert opinion’s if they disagree with yours. Either way, though you may think appealing to qualified people who’ve spent most of their adult lives studying the material “won’t help me,� I suspect the vast majority of the audience will disagree.
I'm logically under no obligation to accept the opinion of a person on the basis of their credentials alone. Especially when there are other credentialed experts that would disagree. I'll tell you what though, I'll accept Ehrman's opinion if you accept William Lane Craig's...

You've drifted off onto a diversion about how fantastic your favourite scholar is because you can't counter my point that all I need to do to reduce the evidentiary support for the assassination to be on par with the resurrection is provide reason to think there was motive to be biased, which there was, on the part of the assassination writers. However, I've built the resurrection writers credibility back up by showing they also had motives to help minimize the tendency to be biased in 1) persecution and 2) Jesus teaching not to lie.

All this time on bias and we've accomplished very little.

edit: see next post for second half...
Last edited by Goose on Thu Jun 24, 2010 2:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Goose

Post #3

Post by Goose »

Second half of Goose's round 5...


Regarding the criterion of early sources...
Chaosborders wrote:I’ll concede the creed [1 Corinthians 15:3-4] within a couple of years, though it is still not as early as the second philippic.
Well, now you are splitting hairs. We're talking the difference of about one to three years. But it matters not anyway. If you are going to be this rigid I've got Peter's preaching within only two months and therefore an earlier source to the resurrection than the Second Philippic is to the assassination. Not to mention Peter is an eyewitness. In this light, the resurrection wins on this criterion if we are going to be rigid.

Goose wrote:Not only have you now given me an early source in Paul's creeds but you also have given me enemy attestation between Paul and Peter agreeing on the resurrection. But it gets even better. By introducing Antony's oration via Dio you just gave me a very early (within only 2 months of the crucifixion) eyewitness testimony with Peter! Cha-ching... :pelvic_thrust:
Chaosborders wrote:Perhaps, if you trust Luke’s memory.
I trust Luke's memory writing about 50 years later more than I trust Dio writing almost three hundred years later. But it's not Luke's memory anyway per se. It's the memory of the witnesses he spoke to. Further, some of Paul's and Peter's sermons as recorded in Acts by Luke contain creeds as well. So the memory objection shouldn't be a significant issue. Add to this, all Luke really had to remember (or at least the winesses he interviewed had to remember) was that Peter and Paul preached the resurrection. Not something likely to be forgotten.
Chaosborders wrote:Considering the traditional view is Luke was authored by a companion of Paul, but it is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical ... e_Apostles]noted[/url] that “Acts and the Pauline letters appear to disagree about the number and timings of Paul's visits to Jerusalem, and Paul's own account of his conversion is slightly different from the account given in Acts�. For that matter, Luke’s own accounts of Paul’s conversion somewhat differ.
So what? They don't disagree on the resurrection. Compare this to Cicero and Nicolaus which differ in their "lists" of senators. In fact, Cicero doesn't even give a detailed account at all where Nicolaus does. And Cicero contradicts himself in the Second Philippic. (See below)



Criterion: Multiple independent sources strengthen the credibility of the message...
Chaosborders wrote:The reason that you think the resurrection does so much better is because you do not understand what “independent source� means.
Independent sources, in journalism, criminal justice and general research, represent two or more people or organizations which attest to a given piece of information.
Firstly, we aren't discussing "journalism, criminal justice and general research." We are discussing ancient history and specifically the resurrection. So I'm thinking more along the lines of independent literary source as applied by John P. Meier:
Meier wrote:The criterion of multiple attestation (or "the cross section") focuses on those sayings or deeds of Jesus that are attested in more than one independent literary source (e.g., Mark, Q, Paul, John) and/or in more than one literary form or genre (e.g., parable, dispute story, miracle story, prophecy, aphorism). The force of this criterion is increased if a given motif or theme is found in both different literary sources and different literary forms.
Secondly, if we go with your definition of what constitutes an independent source then Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, 1 Peter, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp are ALL independent as they all attest to a given piece of information - i.e. Jesus returned from the dead.
Chaosborders wrote:Further:
If two witnesses to an event discuss what they saw before they are consulted and agree on a consistent story, they are also no longer independent.
If the source in question must be a witness as one of the criteria to be considered independent, then you no longer have any independent sources for the assassination. Cicero wasn't a witness and neither was Nicolaus. Unless you can show that Cicero consulted different witnesses to the assassination before they had a chance to consult one another. I don't see how this possible as the witnesses to the assassination were in a group, like the resurrection, and undoubtedly consulted one another after the deed but before Cicero had a chance to speak with them.
Chaosborders wrote:So not ONLY do you need two people, there is little reason to believe the apostles themselves are independent given most descriptions have them “witnessing� the resurrection together.
Hello? The witnesses of the assassination were together in a group too. So, say bye-bye to any independent sources for the assassination. Bye-bye assassination sources...
Chaosborders wrote:What YOU have is a case of Circular Reporting.
Hello again? All the witnesses of the assassination were together and we are told they conspired amongst one another. YOU have circular reporting then too for the assassination. For some odd reason you seem to think it is different for the assassination. It isn't.
Chaosborders wrote:
In source criticism, circular reporting or false confirmation is a situation where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in fact is coming from only one source.


Getting your information from someone and then restating it does NOT make you a new independent source.
Ditto for the assassination...
Chaosborders wrote:Actually, given there is no reason to believe Cicero made the speech written in Dios considering how positive it made Anthony look, even if one does not assume it to have been Anthony’s actual speech it can be asserted as an independent attestation that the assassination actually occurred since whoever did write it was taking it to be a fact.
Are you serious? You reveal yet another double standard here. By your reasoning here anyone that writes about the resurrection that takes it to be a fact is independent attestation that the resurrection actually occurred. What happened to being from a witnesses that had no opportunity to consult one another just a moment ago? Guess those criteria only apply to the resurrection, huh?
Chaosborders wrote:So at a bare minimum the assassination has two, compared to the resurrection having at most three that can be reasonably asserted as independent.
Even with the blatant way in which you've applied a double standard and erroneously tried to squeeze in Antony as recorded by Dio to bring the tally for the assassination up to two independent sources the resurrection still has more independent sources and wins. Face it. The assassination loses on this criterion.
Chaosborders wrote:But yes, ultimately the resurrection can be seen as winning on this criterion [of multiple independent sources]
Why all the fuss then? So we agree. The resurrection wins on this criterion as well. And therefore the resurrection should be seen as having stronger credibility.



Regarding the assertion that the Gospel of John has no connection to the historical Jesus...
Chaosborders wrote:Well without Wikipedia it certainly makes it harder to state early criticism of it as a forgery from Marcion and Celsus since I’m certainly not going to dig through their manuscripts myself for where they stated that. But modern scholars include:

<...snipped the Appeals to Authority for brevity...>

Admittedly, it would have been simpler to just make a link to Wikipedia; but as can be seen, that link would hardly be unsupported.
Citing the opinions of scholars without providing the evidence and their arguments isn't really my idea of support. Especially on a controversial subjective where I can cite respected scholars such as Simon Greenleaf, F.F. Bruce, or William Lane Craig to name but a few that would support my position. But it was my fault for not specifying what I meant by support. So I'll grant you another opportunity to support, with evidence and argument, your assertion that the author of the Gospel According to John almost certainly had no direct connection to the historical Jesus.

You ignored my question by the way. Do you deny that the Gospel of John internally claims to be written by a witness?



Criterion: Eyewitnesses are, in general, to be preferred...
Chaosborders wrote:Fair enough. I’m fine with treating Peter as someone who at least claims to have been an eyewitness, though I can find no such claim in 1 Peter.
Because there isn't in 1 Peter and I've not claimed there is. I've only argued 1 Peter affirms the resurrection.



Regarding my argument (A) remaing sound...
Chaosborders wrote:Every? I think the audience would quite disagree with that.
Really? Of the many criterion we've looked at which one do you feel the assassination wins? Of all of them the only one the assassination possibly has a shot of winning is the criterion of having the earliest written document with Cicero's Second Philippic. Even though it isn't really much earlier, by ancient standards, than Paul's letters. And I'd concede this one if it wasn't hampered by the fact that Cicero doesn't come right out and unequivocally affirm the assassination. We need later writers such as Nicolaus and Plutarch to interpret Cicero. So I stand by my assertion that on every criterion the resurrection is at least as good, if not better, than the evidence for the assassination. Thus my argument (A) remains sound.
Chaosborders wrote:However, on the Source Criticism aspect I always expected the Bible to have a lead (and thought it would be much less narrow than it is). Though I could probably even further argue such points as independent sources and Peter as an eyewitness, I would rather get into Internal Criticism.
Chaosborders concedes the resurrection wins on source criticism. Thank you.



Regarding Internal Criticism...
Chaosborders wrote:Because there is no doubt that the resurrection is mentioned more often. And there is little doubt that the vast majority of the ones mentioning it believe that it occurred. So based on Source Criticism, which is part of External Criticism, just maybe it would have sufficient evidence to be considered literally factual. (Though so would just about any myth mentioned by more than one person).
You Beg the Question, what myths?
Chaosborders wrote:But in academic history, that is simply not enough. There are two more stages to the historical method, Internal Criticism and Historical Reasoning. For this post we will explore Internal Criticism, which is also known as Historical Reliability. Another way of putting it is that external criticism helps to keep us from using completely false evidence, things people have totally made up without any external reason for actually believing themselves, whereas Internal Criticism goes further and helps us determine the reliability of the evidence that makes it through source criticism.

The first method applies to eyewitnesses, so we will go through Peter and for that matter Paul since Paul claims to be a witness.
Well, considering the assassination doesn't even have a contender for an eyewitness, as a comparison I'll run Cicero through the same criteria as he is at least your earliest source.
Chaosborders wrote:
Is the real meaning of the statement different from its literal meaning? Are words used in senses not employed today? Is the statement meant to be ironic (i.e., mean other than it says)?
I think Ehrman actually makes a pretty good case that the first to say they saw Jesus never meant it in a literal sense and that most at that time would have understood it as a vision. I don’t really want to spend a lot of time on that in this section though since it is not set in stone that’s what was originally meant.
You are wise not to. What did Cicero really mean when he wrote about a "glorious banquet"?
Chaosborders wrote:
How well could the author observe the thing he reports? Were his senses equal to the observation? Was his physical location suitable to sight, hearing, touch? Did he have the proper social ability to observe: did he understand the language, have other expertise required (e.g., law, military); was he not being intimidated by his wife or the secret police?
This is where Paul already fails. There is no indication at all that he had ever met Jesus while Jesus was alive, thus even if he ran into someone claiming to be Jesus he cannot reasonably assert that it was indeed Jesus risen from the dead and not some lunatic/imposter claiming to be.
Paul is irrelevant here. As I mentioned earlier I'm not arguing Paul was a witness. As for Cicero he doesn't even claim to be as a witness.
Chaosborders wrote:What is more, neither Peter nor anyone else claimed to see the resurrection itself, but rather inferred its occurrence having supposedly seen someone they saw killed walking around again.
Patently false. Peter, as quoted by Luke, directly claims to be a witness...
Quoting Peter, Luke in Acts 3:14-15 wrote:"You rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the source of life, whom God raised from the dead. We are witnesses to that."
Cicero again is a non-starter here.
Chaosborders wrote:
How did the author report?, and what was his ability to do so?
Peter presumably had the ability to report and is said to have done so through speeches and definitely stated it occurred in his letter (though I find no claim to being a witness in said letter, despite a statement that he witnessed the Jesus’ death).
See the quote above regarding Peter claiming to be a witness. Paul also reports Peter was a witness in 1 Corinthians 15. So I have enemy attestation that Peter was a witness.

Cicero wrote a speech which he never delivered in public to be scrutinized by others in the know. Neither was his speech circulated amongst them.
Chaosborders wrote:
Regarding his ability to report, was he biased? Did he have proper time for reporting? Proper place for reporting? Adequate recording instruments?
I can scarcely imagine with someone with more motive to be biased. Either he’d just spent years of his life following around a nobody fraud who just got killed (which rather makes him less than a nobody) or he was a disciple of the Son of God. A host of psychological issues give him incentive towards finding a way to believe the latter.
Back to the issue of bias. Cicero had substantial motive to be biased too. Plenty of power driven motives for Cicero to lie.
Chaosborders wrote:
When did he report in relation to his observation? Soon? Much later? Fifty years is much later as most eyewitnesses are dead and those who remain may have forgotten relevant material.
If Acts is to be believed, it was at least a month after the first appearance. If taken as authentic, the letter is believed to have been written 60 at the earliest, almost three decades after the event was supposed to have been taken place. Acts brings up the question of, if Jesus was resurrected, why did he not prance around in public and make it as clear as possible he was indeed alive? Whereas the letter brings up the question of why Peter does not have any writings that are earlier? Paul wasn’t even a disciple but beat him to the punch? What is more, most biblical scholars argue that it is psuedigraphical and not even written by Peter at all. Even if assumed that it was a disciple of Peter, the earliest date believed for that is 70, over almost four decades after the alleged event, with most arguing for an even later date.
You've got all the same problems for the assassination. It's amazing you don't see it. Cicero doesn't give a detailed account and beats around the bush. Why? If the alleged accusations in Cicero's Second Philippic are true why didn't Cicero get out there and deliver his speech or promote it to everyone? Why aren't there more early writings attesting to the assassination? There were allegedly dozens of senators involved in this monumental event and what do we have? Crickets...Until Nicolaus 60 years later. Then more crickets until Plutarch 115 years later...

Chaosborders wrote:
What was the author's intention in reporting? For whom did he report? Would that audience be likely to require or suggest distortion to the author?
In the case of Acts, to convert people.
Luke wrote to convince Theophilus and possibly others. Acts was a two part book. Luke tells us why he wrote it and where he got his data.
Luke 1:1-4 wrote: Since many people have attempted to write an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were passed down to us by those who had been eyewitnesses and servants of the word from the beginning, I, too, have carefully investigated everything from the beginning and have decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Luke was writing to Theophilus, who had already been taught, so he could be certain. Luke apparently got his data from eyewitnesses.
Chaosborders wrote:In the case of 1 Peter he was reporting to people who already believed and appears to use the resurrection as a backup for his moral exhortation to them. Certainly both cases would require the resurrection, as no one has any reason to convert to the religion he wanted them to or follow the morality he wanted them to without such a momentous act. “Please follow the teachings of the guy who got crucified� just doesn’t have quite the same weight behind it as “Please follow the teachings of the guy who got crucified…then was raised from the dead by God and ascended into heaven.�
Please... as though Cicero had no motive to lie. "Hey, Caesar got into an argument and then a fight with Brutus and in the heat of the moment Brutus killed Caesar" doesn't carry the potential to implicate one's political rivals like "Hey, Caesar was assassinated by some senators. My arch political rival says I was in on it but I wasn't. He was..."

Cicero wrote to defend himself and accuse his rivals. He reported purely for his own benefit. We don't know if Cicero's audience would be likely to suggest distortion because Cicero never publicly delivered his speech to the people that were in a position to know the truth.
Chaosborders wrote:
Are there additional clues to intended veracity? Was he indifferent on the subject reported, thus probably not intending distortion? Did he make statements damaging to himself, thus probably not seeking to distort? Did he give incidental or casual information, almost certainly not intended to mislead?
Not the tiniest bit indifferent. And whatever statements he might have made that seem damaging to himself (if any), he effectively elevated himself from loser nobody to beloved disciple of God. Further, his stated casual information is a being that cannot be proven to exist.
What statements did Cicero make that were damaging to himself? In his Second Philippic he tries to argue he had nothing to do with the death of Caesar while also rejoicing in his death. He tries to make his case he was not an accomplice. Cicero effectively made himself an innocent hero that was on board with it all.
Chaosborders wrote:
Do his statements seem inherently improbable: e.g., contrary to human nature, or in conflict with what we know?
Yes. Dead people do not come back to life. Even if accounting for modern technology and a loose definition of ‘dead,’ they certainly do not come back to life without human intervention.
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. Further, it conflicts with our general experiences of politicians that dozens of senators would in broad daylight stab the head of state until dead. It's more probable that a head of state would die of natural causes, or at least be killed by accident, than by a stabbing assassination conspiracy involving many people.
Chaosborders wrote:
Are there inner contradictions in the document?
There are at a minimum contradictions between Luke and Acts, believed almost universally as being written by the same person, hurting the credibility of the author as a whole. And 1st Peter, besides being believed by the majority to be pseudigraphical, never seems to actually have Peter claiming to be a witness to the resurrection.
I think if we looked in more detail at those alleged contradictions between Luke and Acts we would find you are over stating your case. As for 1 Peter you are right it doesn't internally claim to be a witness. But I don't need it to. I have Peter's words, as recorded by Luke, claiming to be a witness.

Does Cicero contradict himself? Apparently he does. Cicero can't seem to keep it straight to whom he is addressing his speech in the Second Philippic. Sometimes he is addressing the Conscript Fathers. At one point he's addressing a wise man. At other points it's the immortal gods. At times Cicero is addressing Mark Antony. Cicero is all over the map.

Also, Cicero writes that Antony's accusation was, "'When Caesar was slain,' says [Mark Antony], 'Marcus Brutus immediately lifted up on high his bloody dagger, and called on Cicero by name; and congratulated him on liberty being recovered.'" But only a few sentences later Cicero changes what Antony said to, "For thus [Antony] spoke:—'Marcus Brutus, whom I name to do him honour, holding aloft his bloody dagger, called upon Cicero, from which it must be understood that he was privy to the action.'" Cicero can't keep his story straight over the span of even one paragraph for crying out loud!
Chaosborders wrote: Ultimately there seems little reason to accept either document as providing reliable testimony from an eyewitness, and plenty of reason not to.
Ditto then for Cicero.
Chaosborders wrote:Now if these documents, as well as Paul and John were taken to be the accounts of secondary witnesses (still disputed), even if the first question of “On whose primary testimony does the secondary witness base his statements?� could be determined with certainty, and the 2nd and 3rd questions of “(2) Did the secondary witness accurately report the primary testimony as a whole? (3) If not, in what details did he accurately report the primary testimony?� be satisfactorily answered such that it could be considered we actually have the gist of someone’s primary testimony, the reliability of said testimony would still be hurt by the same problems as 1st Peter. In particular, the problems of bias and the inherent improbability of a dead guy coming back to life.
Same for Cicero regarding bias. A dead man coming back to life is only a problem for those that rule it out a priori.
Chaosborders wrote:Given I have seen no academic challenges at all to the reliability of the assassination, I will leave it to you to try and show the documents concerning it as somehow being less reliable than the documents concerning the resurrection.
Done.



Back to John...
Chaosborders wrote:But back onto John, it is at a minimum considered by most to be the result of an oral tradition, so let us see what happens when we run it through the considerations set up for examining oral traditions.
Oral tradition? John internally claims to have been written by an eyewitness. Why are you ignoring this fact?

Your following assessment, using the criteria for oral traditions, of the Gospel of John is irrelevant as you are Begging the Question that it was the result of an oral tradition. So I see little need to address with any seriousness your comments on this matter until you establish with evidence John was the result of oral traditions and not an eyewitness account as it claims to be.
Chaosborders wrote:Broad conditions stated.
The tradition should be supported by an unbroken series of witnesses, reaching from the immediate and first reporter of the fact to the living mediate witness from whom we take it up, or to the one who was the first to commit it to writing.
Many of the scholars do not consider it an unbroken series and believe it to have no direct connection at all, but even if that were assumed to be true:
The Gospel of John internally claims to be a witness. Further, the last chapter affirms it was written by a disciple. If this isn't enough you have argued yourself that Polycarp and Ignatius probably received their data from the witness John. So either way we have an unbroken chain in either the Gospel of John, Polycarp, or Ignatius. Compare this to Cicero or Nicolaus. We don't have any evidence that I'm aware of that there is an unbroken chain of witnesses.

Chaosborders wrote:
There should be several parallel and independent series of witnesses testifying to the fact in question.
Of the hundreds who supposedly saw Christ after his resurrection, and of the thousands who supposedly converted and thus took up the tradition following Christ’s supposed ascension into heaven, we have at most a few ‘series’ of witnesses that can be reasonably stated as independent.
Which is more than we can say for one of the most pivotal events from antiquity - the assassination of Julius Caesar. All we have is one independent source in Cicero. And to make matters worse we don't know where he got his data.
Chaosborders wrote:It does not seem like John firmly meets the broad conditions very well.
He meets it better than Cicero.
Chaosborders wrote:Particular conditions formulated.
The tradition must report a public event of importance, such as would necessarily be known directly to a great number of persons.
Certainly if it happened it can be thought of as one of the most important events to ever occur in human history.
Like the assassination was for the future of the Roman Empire.
Chaosborders wrote:
The tradition must have been generally believed, at least for a definite period of time.
Yet despite the importance it should have had, over 260 years later there were still at most 5-8 million (from The Rise of Christianity page 6) out of over 50 million.

Not exactly 'generally believed' when not even a third of the population believes it after 300 years of 40% growth.
Firstly, I'm puzzled how the logical fallacy of an Appeal to Popularity could be considered a legitimate historical criterion. Which leads me to conclude either the criterion is fallacious or you are misapplying it. Secondly, these types of estimates you've linked us to are extremely speculative. For instance your source says about the city of Alexandria, "[it] was perhaps between 500,000 and 750,000." I'll add that 5-8 million out of 56 million (assuming these numbers are even remotely accurate) by c. 300AD sounds like a lot to me and impressive considering this was accomplished during a period of heavy persecution. At any rate, the tradition was generally believed among those that witnessed it anyway. Which is the only group in a position to know the truth and therefore of any real importance here. Comparatively, outside of the relatively few that would even know about the assassination how many believed the tradition that Caesar had been assassinated?
Chaosborders wrote:
During that definite period it must have gone without protest, even from persons interested in denying it.
Justin Martyr makes clear in his Dialogue with Typhro that there was indeed protest against the resurrection:
but, as I said before you have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilaean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. Moreover, you accuse Him of having taught those godless, lawless, and unholy doctrines which you mention to the condemnation of those who confess Him to be Christ, and a Teacher from and Son of God.


From him we know that Jews were protesting the resurrection, believing it a hoax by the disciples.
This is an odd criterion. Personally, I would of course expect parties interested in denying something to deny that thing and not be surprised when they do. Just as I would expect parties interested in promoting something as true to do so as well. Further, we don't know if this dialogue you've quoted falls in the time frame of a "definite period" because we aren't given that period or explanation for why that particular period is right. At any rate, it's really of no surprise the Jews protested the resurrection and tried to find other explanations. They were protesting Jesus from the start and at every step of the way so this protest from them over the resurrection carries little weight.
Chaosborders wrote:
The critical spirit must have been sufficiently developed while the tradition lasted, and the necessary means of critical investigation must have been at hand.
I see little indication, but if you would like to offer evidence it meets this criteria I would be happy to see it.
John tells us that Jesus' own brothers did not believe in him (7:5). John includes the story of doubting Thomas (20:24-29). Now, please provide the evidence that Cicero for example meets this criteria.
Chaosborders wrote:
Critical-minded persons who would surely have challenged the tradition — had they considered it false — must have made no such challenge.
Besides Justin Martyr’s description of the Jews, we also have Tacitus labeling Christianity as a whole as a superstition. It certainly seems there were indeed challenges.
I wouldn't call the Jews critical-minded in this case. They denied almost every claim about Jesus. They were cynical not critical. Tacitus on the other hand could be seen as fulfilling this criterion. But labeling Christianity as a "superstition" isn't necessarily a denial of the resurrection. Or are you arguing it is now? Which would be hilarious if you were. Considering you made such a big fuss about me inferring that Tacitus was referring to reports that had come down to him that Christians believed Jesus had risen from the dead when he wrote, "...a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out..." Further, in post 23 you wrote, "Tacitus is merely a red herring and has no evidentiary value regarding the resurrection." Apparently in your world Tacitus is only a Red Herring when used for the resurrection but not when used against it. Yet another double standard.
Chaosborders wrote:So even in conjunction with the other documents, John can scarcely meet the broader conditions, and itself fails at almost every particular condition that must be met for it to be accepted.
You Beg the Question. First, you must show it is the result of oral tradition and not an eyewitness account for you to draw this conclusion.
Chaosborders wrote:Ultimately, when internal criticism is applied, the documents fail to be shown as reliable.
Hardly. You've Begged the Question that John is the result of oral traditions and merely argued by assertion.
Chaosborders wrote:When historical reasoning, the final step of the historical method, is gone through in the next post, it will be shown that this unreliability makes the resurrection so much less plausible than alternative hypotheses that to teach it as a literally factual event would be a completely unreasonable violation of what is used by historians to form academic history.
I can't wait...

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Post #4

Post by ChaosBorders »

Round 5
Goose wrote:
Appeal to Authoity wrote:If there is a significant amount of legitimate dispute among the experts within a subject, then it will [be] fallacious to make an Appeal to Authority using the disputing experts. This is because for almost any claim being made and "supported" by one expert there will be a counterclaim that is made and "supported" by another expert. In such cases an Appeal to Authority would tend to be futile. In such cases, the dispute has to be settled by consideration of the actual issues under dispute. Since either side in such a dispute can invoke experts, the dispute cannot be rationally settled by Appeals to Authority.
I suggest Chaosborders reviews the above fallacy as he had made it multiple times in his last post. In cases where he merely cites the name(s) of a scholar as support for his position I'll assume he cannot address the actual argument presented.
A) When you present sources that are disputed by experts in the field, while I have sources that you have not shown to be in the least, it would make no sense at all not to appeal to those experts and just allow you to present said evidence as if it is unchallenged.
B) As I will demonstrate with the ‘experts’ you give later on, mine have far better credentials in the field under consideration. As I laid out in an earlier post, History as an academic subject should be formed by those with expertise in the field itself.
C) And what qualifies as ‘significant’? Most of the times I appeal to authority it is when they are in the majority, usually in the vast and increasing majority.
D) Furthermore, I cannot possibly reiterate the entirety of the arguments against each and every piece of evidence you present. I’ve done my best to give sources of said arguments and list the credentials of the people giving them.

Rather than trying to broadly imply that every time I appeal to an expert I am committing a fallacy, perhaps you should state it on a case by case basis so I can state in each case why I feel the instance is not covered by the fallacy.

Goose wrote:There is no logical reason for the process of historical reasoning to automatically exclude a supernatural explanation or a miracle. The process itself argues to the BEST explanation that has both scope and power. To automatically exclude a supernatural explanation or miracle claim a priori because it is a supernatural explanation or miracle claim is circular logic. Surely Chaosborders recognizes this. So the only way he can reduce my argument to the absurd in this manner is if he firsts commits the fallacy of circular reasoning.



As we will see when going through historical reasoning, there is plenty of reason to automatically exclude a supernatural explanation or a miracle. Namely, that neither can be proven to actually occur, which means that any naturalistic possibility that can be proven to occur is by definition more plausible.
Goose wrote:You are correct my argument relies on what is already taught as factual. My underlying assumption is that what is taught as historical in secular history has already passed through the historical method. If you would like to argue that there are things currently being taught in secular history classes as literally factual, such as the assassination of Caesar, that should NOT be because they would not pass the historical method, be my guest.
Unfortunately that is a faulty assumption due to the politics surrounding the writing of history text books. Another problem is that not everyone involved in writing the textbooks are actually professional historians in any manner. I can elaborate on both of those points if you wish, but for now I’ll just give an example.

In my most recent history class’s text book it was taught as literally factual that the Wizard of Oz was written as an allegory for the political landscape at the time. This is inaccurate. In 1963, summer school teacher Henry Littlefield came up with the idea of using the characters and events as metaphors to teach bored students. (Though I can come up with a list of other examples, I find this particular one to be entertaining).
Goose wrote:You tacitly acknowledge the resurrection is overwhelming the assassination. Thank you. I agree. And thus my argument is sound. Logically, you have no choice but to accept its conclusion.
Hardly overwhelming. At this stage I actually expected it to be doing considerably better than it has. But ultimately that is irrelevant since we still haven’t gone over Historical Reasoning, which is the part of the historical method where hypothesis are formed and examined. All we’ve gone over so far is the parts that basically state “Did someone say x happened?� and “Is that someone reliable?� The resurrection pretty firmly has someone saying it happened, and I’ll even grant on that point it wins over the assassination. Regarding reliability though, it does not fare as well, and regarding historical reasoning, the equivalent of “Did x probably happen?� it gets competely trounced.

Goose wrote:Look. Let's lance this boil to prevent any more whining. Simply replace where my argument says "another historical event" with "the assassination of Julius Caesar."

Whining: To complain or protest in a childish manner.

I realize I’m scarcely half your age, so perhaps you think of me as being a child, but unless you can detail exactly in what manner my protests are childish, I would ask you stop making this ad hominen against me. This is the third time this debate you have accused me of whining.

I would also like the audience to note this is the second time Goose has had to modify his argument.
Goose wrote: I think you apply scepticism to the resurrection sources but appear to be quite forgiving on the assassination. For instance. You assert that Dio's speech coheres with the character of Mark Anthony presented in other material. What other material would that be? I'd wager if we dig we'll find out it's circular reporting. Something you seem to think the resurrection sources are guilty of. I'll also note that you feel as long as the character presented in one source coheres with the character presented in other material this is enough to establish reliability in the case of Antony's oration by Dio. That alone gives me the reliability of almost every source for the resurrection.
Appian’s Bell. Civ. i.–v., Cicero’s Letters and Philippics, and Plutarch’s Parallel Lives: “Anthony� namely. And given Cicero is hardly going to write a brilliant speech on Mark Anthony’s behalf, trying to argue that’d be circular reporting is quite the stretch. But if you would like to make a case, then please go for it.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:No, I argue as if [the Second Philippic] was circulated among the senate. I know that it was not an actual ‘speech’. However, for your assertion
It wasn't circulated amongst the senate either. If you think it was provide your evidence.
Fair enough, I cannot prove it was physically given to the senate. However, given the entire rest of the series of Philippicae was addressed to the senate, and the basic premise of all of them was trying to rally the senate against Mark Anthony, it seems unreasonable to conclude that Cicero wrote this not meaning for it to ever be read by the senate. Whether it ever actually made it to them physically before he died isn’t particularly relevant regarding the tendency towards minimizing bias.

Furthermore:

The second oration against Antony (here abridged) was never actually delivered by Cicero, the reason being explained in “the argument� prefixed to Mr. Yonge’s translation, as follows: “The senate met in the temple of Concord, but Cicero himself was persuaded not to attend by his friends, who were afraid of Antony proceeding to actual violence against him (and indeed he brought a strong guard of armed men with him to the senate). He spoke with the greatest fury against Cicero, charging him with having been the principal author and contriver of Cæsar’s murder, hoping by this to inflame the soldiers, whom he had posted within hearing of his harang. Soon after this, Cicero removed to a villa near Naples for greater safety, and here he composed this second philippic, which he did not publish immediately, but contented himself at first with sending a copy to Brutus and Cassius, who were much pleased with it.�
This source has him sending a copy straight to Brutus, a principle actor, as well as Cassius, who was listed in paragraph 11 as one of the senators involved. Presumably they knew whether they had a hand in killing their emperor or not.
Goose wrote: And I don’t see how anything else is relevant. Being killed doesn't necessarily imply an assassination. We've been over this.
Assasination: An assassination is the targeted killing of a public figure, usually for political purposes.

Keyword there is usually. It doesn’t need to be. Unless you are seriously contending that someone accidently killed Caesar, it counts as an assassination. Given Cicero is clearly not implying an accidental killing, the logical conclusion is he is explicitly stating Caesar was assassinated by the basic definitions of the words involved.
Goose wrote:For example, Paul writes that Jesus had returned from the dead and named the witnesses, such as Peter, in a letter that was intended to be circulated. Don't you think Paul would have been discredited if it were not true? We have evidence that the disciples taught the resurrection and were persecuted for their belief in it. Don't you think Peter would have taken action against Paul if it were not true what Paul had written? Especially considering we have evidence that Peter was worried about the consequences of being associated to Jesus.


Irony. You contend that Paul and Peter were ‘enemies.’ Were that the case, not only would Paul falsely stating Peter was a witness fit fine, but if the traditional belief of the writer of Acts of the Apostles were assumed true then Luke, being a disciple of Paul, would also be totally worthless as a source, eliminating any reason to think Peter ever claimed to be a witness entirely.

However, given I find the notion of Paul and Peter being enemies utterly ludicrous I am more inclined to let you have this one. Especially since I think Peter did indeed claim to have seen Jesus resurrected, though am far more skeptical regarding issues such as whether that was in earnest, whether that was meant literally, and whether that was because it literally occurred or was the result of multiple possible psychological reasons. Those issues will all be explored in more detail later in the post.
Goose wrote: You call that evidence? I can't meet your demand because historians don't know where Nicolaus got his data. It could have been Joe the bartender for all we know. For some reason this doesn't seem to bother you...
On the contrary, not knowing where Nicolaus got his data is precisely why I’ve primarily relied upon Cicero.
Goose wrote:
So let's see. I've provided an argument that Nicolaus probably received his data, or at least some of it, from Antony based upon the premise that Antony was Nicolaus' employer. I'll concede this may not be a cogent argument as the evidence that supports Nicolaus being the tutor comes from Sophronius and is very late. But it is at least something to go on. And my argument here is more cogent than your argument that, well, it could have been almost anyone. Well duh! Your argument is basically a truism. Apparently it is acceptable to you that Nicolaus' source of data remains a mystery. Go figure...
Honestly, I don’t care that much either way. If he got it from Antony, then the assassination has classic enemy attestation. If he didn’t, there is no reason to believe he was biased. Either way helps the assassination.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:If there is anyone in the audience who actually feels he gets enemy attestation, please comment in the Peanut Gallery on what you feel is valid and I will address it. Otherwise I am not going to waste my time or the audiences rebutting this.
Dodging this argument by appealing to the Peanut Gallery doesn't make it go away. The argument stands.
If no one thinks you have even the appearance of a case here, wasting time on it is pointless. If you wish to delude yourself into thinking you have enemy attestation when nobody else does, that is your own business.

I again ask for ANYONE reading this thread who thinks Goose’s claim to have enemy attestation is worth addressing to speak up. Otherwise I’m not going to waste everyone’s time refuting it.
Goose wrote:
The point of 1 Kings 22 being God will use whatever means he chooses to accomplish his will. This does not give a green light to Christians to lie which you seem to be arguing it does. It's as though you are arguing Christians use 1 Kings 22 as a good for the goose, good for the gander type argument to allow lying. And I know of no Christian or theologian that does.


Really? You don’t know any theologians fine with stuff we now call lying?
Read page 142 . Catholic theologians have been doing it for ages. In that example it’s explained why lying to save Jews from the Nazis was ok because the Nazis didn’t have any right to the truth so it wasn’t really lying. In the distant past, telling a half-truth (lie of omission) was fine so long as you added the other half in your head.

Point is, what fits definitions of lying today is not necessarily the case then, nor was everything we would consider lying today considered wrong.
Goose wrote:
Do not bear false witness means do not give false testimony whether in court or anywhere else. That is, do not lie, full stop.
That is what it has come to mean, especially thanks to the early catholic church. There is no indication that the original intent was ever to be more than lying in court (which back then was often tantamount to murder given the frequency of capital cases and lack of other evidence).
Goose wrote: Christians are instructed by Jesus to not give false testimony and therefore instructed not to lie. I can't imagine how anyone would not see this as a motivation to minimize the tendency in Christian writers to be biased or lie.
If Jesus died and stayed dead it would hardly be any motivation for the original ones claiming to have seen him come back to life if they felt they could benefit from claiming he did. It would hardly be the fault of subsequent writers if they were fooled and propagated the lie.
Goose wrote: It still remains that your premise is false as relatively early Christian writers did not accept pseudepigraphy as a practice. Therefore, Christians did not accept as a practice this form of "lying" as you claim they did.
A) The ones writing the materials were Christian, or at least considered themselves as such, so yes some did accept it as a practice. They also clearly accepted making stuff up/adding details to make a theological point as acceptable too. This isn’t really any different from many Christians today.
B) Given the Apocrypha, all pseudegraphical in nature, have been considered useful by large segments of Christianity for almost two thousand years, pseudegraphical work in general seems to only be unaccepted as divinely inspired. But given the prevalence of it early on, it isn’t surprising so much ended up in canon anyways.

Goose wrote: Demonstrate with evidence Cicero wrote his letters and they were not pseudepigraphical.


To my knowledge they are accepted by every single accredited historian based on textual analysis. I am unaware of any dispute on this matter. I can’t possibly bring forth the entirety of work done showing this, so will leave it to you to find any experts on the matter who support your position. Any. At all.
Goose wrote:Fine. I'm not arguing here that the details surrounding the resurrection should be taught as literally factual either. Thus, by your reasoning, pseudepigraphy is moot and irrelevant to the debate.
No, it shows at a minimum that at least some early Christians were making stuff up to try and make points. So clearly any attempts to get them not to ‘lie’ (though I still contend it was not considered lying back then), was unsuccessful. As such, it can hardly be viewed as having minimized any biases.
Goose wrote: I smell sour grapes. What I'm accomplishing by this form of argument is to show how good the evidence for the resurrection really is. And we are discovering through this process of comparison to the assassination, which is by ancient standards very well supported evidentially and considered an undisputed historical fact, the evidentiary support for the resurrection measures up very well.
And now you claim the assassination is very well supported evidentially, despite spending the last several posts tearing it down. Hardly seems all that well supported to me. The only reason really it is an undisputed historical fact is that there are not more plausible alternative explanations that account for the descriptions of it happening, as will be seen going through Historical Reasoning. This is the same for just about any event in antiquity that is considered literally factual.
Goose wrote: I'm also showing how the type of sceptical reasoning often used against the resurrection when applied to the assassination causes similar problems for the assassination as it would for almost any other event from antiquity.
Which does nothing to show that the resurrection should be taught as literally factual.
Goose wrote:The evidentiary support for Caesar's assassination, by ancient standards, is very strong.


Your contention is that the evidence is strong?
Goose wrote:In other words, if the assassination is not well enough supported to be taught as an historical fact then almost nothing from that time would be.
A)Historical reasoning will show why events that seem at first glance to have weaker evidence are passed through when the resurrection is not.
B)What’s your point? Just because most things in antiquity are questionable doesn’t mean the resurrection should be taught as literally factual. It’s a non sequitur.
Goose wrote:
The writing is on the wall now and you are about to be check-mated.
Now wasn’t there a thread where it was discussed how such claims are not becoming and usually an indicator of the opposite?
Goose wrote: The resurrection is so well supported evidentially that you must either accept its historicity or go down the absurd path of rejecting the historicity of most of antiquity in order to be consistent.
Or I could turn to Historical Reasoning and show why I don’t have to reject the historicity of the assassination. How appropriate that you make so many of these claims on the post where I finally get to show why academic history completely rejects them as false.
Goose wrote:I'm logically under no obligation to accept the opinion of a person on the basis of their credentials alone. Especially when there are other credentialed experts that would disagree. I'll tell you what though, I'll accept Ehrman's opinion if you accept William Lane Craig's...
Actually, William Lane Craig will probably be a valuable part of my argument on historical reasoning next post, as will be how his argument fails when applied to secular history classes.
Goose wrote: You've drifted off onto a diversion about how fantastic your favourite scholar is because you can't counter my point that all I need to do to reduce the evidentiary support for the assassination to be on par with the resurrection is provide reason to think there was motive to be biased, which there was, on the part of the assassination writers.
Just because you’ve continuously ignored the argument I made for why expert opinion regarding history is what should be taught, does not mean I have not countered your assertion that your opinion should be just as important. That you do not accept the counter is your prerogative, but unless someone in the audience also feels my counter is insufficient I don’t really care.
Goose wrote:All this time on bias and we've accomplished very little.
You may not feel so, but I suspect our viewers would disagree.
Goose wrote: Well, now you are splitting hairs. We're talking the difference of about one to three years. But it matters not anyway. If you are going to be this rigid I've got Peter's preaching within only two months and therefore an earlier source to the resurrection than the Second Philippic is to the assassination. Not to mention Peter is an eyewitness. In this light, the resurrection wins on this criterion if we are going to be rigid.
Fair enough. Took you long enough to do, but I’m glad it happened on the post where I get to show it’s irrelevant anyways.

Criterion: Multiple independent sources strengthen the credibility of the message...
Goose wrote:Firstly, we aren't discussing "journalism, criminal justice and general research."


Historical research falls under the category of ‘general research’.
Goose wrote:We are discussing ancient history and specifically the resurrection. So I'm thinking more along the lines of independent literary source as applied by John P. Meier:
Meier wrote:The criterion of multiple attestation (or "the cross section") focuses on those sayings or deeds of Jesus that are attested in more than one independent literary source (e.g., Mark, Q, Paul, John) and/or in more than one literary form or genre (e.g., parable, dispute story, miracle story, prophecy, aphorism). The force of this criterion is increased if a given motif or theme is found in both different literary sources and different literary forms.
I was actually trying to give you some leeway by somewhat using this definition myself, as applying independent source at its most rigid makes it so only one independent source can reasonably be claimed for each event and I didn’t mind you winning on this criterion. However, your attempt at a landslide victory with the claim:
Goose wrote:Secondly, if we go with your definition of what constitutes an independent source then Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, 1 Peter, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp are ALL independent as they all attest to a given piece of information - i.e. Jesus returned from the dead.


Is completely and total nonsense. I’ve already gone over the manner in which some of those rely on the others and thus are not independent. If anyone in the audience needs me to repeat myself or go more in depth I will, but I’m not wasting my time doing it here.
Goose wrote:If the source in question must be a witness as one of the criteria to be considered independent, then you no longer have any independent sources for the assassination. Cicero wasn't a witness and neither was Nicolaus. Unless you can show that Cicero consulted different witnesses to the assassination before they had a chance to consult one another. I don't see how this possible as the witnesses to the assassination were in a group, like the resurrection, and undoubtedly consulted one another after the deed but before Cicero had a chance to speak with them.
Internal criticism does not require the source to be an eyewitness. To try and explain how this works to you, since you don’t seem to get it, I will give an example.

Ten people witness the assassination, they confer, one of them tells Cicero. Cicero writes it down and the ten don’t. Cicero is an independent source.

Ten people witness the assassination, the don’t confer, they all individually tell Cicero. Cicero writes it down and is still only one independent source.

Ten people witness the assassination, they confer, they tell Cicero but also write it down themselves. Cicero writes it down but is not an independent source from the ten.

If it is the only source, it is an independent source. (Whether it is a reliable source or not is a separate matter).

Since it is unknown where Nicolaus got his information he cannot reasonably be claimed as an independent source. I tried to usher in Dios through textual analysis based on the concept of independent literary sources so you could have John and Paul and actually win by one to be nice and also so I didn’t have to spend time arguing the point that you went ahead and made for me here:
Hello? The witnesses of the assassination were together in a group too. So, say bye-bye to any independent sources for the assassination. Bye-bye assassination sources...
So yes, if you want to get really technical about it only a singular independent source can be reasonably claimed for each event. However I’m fine with using the looser independent literary sources and letting you win by one, but you still don’t get a landslide victory. Even using independent literary sources, in cases where the information can be reasonably traced to another source or cannot be reasonably stated as a separate literary tradition, it is not reasonable to assert they are independent. It is blatant circular reporting.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:So at a bare minimum the assassination has two, compared to the resurrection having at most three that can be reasonably asserted as independent.
Even with the blatant way in which you've applied a double standard and erroneously tried to squeeze in Antony as recorded by Dio to bring the tally for the assassination up to two independent sources the resurrection still has more independent sources and wins. Face it. The assassination loses on this criterion.
A)I did face it. I gave you three and the assassination two.
B)I didn’t need to face it since I could legitimately argue they both only deserve one.
C)I don’t really feel like spending time on that though since I think Historical reasoning renders it irrelevant and will show that in this post. So I’m still willing to let you win on this one, despite you yourself bringing up the basic reason you shouldn’t.
Goose wrote:Why all the fuss then? So we agree. The resurrection wins on this criterion as well. And therefore the resurrection should be seen as having stronger credibility.
The fuss is because you want a landslide where you get a narrow margin.

Goose wrote:Citing the opinions of scholars without providing the evidence and their arguments isn't really my idea of support. Especially on a controversial subjective where I can cite respected scholars such as Simon Greenleaf, F.F. Bruce, or William Lane Craig to name but a few that would support my position.


Simon Greenleaf was a lawyer who happened to write on Christian Apologetics. He is not a historian in any manner. Also, he has been dead over a hundred and fifty years. Even if he were a historian he would not likely be using the same practices academic historians do today.

Frederick Bruce does a little better since he was actually head of a department of Biblical History and Literature, but his work on the reliability of New Testament Documents is still over sixty years old.

The only degree William Lane Craig holds even remotely related to history is a master’s in Church History from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Even if it were overlooked that his degree is from an evangelical Christian Seminary of no apparent note whose stated on Theopedia as being “a learning community dedicated to the development of servant leaders for the global church, … to engage contemporary culture for the sake of Christ’s kingdom� (yeah, that’s totally a fair and unbiased place to learn), all he has is a Master’s. Craig’s primary expertise is in theology. We are discussing history. He is not nearly as qualified as the experts I listed.
Goose wrote:But it was my fault for not specifying what I meant by support. So I'll grant you another opportunity to support, with evidence and argument, your assertion that the author of the Gospel According to John almost certainly had no direct connection to the historical Jesus.


Given most of the people I listed have spent significant amounts of time outlaying the arguments, I cannot possibly fit it all into this thread. But to humor you I suppose I can summarize some of them to a ridiculous extent:

A)The teachings of Jesus in John are very different from those found in the synoptic gospels, thus for the last couple hundred years the view has been taken only one or the other are likely to be authentic. The majority of historians view the Synoptics to have far greater historical value, thus discount John.
B) By all indications it took far longer to be accepted by mainstream Christianity than the other Synoptics.
C) Gnostics accepted it.
D) Even going by the traditional dates, the earliest it is believed to have been written was 90. Even were he a teen when Jesus was executed, it would make him almost three decades older than the median life expectancy of the time. Not unheard of, but besides the reliability issues involved it is simply more likely a tradition was passed down the three or four generations that had been born by then.
E) The language and phrasing are not characteristic of a Jew, as John the Apostle was.
Goose wrote:You ignored my question by the way. Do you deny that the Gospel of John internally claims to be written by a witness?
20Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, "Lord, who is going to betray you?") 21When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"
22Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me." 23Because of this, the rumor spread among the brothers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?"
24This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.
25Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
Since my assertion is that John is psuedigraphical, I don’t see how an internal claim is all that relevant. But it seems to me that at best it would be partly a copy of the work of someone claiming discipleship, given the third person descriptions and the use of ‘we’.
Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:Because there is no doubt that the resurrection is mentioned more often. And there is little doubt that the vast majority of the ones mentioning it believe that it occurred. So based on Source Criticism, which is part of External Criticism, just maybe it would have sufficient evidence to be considered literally factual. (Though so would just about any myth mentioned by more than one person).
You Beg the Question, what myths?
Myth: 1. A usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.
2. A popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone.

True or not, by definition the Bible qualifies as a myth. C.S. Lewis has called it a true myth. The problem is that whether the Bible is true or not, most myths aren’t, and any system of reasoning that can end up getting them taught as literally factual is faulty.

Goose wrote:
Chaosborders wrote:What is more, neither Peter nor anyone else claimed to see the resurrection itself, but rather inferred its occurrence having supposedly seen someone they saw killed walking around again.
Patently false. Peter, as quoted by Luke, directly claims to be a witness...
Luke 24:
1On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " 8Then they remembered his words.
As with all matters on the work, the author of Acts does not have a single person actually seeing Jesus’ dead body pick itself up and start walking around. Everyone involved infers it from ‘seeing’ a ‘risen’ Jesus after seeing him crucified. This is rather notable as it opens up a ton of possibilities that would ruled out if anyone had said something along the lines of “I was there when he clawed himself out of the grave�.
Goose wrote: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.


If you are going to make such a claim, you better well document it.
Goose wrote: Further, it conflicts with our general experiences of politicians that dozens of senators would in broad daylight stab the head of state until dead. It's more probable that a head of state would die of natural causes, or at least be killed by accident, than by a stabbing assassination conspiracy involving many people.
It does not, however, conflict with our general experience that heads of state often end up assassinated, as this long list of assassinated people show. Since even Brutus stabbing to death Caesar by himself is an assassination by definition, I don’t find the number of people involved particularly relevant.

Note also this is a particularly common fate of Roman Emperors
• Titus Tatius, (748 BC), Sabine king, in Rome
• Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, (579 BC), Etruscan king of Rome, in Rome by the sons of Ancus Marcius
• Servius Tullius, (534 BC), Etruscan king of Rome, in Rome by Tarquin II
• Tiberius Gracchus, (133 BC), Roman tribune, in Rome by Roman senators
• Julius Caesar, (44 BC), Roman general and dictator, in Rome by members of the Roman Senate
• Cicero, (43 BC), Roman orator, outside of Rome under orders from Mark Antony
• Caligula, (41), Roman Emperor, in Rome by Cassius Chaerea through a conspiracy with the Praetorian guard and the Senate
• Claudius, (54), Roman Emperor, poisoned in Rome by his wife, Agrippina
• Vitellius, (69), Roman Emperor, in Rome by the Flavian army
• Galba, (69), Roman Emperor, in Rome by the Praetorian Guard under orders from Otho
• Domitian, (96), Roman Emperor, in Rome by Stephanus, steward to Julia Flavia
• Commodus, (192), Roman Emperor, killed in Rome by Narcissus the wrestler
• Pertinax, (193), Roman Emperor, in Rome by the Praetorian Guard
• Didius Julianus, (193), Roman Emperor, in Rome by the Praetorian Guard
• Publius Septimius Geta, (212), Roman Emperor, in Rome by centurions under orders of Caracalla
• Caracalla, (217), Roman Emperor, between Edessa and Carrhae (modern-day Sanli Urfa and Harran) by Martialis, possibly under orders of Macrinus
• Elagabalus, (222), Roman Emperor, in Rome by the Praetorian Guard under orders of Julia Maesa and Julia Mamaea
• Maximinus Thrax, (238), Roman Emperor, outside Aquileia by his troops
• Pupienus, (238), Roman Emperor, in Rome by the Praetorian Guard
• Balbinus, (238), Roman Emperor, in Rome by the Praetorian Guard
• Volusianus, (253), Roman Emperor, near Interamna by his troops
• Trebonianus Gallus, (253), Roman Emperor, near Interamna by his troops
• Aurelian, (275), Roman Emperor, near Caenophrurium (modern-day Corlu)
• Florianus, (276), Roman Emperor, near Tarsus
Goose wrote:Sometimes he is addressing the Conscript Fathers. At one point he's addressing a wise man. At other points it's the immortal gods. At times Cicero is addressing Mark Antony. Cicero is all over the map.


Precisely how is addressing multiple people a contradiction?
Goose wrote:Also, Cicero writes that Antony's accusation was, "'When Caesar was slain,' says [Mark Antony], 'Marcus Brutus immediately lifted up on high his bloody dagger, and called on Cicero by name; and congratulated him on liberty being recovered.'" But only a few sentences later Cicero changes what Antony said to, "For thus [Antony] spoke:—'Marcus Brutus, whom I name to do him honour, holding aloft his bloody dagger, called upon Cicero, from which it must be understood that he was privy to the action.'" Cicero can't keep his story straight over the span of even one paragraph for crying out loud!
XII. But recollect, I pray you, how that clever man convicted me of being an accomplice in the business. When Caesar was slain, says he, Marcus Brutus immediately lifted up on high his bloody dagger, and called on Cicero by name; and congratulated him on liberty being recovered. Why on me above all men? Because I knew of it beforehand? Consider rather whether this was not his reason for calling on me, that, when he had performed an action very like those which I myself had done, he called me above all men to witness that he had been an imitator of my exploits. But you, O stupidest of all men, do not you perceive, that if it is a crime to have wished that Caesar should be slain--which you accuse me of having wished--it is a crime also to have rejoiced at his death? For what is the difference between a man who has advised an action, and one who has approved of it? or what does it signify whether I wished it to be done, or rejoice that it has been done? Is there any one then, except you yourself and those men who wished him to become a king, who was unwilling that that deed should be done, or who disapproved of it after it was done? All men, therefore, are guilty as far as this goes. In truth, all good men, as far as it depended on them, bore a part in the slaying of Caesar. Some did not know how to contrive it, some had not courage for it, some had no opportunity,--every one had the inclination.

However, remark the stupidity of this fellow,--I should rather say, of this brute beast. For thus he spoke:--"Marcus Brutus, whom I name to do him honour, holding aloft his bloody dagger, called upon Cicero, from which it must be understood that he was privy to the action." Am I then called wicked by you because you suspect that I suspected something; and is he who openly displayed his reeking dagger, named by you that you may do him honour? Be it so. Let this stupidity exist in your language: how much greater is it in your actions and opinions! Arrange matters in this way at last, O consul; pronounce the cause of the Bruti, of Caius Cassius, of Cnaeus Domitius, of Caius Trebonius and the rest to be whatever you please to call it: sleep off that intoxication of yours, sleep it off and take breath. Must one apply a torch to you to waken you while you are sleeping over such an important affair? Will you never understand that you have to decide whether those men who performed that action are homicides or assertors of freedom?
I see no indication that he thinks Anthony spoke only a single sentence on the matter. Even if he did, speaking about two separate parts of a compound sentence result in the same thing. I don’t really get how you’re coming up with these two parts as being contradictory.
Goose wrote: A dead man coming back to life is only a problem for those that rule it out a priori.
And until you can document using credible sources that the dead can actually come back to life, then its improbability remains an issue for Internal Criticism. That issue will be an even greater problem for Historical Reasoning.

Goose wrote:The Gospel of John internally claims to be a witness. Further, the last chapter affirms it was written by a disciple. If this isn't enough you have argued yourself that Polycarp and Ignatius probably received their data from the witness John.


Them being disciples of John doesn’t mean the Gospel itself was written by John , though you would in fairness get a fourth independent literary tradition if this is the case (despite it not technically giving an independent source, as mentioned above I never expected to win on that criteria).
Goose wrote:Compare this to Cicero or Nicolaus. We don't have any evidence that I'm aware of that there is an unbroken chain of witnesses.



For Cicero at least he states the senators made no secret who was involved. And despite your claims we are merely making inferences, later he makes the argument that “if they be not deliverers of the Roman people and saviors of the republic, are worse than assassins, worse than homicides, worse even than patricides: since it is a more atrocious thing to murder the father of one's country, than one's own father,� thus what they did was either patricide or an honorable thing to do, and since Brutus and Cassius have been called honorable and given provinces it must be the latter.
Goose wrote:
Firstly, I'm puzzled how the logical fallacy of an Appeal to Popularity could be considered a legitimate historical criterion. Which leads me to conclude either the criterion is fallacious or you are misapplying it.
I’ve never much cared for the field of history for precisely that reason. However, it is laid out in “A Guide to the Historical Method.� Having not read the book itself, perhaps I am misapplying it, however unless a more in depth description of the proper application can be found, your puzzlement is hardly proof of my misapplication.
Goose wrote: At any rate, the tradition was generally believed among those that witnessed it anyway. Which is the only group in a position to know the truth and therefore of any real importance here.
That doesn’t even make sense. The only people who matter are the people making the claim? That’s like saying the only people who should be considered when trying to establish whether Bigfoot exists are those claiming to have seen it because they’re the only ones in a position to ‘know the truth’. Never mind the possibilities of hoaxes or psychological distortions.
Comparatively, outside of the relatively few that would even know about the assassination how many believed the tradition that Caesar had been assassinated?
No telling, but there’s no dispute from the time that it happened, as far as I’m aware. Unlike with the resurrection.
Goose wrote:
This is an odd criterion. Personally, I would of course expect parties interested in denying something to deny that thing and not be surprised when they do. Just as I would expect parties interested in promoting something as true to do so as well. Further, we don't know if this dialogue you've quoted falls in the time frame of a "definite period" because we aren't given that period or explanation for why that particular period is right. At any rate, it's really of no surprise the Jews protested the resurrection and tried to find other explanations. They were protesting Jesus from the start and at every step of the way so this protest from them over the resurrection carries little weight.
Regardless of your claim that it carries little weight, there is no dispute on the assassination while there is dispute on the resurrection. Considering your assertions of bias in favor of stating there was an assassination, why is there no indication of interested parties denying it?
Chaosborders wrote:
The critical spirit must have been sufficiently developed while the tradition lasted, and the necessary means of critical investigation must have been at hand.
I see little indication, but if you would like to offer evidence it meets this criteria I would be happy to see it.
Goose wrote:John tells us that Jesus' own brothers did not believe in him (7:5). John includes the story of doubting Thomas (20:24-29). Now, please provide the evidence that Cicero for example meets this criteria.
A)The reported incident of the brothers took place before the event in question.
B)The brothers are not the author and give no indication that the author (even if it were the disciple John) made any critical investigation himself.
C)Thomas is also not the author, no statement was made that he actually went through with putting his hand in Jesus’ side, and if there was supposedly still a hole in Jesus’ side it causes further problems on the criteria of whether the event seems inherently improbable given now not only did Jesus come back from the dead, he did so while still having a grievous flesh wound.
D)If the author was disciples of John recording his testimony there is no indication of critical investigation there.
E)If the work is psuedigraphical, as the majority of biblical scholars believe, not only is there not any evidence of critical investigation, but the doubting Thomas tale probably didn’t even happen.
F)Outside of John do you have any indication?
G)I think it is also interesting to note that despite your earlier claims to liking a challenge and intention to not use the Bible, it is now your sole reference for a criterion. Was going without proving too challenging?

As to Cicero, not sure how to be more critical than observing the sudden demise of your Head of State and senators claiming to have killed him besides seeing the body itself. I will concede though that with no indication that he saw the body, he does not do as well on this criterion as would be nice.
Goose wrote: I wouldn't call the Jews critical-minded in this case. They denied almost every claim about Jesus. They were cynical not critical.
Unless Jesus fell into the mad or bad branches of Lewis’ Trilema, in which case denying every claim was just smart. Or unless they accurately assessed claims being attributed to Jesus after his death as false ones he never would have endorsed (a possibility that makes the Trilema an obnoxious false dichotomy), in which case again they would have been right again. You may call them cynical, but that doesn’t mean they were wrong, and there is no indication of which I’m aware that anyone disputed the assassination occurred.
Goose wrote: Tacitus on the other hand could be seen as fulfilling this criterion. But labeling Christianity as a "superstition" isn't necessarily a denial of the resurrection. Or are you arguing it is now? Which would be hilarious if you were. Considering you made such a big fuss about me inferring that Tacitus was referring to reports that had come down to him that Christians believed Jesus had risen from the dead when he wrote, "...a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out..." Further, in post 23 you wrote, "Tacitus is merely a red herring and has no evidentiary value regarding the resurrection." Apparently in your world Tacitus is only a Red Herring when used for the resurrection but not when used against it. Yet another double standard.
No, I don’t think Tacitus was specifically referring to the resurrection and especially not specifically denying the resurrection. I do think the attitude that Christians were merely superstitious is an important one to note, however, as there is no indication of anyone labeling believers that the assassination occurred as being superstitious or anything comparable.

But now we move onto the final step Historians use to determine whether something should be considered as literally factual: Historical Reasoning. Using this process, potential explanations for the available information are examined and an argument is made based on that information. For that argument to gain acceptance as most likely true, it must satisfy certain conditions.
One form of these conditions is the Argument to the Best Explanation outlined by C. Behan McCullagh, which is as follows:
1.The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)
2.The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory scope than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.
3.The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.
4.The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.
5.The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.
6.It must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, when conjoined with accepted truths it must imply fewer observation statements and other statements which are believed to be false.
7.It must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis, after further investigation, soon exceeding it in these respects.
So breaking it down:
1. The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)
The statement is that Jesus was resurrected. For this to have happened he must have died, and then come back to life. Because of the question for debate, how he died was not specified nor was the time frame with which he came back to life. Further, the exact definition of dead was not specified, perhaps giving you some medical wiggle room. But for the statement to even have a chance of being considered literally factual, it must first be established by present, observable data that it is even possible for the dead to come back to life without modern medical equipment in any sense of the word. So your earlier claim 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� needs to be documented.

All present data that I’m aware of points to dead people staying dead. Unless you are able to show even a few credible exceptions, I don’t think the resurrection can win on a single one of these criteria against ANY alternative hypothesis involving mundane occurrences like fraud or cognitive distortions.

This is in contrast to the assassination where a leader being killed is nothing new and is observed all the time. The only really remarkable thing is that it was the senate that did it.
2. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory scope than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.
Due to source criticism, this is the only criteria I can even see the resurrection as coming close to winning on. If Jesus was resurrected, yes it would explain why there were tales of him being resurrected. Fair enough. But the problem with this one is that for the fullest explanatory scope, Jesus’ method of death becomes crucifixion. (Certainly no one has him dying of a simple heart attack or stroke).

This causes a problem with:
The hypothesis of Julius Ceasar being assassinated likewise benefits from it being what was stated to have happened.
3. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.
So to win on two, Jesus’ method of death pretty much has to become crucifixion, which means not only must it be shown that coming back from the dead is possible, it would have to be further shown that whatever occurrences of people coming back from the dead there may be would not have been impossible had those people been tortured to death.

Meanwhile, the alternative to Julius Caser being assassinated seems to be that there was a conspiracy to get people to believe he was assassinated after dying prematurely of some other reason…a conspiracy to create a conspiracy based on a timely death does not seem nearly as likely as just having the one conspiracy to off him. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a single comparable event.
4. The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.
This here is where the scientific method gets ushered in full force, as does reason to doubt aka ‘probable negation’. Things violating accepted truths (aka physics, biology, etc.) fail this condition miserably.
5. The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.
To accept a dead person coming back to life without present data suggesting that being possible/probable, or any form of argument that would make it possible for other past ‘miracles’ that violate the current sciences to be included as literally factual in the academic realm of history, it would seem suppositions must be made that the current rules of physics and biology were not the same in the past.
6. It must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, when conjoined with accepted truths it must imply fewer observation statements and other statements which are believed to be false.
This is another criterion in which the crucifixion becomes an issue. The question for debate does not specify how Jesus died, so in theory one could argue the possibility of say him dieing from heart failure, being hit by lightning, having his heart restarted before such massive brain damage resulted that he’d die again within minutes from inability to breath…which from what I’ve read is scientifically possible, albeit has a probability of at most 1 in over a hundred billion thus would still fail on almost every criteria here when compared to alternative hypothesis involving fraud or cognitive distortions. But the crucifixion is much more historically supported, and thus makes even such unlikely but possible scenarios as that even further long shots when contending with massive physical trauma.
7. It must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis, after further investigation, soon exceeding it in these respects.
And here the resurrection continues to fail because even if it somehow WON on the other six criteria, (which I cannot even imagine how you will begin to argue that it comes close to), I am unable to conceive of a way in which it would do so by more than the narrowest of margins. And without doing so, alternative hypothesis remain STRONG possibilities, and thus the resurrection cannot be taught as literally factual because it has such serious contenders. It, at that point, would at most be a very likely possibility.

For the sake of brevity I will leave off actually proposing alternative solutions and assessing how they do against these criteria until you have shown documentation regarding the possibility (and preferably the probability) of a dead person returning to life. (Because if you can’t do that, the resurrection is beaten by literally any hypothesis some random person can come up with that can be shown as feasible).

Goose

Post #5

Post by Goose »

Round 6

Chaosborders wrote: Hardly overwhelming [the assassination]. At this stage I actually expected it to be doing considerably better than it has. But ultimately that is irrelevant since we still haven’t gone over Historical Reasoning, which is the part of the historical method where hypothesis are formed and examined. All we’ve gone over so far is the parts that basically state “Did someone say x happened?� and “Is that someone reliable?� The resurrection pretty firmly has someone saying it happened, and I’ll even grant on that point it wins over the assassination. Regarding reliability though, it does not fare as well, and regarding historical reasoning, the equivalent of “Did x probably happen?� it gets competely trounced.
At any rate, the resurrection need not overwhelm the assassination for my argument (A) to remain sound. It only needs to be at least as good as the assassination, which it is. Thus you are logically obligated to accept the truth of the conclusion. Further, you haven’t shown the resurrection writers were not as reliable anyway. You’ve merely stated the obvious, that the writers were biased, as though that alone makes the resurrection writers unreliable. The irony of course is that the assassination writers were biased as well. In a few moments we’ll get to your hollow claims of a victorious trouncing in historical reasoning.



Regarding Cicero and Nicolaus and minimizing the tendency to be biased…
Chaosborders wrote:Fair enough, I cannot prove [the Second Phillippic] was physically given to the senate. However, given the entire rest of the series of Philippicae was addressed to the senate, and the basic premise of all of them was trying to rally the senate against Mark Anthony, it seems unreasonable to conclude that Cicero wrote this not meaning for it to ever be read by the senate. Whether it ever actually made it to them physically before he died isn’t particularly relevant regarding the tendency towards minimizing bias.
If you cannot prove it was given to the senate then there is no good reason to believe there was a motivating factor to help minimize bias as you claim. Regardless of what you assume Cicero’s motives were for writing it. To make things worse for you the Second Philippic (2Ph) was the only ‘speech’ of fourteen not actually delivered to or circulated amongst the Senate. Why not? Coincidently, the 2Ph is the ‘speech’ in which Cicero allegedly accuses senators of assassinating Caesar. This is suspicious indeed. :-k

Chaosborders wrote:This source has [Cicero] sending a copy straight to Brutus, a principle actor, as well as Cassius, who was listed in paragraph 11 as one of the senators involved. Presumably they knew whether they had a hand in killing their emperor or not.
This only makes matters worse. Assuming that Yonge is correct here we have Cicero sending a copy of the 2Ph to two of his buddies, Brutus and Cassius. Why don’t we have evidence of Cicero sending a copy to the entire senate if he had the means to send it to Brutus and Cassius and everything in it was true? Perhaps the three of them needed to conspire to get their tale straight first.

Chaosborders wrote:Assasination: An assassination is the targeted killing of a public figure, usually for political purposes.

Keyword there is usually. It doesn’t need to be. Unless you are seriously contending that someone accidently killed Caesar, it counts as an assassination. Given Cicero is clearly not implying an accidental killing, the logical conclusion is he is explicitly stating Caesar was assassinated by the basic definitions of the words involved.
Caesar may have been killed for many reasons. Maybe Caesar and Brutus got into an argument over a woman and it ended in bloodshed. Then a rumour started that Caesar had been assassinated. Please quote where Cicero explicitly states “Caesar was assassinated� as you claim. I’ll save you the time. He doesn’t. Again, you are inferring it.

Chaosborders wrote:On the contrary, not knowing where Nicolaus got his data is precisely why I’ve primarily relied upon Cicero.
But we don’t really know where Cicero got his data from either. Not to mention he wasn’t a witness. Cicero was a biased politician and had motive to lie with no motive to minimize bias. He never actually explicitly states Caesar was assassinated. Add to this the dilemma that Cicero contradicts himself regarding Caesar’s death in the span of one paragraph. Yet, despite all this, you still feel he is reliable where Christian writers are not. :confused2:

Chaosborders wrote: Honestly, I don’t care that much either way. If [Nicolaus got his data] from Antony, then the assassination has classic enemy attestation. If he didn’t, there is no reason to believe he was biased. Either way helps the assassination.
Your indifference towards where Nicolaus got his data is noted. I’ve already given evidence that Nicolaus reports in a biased manor. You just keep ignoring it post after post…

Chaosborders wrote: I again ask for ANYONE reading this thread who thinks Goose’s claim to have enemy attestation [between Paul and Peter] is worth addressing to speak up. Otherwise I’m not going to waste everyone’s time refuting it.
Once again appealing to the peanut gallery doesn’t make the argument go away. It’s become painfully obvious you cannot refute it. The argument stands. If we use a looser definition for enemy attestation then I retain enemy attestation between Peter and Paul for the resurrection as you would for the assassination between Cicero and Antony. Or if we use a stricter definition then both events lose enemy attestation. Further, you entirely ignored the argument of enemy attestation between opposing early Christian groups anyway.



Regarding motivation to minimize the tendency of Christians to be biased…
Chaosborders wrote: Really? You don’t know any theologians fine with stuff we now call lying? Read page 142. Catholic theologians have been doing it for ages. In that example it’s explained why lying to save Jews from the Nazis was ok because the Nazis didn’t have any right to the truth so it wasn’t really lying. In the distant past, telling a half-truth (lie of omission) was fine so long as you added the other half in your head.
Nice try. I wasn’t arguing there weren’t theologians fine with the stuff we now call lying. I was arguing I know of no theologian that argues 1 Kings 22 allows Christians to lie, which you seemed to be arguing it does. And I would take issue with anyone that would. Nor am I arguing that Christians never lie. It isn’t necessary for me to argue this. All it is necessary for me to argue to satisfy the criterion is that there is motivation to help minimize the tendency in Christian writers to be biased. I’ve done more than that.

Chaosborders wrote: Point is, what fits definitions of lying today is not necessarily the case then, nor was everything we would consider lying today considered wrong.
Here is the real point which you keep avoiding with your digression: claiming someone had returned from the dead, if in fact he had not, would have been considered a lie in the first century ANE as it would be now. Again, you continue to ignore this point.

Goose wrote:Do not bear false witness means do not give false testimony whether in court or anywhere else. That is, do not lie, full stop.
Chaosborders wrote: That is what it has come to mean, especially thanks to the early catholic church. There is no indication that the original intent was ever to be more than lying in court (which back then was often tantamount to murder given the frequency of capital cases and lack of other evidence).
You seem to be arguing as though the Old Testament and therefore Jesus as well teaches it’s acceptable for one to lie as long as one isn’t in court. :hahano:

There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him… a lying tongue…a heart that devises wicked schemes…a false witness who pours out lies…(Proverbs 6:17-19)

Do not spread false reports. (Exodus 23:1)
Goose wrote:Christians are instructed by Jesus to not give false testimony and therefore instructed not to lie. I can't imagine how anyone would not see this as a motivation to minimize the tendency in Christian writers to be biased or lie.
Chaosborders wrote: If Jesus died and stayed dead it would hardly be any motivation for the original ones claiming to have seen him come back to life if they felt they could benefit from claiming he did. It would hardly be the fault of subsequent writers if they were fooled and propagated the lie.
Regardless of what you may try to imply about the integrity of the disciples you cannot refute the argument that Christian writers had substantial motivation to look upon lying negatively. I would say the motivation to gain eternal life is substantial, wouldn’t you? Thus there is motivation to minimize the tendency to be bias.

Chaosborders wrote: A) The ones writing the [pseudepigraphical] materials were Christian, or at least considered themselves as such, so yes some did accept it as a practice. They also clearly accepted making stuff up/adding details to make a theological point as acceptable too. This isn’t really any different from many Christians today.
The sheer fact that early second century Christians denounced these pseudepigraphical books tells us that early Christians frowned upon the practise of pseudepigraphy as they would now. This falsifies the main premise in your rebuttal that there was a different view of what is considered lying back then as compared to now.



Regarding complaints about my form of argument (A)…
Chaosborders wrote: And now you claim the assassination is very well supported evidentially, despite spending the last several posts tearing it down. Hardly seems all that well supported to me. The only reason really it is an undisputed historical fact is that there are not more plausible alternative explanations that account for the descriptions of it happening, as will be seen going through Historical Reasoning. This is the same for just about any event in antiquity that is considered literally factual.
You are missing the point. I’m “tearing [the assassination] down� using similar sceptical reasoning and standards applied to the evidence for the resurrection. It shows the double standard applied by sceptics of the resurrection.

Of course it is easy for you to now claim the assassination is not well supported, thus implying I’ve stacked the deck in my favour in order to force my conclusion. But you have yet to offer a better evidentially supported event from that era by which to compare the resurrection.

Chaosborders wrote:A)Historical reasoning will show why events that seem at first glance to have weaker evidence are passed through when the resurrection is not.
B)What’s your point? Just because most things in antiquity are questionable doesn’t mean the resurrection should be taught as literally factual. It’s a non sequitur.
A) Of course events with weaker evidence than the resurrection will pass. If the bench mark for evidentiary support was the resurrection very little from antiquity would pass through.
B) My point is that the evidentiary support for the resurrection is very good by comparison. So good in fact that it should be taught as a fact. If one rejects the resurrection for lack of evidentiary support they must also take the irrational position of rejecting almost all of antiquity if they are to be consistent.



More on bias and how wonderful Bart Ehrman is…
Chaosborders wrote: Just because you’ve continuously ignored the argument I made for why expert opinion regarding history is what should be taught, does not mean I have not countered your assertion that your opinion should be just as important. That you do not accept the counter is your prerogative, but unless someone in the audience also feels my counter is insufficient I don’t really care.
Once again appealing to the silence of the audience does not excuse you from addressing the point. Despite your digression into the credentials of your favourite scholar my point stands that: all I need to do to reduce the evidentiary support for the assassination to be on par with the resurrection is provide reason to think there was motive for the assassination writers to be biased because that is all you’ve done regarding resurrection writers.

Chaosborders wrote: Fair enough. Took you long enough to do, but I’m glad it happened on the post where I get to show it’s irrelevant anyways.
It’s hardly irrelevant that the resurrection has an earlier source in Peter, who reports within two months of the event and also happens to be an eyewitness, than the assassination does with Cicero. That alone, by ancient stands of evidentiary support, is enough to establish the resurrection as a fact.



Regarding Multiple independent sources strengthen the credibility of the message...
Chaosborders wrote: The fuss is because you want a landslide where you get a narrow margin.
I don’t need a landslide victory. A win, even if only by a narrow margin as you’ve conceded above, on this criterion gives the resurrection stronger credibility than the assassination. But I don’t even need a win for that matter. For my argument (A) to remain sound I only need the evidentiary support for the resurrection to be at least as good as the assassination. The resurrection, by your own admission, is at least equal to the assassination even with your stricter definitions and standards for independent sources. I’ll further note your definitions and explanations appear contrived to allow only one independent source for each event. Indeed your definitions and standards for independent sources would probably only allow one independent source for most of antiquity.

The resurrection has been shown to be at least as good on every criterion so far presented. Once again my argument (A) remains sound. You are logically obligated to accept the conclusion that the resurrection should be taught as factual in secular history classes.



Regarding the assertion that the Gospel of John has no direct connection to the historical Jesus…
Chaosborders wrote: Given most of the people I listed have spent significant amounts of time outlaying the arguments, I cannot possibly fit it all into this thread. But to humor you I suppose I can summarize some of them to a ridiculous extent:

A)The teachings of Jesus in John are very different from those found in the synoptic gospels, thus for the last couple hundred years the view has been taken only one or the other are likely to be authentic. The majority of historians view the Synoptics to have far greater historical value, thus discount John.
B) By all indications it took far longer to be accepted by mainstream Christianity than the other Synoptics.
C) Gnostics accepted it.
D) Even going by the traditional dates, the earliest it is believed to have been written was 90. Even were he a teen when Jesus was executed, it would make him almost three decades older than the median life expectancy of the time. Not unheard of, but besides the reliability issues involved it is simply more likely a tradition was passed down the three or four generations that had been born by then.
E) The language and phrasing are not characteristic of a Jew, as John the Apostle was.
Funny you think it merely humouring me to back your erroneous assertion that the Gospel of John had no direct connection to the historical Jesus.
  • A) I would agree John differs in some ways such as his Christology being more explicit. This does not, however, support the argument that the author of John had no direct connection to the historical Jesus. That would be a non-sequitur. It would, however, support the argument that John was independent.
    B) So what if it did?
    C) So what if they did?
    D) Regardless of who may have actually written John it is written early enough to have been composed by a person with a direct connection to the historical Jesus. This fact is indisputable.
    E) I disagree and would be happy to address the arguments if you were inclined to present them.
Chaosborders wrote: Since my assertion is that John is psuedigraphical, I don’t see how an internal claim [that John is written by a witness] is all that relevant. But it seems to me that at best it would be partly a copy of the work of someone claiming discipleship, given the third person descriptions and the use of ‘we’.
And at this point that’s all it is, an assertion. You’ve assumed to be true your premise that John is pseudigraphical (in that it was not written by a witness), thus you Beg the Question. You are then guilty of simply hand waiving direct evidence that counters your assertion…

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory… (John1:14)



Regarding Internal Criticism...
Chaosborders wrote: Myth: 1. A usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.
2. A popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone.

True or not, by definition the Bible qualifies as a myth. C.S. Lewis has called it a true myth. The problem is that whether the Bible is true or not, most myths aren’t, and any system of reasoning that can end up getting them taught as literally factual is faulty.
I’m not asking for the definition of a myth. I’m asking what myths would be considered factual if the resurrection were.

Chaosborders wrote: As with all matters on the work, the author of Acts does not have a single person actually seeing Jesus’ dead body pick itself up and start walking around. Everyone involved infers it from ‘seeing’ a ‘risen’ Jesus after seeing him crucified. This is rather notable as it opens up a ton of possibilities that would ruled out if anyone had said something along the lines of “I was there when he clawed himself out of the grave�.
Setting aside the fact we have Jesus’ own personal testimony that he rose from the dead you’ve created an impossible standard for what is required to be a witness. For instance I could argue the same way regarding the assassination. It is only an inference that blows with daggers were what actually killed Caesar. The witnesses of the assassination could not physically see a knife penetrate Caesar’s heart or an artery for example. This is notable because it opens up multiple other possibilities like Caesar may have survived the stabbing and some time later actually died from a heart attack. Strictly speaking you are correct that Jesus rising from the dead is an inference from the witnesses (other than Jesus). But similarly, strictly speaking, so is Caesar’s death from stabbing an inference by its witnesses as well.

Chaosborders wrote: It does not, however, conflict with our general experience that heads of state often end up assassinated, as this long list of assassinated people show. Since even Brutus stabbing to death Caesar by himself is an assassination by definition, I don’t find the number of people involved particularly relevant.
Nice try. Your link to wikipedia lists “assassinated people� and even includes football players and nuns for crying out loud! Killing a nun and assassinating a head of state are entirely different propositions. The list of assassinated heads of state, the wikipedia list Julius Caesar is on, is a much shorter list consisting of only 64 names over the last several millennia. Even if we were to allow the broadening of the list to include assassinated heads of government it wouldn’t even double in size as at least half the names on the heads of government list also appear on the heads of state list. Assassination of heads of state certainly isn’t something that, in your words, “is observed all the time.� It is hardly the case that “heads of state often end up assassinated� as you claim. Heads of state more often die of causes other than assassinations. In fact, based on the above links I would contend it is quite rare for a head of state to be assassinated.

Further, if we were to narrow the parameters to assassinations that were: 1) of heads 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, I suspect the list would be reduced to a handful and very short indeed. Dare I say there might even be only one name on that list, i.e. Julius Caesar?

Chaosborders wrote: Note also this is a particularly common fate of Roman Emperors…
    First, you are assuming that these Romans were actually assassinated. Yet they suffer similar evidentiary problems that Julius Caesar’s assassination and Jesus’ resurrection does. And to make matters worse many of them have weaker evidentiary support than the assassination of Julius Caesar. Because of these reasons you are obligated to prove each one was actually assassinated as you are with Caesar. If for some reason you feel excused from having to prove these alleged assassinations, then it is only fair that I can cite all the instances of alleged resurrections from antiquity as well without having to prove them either. All these instances, such as Lazarus for example, could be used as evidence to support the assertion it is a common occurrence for people to return from the dead.

    Secondly, the list of assassinated Roman Emperors is misleading. It includes names such as Cicero that were never Emperors. Thirdly, even if we grant all these as legitimate assassinations of Roman Emperors it adds about two dozen names and brings the total assassinations to around a mere one hundred, give or take, over the last almost three thousand years. Not very impressive considering you have claimed assassinations of people like Caesar are “observed all the time.�

    Chaosborders wrote: <snipped Cicero’s account in 2Ph>…I see no indication that he thinks Anthony spoke only a single sentence on the matter. Even if he did, speaking about two separate parts of a compound sentence result in the same thing. I don’t really get how you’re coming up with these two parts as being contradictory.
    Thank you for the attempt to harmonize the alleged internal contradiction in Cicero’s account. I’ll use the same reasoning whenever you or anyone else accuses Christian writers of being contradictory. Again, thank you. This will be useful elsewhere.



    Back to John...
    Chaosborders wrote: For Cicero at least he states the senators made no secret who was involved. And despite your claims we are merely making inferences, later he makes the argument that “if they be not deliverers of the Roman people and saviors of the republic, are worse than assassins, worse than homicides, worse even than patricides: since it is a more atrocious thing to murder the father of one's country, than one's own father,� thus what they did was either patricide or an honorable thing to do, and since Brutus and Cassius have been called honorable and given provinces it must be the latter.
    You still haven’t shown an unbroken chain of witnesses to Cicero. You are merely assuming it. Neither is this an explicit statement from Cicero that Caesar was assassinated. Cicero is making a personal philosophical statement, not a statement of fact. You are again inferring an assassination.

    Chaosborders wrote: That doesn’t even make sense. The only people who matter are the people making the claim? That’s like saying the only people who should be considered when trying to establish whether Bigfoot exists are those claiming to have seen it because they’re the only ones in a position to ‘know the truth’. Never mind the possibilities of hoaxes or psychological distortions.
    Setting aside the fact your Bigfoot analogy is juvenile it is guilty of the false analogy fallacy anyway. The disciples spent years with Jesus before the resurrection and 40 days with him after in a variety of intimate settings whereas Bigfoot sightings are generally brief glimpses from distances. The disciples were in a much better position to know the truth than those that claim to have seen Bigfoot.

    Chaosborders wrote: No telling [how many people believed the tradition of the assassination], but there’s no dispute from the time that it happened, as far as I’m aware. Unlike with the resurrection.
    Patently false. We have no record of anyone from the time of the resurrection happening that disputes it.

    Chaosborders wrote: Regardless of your claim that [the Jews denying the resurrection in the mid second century] carries little weight, there is no dispute on the assassination while there is dispute on the resurrection. Considering your assertions of bias in favor of stating there was an assassination, why is there no indication of interested parties denying it?
    There are no interested parties denying the resurrection during the time of it happening or shortly after. Some Jews denying the resurrection in the mid second century, well after any possible witnesses are dead, carries as much weight as some Muslims denying the holocaust fifty years from now.

    Chaosborders wrote:[Regarding the criterion of a critical spirit being sufficiently established by John 7:5 and 20:24-29]
    A)The reported incident of the brothers took place before the event in question.
    B)The brothers are not the author and give no indication that the author (even if it were the disciple John) made any critical investigation himself.
    C)Thomas is also not the author, no statement was made that he actually went through with putting his hand in Jesus’ side, and if there was supposedly still a hole in Jesus’ side it causes further problems on the criteria of whether the event seems inherently improbable given now not only did Jesus come back from the dead, he did so while still having a grievous flesh wound.
    D)If the author was disciples of John recording his testimony there is no indication of critical investigation there.
    E)If the work is psuedigraphical, as the majority of biblical scholars believe, not only is there not any evidence of critical investigation, but the doubting Thomas tale probably didn’t even happen.
    F)Outside of John do you have any indication?
    G)I think it is also interesting to note that despite your earlier claims to liking a challenge and intention to not use the Bible, it is now your sole reference for a criterion. Was going without proving too challenging?
    • A-B) You miss the point. John shows that not even Jesus’ own family believed in him. This shows that there was a critical spirit among the Jews. It also lends credibility to the integrity of the author of John that he would include such an embarrassing admission which could harm his case.
      C) Thomas doesn’t need to be the author. John shows us that at least one of the disciples was sceptical, thus demonstrating a sceptical spirit existed amongst some of them.
      D) Your opinion is noted.
      E) “If� being the key word. Further it is an Appeal to Anonymous scholarship. Who are these scholars anyway? Please list every single one of them.
      F) Now you are just arbitrarily raising the bar. Why isn’t John enough? How many more do I need? However, I’ll meet your request anyway. Matthew tells us that some disciples had some doubts upon initially seeing the risen Jesus. �When they saw him, they worshiped him, though some had doubts.� (Matthew 28:17). Again this demonstrates a sceptical spirit amongst the disciples. They weren’t gullible men. It also lends credibility to the author of Matthew that he would include such an embarrassing admission.
      G) Are you serious? :yikes: Dude, YOU introduced the Bible first, not me. I referenced only John here because I thought we were still assessing internal criticism via John at this point. And if the writers of Bible can be shown to have a skeptical spirit as I’ve done is it really necessary for me to cite non-Biblical authors on this criterion?


    Chaosborders wrote:No, I don’t think Tacitus was specifically referring to the resurrection and especially not specifically denying the resurrection. I do think the attitude that Christians were merely superstitious is an important one to note, however, as there is no indication of anyone labeling believers that the assassination occurred as being superstitious or anything comparable.
    I can’t imagine how Tacitus labelling Christians as ‘superstitious’ has any relevance then in this criterion. I also wonder why Tacitus did not accuse later Roman historians such as Plutarch as being ‘superstitious’ for associating with Caesar’s death events such as the appearance of a giant phantom to Brutus. Could it be because Tacitus was biased? Oh, the irony…



    Historical Reasoning…
    1. The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)
    Chaosborders wrote:The statement is that Jesus was resurrected. For this to have happened he must have died, and then come back to life. Because of the question for debate, how he died was not specified nor was the time frame with which he came back to life. Further, the exact definition of dead was not specified, perhaps giving you some medical wiggle room. But for the statement to even have a chance of being considered literally factual, it must first be established by present, observable data that it is even possible for the dead to come back to life without modern medical equipment in any sense of the word. So your earlier claim 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� needs to be documented.
    No problem...

    Here’s one. And here’s another one. Here’s another case detailed in a medical paper. Zach Dunlap was pronounced brain dead by physicians in the U.S.A. and subsequently returned to life without medical assistance.

    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. Further, it was written in the ‘Discussion’ of the medical paper linked above that, “Although only a handful of such cases have appeared in the literature, there has been speculation that the Lazarus phenomenon occurs more often than those few reports would suggest.�

    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. But of course this is circular and assumes that a mistake was made because it is not possible for a dead person to return to life. Therefore any type of resurrection explanation becomes not viable because dead people always stay dead. And any evidence to the contrary will be explained away.

    Whatever the explanation one offers for these cases or questions one raises about our current understanding and definitions of death it is an indisputable fact that there exists recent documented cases of people returning to life without medical assistance after having been declared dead by trained medical professionals. These cases meet your demand to establish with documentation my claim 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.� These cases also falsify the often universally applied proposition that dead people always stay dead.

    Chaosborders wrote: This is in contrast to the assassination where a leader being killed is nothing new and is observed all the time. The only really remarkable thing is that it was the senate that did it.
    The statement is that Caesar was assassinated. Please provide the present observable data of a head of state being assassinated. In fairness to the resurrection the evidence you provide should be of events after 1982. Please further establish your claim that this “is observed all the time� because I’ve never observed it. Have you? I’ll be generous and overlook the fact that the present observable data should also be of an assassinated head of state, by stabbing at the main place where and when that government convenes, in plain view of other witnesses, with no resistance from security personnel, and committed by a large group of politicians to fully establish the plausibility of the statement as it applies to Caesar. His assassination is certainly an extraordinary event when everything is taken into consideration.

    2. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory scope than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.
    Chaosborders wrote: Due to source criticism, this is the only criteria I can even see the resurrection as coming close to winning on. If Jesus was resurrected, yes it would explain why there were tales of him being resurrected. Fair enough. But the problem with this one is that for the fullest explanatory scope, Jesus’ method of death becomes crucifixion. (Certainly no one has him dying of a simple heart attack or stroke).
    The resurrection hypothesis has more scope than any other hypothesis. It accounts for a diverse set of data such as but not limited to:
    • 1) Jesus’ death by crucifixion.
      2) An empty tomb.
      3) The disciples’ belief Jesus appeared to them alive.
      4) The resurrection was preached in Jerusalem by the disciples despite persecution and the threat of death.
      5) The conversion of Jesus’ brother James.
      6) Paul’s conversion.
      7) The existence of the NT documents and writings of church fathers.
      8) The Nazareth Inscription.
    How does the assassination have more scope than the hypothesis that Caesar died of natural causes and the assassination was invented for instance?

    3. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.
    Chaosborders wrote:So to win on two, Jesus’ method of death pretty much has to become crucifixion, which means not only must it be shown that coming back from the dead is possible, it would have to be further shown that whatever occurrences of people coming back from the dead there may be would not have been impossible had those people been tortured to death.
    Death by crucifixion and torture helps ensure that Jesus was dead. Not that it is necessary for me to meet your demand here but Zack Dunlap was in a severe accident. Now, that’s not torture per se but I suspect it would have the potential to inflict some similar physical trauma to the body as torture would.

    The resurrection more powerfully explains the following than any competing hypothesis...

    1) Jesus’ death by crucifixion.
    2) An empty tomb.
    3) The disciples’ belief Jesus appeared to them alive.
    4) The resurrection was preached in Jerusalem by the disciples after Jesus’ death despite persecution and the threat of death.
    5) Jesus’ brother James became a leader in the church even though he was a sceptic before allegedly witnessing the risen Jesus.
    6) Paul’s conversion even though he was a persecutor of the church before his alleged experience with the risen Jesus.
    7) The existence of the NT documents and writings of early church fathers.
    8) The Nazareth Inscription.

    How does the assassination have more explanatory power than the hypothesis that Caesar died of natural causes and the assassination was invented for instance?

    4. The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.
    Chaosborders wrote:This here is where the scientific method gets ushered in full force, as does reason to doubt aka ‘probable negation’. Things violating accepted truths (aka physics, biology, etc.) fail this condition miserably.
    The accepted truth is that there are multiple documented cases over the last few decades of people being declared dead by medical professionals and subsequently returning to life. This supports the belief that it is possible for a dead person to return to life.

    It is more plausible that Caesar died of either 1) natural causes 2) an accident or 3) even a heated argument with Brutus over a woman, for instance, that escalated into bloodshed than the hypothesis he was assassinated by stabbing in a grand conspiracy involving many senators that got past the Caesar’s body guards unmolested.

    5. The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.
    Chaosborders wrote:To accept a dead person coming back to life without present data suggesting that being possible/probable, or any form of argument that would make it possible for other past ‘miracles’ that violate the current sciences to be included as literally factual in the academic realm of history, it would seem suppositions must be made that the current rules of physics and biology were not the same in the past.
    Because of documented cases it is currently believed that it is at least possible for a person to return to life after being declared dead. There is indisputable recent evidence to support this belief. There is no need to argue that the laws of physics were different two thousand years ago.

    However, the assassination hypothesis requires us to believe it would be plausible, as an example, for a large group of senators to successfully conspire and assassinate by stabbing the president of the United States during a meeting of Congress in the US Capitol building. Not to mention the assassins would also need to get past the Presidents’ body guards. Though this scenario might be conceivably possible it is not plausible. It would be hardly any more plausible for Caesar. It is more plausible and less ad hoc to hypothesize Caesar died of natural causes than from a grand assassination conspiracy.

    6. It must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, when conjoined with accepted truths it must imply fewer observation statements and other statements which are believed to be false.
    Chaosborders wrote:This is another criterion in which the crucifixion becomes an issue. The question for debate does not specify how Jesus died, so in theory one could argue the possibility of say him dieing from heart failure, being hit by lightning, having his heart restarted before such massive brain damage resulted that he’d die again within minutes from inability to breath…which from what I’ve read is scientifically possible, albeit has a probability of at most 1 in over a hundred billion thus would still fail on almost every criteria here when compared to alternative hypothesis involving fraud or cognitive distortions. But the crucifixion is much more historically supported, and thus makes even such unlikely but possible scenarios as that even further long shots when contending with massive physical trauma.
    Haven’t got a clue what you are arguing here in relation to the criterion.

    It is commonly believed that assassinating a head of state is at best very difficult and rare. To accept the assassination hypothesis we must accept the truth of the statement that it is plausible for a group of senators to stab to death a head of state in the main meeting place of the government while also getting past body guards. Clearly the preceding statement is false. It is not plausible. For example, I think it safe to say that the belief it is plausible that a group of senators could stab to death in Congress the President of United States is false.

    7. It must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis, after further investigation, soon exceeding it in these respects.
    Chaosborders wrote:And here the resurrection continues to fail because even if it somehow WON on the other six criteria, (which I cannot even imagine how you will begin to argue that it comes close to), I am unable to conceive of a way in which it would do so by more than the narrowest of margins. And without doing so, alternative hypothesis remain STRONG possibilities, and thus the resurrection cannot be taught as literally factual because it has such serious contenders. It, at that point, would at most be a very likely possibility.
    There is no other hypothesis that has a greater level of scope and explanatory power as the resurrection. If you think otherwise feel free to present it.

    On the other hand a serious contender to the assassination hypothesis is my Assassination Tale Hypothesis (ATH).The ATH uses similar reasoning and forms of argument as are often applied to the resurrection. In this hypothesis Caesar probably died by natural causes or accident or was killed in a fight that was not politically motivated. The assassination conspiracy tale was then created by someone such as Cicero because of political motivations, though it may not have been Cicero. Cicero may have picked up on a rumour of an assassination and propagated the tale for his own means. Later writers such as Nicolaus and Plutarch then embellished upon the ambiguous earlier accounts of writers such as Cicero and the tale grew over time into what we have today. The ATH is more plausible than the assassination hypothesis as it is more plausible that a tale of an assassination was created than an actual assassination took place. It also has scope and explanatory power.

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    Post #6

    Post by ChaosBorders »

    Round 6
    Goose wrote:At any rate, the resurrection need not overwhelm the assassination for my argument (A) to remain sound. It only needs to be at least as good as the assassination, which it is. Thus you are logically obligated to accept the truth of the conclusion. Further, you haven’t shown the resurrection writers were not as reliable anyway. You’ve merely stated the obvious, that the writers were biased, as though that alone makes the resurrection writers unreliable. The irony of course is that the assassination writers were biased as well. In a few moments we’ll get to your hollow claims of a victorious trouncing in historical reasoning.
    My trouncing in historical reasoning hasn’t even been presented yet, so I do not know how you think you’ve shown my claims to have been hollow. I intend to present a variety of alternative hypotheses and assess them using the criteria for historical reasoning in comparison with the Resurrection hypothesis. I didn’t do it last time because they are very long and if you couldn’t even show that coming back from the dead is even seemingly possible, there would be no reason to bother since any naturalistic hypothesis, no matter how scarcely supported, would automatically beat the resurrection hypothesis. By showing Lazarus syndrome you have at least met this minimum requirement, though as I will detail later on you still haven’t shown it is possible to do without modern medical treatment.
    Goose wrote:If you cannot prove it was given to the senate then there is no good reason to believe there was a motivating factor to help minimize bias as you claim. Regardless of what you assume Cicero’s motives were for writing it. To make things worse for you the Second Philippic (2Ph) was the only ‘speech’ of fourteen not actually delivered to or circulated amongst the Senate. Why not? Coincidently, the 2Ph is the ‘speech’ in which Cicero allegedly accuses senators of assassinating Caesar. This is suspicious indeed. :-k
    This only makes matters worse. Assuming that Yonge is correct here we have Cicero sending a copy of the 2Ph to two of his buddies, Brutus and Cassius. Why don’t we have evidence of Cicero sending a copy to the entire senate if he had the means to send it to Brutus and Cassius and everything in it was true? Perhaps the three of them needed to conspire to get their tale straight first.
    Let’s look again at the explanation for why he didn’t:
    The second oration against Antony (here abridged) was never actually delivered by Cicero, the reason being explained in “the argument� prefixed to Mr. Yonge’s translation, as follows: “The senate met in the temple of Concord, but Cicero himself was persuaded not to attend by his friends, who were afraid of Antony proceeding to actual violence against him (and indeed he brought a strong guard of armed men with him to the senate). He spoke with the greatest fury against Cicero, charging him with having been the principal author and contriver of Cæsar’s murder, hoping by this to inflame the soldiers, whom he had posted within hearing of his harang. Soon after this, Cicero removed to a villa near Naples for greater safety, and here he composed this second philippic, which he did not publish immediately, but contented himself at first with sending a copy to Brutus and Cassius, who were much pleased with it.�
    This leads to several points:
    A) 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 would even further solidifies enemy attestation.
    B) Seems odd that getting his story straight with Brutus and Cassius would involve implicating them in the assassination of their emperor. Particularly if he just dropped dead of a heart attack or some such.
    C) There is nothing in the explanation for why it was not immediately published that would indicate Cicero did not intend for it to be.
    D) If the explanation is false, why would anyone assume it wasn’t spoken to the senate, given the rest of the speeches were?
    Caesar may have been killed for many reasons. Maybe Caesar and Brutus got into an argument over a woman and it ended in bloodshed. Then a rumour started that Caesar had been assassinated. Please quote where Cicero explicitly states “Caesar was assassinated� as you claim. I’ll save you the time. He doesn’t. Again, you are inferring it.
    I would like to add yet another line from paragraph XLV of Charles Yonge’s translation:
    Unless, indeed, you have men who are bound to you by greater kindnesses than some of those men by whom he was slain were bound to Cæsar
    Furthermore, addressing Anthony:
    XLVI. With him I can, indeed, compare you as to your desire to reign; but in all other respects you are in no degree to be compared to him. But from the many evils which by him have been burnt into the republic, there is still this good, that the Roman people has now learnt how much to believe every one, to whom to trust itself, and against whom to guard. Do you never think on these things? And do you not understand that it is enough for brave men to have learnt how noble a thing it is as to the act, how grateful it is as to the benefit done, how glorious as to the fame acquired, to slay a tyrant? When men could not bear him, do you think they will bear you? Believe me, the time will come when men will race with one another to do this deed, and when no one will wait for the tardy arrival of an opportunity.
    Cicero has him being killed by multiple men so your little idea about a quarrel over a woman is completely rejected. And per many definitions of assassination, even if he was killed in such a manner it would still be an assassination.
    Assassination per Merriam Webster.com: to murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons.
    Notice again how it says ‘often,’ not ‘exclusively.’

    The second paragraph is also of note because it once again indicates that not only is the assassination of Julius Ceasar common knowledge, the perpetrators were well regarded for it. Both of these would be particularly peculiar if writing to his ‘co-conspirators’ while trying to fabricate the existence of an assassination.
    Goose wrote: Your indifference towards where Nicolaus got his data is noted. I’ve already given evidence that Nicolaus reports in a biased manor. You just keep ignoring it post after post…
    You made the case that Nicolaus might have gotten his data from Marc Antony who might have been biased and gave evidence that Nicolaus spoke favorably of Caesar. Were it by itself, I would even say that is a decent case for bias. However, Cicero agrees with what happened with the exact opposite reasons to potentially be biased in favor of fabricating the assassination that Marc Antony could conceivably have. All either one of them would have to do to screw the other over is say “Hey…dude just dropped dead� or “Hey…cleaning lady killed him for getting her pregnant� or some such. As such, the stronger the case you make in favor of them being biased, the stronger the enemy attestation becomes. Either way, the assassination fairs well on one or the other.
    Goose wrote:Once again appealing to the peanut gallery doesn’t make the argument go away. It’s become painfully obvious you cannot refute it. The argument stands. If we use a looser definition for enemy attestation then I retain enemy attestation between Peter and Paul for the resurrection as you would for the assassination between Cicero and Antony. Or if we use a stricter definition then both events lose enemy attestation. Further, you entirely ignored the argument of enemy attestation between opposing early Christian groups anyway.
    Since Fisherking thinks you have a valid point for some strange reason, I’ll address this. First, let’s look at what enemy attestation is defined as.
    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.-Paul L. Meir, Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University and Second Vice President of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. This definition is also supported by Gary R. Habermas, Distinguished Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy and chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University and holder of a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of religion from Michigan State University.

    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.- Mary Jo Sharp, Christian apologist and author.

    These are the only two definitions for enemy attestation I could find, and both came from apologetic sources so one would hope you do not have an objection to them. Now let’s examine how Cicero and Anthony versus Paul and Peter stack up against these definitions.

    If Caesar was not killed, all Cicero or Anthony has to do to discredit their opponent is point out that “Hey, the other guy is a liar. Caesar wasn’t even killed. I don’t know what my opponent has been smoking, but he’s a liar, or crazy, or something. Either way, you shouldn’t trust or listen to him.� It is not in either of their interests to just go along with their opposition’s story if it isn’t true and known by most people to be true given their active attempts to discredit each other.

    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.

    But let’s not stop there, in case you do not accept the common definitions for enemy attestation. Let’s just look at the word enemy for a bit and see how the two pairs compare.

    Enemy: One who feels hatred toward, intends injury to, or opposes the interests of another; a foe.

    One that is hostile toward another. (Hostile defined as one being marked by opposition or ill will).

    A person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another.

    Cicero and Anthony’s relationship were characterized by being constantly at each other’s throats. It can be pretty safely said they met the definition of enemy. Do Paul and Peter? Odd to visit an enemy for 15 days (Galatians 1:15). Even more odd is Galatians chapter 2:
    7On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles,[a] just as Peter had been to the Jews. 8For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9James, Peter[c] and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. 10All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.


    Do enemies normally give each other ‘the right hand of fellowship’ and agree each should work on a different task? Rather bizarre way to show hatred or hostility towards one another.

    Paul calls Peter out on some hypocrisy in Galatians 2, but that doesn’t show them to be enemies in the least. Their basic interests and goals were the same: spread the message of Christ, and on this they were in agreement and supported each other.

    Paul and Peter were not enemies by any commonly used definition of the word. Cicero and Anthony clearly were. Trying to paint Paul and Peter as enemies is equivocating.

    Also, I didn’t entirely ignore your argument for enemy attestation between opposing early Christian groups. Per Post 25 of the original thread:
    But if you care to list these opposing groups, I will address each case specifically to show why they are not good examples of enemy attestation when compared to Mark Antony and Cicero.


    If there is a post where you have done so, I have clearly missed it. In which case, I apologize and invite you to quote yourself so that I may correct that error. However, if you have not done so then I see no reason to spend a lot of time trying to knock down vaguely defined ‘opposing groups’.

    Goose wrote:Nice try. I wasn’t arguing there weren’t theologians fine with the stuff we now call lying. I was arguing I know of no theologian that argues 1 Kings 22 allows Christians to lie, which you seemed to be arguing it does. And I would take issue with anyone that would. Nor am I arguing that Christians never lie. It isn’t necessary for me to argue this. All it is necessary for me to argue to satisfy the criterion is that there is motivation to help minimize the tendency in Christian writers to be biased. I’ve done more than that.


    No, just giving an example showing that not all lying is condemned. Here’s an article outlining a fair number of other Righteous Lies in the Bible.

    Though certainly Christians from very early on were not all opposed to all lying.
    From Johann Lorenz Mosheim in his book The Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, Ancient and Modern. Volume I:
    To these defects in the moral system of the age, must be added two principal errors now well nigh publically adopted, and from which afterwards immense evils resulted. The first was, that to deceive and lie, is a virtue, when religion can be promoted by it. The other was, that errors in religion, when maintained and adhered to after proper admonition, ought to be visited with penalties and punishments.


    In context he his speaking of the practices of many Christians primarily in the 4th century with commentary on how it came from the centuries before. Though I personally think we would both agree the original apostles were earnest in their claims, there seems to be little indication that those promoting Christianity were remotely less likely to lie, regardless of any biblical commands. Furthermore, assuming it is an effective tendency to minimize bias presupposes that they actually believe what they are writing, that they would believe claiming the resurrection occurred was actually lying (which if they had visions of it opposed to a physical resurrection might not be the case), that they did not deceive themselves due to a host of psychological distortions, etc. All of these potentialities will be explored more in depth later on.

    So I do concede that commands not to lie might be a tendency to reduce bias, but I see no evidence whatsoever (either back then nor present day) that such a tendency is more than slight.

    Goose wrote: Here is the real point which you keep avoiding with your digression: claiming someone had returned from the dead, if in fact he had not, would have been considered a lie in the first century ANE as it would be now. Again, you continue to ignore this point.


    A)It would not be considered lying if (at least originally) it was not meant as a physically literal resurrection.
    B)It would not be considered lying if they were first convinced of it through psychological distortions.
    C)Later writers would not be considered lying if they happened to massage a few details here and there to enhance the narrative or create a more coherent story, as they would likely be considered today.

    Goose wrote: You seem to be arguing as though the Old Testament and therefore Jesus as well teaches it’s acceptable for one to lie as long as one isn’t in court. :hahano:


    No. I’m pointing out that the ‘proof’ text used to condemn all lying did not do any such thing.

    Goose wrote:Do not spread false reports. (Exodus 23:1)

    Good job contextomizing Exodus, which fully reads: Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness. It’s a court thing. Again.
    Goose wrote: There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him… a lying tongue…a heart that devises wicked schemes…a false witness who pours out lies…(Proverbs 6:17-19)


    Let’s fill in the blanks:
    16 There are six things the LORD hates,
    seven that are detestable to him:
    17 haughty eyes,
    a lying tongue,
    hands that shed innocent blood,
    18 a heart that devises wicked schemes,
    feet that are quick to rush into evil,
    19 a false witness who pours out lies
    and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.


    You get a little closer with proverbs, though proverbs has long been viewed as a book more of ‘suggestions’ than commands. However, if you’ll notice the lines you left out, all of these forms of deception have been intertwined with causing harm to others. If the writers’ intent was good, I highly doubt a few lines in Proverbs associated with harming others would cause much pause for thought. If their intent was not good, then it definitely wouldn’t give them the slightest pause for thought.

    Goose wrote: I would say the motivation to gain eternal life is substantial, wouldn’t you?


    Clearly not. Everyone lies, as Paul points out in Romans chapter 3. (Actually, this is only mostly true. Some severely autistic people and other brain damaged individuals cannot. But everyone else over the age of four or so does it without exception.) Some are better at deceiving themselves first before telling a lie to someone else, but regardless of how many steps it takes, people lie.
    Given there are a couple billion Christians and every one of them lies at least some of the time, it clearly is not a substantial motivation, and I see no evidence of any kind it has ever been.

    Goose wrote: The sheer fact that early second century Christians denounced these pseudepigraphical books tells us that early Christians frowned upon the practise of pseudepigraphy as they would now. This falsifies the main premise in your rebuttal that there was a different view of what is considered lying back then as compared to now.


    A)Earlier Christians than that were the ones who wrote the books, so I don’t see how you figure this is a good rebuttal.
    B)Many of the ones that got labeled Psuedigraphical were still considered influential by many (such as the Apochrypha), so oftentimes not exactly a very stern commendation.


    Regarding complaints about my form of argument (A)…

    Goose wrote: You are missing the point. I’m “tearing [the assassination] down� using similar sceptical reasoning and standards applied to the evidence for the resurrection. It shows the double standard applied by sceptics of the resurrection.
    Of course it is easy for you to now claim the assassination is not well supported, thus implying I’ve stacked the deck in my favour in order to force my conclusion. But you have yet to offer a better evidentially supported event from that era by which to compare the resurrection.


    And you seem to be missing the point that if you sufficiently tear down the assassination, then by your criteria we can usher in anything ever said as having happened as ‘historically factual’.
    >>>Snip points regarding Goose finally getting the resurrection up to snuff with the assassination on Source Criticism and Internal Criticism<<< I expected you to get there a lot faster than you did. Since it is my contention that historical reasoning is what ends up excluding the resurrection from being taught as historically factual, I’m not very interested in continuing to argue on just how narrow a margin one or the other wins or loses on these. I’ll continue to do so though if it becomes a major point of contention later.

    Though I do wish to address:
    Goose wrote: I’ll further note your definitions and explanations appear contrived to allow only one independent source for each event. Indeed your definitions and standards for independent sources would probably only allow one independent source for most of antiquity.


    These definitions and explanations are what I get from academic historians whose entire professional careers are to determine this stuff. I personally was fine with using a definition that actually let you win by a little bit instead of tying, but since you decided to push the point I thought it fair to point out that from a technical standpoint it’s actually a tie. And yes, it probably would only allow for one independent source for most of antiquity. I don’t see how that matters much.

    Goose wrote: I’m not asking for the definition of a myth. I’m asking what myths would be considered factual if the resurrection were.


    All of them. It is your contention that the assassination is, by the standards of antiquity, heavily supported. But as has been demonstrated, it can only be said with absolute certainty to have a single independent source, which may or may not be biased. That describes pretty much everything that has ever been written.

    Now getting into Historical Reasoning again:
    Goose wrote: The list of assassinated heads of state, the wikipedia list Julius Caesar is on, is a much shorter list consisting of only 64 names over the last several millennia. Even if we were to allow the broadening of the list to include assassinated heads of government it wouldn’t even double in size as at least half the names on the heads of government list also appear on the heads of state list. Assassination of heads of state certainly isn’t something that, in your words, “is observed all the time.� It is hardly the case that “heads of state often end up assassinated� as you claim. Heads of state more often die of causes other than assassinations. In fact, based on the above links I would contend it is quite rare for a head of state to be assassinated.


    Of course they die of natural causes more often than of assassination. However, that does not mean assassination is all that unlikely. Let us consider how many heads of state there have actually been. For the sake of convenience let’s say there are 200 countries (there are actually 195) and that there have existed roughly that number going back into antiquity. (Pretty sure there were far fewer if you’re looking at Sovereign states in the way we think of them, but we’ll be generous). Unfortunately, I can’t find any data just stating how many rulers there have ever been, but counting up the rulers of varying countries on wiki lists we can get factoids like 66 in England over a 1500 year period, 68 over a 1000 year period in Germany, 80 in a 1300 period in France, 625 over a 4700 year period in China, and 200 over a 1000 year period in Russia. Let’s go with the shortest period of a new ruler every 5 years that occurs in Russia and generalize it to 200 countries over a 5000 year period. That gets us about 200,000 rulers. Of these, 64 are on the assassinated heads of state list + those listed in the subgroup on that page (6 Caliphs, 86 Monarchs, 25 Emperors, and 4 U.S. presidents) which brings the total up to 185. It should also be noted that just because no one has bothered to list them on those wiki pages doesn’t mean there aren’t far more rulers to have been assassinated, but since this applies to potential resurrections as well, that is really only fair. (Also not included are the list of murdered monarchs, the deaths of many of whom fit the definition of assassinations. However, I’m going to leave these out, at least for now, because I am not willing to go through the list of about a hundred monarchs and figure out which ones could be said to have been assassinated and which ones were ‘just murdered.’)

    Now sure, 185 people out of something like 200,000 doesn’t seem like much. But let’s put that into perspective. You have 25 instances recorded of people coming back from the dead since 1982. We’ll assume for now they all happened in America. (They didn’t, and there were more like 40 total, but we’ll get to all that later in the post) There have been 54 MILLION deaths in America alone since 1982.

    Goose wrote:
    Further, if we were to narrow the parameters to assassinations that were: 1) of heads 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, I suspect the list would be reduced to a handful and very short indeed. Dare I say there might even be only one name on that list, i.e. Julius Caesar?


    Maybe, but why would narrow the parameters to that? Julius Caesar being the leader of his country is really the only relevant fact pertaining to the likelihood of whether he was assassinated at all. The definition of assassination does not require political reasons (though is enhanced by those reasons) nor does the scope of the debate include any of the subsequent information. None of that information has direct relevance to the inherent probability of a leader being assassinated. As such, though I may personally find some of those things reasonable, whether they even happened or not is outside the scope this debate.

    Goose wrote: First, you are assuming that these Romans were actually assassinated. Yet they suffer similar evidentiary problems that Julius Caesar’s assassination and Jesus’ resurrection does. And to make matters worse many of them have weaker evidentiary support than the assassination of Julius Caesar. Because of these reasons you are obligated to prove each one was actually assassinated as you are with Caesar. If for some reason you feel excused from having to prove these alleged assassinations, then it is only fair that I can cite all the instances of alleged resurrections from antiquity as well without having to prove them either. All these instances, such as Lazarus for example, could be used as evidence to support the assertion it is a common occurrence for people to return from the dead.


    Since I cannot possibly go through each and every Roman emperor and make a case for their assassination individually, let’s do it your way. Even if you allowed every reported resurrection when assessing the probability of it occurring, it’s still negligible.

    Let’s compare:
    I count 92 Roman Emperors (93 if Julius is counted). Of these, 23 were reported as assassinated (Not including Caesar). 10 others were possibly assassinated. Only 33 were reported to have assuredly died of natural causes, with the remainder being mostly killed off by battles, executions, and suicide.

    I managed to find 15 resurrections reported in antiquity (given in the wiki on Resurrections). 4 from the Bible (when not including Jesus) and 10 from Greek people who most likely didn’t even exist. But supposing that all of those people did in fact exist and were resurrected, that would give 14 resurrections besides Jesus to have been reported over a time period in which over 40 Billion people were estimated to have lived. Now in fairness, literacy rates were low and much of what was written was lost. Further, if you dig around more I’m sure you can find more reported resurrections in some culture or another. But even comparing how many resurrections were noted to have occurred in comparison to how many people have been listed and stated to exist in Antiquity you get a number quite close to zero percent.

    Which is of course the reason that historical methodology has been developed such that it excludes resurrections entirely. Justin Martyr might have been fine with considering those Greek myths to have existed and resurrected via the “work of demons and Satan, with the intention of leading Christians astray,� but academic historians of today don’t want myths being taught as factually true. This almost certainly gets some extraordinary events that actually happened (such as potentially the resurrection of Christ) excluded from the realm of academic history, but not doing it like this would allow for the addition of far, far more events that did not occur.

    Goose wrote:
    Chaosborders wrote: <snipped Cicero’s account in 2Ph>…I see no indication that he thinks Anthony spoke only a single sentence on the matter. Even if he did, speaking about two separate parts of a compound sentence result in the same thing. I don’t really get how you’re coming up with these two parts as being contradictory.
    Thank you for the attempt to harmonize the alleged internal contradiction in Cicero’s account. I’ll use the same reasoning whenever you or anyone else accuses Christian writers of being contradictory. Again, thank you. This will be useful elsewhere.


    Though I do think there are genuine inconsistencies in the Gospels, I would be among one the first to agree that many people go too far and claim contradictions that do not actually seem, at least to me, to exist.

    Goose wrote:
    Chaosborders wrote: That doesn’t even make sense. The only people who matter are the people making the claim? That’s like saying the only people who should be considered when trying to establish whether Bigfoot exists are those claiming to have seen it because they’re the only ones in a position to ‘know the truth’. Never mind the possibilities of hoaxes or psychological distortions.
    Setting aside the fact your Bigfoot analogy is juvenile it is guilty of the false analogy fallacy anyway. The disciples spent years with Jesus before the resurrection and 40 days with him after in a variety of intimate settings whereas Bigfoot sightings are generally brief glimpses from distances. The disciples were in a much better position to know the truth than those that claim to have seen Bigfoot.


    The only place the time period is even alleged is in Acts. The descriptions given in all of the Gospels don’t ever have the Apostles as seeing him more than a few times. (The earliest manuscripts of Mark, the earliest Gospel, don’t even have them seeing him at all). So perhaps I could have used a better example, but my point stands that claiming only the ‘witnesses’ are of any importance in a situation is absurd. I think one of the more amusing examples of the unreliability of eyewitnesses is the following:
    Australian eyewitness expert Donald Thomson appeared on a live TV discussion about the unreliability of eyewitness memory. He was later arrested, placed in a lineup and identified by a victim as the man who had raped her. The police charged Thomson although the rape had occurred at the time he was on TV. They dismissed his alibi that he was in plain view of a TV audience and in the company of the other discussants, including an assistant commissioner of police. The policeman taking his statement sneered, "Yes, I suppose you've got Jesus Christ, and the Queen of England, too." Eventually, the investigators discovered that the rapist had attacked the woman as she was watching TV - the very program on which Thompson had appeared. Authorities eventually cleared Thomson. The woman had confused he rapist's face with the face the she had seen on TV.


    This problem is in fact only compounded by groups, as was the case quite recently at my own university. A lone gunman went up to the library of the sixth floor with an Ak-47 and shot himself. Unfortunately, different eyewitnesses described him differently and as a result the police thought there was a second shooter, keeping the campus on lock-down (with me in class) for the next three hours until they finally decided there was no second shooter and it had just been a very public suicide.

    I’ll go into further detail later in the debate regarding the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, but for now I hope it has been illustrated that it is not just eyewitnesses who are important in determining the truth of a matter and who are important.

    Though as an aside, it does beg the question of why, if he had truly returned from the dead, Jesus didn’t walk up to all of his opponents and say “Hey, you believe me now?�

    Goose wrote:
    Chaosborders wrote: No telling [how many people believed the tradition of the assassination], but there’s no dispute from the time that it happened, as far as I’m aware. Unlike with the resurrection.
    Patently false. We have no record of anyone from the time of the resurrection happening that disputes it.


    Actually, Matthew 28 verses 13 and 15 give us that.
    13 "You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.'
    15 And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
    These two lines give enemy attestation that there was a story circulating among the Jews that the disciples came during the night and stole Jesus’ body away. Unfortunately, that is the limit of the information that can be deemed reliable from the passage, as they are the only parts that meet the criteria for enemy attestation. It seems Jews were denying the resurrection from the very beginning. This of course is not on its own remotely proof that it didn’t happen, but in comparison to the assassination we must address again the issue no one denied it occurred. No record of any kind has the assassination being considered false by anyone, anywhere, at any time until just maybe modern day and even then not by a single historian that I’m aware of. (Pretty sure, and if I’m wrong please present evidence to the contrary).


    Chaosborders wrote:[Regarding the criterion of a critical spirit being sufficiently established by John 7:5 and 20:24-29]

    >>>Snip spirit of critical investigation issues<<< Due to the nature of the event, I’m not sure the second part regarding means of a critical investigation is even possible, and though I could press the issue on John and Matthew, for now I’m going to let you have this one unless it becomes a major point of contention later on. However:
    Goose wrote:
    G) Are you serious? :yikes: Dude, YOU introduced the Bible first, not me.


    Really? Because the first mention of the Bible I can find in the debate is from post 24 of the original thread in Round 2 where YOU state the following:
    Now compare this to the resurrection. We have Paul, Mark (the earliest and most reliable manuscripts end affirming the resurrection 16:6-7), John, Clement, Polycarp, and Ignatius all writing within approximately 80 years and within the lifetime of possible witnesses. I could further argue 1 Peter as another independent and early source. Also, I could argue that Matthew and Luke differ in their accounts of the resurrection and thus are independent in this regard.


    Also, I am not the one who stated:
    There is religious baggage associated with the Bible and thus it would be difficult to allow it into a secular history class. Especially amongst those that a priori do not accept the Bible as containing history. Also, it makes it more challenging for me to not refer to the Bible. And I like a challenge. For these reasons above I will not refer to the Bible as a source in my argument.


    Though I do not think the Bible should just be taken at face value, it would be contrary to the ideals of history to just dismiss what is in it entirely, and as such was going to use it when developing alternative hypotheses. However, the first time I’m aware of referencing it comes a post after yours when I use it as a reference of there being only two recorded instances of Jesus ever speaking on the topic of lying in any manner at all. Further, I’ve never said I wasn’t going to use it, whereas you did.

    I certainly don’t mind in the least that you’re using it, but I find it amusing to point out and would like to say I’m glad I’ve been enough of a challenge that you’ve ultimately had to resort to it.

    Goose wrote:
    I can’t imagine how Tacitus labelling Christians as ‘superstitious’ has any relevance then in this criterion. I also wonder why Tacitus did not accuse later Roman historians such as Plutarch as being ‘superstitious’ for associating with Caesar’s death events such as the appearance of a giant phantom to Brutus. Could it be because Tacitus was biased? Oh, the irony…


    You mean the thing mentioned by Plutarch, whose work Tacitus may never have even read?


    Goose wrote:
    Historical Reasoning…
    1. The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)
    Chaosborders wrote:The statement is that Jesus was resurrected. For this to have happened he must have died, and then come back to life. Because of the question for debate, how he died was not specified nor was the time frame with which he came back to life. Further, the exact definition of dead was not specified, perhaps giving you some medical wiggle room. But for the statement to even have a chance of being considered literally factual, it must first be established by present, observable data that it is even possible for the dead to come back to life without modern medical equipment in any sense of the word. So your earlier claim 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� needs to be documented.
    No problem...

    Here’s one. And here’s another one. Here’s another case detailed in a medical paper. Zach Dunlap was pronounced brain dead by physicians in the U.S.A. and subsequently returned to life without medical assistance.
    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. Further, it was written in the ‘Discussion’ of the medical paper linked above that, “Although only a handful of such cases have appeared in the literature, there has been speculation that the Lazarus phenomenon occurs more often than those few reports would suggest.�


    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. But of course this is circular and assumes that a mistake was made because it is not possible for a dead person to return to life. Therefore any type of resurrection explanation becomes not viable because dead people always stay dead. And any evidence to the contrary will be explained away.

    Whatever the explanation one offers for these cases or questions one raises about our current understanding and definitions of death it is an indisputable fact that there exists recent documented cases of people returning to life without medical assistance after having been declared dead by trained medical professionals. These cases meet your demand to establish with documentation my claim 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.� These cases also falsify the often universally applied proposition that dead people always stay dead.


    Given medical errors kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people a year in this country, the possibility should not be ignored. 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.

    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.

    Firstly, each and every case of Lazarus syndrome came after a minimum of CPR being given. The primary cause of Lazarus syndrome is believed to be the result of “the buildup of pressure in the chest as a result of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The relaxation of pressure after resuscitation efforts have ended is thought to allow the heart to expand, triggering the heart's electrical impulses and restarting the heartbeat.� (From the same medical paper you cited). This is supported by Lapinsky SE, Leung RS. Auto-PEEP and electromechanical dissociation. N Engl J Med. 1996; 335: 674 in which a case series “suggested that this occurred in patients with obstructive airway disease.� It was also supported by four studies showing six of the cases occurred as a result of gas trapping, or likely the result of gas trapping. The full papers of two of these studies can be found here and here.

    If necessary I can try to explain this in even further depth, but to put it more succinctly the overriding message of the medical literature on this subject is:
    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.

    But when CPR was ceased the pressure eased and the patients’ hearts restarted and breathing returned. But by all indications, the patients would have been dead without the initial application of CPR or ventilation (or in a couple cases drugs like adrenaline). 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. Let’s look at each case you presented:

    The first one was readmitted into the hospital in a coma. The second one, in addition to being revived twice before, hooked up to a respirator, and undergoing a treatment to induce hypothermia to protect her heart and organs, was given at least slight odds of surviving. (Not exactly ‘without medical assistance’). The media coverage has also been criticized in this case as relying too much on the insights of the family and not enough on the medical professionals. She is the only one I can find that did not need extensive post-‘resurrection’ care, though from the tubes she was hooked up to during her interview I’d say she certainly needed some. The man presented in the medical paper you presented required surgery, blood transfusions, and mechanical ventilation for several days. Your last case, Zach Dunlap, required life support a further five days before he even opened his eyes. Another case required 13 days in intensive care. One died less than an hour after ‘resurrecting’ (Bradbury N. Lazarus phenomenon: another case? Resuscitation1999;41:87.) Even with intensive care, another case died less than two days after his pulse came back. Another one for intensive care who was in a coma.

    So you’ve given an example of something that (with Zach Dunlap) gives you about 40 examples total (as of 2010) of people who came back to life once medical treatment had ceased (not in absence of medical treatment.) Even if every single one of those were taken as a comparable resurrection to the one claimed of Jesus at face value despite the medical care given to them before their resuscitation and medical opinions being that the return to life of the Lazarus cases was most likely the result of both the medical care and temporary cessation of that care, and only compared them to the deaths in the countries where they have been recorded (U.S.=54 Million, U.K.= 14.6 Million (statistics.gov.uk), Belgium = 2.85 Million per wiki demographics of Belgium) minus Columbia due to not being able to find that information, we still only have a recorded incidence of 40 out of 71.45 million, giving a rate of 5.598X10^-7.

    When all of the necessary relevant facts surrounding the resurrection are taken into account, it will be shown that this tiny number is still staggeringly generous given the facts surrounding the Lazarus cases that make them entirely incomparable to the alleged resurrection of Jesus.


    Goose wrote:
    Chaosborders wrote: This is in contrast to the assassination where a leader being killed is nothing new and is observed all the time. The only really remarkable thing is that it was the senate that did it.
    The statement is that Caesar was assassinated. Please provide the present observable data of a head of state being assassinated. In fairness to the resurrection the evidence you provide should be of events after 1982. Please further establish your claim that this “is observed all the time� because I’ve never observed it. Have you?


    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.

    From the wiki on Assassination:
    On August 17, 1988 President of Pakistan Gen. M. Zia ul Haq died along with his staff and the American Ambassador to Pakistan when his C-130 transport plane exploded in mid-air after taking off from Bahawalpur because of an on-board bomb.
    In India, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were assassinated in 1984 and 1991
    In Israel, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995.
    In Guinea Bissau, President João Bernardo Vieira was assassinated in the early hours of Monday March 2, 2009


    In addition to that:
    President of Rwanda Juvénal Habyarimana and President of Burundi Cyprien Ntaryamira had their plane shot down April 6, 1994.

    Ahmed Abdallah Abderemane- President of the Comoros assassinated on November 26th, 1989.

    Haruo Remeliik-President of Palau until his assassination on June 30th, 1985.

    Mohamed Boudiaf-Head of State of Algeria assassinated by a bodyguard on June 29, 1992.

    Ranasinghe Premadasa- President of Sri Lanka assassinated May 1st, 1993.

    Thomas Sankara- President of Burkina Faso assassinated on October 15, 1987.

    Shame the cutoff wasn’t 1981. Apparently a bad year for leaders, given 3 assassinations occurred. But even as it is, 12 leaders have been assassinated since 1982.

    Going back to the estimation of total leaders made earlier, with about 200 countries over around 30 years we can expect something like a total of 1200 leaders in total. This means there’s been a roughly 1% chance over that time period that if you’re a leader, you’re gonna’ get assassinated. This is over 17,500 times the recorded rate of a person even momentarily coming back to life after cessation of medical treatment.

    Goose wrote: I’ll be generous and overlook the fact that the present observable data should also be of an assassinated head of state, by stabbing at the main place where and when that government convenes, in plain view of other witnesses, with no resistance from security personnel, and committed by a large group of politicians to fully establish the plausibility of the statement as it applies to Caesar. His assassination is certainly an extraordinary event when everything is taken into consideration.


    Most (possibly all) of the people I listed are on the assassinated head of state list. None of the other details are inherently relevant to the probability of a leader being assassinated. As such, whether they even happened or not is beyond the scope of the debate. I personally find stabbing likely given it was one of the main methods of assassination at the time, which is no longer the case given the invention of guns and bombs, but if he were killed some other way it wouldn’t matter so long as he was killed. I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if the sheer number of people involved has been exaggerated and would never try to defend that.

    I’ll address your statement of scope and explanatory at the same time.
    Goose wrote: The resurrection hypothesis has more scope than any other hypothesis. It accounts for a diverse set of data such as but not limited to:
    1) Jesus’ death by crucifixion.


    How in the world does resurrection account for crucifixion? This is in fact a nail in the coffin as far as plausibility and explanatory power goes though, even if it did help with scope. Let’s look at what crucifixion entails:
    Being nailed to a stake or cross of wood and left to die from blood loss, hypovolemic shock, sepsis, or eventual dehydration. Generally it was a slow and agonizing way to go.

    It is beyond the scope of the debate question that Jesus was beaten to within an inch of his life before being crucified, and there is mention of him being taken down rather faster than most. Further, even having had his side pierced cannot be assumed. As such, surviving the crucifixion is theoretically possible. But if he died, as he must have for him to have resurrected, no matter how little time he spent nailed up he would have suffered far more physical trauma than any of the Lazarus syndrome victims. The only one of the examples of 'resurrection' you gave that was reported as having any physical trauma at all was Zach Dunlap, and given his claims of being able to hear people while supposedly brain dead, one does have to wonder if his PET Scan wasn’t botched. Even if he was at some point brain dead, he was kept physically alive with life support both before and after giving signs of being ‘alive’. Given how much medical care had to be given to the Lazarus syndrome cases to keep them alive following their own ‘resurrections,’ I don’t see how it is has been shown at all that it is possible for someone who has suffered severe trauma to return to life in absence of modern medical care, much less stay alive long enough without it for people to notice.

    Goose wrote:
    2) An empty tomb.
    3) The disciples’ belief Jesus appeared to them alive.
    4) The resurrection was preached in Jerusalem by the disciples despite persecution and the threat of death.
    5) The conversion of Jesus’ brother James.
    6) Paul’s conversion.
    7) The existence of the NT documents and writings of church fathers.


    These will be covered when I start doing alternative hypotheses.

    Goose wrote:
    8) The Nazareth Inscription.


    At best this supports that Jews were claiming Jesus’ followers stole Jesus’ body. That would very tentatively support the possibility there was an empty tomb (though not conclusively given if there was no tomb in the first place the Jews could have just been being contrary).

    Goose wrote:
    How does the assassination have more scope than the hypothesis that Caesar died of natural causes and the assassination was invented for instance?


    If you would care to make an argument for a conspiracy theory to invent a conspiracy theory then go for it. If you can’t find sufficient comparable situations that would lend credence to such a thing happening with a prevalence anywhere near that of leaders actually getting assassinated though, then it fails on explanatory power, plausibility, ad hoc, and accepted beliefs disconfirmed. As such, even if you could make an argument for scope, I think it would fail so incredibly on the other criteria that the hypothesis that Julius was assassinated blows the double conspiracy theory out of the water. But if you think you can show otherwise, go for it.

    Goose wrote:
    Death by crucifixion and torture helps ensure that Jesus was dead. Not that it is necessary for me to meet your demand here but Zack Dunlap was in a severe accident. Now, that’s not torture per se but I suspect it would have the potential to inflict some similar physical trauma to the body as torture would.


    Zack Dunlap was also on life support for like a week, without which he’d have died and would have stayed dead. To my knowledge Jesus didn’t have a modern life support system. If you’re comparing the situations, it would only strengthen the conclusion that if Jesus was tortured to death he wouldn’t have gotten back up.


    Goose wrote:
    4. The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.
    Chaosborders wrote:This here is where the scientific method gets ushered in full force, as does reason to doubt aka ‘probable negation’. Things violating accepted truths (aka physics, biology, etc.) fail this condition miserably.
    The accepted truth is that there are multiple documented cases over the last few decades of people being declared dead by medical professionals and subsequently returning to life. This supports the belief that it is possible for a dead person to return to life.


    If I’ve ever said it wasn’t possible for a dead person to return to life, I did not mean to. However, it is my contention that it has not been shown possible without modern medical treatments. To my knowledge, none of your examples has demonstrated this given in all of them at least CPR was administered and usually significantly more medical treatments than that both before and after their temporary deaths.

    Goose wrote:
    It is more plausible that Caesar died of either 1) natural causes 2) an accident or 3) even a heated argument with Brutus over a woman, for instance, that escalated into bloodshed than the hypothesis he was assassinated by stabbing in a grand conspiracy involving many senators that got past the Caesar’s body guards unmolested.


    Again, the surrounding details of him being assassinated are not relevant to whether he was. If it were not stated that he had died from assassination, your assessment of him dying from one of the other reasons would be accurate. But, as it is, the probability of the scenarios that would lead to the conclusion that he was not assassinated and other people were making it up are significantly smaller than that of him simply having been assassinated. Because of that, it is more plausible he was assassinated as reported. (And if you wish to try and show otherwise, feel free to make your case).

    Goose wrote:
    Because of documented cases it is currently believed that it is at least possible for a person to return to life after being declared dead. There is indisputable recent evidence to support this belief. There is no need to argue that the laws of physics were different two thousand years ago.


    You’ve shown it is possible, but not in absence of modern medical treatments. And you’ve definitely not shown it probable. Unless they had life support systems back then, every one of the cases where they were needed can be reasonably ruled out given not doing so would indeed require different laws of physics.

    Goose wrote:
    However, the assassination hypothesis requires us to believe it would be plausible, as an example, for a large group of senators to successfully conspire and assassinate by stabbing the president of the United States during a meeting of Congress in the US Capitol building. Not to mention the assassins would also need to get past the Presidents’ body guards. Though this scenario might be conceivably possible it is not plausible. It would be hardly any more plausible for Caesar. It is more plausible and less ad hoc to hypothesize Caesar died of natural causes than from a grand assassination conspiracy.


    Again, superfluous details that are outside of the scope of debate. Though given how many assassinations have been reported to have occurred as a direct result of body guards, the idea they might have stood by and let it happen if they had reason to do so is not that implausible. Still, within the scope of the debate the only important thing is whether it is plausible for a leader to end up assassinated. If you’re going to compare it to the U.S. president getting assassinated, we have 4 to choose from and 10 others attempted. It is not remotely plausible or less ad hoc to assume that Caesar died of natural causes and then people (including ones who hated each other) invented the assassination.

    Goose wrote:
    It is commonly believed that assassinating a head of state is at best very difficult and rare. To accept the assassination hypothesis we must accept the truth of the statement that it is plausible for a group of senators to stab to death a head of state in the main meeting place of the government while also getting past body guards. Clearly the preceding statement is false. It is not plausible. For example, I think it safe to say that the belief it is plausible that a group of senators could stab to death in Congress the President of United States is false.


    And again, the only thing of actual importance is whether it is more plausible he was assassinated or whether a conspiracy to invent a conspiracy was developed. In the last few decades, heads of state have been assassinated at a rate of around 1%. The rate recorded for roman emperors ending up assassinated is something like one in three. I don’t even think you can show it is more plausible that such a double conspiracy would occur than the bare minimum assassination rate for leaders examined above of 185 in 200,000, much less these higher rates.

    Goose wrote:
    There is no other hypothesis that has a greater level of scope and explanatory power as the resurrection. If you think otherwise feel free to present it.


    Given you haven’t even successfully shown it possible for resurrection to occur without medical techniques having been used before resurrection and following resurrection, I can think of quite a number of them to present.

    Goose wrote:
    On the other hand a serious contender to the assassination hypothesis is my Assassination Tale Hypothesis (ATH).The ATH uses similar reasoning and forms of argument as are often applied to the resurrection. In this hypothesis Caesar probably died by natural causes or accident or was killed in a fight that was not politically motivated. The assassination conspiracy tale was then created by someone such as Cicero because of political motivations, though it may not have been Cicero. Cicero may have picked up on a rumour of an assassination and propagated the tale for his own means. Later writers such as Nicolaus and Plutarch then embellished upon the ambiguous earlier accounts of writers such as Cicero and the tale grew over time into what we have today. The ATH is more plausible than the assassination hypothesis as it is more plausible that a tale of an assassination was created than an actual assassination took place. It also has scope and explanatory power.


    Would you care to present evidence showing that a tale of an assassination is more plausible than an actual assassination? Preferably evidence that false tales of assassinations occur with a greater frequency than actual assassinations. I think you are correct that your reasoning is similar to that which will be applied to the resurrection. However, alternati

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    Post #7

    Post by ChaosBorders »

    However, alternatives to the resurrection are all individually quite improbable. 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. As such, any alternative hypotheses that can be shown to be possible sufficiently detract from the resurrection hypothesis enough for it to not be taught as historically factual.

    To that end, let’s get started. Let the fun part begin.

    I think for this we will split the hypotheses into several categories. The first to be explored will be the ‘didn’t die’ category.

    The first alternative hypothesis is not one I like, but would unfortunately exceed the resurrection on probability and plausibility while at least matching the scope.

    As much as I dislike how Lewis’ trilema gets turned into a false dichotomy in practice, the mad, bad, or God idea does point out the possibility of fraud. Let’s set up some baseline facts, some of which will be used again for other alternative hypotheses:
    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.

    Sadly, religious leaders are far from immune. An estimated 27 billion dollars was stolen by Christian religious leaders in 2009. Further, referencing back to Johann Lorenz Mosheim we can say that the existence of people taking advantage of others in the name of religion has been around since ancient times. This is particularly true of those who claim to be faith healers. Though faith healing can have at least some effect through the placebo effect (and for most of history that described the majority of medical practitioners whether of faith or not), many of those claiming to be faith healers have been shown to use deception and trickery. Examples include [url = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faith_Healers] AA Allen, Ernest Angley, WV Grant, Peter Popoff, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and Father DiOrio. [/url]

    Psychopaths, have a prevalence of roughly one in two hundred people. They are usually highly charismatic and very convincing liars.

    Crucifixion can be survived short periods, especially if the intent was not to kill.
    People facing legal issues (especially jail or execution) will occasionally fake their own deaths. Others on occasion try death defying stunts such as being buried alive (though not all survive, as Hippolytus reports was the case with Simon Magnus).

    It should also be noted that people hate to admit they’ve been taken advantage of, with only 15 percent reporting their fraud to the authorities.

    So now we have some baseline facts (which will be reused in this post and later ones). Let’s construct some narratives and see how it does on scope, explanatory power, and plausibility compared to the resurrection.

    Jesus, a psychopath or charismatic narcissist, gets tired of doing work in his little village and goes off performing miracles and gathering followers. Perhaps as young man or even as a child he had encounters with some of the supposed holy men and miracle workers that seem to have been fairly prevalent in their day and realized how they were doing it. Like Schindler, maybe he liked a challenge, and so decided it would be too easy to become a normal hypocritical priest. Taking cues from the Roman emperors, he may have decided to go the route of being seen as a deity. So he goes around performing ‘miracles’ and ‘faith healings’. No doubt this would have upset those who saw him for what he was; both the ones who had earnest faith and thought him a blasphemer and those who were fellow scam artists being upstaged. Realizing they were trying to have him killed, he arranged it so that he wouldn’t be finished off. Having successfully faked his own death and resurrection, he either recovers and flees the empire or succumbs to infection from the wounds sustained by being crucified. Most of his followers believe him to have resurrected and come to view him as truly divine while any who realize what happened are too ashamed to admit it.

    Regarding the actual crucifixion, the narrative breaks into a couple distinct possibilities that should be evaluated separately.

    The first possibility is that he allowed himself to be crucified after making a deal of some sort with the sentries overseeing it or by taking the right doses of a poison like Crotalaria that can simulate death so as to appear dead long before actually bleeding to death. In both cases, arrangements would have had to have been made to actually get him off the cross after a few hours rather than leave him hanging was as common.

    I think of the two options there, the slightly more likely one is buying off a sentry. It has the difficulty of involving a roman sentry or two in faking your death, but expands the scope to include peculiarities such as not just leaving him up to rot on the cross (as has been reported to be the norm for crucifixions) and being given a side wound instead of having his legs broken (as has also been reported to be a more common treatment).

    Further, it doesn’t have to deal with the medical issues as to amount of poison needed to simulate death after being crucified awhile versus amount of poison that would just flat out kill you.

    So now let’s look at the scope of this narrative:
    Firstly, it would explain why he was reported to have been unable to work miracles in his home town.

    Mark 6:
    1 Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
    “Where did this man get these things?� they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? 3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph,[a] Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?� And they took offense at him.
    4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.� 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 He was amazed at their lack of faith.
    Psychopaths can go undetected for years, even decades, but eventually if people spend enough time with them (as would likely occur in a village of that time) they become aware of the tricks and manipulations a person employs. As such, they would not likely have believed any minor miracles he might try to perform were genuine.

    Further, it would explain the reports of him being able to predict his own death and resurrection:

    Mark 10: 32-33
    Jesus Predicts His Death a Third Time
    32 They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. 33 “We are going up to Jerusalem,� he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.�
    Resurrecting from the dead in total absence of modern medical treatments (at a minimum CPR) is quite impressive, given it still hasn’t been shown to be medically possible. Being able to predict the event ahead of time would be even more astounding. Unless of course you plan on faking your death ahead of time, in which case it is easily explainable.

    It also could also somewhat explain eventual tales by Gnostics that Judas was his closest disciple despite being the one to get him consigned to death, as well as reports of Jesus predicting the ‘betrayal’. (This is also potentially supportable by attacks on Judas’ character, such as in John 12, that portray him as a thief).

    In addition to those, it explains everything the resurrection would, from Christ’s apparent crucifixion to even having holes Thomas could inspect. One of the largest problems it runs into is the extensive pre-crucifixion torture, but this is just as much a problem for the resurrection as it is for faking. And either way, those depictions are largely absent from Mark, now believed by most scholars to be the earliest Gospel.

    Looking at the explanatory power we see that this narrative is incredibly improbable. (This and the second possibility for faking death are by far my least favorite alternative hypotheses). However, each individual part necessary for the narrative to occur can at least be shown as distinctly possible. This is in contrast with the resurrection, which can be broken down into three parts (first assuming death).

    1.It has to be possible for someone to come back to life.
    This is possible, as you have shown with Lazarus syndrome.
    2.Coming back to life has to be possible without the intervention of modern medical techniques.
    This has not been shown.
    3.If someone was able to come back to life (with or without modern medical techniques) it has to be possible for them to live long enough and be in good enough physical condition to actually be seen by others so that resurrection rumors could be propagated.
    You have one potential example here, if the shoddy reporting and all the tubes hooked up to Val Thomas during her interview are ignored.
    4.Another consideration that must be taken into account is physical trauma, given that it is a medically relevant bit of information. The only person here who is even potentially an example is Zach Dunlap.
    The second requirement has not been shown to be possible, thus the probability of someone resurrecting under the conditions Jesus was in cannot be distinguished from zero. So even though the probability of the narrative above is easily one in hundreds of millions (possibly billions), it is still of greater explanatory power than the resurrection.

    Of course, not only is it staggeringly improbable, it is also incredibly implausible. Psychopathy wouldn’t be particularly implausible, but managing to buy over sentries, or have the medical knowledge to know the right kinds and dosage of poisons to feign death without actually dying, or even having the audacity (and some would say stupidity) to allow oneself to be crucified in order to fake one’s own death are all extremely implausible.
    On the other hand, it is being compared to an event that would require a complete and total defiance of all known medical knowledge. Dead people stay dead in the absence of modern medical treatment of some kind. Even then they usually stay dead.

    Sure, if you presuppose the existence of an omnipotent God as is done in religious history classes, it doesn’t seem that implausible. Something exists that can violate the rules of science, so why shouldn’t a miracle be possible? But secular classes do not have that presupposition. An omnipotent God cannot be proven to exist, so anything it may or may not do or be capable of cannot be factored into evaluating the plausibility of an event. As such, something like the resurrection can only be deemed as unbelievably implausible.

    I think the other possibility regarding Jesus faking his own death is a little more plausible, though ironically less inherently probable and weaker regarding scope. And that would be that Jesus had a mentally slow twin (or very similar looking brother) he managed to get executed in his place. This side steps a lot of the greatest difficulties involved with the plausibility of actually letting himself be crucified and would be more consistent with the pattern of people faking their deaths. It also reduces the number of people who would have to be in on the deception. (He could probably get away with just him and an accomplice, probably Judas).

    But it has the downside of having the probability of having a twin, and of that twin having been sufficiently mentally damaged that Jesus could control him well enough to position at the moment of betrayal without the twin going ‘Hey, wait a minute, I’m not Jesus!� (Though, I suppose another possibility is that the ‘betrayal’ actually occurred while the apostles were asleep or something and after the fact they were just too embarrassed to admit it, opening the door such that Judas marked the twin and had him hauled off despite protests).

    Still, though I think Jesus having a twin is an interesting option to explore in greater depth later, regarding this particular narrative I think it is the less probable possibility.

    It also does not have the bonus for scope regarding the reported peculiarity of the crucifixion. As such, though it is potentially more plausible than faking his death via an actual, brief crucifixion, it is probably not as probable nor as good on scope. Still, when being compared to an event with a probability indistinguishable from zero and unbelievably implausible, it wins out.

    But that is certainly not the most plausible or probable of the ‘still living’ alternative hypotheses. The other obvious possibility is that Jesus was merely misdiagnosed as being dead. Let’s look at the issue of false diagnosis throughout history:

    Jan Bondes gives us several lists in Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear:
    In 1749, French Physician Jean-Jacques Bruhier reviewed 56 cases of premature burial or dissection, and a 125 narrow escapes. In 1905, William Tebb found 161 cases of individuals buried alive, dissected, or embalmed while still living and 222 narrow escapes. 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).

    Less than 150 years ago, many medical practioners freely admitted to being unsure if their patients were dead or alive. In antiquity, the heart was thought to be the primary indicator of life and presumably figured someone was dead based on if they had a strong heartbeat or not. If it was too weak to detect a heartbeat without instruments, it seems unlikely they would have thought someone was alive. What is more, according to Hypocratic medical ethics, the doctor merely forecasted impending death and left the actual determining of death to the nonmedical attendants. The Romans were likewise fallible, the consuls Acilius Aviola and Lucius Lamia both having been reported to have awoken on their flaming funeral pyres. Unable to be saved, they burned to death horribly. Gaius Aelius would have suffered a similar fate, but showed signs of life quickly enough to be saved. Pliny, Plutarch, and Plato all have reports. Galen mentioned cases that were almost certainly catalepsy or cataplexy in which people who died of ‘excessive joy or grief’ were known to recover.

    As medical science has progressed, more accurate diagnosis and the discovery of conditions that can mimic death have made falsely labeling someone as dead increasingly rare. But even now, extreme cases of cataplexy have resulted in misdiagnosed death .

    So though on any individual case of someone seeming to come back to life it may be faulty to presume that they were misdiagnosed as dead in the first place, it can be determined from statistical inference that was what most probably happened.

    In Jesus’ case this has at least as much scope as the resurrection because from an outside point of view he really would have appeared to have died and come back to life. As mentioned before, it is possible to survive short-term crucifixion. What is more, if he had cataplexy, because the trigger is strong emotion there is a very good chance he would have had an attack on the cross. (It’s hard to imagine a time when one would have stronger emotions than while nailed to a cross and left to die). So it’s not even a matter of whether or not he had it AND just happened to have an attack at the exact time required to make it appear as if the execution had already worked.

    The odds of having cataplexy are less than one in two thousand. If he was removed from the cross after only a few hours as the reports indicate, the odds of survival (presuming he were not actually as dead as he appeared) could have been as high as one in three. Even allowing for the odds to be smaller for more severe cataplexy, they could easily be less than one in a million. This would still be higher than the recorded rates of Lazarus syndrome, even if every single case of it were considered comparable to what would be necessary for the resurrection of Jesus to have occurred and explain the reports supposedly resulting from said resurrection. Since in actuality, not a single case actually is comparable, the probability of cataplexy explaining the issue are (as low as they may be numerically) immeasurably higher than the probability of the resurrection.

    This isn’t even including other, less common (especially these days) causes of misdiagnosing someone as dead such as rare manifestations of hysteria, asphyxia, coma, and catalepsy. I think Cataplexy is the most plausible, so for now am only putting forth its probability.

    For plausibility, I think it is likewise considerably greater than the resurrection. The only real problems for it is there is not much explanation for why they took him off the cross at all, much less after a relatively short period of time compared to most crucifixions. But these are just as much a problem for the resurrection.

    Ultimately, even if it could not be determined that there exists a possibility of the cause being an attack of cataplexy, statistical inference from the decrease in misdiagnosed deaths as medicine has advanced would still lead to the conclusion that he was a lot more likely still alive and declared dead than he was dead and come back alive.

    So just exploring alternative hypotheses which involve Jesus never dying in the first place we can get a couple that at least equal the resurrection in terms of historical reasoning. Because of this, the resurrection does not reach anywhere near the level of near certainty that it needs to be such that it should be taught as literally factual in a secular history class.
    What I personally think is more plausible is Jesus dying and common psychological distortions leading to the reports we now have.

    Unfortunately, though I wanted to get to them in this post, school and work have swamped me. Perhaps this is just as well given that we have another four rounds, so putting it off will leave me more to talk about on the next post.

    Goose

    Post #8

    Post by Goose »

    Round 7 – part 1


    Regarding Cicero and minimizing his bias…
    Chaosborders wrote: This leads to several points:
    A) 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 would even further solidifies enemy attestation.
    B) Seems odd that getting his story straight with Brutus and Cassius would involve implicating them in the assassination of their emperor. Particularly if he just dropped dead of a heart attack or some such.
    C) There is nothing in the explanation for why it was not immediately published that would indicate Cicero did not intend for it to be.
    D) If the explanation is false, why would anyone assume it wasn’t spoken to the senate, given the rest of the speeches were?
    A) Not sure how you figure this solidifies enemy attestation. 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. 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?



    Regarding minimizing bias in Christian writers…
    Chaosborders wrote:So I do concede that commands not to lie might be a tendency to reduce bias, but I see no evidence whatsoever (either back then nor present day) that such a tendency is more than slight.
    I thank you for finally conceding this point. All I’ve been arguing for is that there exists a motive to minimize the tendency to be biased in Christian writers, which is all I need to argue to satisfy the criterion. 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:You mean the thing mentioned by Plutarch, whose work Tacitus may never have even read?
    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.

    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.

    Everybody back then, as now, wrote with a bias.



    Criteria of Enemy Attestation…
    Chaosborders wrote: You made the case that Nicolaus might have gotten his data from Marc Antony who might have been biased and gave evidence that Nicolaus spoke favorably of Caesar. Were it by itself, I would even say that is a decent case for bias. However, Cicero agrees with what happened with the exact opposite reasons to potentially be biased in favor of fabricating the assassination that Marc Antony could conceivably have. All either one of them would have to do to screw the other over is say “Hey…dude just dropped dead� or “Hey…cleaning lady killed him for getting her pregnant� or some such. As such, the stronger the case you make in favor of them being biased, the stronger the enemy attestation becomes. Either way, the assassination fairs well on one or the other.
    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.

    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.-Paul L. Meir, Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University and Second Vice President of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. This definition is also supported by Gary R. Habermas, Distinguished Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy and chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University and holder of a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of religion from Michigan State University.

    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.- Mary Jo Sharp, Christian apologist and author.
    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: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.

    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.

    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.

    At any rate, Cicero and Antony both benefit from affirming the assassination as well anyway. In fact, the whole foundation of the accusations against one another center around implicating one another in Caesar’s death. So by your reasoning this disqualifies them if it disqualifies Peter and Paul.

    Chaosborders wrote:Cicero and Anthony’s relationship were characterized by being constantly at each other’s throats. It can be pretty safely said they met the definition of enemy.
    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. 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:Do Paul and Peter? Odd to visit an enemy for 15 days (Galatians 1:15). Even more odd is Galatians chapter 2:
    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
    Paul’s actions toward Peter in Antioch certainly meet this definition and thus they can be seen as “enemies.�

    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. And further, I will tighten the definition for attestation and expect you to produce something literally written by both Anthony and Cicero that explicitly affirms the assassination.

    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.
      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.
    Like I’ve been maintaining all along…
    Goose wrote: If we use a looser definition for enemy attestation then I retain enemy attestation between Peter and Paul for the resurrection as you would for the assassination between Cicero and Antony. Or if we use a stricter definition then both events lose enemy attestation.
    Chaosborders wrote:Also, I didn’t entirely ignore your argument for enemy attestation between opposing early Christian groups. Per Post 25 of the original thread:
    Chaosborders wrote: But if you care to list these opposing groups, I will address each case specifically to show why they are not good examples of enemy attestation when compared to Mark Antony and Cicero.
    If there is a post where you have done so, I have clearly missed it. In which case, I apologize and invite you to quote yourself so that I may correct that error.
    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'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.


    CB’s digression…
    Goose wrote: G) Are you serious? Dude, YOU introduced the Bible first, not me.
    Chaosborders wrote:Really? Because the first mention of the Bible I can find in the debate is from post 24 of the original thread in Round 2 where YOU state the following…
    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…
    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. Even if I had not used the Bible all it would have given you is a win on having an earlier source in Cicero. Even then, you wouldn’t fully have that as you had to infer the assassination from Cicero’s writings.

    Goose

    Post #9

    Post by Goose »

    Round 7 – part 2 (see above post for part 1)


    Historical Reasoning and Arguments from Probability…

    Chaosborders appears to be abandoning the debate over the criteria for Source Criticism and Internal Criticism by now hinging this debate more on historical reasoning when he writes:
    Chaosborders wrote:Since it is my contention that historical reasoning is what ends up excluding the resurrection from being taught as historically factual, I’m not very interested in continuing to argue on just how narrow a margin one or the other wins or loses on [Source Criticism and Internal Criticism].
    I don’t blame him. The evidentiary support for the resurrection has been shown to be at least as good as that for the assassination.

    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:

    1) Favourable statistical results can be achieved depending upon how one selects the data. To put this in perspective think about the following scenario as improbable as it may sound. In the United States there has been an average of 58 reported deaths per year over the last 30 years from being struck by lightning. Which puts the probability at low 1 in 5 million of being killed by lightning in the States in any given year. The probability of winning a 6/49 lottery is about 1 in 14 million. There have been absolutely zero successful assassinations of Presidents over the last 30 years in the States which gives the probability of an American President being killed by assassination, based upon the last 30 years statistics, to be zero. In short, based on the American stats from the last 30 years, assuming each President buys at least one 6/49 lottery ticket, it is statistically more probable that every President of the United States will win the lottery and then be killed by lightning than be killed by assassination.

    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. The irony of course is that the assassination hypothesis is rendered improbable and thus should not be taught as historical using CB’s own reasoning! Using his own calculations of 185 assassinations of leaders out of a possible 200,000 leaders in history puts the probability of an assassination at 1 in 1081 or 9.25x10^-4 or 0.000925 or 0.0925%. 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). Which are probabilities that I would say are “not significantly different than zero.� Further CB has stated, “any alternative hypotheses that can be shown to be possible sufficiently detract from the resurrection hypothesis enough for it to not be taught as historically factual.� 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.

    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.

    Chaosborders wrote: I intend to present a variety of alternative hypotheses and assess them using the criteria for historical reasoning in comparison with the Resurrection hypothesis.
    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.

    Chaosborders wrote:Cicero has [Caesar] being killed by multiple men so your little idea about a quarrel over a woman is completely rejected.
    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. Game, set, and match for the resurrection…

    Chaosborders wrote: Of course [heads of state] die of natural causes more often than of assassination. However, that does not mean assassination is all that unlikely. Let us consider how many heads of state there have actually been. For the sake of convenience let’s say there are 200 countries (there are actually 195) and that there have existed roughly that number going back into antiquity. (Pretty sure there were far fewer if you’re looking at Sovereign states in the way we think of them, but we’ll be generous). Unfortunately, I can’t find any data just stating how many rulers there have ever been, but counting up the rulers of varying countries on wiki lists we can get factoids like 66 in England over a 1500 year period, 68 over a 1000 year period in Germany, 80 in a 1300 period in France, 625 over a 4700 year period in China, and 200 over a 1000 year period in Russia. Let’s go with the shortest period of a new ruler every 5 years that occurs in Russia and generalize it to 200 countries over a 5000 year period. That gets us about 200,000 rulers. Of these, 64 are on the assassinated heads of state list + those listed in the subgroup on that page (6 Caliphs, 86 Monarchs, 25 Emperors, and 4 U.S. presidents) which brings the total up to 185. It should also be noted that just because no one has bothered to list them on those wiki pages doesn’t mean there aren’t far more rulers to have been assassinated, but since this applies to potential resurrections as well, that is really only fair. (Also not included are the list of murdered monarchs, the deaths of many of whom fit the definition of assassinations. However, I’m going to leave these out, at least for now, because I am not willing to go through the list of about a hundred monarchs and figure out which ones could be said to have been assassinated and which ones were ‘just murdered.’)

    Now sure, 185 people out of something like 200,000 doesn’t seem like much. But let’s put that into perspective. You have 25 instances recorded of people coming back from the dead since 1982. We’ll assume for now they all happened in America. (They didn’t, and there were more like 40 total, but we’ll get to all that later in the post) There have been 54 MILLION deaths in America alone since 1982.
    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.

    You forgot to mention that 185 people out 200,000 doesn’t seem like much because it isn’t. As I wrote earlier it’s 1 out of every 1081 or 9.25x10^-4 or 0.000925 or 0.0925% using your calculations and is thus improbable. To put the improbability of an assassination in perspective let’s assume every American has an average of 10 friends. The probability is better at 1/625 that one of Chaosborders 10 friends will be struck by lightning in their lifetime. It’s more probable that Chaosboders will flip ‘heads’ 10 consecutive times than a head of state will be assassinated. Even if you dropped the total number of leaders to 100,000 and managed to scrape together 1,000 leaders that were reported to be assassinated you are still only at a mere 1/100 or 0.01 or 1% probability. Your own reasoning of excluding events from being taught as historical with a probability “not significantly different from zero� should prevent the assassination of Caesar from being taught as historical. In fact, NO assassination should be taught as historical by this reasoning. Congratulations!

    Chaosborders wrote: Maybe, but why would narrow the parameters to that? Julius Caesar being the leader of his country is really the only relevant fact pertaining to the likelihood of whether he was assassinated at all. The definition of assassination does not require political reasons (though is enhanced by those reasons) nor does the scope of the debate include any of the subsequent information. None of that information has direct relevance to the inherent probability of a leader being assassinated. As such, though I may personally find some of those things reasonable, whether they even happened or not is outside the scope this debate.
    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.

    Chaosborders wrote: Since I cannot possibly go through each and every Roman emperor and make a case for their assassination individually, let’s do it your way. Even if you allowed every reported resurrection when assessing the probability of it occurring, it’s still negligible.

    Let’s compare:
    I count 92 Roman Emperors (93 if Julius is counted). Of these, 23 were reported as assassinated (Not including Caesar). 10 others were possibly assassinated. Only 33 were reported to have assuredly died of natural causes, with the remainder being mostly killed off by battles, executions, and suicide.
    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: I managed to find 15 resurrections reported in antiquity (given in the wiki on Resurrections). 4 from the Bible (when not including Jesus) and 10 from Greek people who most likely didn’t even exist.
    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? 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. 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.

    Chaosborders wrote:But supposing that all of those people did in fact exist and were resurrected, that would give 14 resurrections besides Jesus to have been reported over a time period in which over 40 Billion people were estimated to have lived. Now in fairness, literacy rates were low and much of what was written was lost. Further, if you dig around more I’m sure you can find more reported resurrections in some culture or another. But even comparing how many resurrections were noted to have occurred in comparison to how many people have been listed and stated to exist in Antiquity you get a number quite close to zero percent.
    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?

    Looking at it differently there are about 900 people in total since Ammon (c. 1000BC) that have been reported as assassinated from the wiki link above. The total number of people born from 1000 BC to now is about 64.75 Billion. I figured it this way. There was 46 billion people born in the 8,000 years leading up to 1 AD. So 46 billion divided by 8 is 5.75 billion people born per millennia (by my not factoring in exponential growth rates in the final millennia leading up to 1 AD it helps you). There was about 59 billion born from 1 AD to now. So that’s an estimated total of 64.75 Billion people born from 1000BC to now. Now let’s say we round up to 1,000 the total number of assassinations (we’ll assume the wiki list is incomplete). The total assassinations reported (1,000) out of total people estimated to have ever been born since 1000 BC (64.75Billion) gives us the probability of 1/64.75 Million or 1.54x10^-8 of an assassination. I would say that is a probability not significantly greater than zero, wouldn’t you? And not significantly different from what we get if we did a similar comparison to resurrections. In fact, if I were allowed to include all accounts of resurrections throughout history it would probably show a resurrection as being more probable than an assassination.

    Chaosborders wrote:Which is of course the reason that historical methodology has been developed such that it excludes resurrections entirely.
    Say good bye to assassinations as well then, bye-bye assassinations... :wave:

    Chaosborders wrote:I’ll go into further detail later in the debate regarding the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, but for now I hope it has been illustrated that it is not just eyewitnesses who are important in determining the truth of a matter and who are important.
    You are certainly welcome to disparage eyewitness testimony all you want to. However, let’s keep two things in mind. 1) As far as ancient history goes, eyewitness testimony is rare and golden. 2) The assassination doesn’t even so much as have a possible contender for an eyewitness where the resurrection has several.

    Chaosborders wrote: Actually, Matthew 28 verses 13 and 15 give us [a record of someone disputing the resurrection during the time it happened].
    13 "You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.'
    15 And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
    These two lines give enemy attestation that there was a story circulating among the Jews that the disciples came during the night and stole Jesus’ body away. Unfortunately, that is the limit of the information that can be deemed reliable from the passage, as they are the only parts that meet the criteria for enemy attestation. It seems Jews were denying the resurrection from the very beginning. This of course is not on its own remotely proof that it didn’t happen, but in comparison to the assassination we must address again the issue no one denied it occurred. No record of any kind has the assassination being considered false by anyone, anywhere, at any time until just maybe modern day and even then not by a single historian that I’m aware of. (Pretty sure, and if I’m wrong please present evidence to the contrary).
    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.

    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.

    Goose

    Post #10

    Post by Goose »

    Round 7 – part 3 (see above 2 posts for parts 1 and 2)


    Historical Reasoning Criteria 1-7:


    Criteria (1)
    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.
    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.
    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.
    Chaosborders wrote:The primary cause of Lazarus syndrome is believed to be the result of “the buildup of pressure in the chest as a result of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The relaxation of pressure after resuscitation efforts have ended is thought to allow the heart to expand, triggering the heart's electrical impulses and restarting the heartbeat.� (From the same medical paper you cited). This is supported by Lapinsky SE, Leung RS. Auto-PEEP and electromechanical dissociation. N Engl J Med. 1996; 335: 674 in which a case series “suggested that this occurred in patients with obstructive airway disease.� It was also supported by four studies showing six of the cases occurred as a result of gas trapping, or likely the result of gas trapping. The full papers of two of these studies can be found here and here.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    Chaosborders wrote:But by all indications, the patients would have been dead without the initial application of CPR or ventilation (or in a couple cases drugs like adrenaline).
    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.
    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.
    Chaosborders wrote:Let’s look at each case you presented:
    <...snipped for brevity...>
    You are certainly welcome to dispute the cases and argue they don’t fully support the resurrection. I’ll do the same for your assassination examples. But the fact remains that in each of the Lazarus Phenomenon cases, someone was pronounced dead by medical professionals and then returned to life spontaneously. This is an indisputable fact.
    Chaosborders wrote:So you’ve given an example of something that (with Zach Dunlap) gives you about 40 examples total (as of 2010) of people who came back to life once medical treatment had ceased (not in absence of medical treatment.)
    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:Even if every single one of those were taken as a comparable resurrection to the one claimed of Jesus at face value despite the medical care given to them before their resuscitation and medical opinions being that the return to life of the Lazarus cases was most likely the result of both the medical care and temporary cessation of that care, and only compared them to the deaths in the countries where they have been recorded (U.S.=54 Million, U.K.= 14.6 Million (statistics.gov.uk), Belgium = 2.85 Million per wiki demographics of Belgium) minus Columbia due to not being able to find that information, we still only have a recorded incidence of 40 out of 71.45 million, giving a rate of 5.598X10^-7.
    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.
    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.

    Chaosborders wrote:<…snipped list of assassinated leaders since 1982…>
    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.

    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.

    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.

    Let’s look at each one of the assassinations.
    • 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.
      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.
      3. There seems to be much dispute over Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. Despite this I won’t dispute this one.
      4. I won’t dispute João Bernardo.
      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.
      6. I won’t dispute Ahmed Abdallah Abderemane even though Comoros has only 800,000 people.
      7. Haruo Remeliik was President of Palau a “country� with 20,000 people and an annual GDP of $164 million. Kinda scraping the barrel on that one. :lol: They haven’t found motive for the killing let alone the killer. But I’ll give you that one.
      8. Again more controversy over Mohamed Boudiaf’s assassination but I won’t dispute this one.
      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.
      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.
    I reckon you have maybe 6 cases that could be considered assassinations, none of which resemble Caesar’s. 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%. 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.

    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.
    Chaosborders wrote:Going back to the estimation of total leaders made earlier, with about 200 countries over around 30 years we can expect something like a total of 1200 leaders in total. This means there’s been a roughly 1% chance over that time period that if you’re a leader, you’re gonna’ get assassinated. This is over 17,500 times the recorded rate of a person even momentarily coming back to life after cessation of medical treatment.
    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:
    Chaosborders wrote:Most (possibly all) of the people I listed are on the assassinated head of state list. None of the other details are inherently relevant to the probability of a leader being assassinated. As such, whether they even happened or not is beyond the scope of the debate. I personally find stabbing likely given it was one of the main methods of assassination at the time, which is no longer the case given the invention of guns and bombs, but if he were killed some other way it wouldn’t matter so long as he was killed. I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if the sheer number of people involved has been exaggerated and would never try to defend that.
    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. 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?


    Criteria (2)- (3)
    Goose wrote:The resurrection hypothesis has more scope [and power] than any other hypothesis. It accounts for a diverse set of data such as but not limited to:
    • 1) Jesus’ death by crucifixion.
      2) An empty tomb.
      3) The disciples’ belief Jesus appeared to them alive.
      4) The resurrection was preached in Jerusalem by the disciples despite persecution and the threat of death.
      5) The conversion of Jesus’ brother James.
      6) Paul’s conversion.
      7) The existence of the NT documents and writings of church fathers.
      8) The Nazareth Inscription.
    Chaosborders wrote:How in the world does resurrection account for crucifixion? This is in fact a nail in the coffin as far as plausibility and explanatory power goes though, even if it did help with scope. Let’s look at what crucifixion entails:Being nailed to a stake or cross of wood and left to die from blood loss, hypovolemic shock, sepsis, or eventual dehydration. Generally it was a slow and agonizing way to go.
    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. 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.
    Chaosborders wrote: If you would care to make an argument for a conspiracy theory to invent a conspiracy theory then go for it. If you can’t find sufficient comparable situations that would lend credence to such a thing happening with a prevalence anywhere near that of leaders actually getting assassinated though, then it fails on explanatory power, plausibility, ad hoc, and accepted beliefs disconfirmed. As such, even if you could make an argument for scope, I think it would fail so incredibly on the other criteria that the hypothesis that Julius was assassinated blows the double conspiracy theory out of the water. But if you think you can show otherwise, go for it.
    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.


    Criteria (4)
    Chaosborders wrote: If I’ve ever said it wasn’t possible for a dead person to return to life, I did not mean to. However, it is my contention that it has not been shown possible without modern medical treatments. To my knowledge, none of your examples has demonstrated this given in all of them at least CPR was administered and usually significantly more medical treatments than that both before and after their temporary deaths.
    I think the multiple examples I’ve given show it is possible for a person to return to life after being dead. And I think that is all I really need to show to allow the resurrection to be taught as historical. You are just raising the bar again once a request has been met. You are expecting another impossible standard that can’t even be met in principle. 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?
    Chaosborders wrote: Again, the surrounding details of him being assassinated are not relevant to whether he was.
    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.
    Chaosborders wrote:If it were not stated that [Caesar] had died from assassination, your assessment of him dying from one of the other reasons would be accurate.
    Cicero does not explicitly state Caesar was assassinated. We’ve been over this. 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. That’s okay though. It allows me to do the same with all your pet theories for the resurrection.
    Chaosborders wrote:But, as it is, the probability of the scenarios that would lead to the conclusion that he was not assassinated and other people were making it up are significantly smaller than that of him simply having been assassinated. Because of that, it is more plausible he was assassinated as reported. (And if you wish to try and show otherwise, feel free to make your case).
    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.


    Criteria (5)
    Chaosborders wrote: You’ve shown it is possible, but not in absence of modern medical treatments. And you’ve definitely not shown it probable. Unless they had life support systems back then, every one of the cases where they were needed can be reasonably ruled out given not doing so would indeed require different laws of physics.
    See my responses above.
    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.


    Criteria (6)
    Chaosborders wrote: And again, the only thing of actual importance is whether it is more plausible he was assassinated or whether a conspiracy to invent a conspiracy was developed. In the last few decades, heads of state have been assassinated at a rate of around 1%. The rate recorded for roman emperors ending up assassinated is something like one in three. I don’t even think you can show it is more plausible that such a double conspiracy would occur than the bare minimum assassination rate for leaders examined above of 185 in 200,000, much less these higher rates.
    I think I’ve addressed this above and also next.


    Criteria (7)
    Chaosborders wrote: Would you care to present evidence showing that a tale of an assassination is more plausible than an actual assassination? Preferably evidence that false tales of assassinations occur with a greater frequency than actual assassinations. I think you are correct that your reasoning is similar to that which will be applied to the resurrection.
    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. In fact you argue along these lines yourself:
    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.
    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.
    Chaosborders wrote: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.
    Well, say good bye to the assassination hypothesis then! :lol: I’m sorry, but I just find this really funny and ironic…
    Chaosborders should have wrote: As such, any alternative hypotheses that can be shown to be possible sufficiently detract from the [strike]resurrection[/strike][assassination] hypothesis enough for it to not be taught as historically factual.
    Yeah, take your pick, there’s like a dozen of them…

    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.
    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)
    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)
    Polycarp wrote:Jesus Christ, who for our sins suffered even unto death
    Tacitus wrote:Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty
    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.

    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:1.It has to be possible for someone to come back to life.
    This is possible, as you have shown with Lazarus syndrome.
    Check.
    Chaosborders wrote:2.Coming back to life has to be possible without the intervention of modern medical techniques.
    This has not been shown.
    If one wants credible evidence for this it inherently involves some medical intervention. It just goes with the territory and is unavoidable. 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, at the main place where and when that government convenes, in plain view of other witnesses, with no resistance from security personnel, and committed by a large group of politicians.
    Chaosborders wrote:3.If someone was able to come back to life (with or without modern medical techniques) it has to be possible for them to live long enough and be in good enough physical condition to actually be seen by others so that resurrection rumors could be propagated.
    You have one potential example here, if the shoddy reporting and all the tubes hooked up to Val Thomas during her interview are ignored.
    This might only require the person to be alive for a few minutes. There are multiple cases like this.
    Chaosborders wrote:4.Another consideration that must be taken into account is physical trauma, given that it is a medically relevant bit of information. The only person here who is even potentially an example is Zach Dunlap.
    The second requirement has not been shown to be possible, thus the probability of someone resurrecting under the conditions Jesus was in cannot be distinguished from zero. So even though the probability of the narrative above is easily one in hundreds of millions (possibly billions), it is still of greater explanatory power than the resurrection.
    Jesus’ resurrection is unique in many ways that increases the improbability. But then so is Caesar’s assassination unique and highly improbable.

    Chaosborders wrote:So though on any individual case of someone seeming to come back to life it may be faulty to presume that they were misdiagnosed as dead in the first place, it can be determined from statistical inference that was what most probably happened.
    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.



    Summary:

    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. Yet he has no historical basis for this. 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. Further, there is no better single explanation that combines both scope and explanatory power than the resurrection. The probability of an assassination is very low, not significantly greater than zero. Depending upon what statistical data we use an assassination can be shown to be even less probable than a resurrection. Thus the assassination should not be taught as historical by Chaosborder’s own reasoning. Fundamentally he must employ a double standard to accept the assassination and reject the resurrection. He cannot logically escape this conundrum without either rejecting the resurrection AND assassination as well to be logically consistent OR accept the resurrection if he also accepts the assassination. It’s pretty much that simple.

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