Comparing denying Jesus to denying climate change

Argue for and against Christianity

Moderator: Moderators

bjs
Prodigy
Posts: 3222
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 4:29 pm

Comparing denying Jesus to denying climate change

Post #1

Post by bjs »

Is the mythic position about Jesus (that he did not exist) reasonable comparable to the position of those who deny climate change?

User avatar
Mithrae
Prodigy
Posts: 4304
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 7:33 am
Location: Australia
Has thanked: 100 times
Been thanked: 190 times

Re: Comparing denying Jesus to denying climate change

Post #11

Post by Mithrae »

bjs wrote: Is the mythic position about Jesus (that he did not exist) reasonable comparable to the position of those who deny climate change?
Pretty much repeating myself from other threads, in scholarship of Christian origins the 'consensus' around any single view is extremely tenuous if not non-existent: It exists only in quite broad terms (eg. "Jesus existed") rather than saying that this, that and the other thing are all clearly identifiable elements 1st century Christian development. And even on those broad points of 'consensus,' I'm not sure that there's anything like the extent of formal surveys to show a comparable level of agreement as in the climate sciences.

There's simply much more uncertainty in ancient history generally, and for Christian origins in particular, than there is for climate science. And in particular, there does not need to be the same kind of conspiratorial thinking to explain away the 'consensus' in the case of NT scholarship as is required in the case of climate science.
Mithrae wrote: A few years ago on my politics/climate change forum I realized that the contrarian view often involves numerous conspiracy theories, in the truest sense of the term. I came up with a set of fairly clear criteria based on some well-known conspiracy theories, along with the question of what makes conspiracy theories so problematic:
  • Conspiracy theories, in the '9/11 sceptic' or 'chemtrails' sense, have a few fairly obvious general characteristics:

    1 > That the public in general is in some way deceived
    2 > They necessarily require that large numbers of people who should be expected to reveal the truth to the public are instead colluding, or inexplicably and inexcusably ignorant of the truth
    3 > The motives attributed behind the deception are vague, obscure, implausible or (at best) in conflict with more obvious and powerful motivators
    4 > And above all, they make up for serious lack of evidence and any contrary evidence by appealing to collusion and cover-up
While the opposite argument could also be made for some theories regarding Jesus, I would say that based on those criteria the Jesus-myth theory as advanced by Richard Carrier for example is not a conspiracy theory: He suggests that Paul preached a heavenly rather than earthly life and death of Jesus and that, being a relatively common kind of thing at the time, there was no intention of deception or it being taken for an earthly life... but the later author of Mark mistook or adapted it as such, the subsequent gospels simply followed Mark's lead and the sect of Christianity which eventually became the orthodox accepted those gospels.

That would require little or no intent to deceive except by Mark (and perhaps, to a much lesser extent, by the other gospel authors in their embellishment of the story), no large numbers who should be expected to reveal the truth, and not much in the way of implausible motives either. The only criteria which it even approaches is the fourth, in his tortured reinterpretations and ad hoc appeals to interpolation regarding Paul (required to make the 'heavenly Jesus' fit instead of the human Jesus Paul clearly meant), but even that is just poor interpretation/reasoning rather than an appeal to collusion or cover-up.

User avatar
1213
Savant
Posts: 11342
Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2011 11:06 am
Location: Finland
Has thanked: 312 times
Been thanked: 357 times

Re: Comparing denying Jesus to denying climate change

Post #12

Post by 1213 »

Guy Threepwood wrote: ...

8 degrees F (-12 C) in Michigan tonight... so I think we could just about handle 9 or 10 F without too much trouble if we really had to!... how about Finland?
Nice to know, now I can sing, “baby, it’s cold outside Finland…�. We have probably produced more CO² than Michigan, because here in southern Finland the temperature is 33 degrees F. But that may be changing soon, after we pay more climate taxes. But it is common to have less than 8 degrees F in winter here. Wouldn’t be big loss to have little warmer. All though, for ice hockey it would be good if the temperatures would remain steadily below 32 degrees F in winter. :)

bjs
Prodigy
Posts: 3222
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 4:29 pm

Re: Comparing denying Jesus to denying climate change

Post #13

Post by bjs »

[Replying to post 11 by Mithrae]

Indeed, I hoped you might repeat a little so that we can consider our differing position and see how close we can get to the truth.

First, I will note that the consensus about Jesus is not so vague as “Jesus existed.� Rather, at minimum it includes: Jesus was an itinerant Jewish preacher in Galilee and Judea who provided new interpretations of the Jewish law, taught using parables, gathered a small group of devoted disciples around him, generated messianic fever and was eventually executed by the Romans.

Now let’s look at your four criteria for a conspiracy theory, though I will take them out of order.

First, the public in general is in some way deceived.
It seems clear that this is true both to those who deny climate change and those who deny Jesus existed. Both groups claim that they have a truth which the majority is incorrect about.

Second, the motives attributed behind the deception are vague, obscure, etc.
Perhaps we could clarify this one more. It seems to me that conspiracy theories always state motives for the conspiracy. Climate change deniers say that a great deal of money has been invested in studying climate change, and if scientists admitted it wasn’t true then that money would dry up.

I would phrase it: The motives behind the deception are invited by the theorist. This seems true for both those who deny climate change and those who deny Jesus existed.

Third, they make up for serious lack of evidence and any contrary evidence by appealing to collusion and cover-up.
Again, this applies to both climate change deniers and Jesus deniers. Neither theory is supported by evidence, and so a great cover up has fooled most people.

Finally, large numbers of people who should be expected to reveal the truth to the public are instead colluding, or inexplicably and inexcusably ignorant of the truth.

Carrier’s theory seems to try to avoid this by attributing the entire things to Mark’s confusion over Paul’s meaning. That seems problematic, almost as if Carrier was creating an improbable explanation in order to avoid the charge of building a conspiracy theory.

Yet it seems inexplicable that some many first century writes would be ignorant of the fact that they things that they were claiming as true, things that would reasonable have happened in their lifetime, were entirely fictional. Not only did these writes make this inexcusable mistake, thousands of people in the Judea area believed the entire event to be true and went to great lengths to record and spread the news about events that there is no reasonable way they could not have known were entirely fictional. It seems that a great deal of first century Christians had to be in on this conspiracy, never letting on that they knew it to be a fake.

While information about the first century is limited, I find that there is more than enough information to say that denying this historical existence of Jesus can only be considered a conspiracy theory.

Sorry for the length of this post.
Understand that you might believe. Believe that you might understand. –Augustine of Hippo

User avatar
RedEye
Scholar
Posts: 495
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2018 6:23 am
Location: Adelaide, Australia

Re: Comparing denying Jesus to denying climate change

Post #14

Post by RedEye »

bjs wrote: Is the mythic position about Jesus (that he did not exist) reasonable comparable to the position of those who deny climate change?
No. One is about denying the consensus of dozens of scientific bodies all around the world who have arrived at their conclusions based on hard scientific data. The other is about rejecting the hearsay claims of anonymous writers who often contradict each other wildly. I don't see much in common there at all.
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

User avatar
Mithrae
Prodigy
Posts: 4304
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 7:33 am
Location: Australia
Has thanked: 100 times
Been thanked: 190 times

Re: Comparing denying Jesus to denying climate change

Post #15

Post by Mithrae »

bjs wrote:Now let’s look at your four criteria for a conspiracy theory, though I will take them out of order.

[[ 1 > That the public in general is in some way deceived ]]
It seems clear that this is true both to those who deny climate change and those who deny Jesus existed. Both groups claim that they have a truth which the majority is incorrect about.
Incorrect is not the same as deceived. In the mythicist view modern folk have not been deceived about the historical Jesus, we're just accustomed to reading a certain selection of early Christian writings in a certain way; gospels before Paul, and even those fabulous gospels as at least quasi-historical material rather than something more like the stories of Odysseus or King Arthur. As I said, really the only folk who MIGHT be said to have been intentionally deceived would be the first readers of Mark's historicised Jesus; at least in what I understand of Carrier's view. That's hardly a widespread public deception.
[[ 3 > The motives attributed behind the deception are vague, obscure, implausible or (at best) in conflict with more obvious and powerful motivators ]]
Perhaps we could clarify this one more. It seems to me that conspiracy theories always state motives for the conspiracy. Climate change deniers say that a great deal of money has been invested in studying climate change, and if scientists admitted it wasn’t true then that money would dry up.

I would phrase it: The motives behind the deception are invited by the theorist. This seems true for both those who deny climate change and those who deny Jesus existed.
That 'motive' in the case of climate science doesn't explain why scientists in the 70s and 80s reached AGW conclusions; ignores the fact that climate is worth studying regardless (and hence it was the Bush Snr administration started ramping up spending); ignores the fact that it's not a 'gravy train' of personal wealth, just an average employment field with grants for legitimate research; doesn't account for scientists with tenure or high enough positions that loss of their job is no real danger even given funding decreases; ignores that any scientist who disproved AGW would be on track for a Nobel Prize; but perhaps most importantly, conflicts with the more obvious and powerful motivator that most people are drawn to the sciences in the first place from a love of knowledge, not to become peddlers of falsehood in the name of a few bucks. Similar problems exist in the case of temperature record falsification claims, 9/11 truthers, chemtrails etc. There's really no comparison there in the case of Christian origins. The numbers of people involved are so small and the information so scanty that they could've had almost any of the motivations observed in fringe religious groups since then.
[[ 4 > And above all, they make up for serious lack of evidence and any contrary evidence by appealing to collusion and cover-up ]]
Again, this applies to both climate change deniers and Jesus deniers. Neither theory is supported by evidence, and so a great cover up has fooled most people.
There's little or no appeal to collusion and cover-up in the case of Jesus mythicists. There's no need; the evidence is so patchy to begin with. Paul is the biggest problem for Carrier's theory (and simultaneously the biggest strength; it's just those pesky half a dozen passages which clearly suggest a human Jesus, otherwise Paul's writing has a strong emphasis on the spiritual and heavenly Christ), and his interpretations of Paul strain credulity, but they aren't appeals to collusion. Similarly there's no real collusion in later authors and the proto-orthodox sect following Mark's pattern of an earthly Jesus.
[[ 2 > They necessarily require that large numbers of people who should be expected to reveal the truth to the public are instead colluding, or inexplicably and inexcusably ignorant of the truth ]]

Carrier’s theory seems to try to avoid this by attributing the entire things to Mark’s confusion over Paul’s meaning. That seems problematic, almost as if Carrier was creating an improbable explanation in order to avoid the charge of building a conspiracy theory.

Yet it seems inexplicable that some many first century writes would be ignorant of the fact that they things that they were claiming as true, things that would reasonable have happened in their lifetime, were entirely fictional. Not only did these writes make this inexcusable mistake, thousands of people in the Judea area believed the entire event to be true and went to great lengths to record and spread the news about events that there is no reasonable way they could not have known were entirely fictional. It seems that a great deal of first century Christians had to be in on this conspiracy, never letting on that they knew it to be a fake.

While information about the first century is limited, I find that there is more than enough information to say that denying this historical existence of Jesus can only be considered a conspiracy theory.
Thousands of people in the Judea area? How do you know that? I think we can legitimately take Luke's tale of explosive church growth in the days after Pentecost with a grain of salt. Paul's claim of 500 (pentakosioi) witnesses to the risen Christ, dubious enough in its own right, could be a scribal gloss from 50 witnesses (pentēkonta) and/or related to that Pentecost tradition one way or the other; but 50 witnesses to the risen Christ would be much more consistent with Luke's belief that there were only about 120 believers before Pentecost! Besides Luke's tale of explosive growth, I'm not aware of any basis for concluding much about the numbers or beliefs of early Jewish Christianity. Paul in places suggests that Jews in general were considerably less receptive to the Jesus message than Gentiles were, and portrays the Jerusalem church as more or less impoverished. Neither of those particularly suggest that there were thousands of Jewish Christians in Judea, let alone whether they viewed Jesus as an historical person.

But there's no reason to suppose that any hypothetical outcry from thousands of Jewish Christians would still exist today regardless. These hypothetical people "who should be expected to reveal the truth"... should not, really. There need be no appeal to collusion or inexplicable ignorance to explain their silence, only the paucity of ancient documentation to begin with and particularly from Judea before the revolt/s.
bjs wrote: [Replying to post 11 by Mithrae]

Indeed, I hoped you might repeat a little so that we can consider our differing position and see how close we can get to the truth.

First, I will note that the consensus about Jesus is not so vague as “Jesus existed.� Rather, at minimum it includes: Jesus was an itinerant Jewish preacher in Galilee and Judea who provided new interpretations of the Jewish law, taught using parables, gathered a small group of devoted disciples around him, generated messianic fever and was eventually executed by the Romans.
There's general agreement on when and where he lived and died, sure. But what he actually did, perhaps not so much. Apocalyptic prophet? Political revolutionary? Religious reformer? I don't get the impression that there's any consensus there. All would involve teaching and gathering followers, all could be consistent with messianic expectations. But again, how many amongst and beyond his immediate followers thought he was the messiah before his death is uncertain; did belief that he was messiah give rise to the resurrection belief, or did the resurrection belief foster the messianic interpretation? All we have to go on are later writings from folk whose primary purpose was to propagate their own belief that he was messiah. Similarly with regard to his view of the Jewish law; Paul and the gospel writers (with the notable exception of Matthew) seem to have had relatively little regard for observing all the Torah's requirements, so one could come away with the impression from Mark in particular that Jesus rejected the law about as explicitly as he could in that society. On the other hand Matthew, despite being written from a particularly anti-Pharisee perspective, casts Jesus' views on the law in a way which besides one or two key points could be consistent with the Hillel school of Pharisees (and his disputes with the 'Pharisees' of his own day consistent with the interpretations of the rival Shammai school which was at that time more prominent).

Contrast that with climate science, in which there exists not only broad consensi around virtually every aspect of what makes AGW a plausible conclusion, but the fact that the reason for such widespread agreement is the grounding in solid empirical evidence:
> The greenhouse effect generally; calculations of Earth's would-be blackbody temperature sans atmosphere, estimate of temperatures on the moon, Venus etc., confirmation of GHG's IR absorption properties and so on
> The CO2/CH4 concentration records both instrumental and ice core
> Estimates of total anthropogenic GHG emissions vs. natural absorption rates
> Measurements of isotope ratios from fossil fuel combustion
> The historical temperature records both surface and satellite
> Instrumental and proxy records of historical solar activity
> Paleoclimate reconstructions of Holocene and Pleistocene temperature variation, correlation with CO2, and expected trajectory given declining solar activity since the 1960s
And so on; model projections, cooling stratosphere, polar amplification etc. etc. Frankly I don't much like the term 'consensus' even in climate science, but there is simply no comparison between the physical sciences and literary criticism/ancient history in terms of what can be known and ultimately agreed on by an overwhelming majority of experts in the field. Perhaps more to the point, even on questions for which a 'consensus' of experts in this very specialized aspect of ancient history agree, it's still much more uncertain than conclusions in the physical sciences or current events, so deviation from that 'consensus' is not at all in the same league.

Post Reply