CelticBear’s Musings

There’s an interesting post today I read I want to talk about that involves the historicity of Jesus and his alleged resurrection; a debate between two educated opponents.
But first, to reface that, it’s important to discuss the weight and validity of “evidence”. In general, of course. I touch on this in a previous post: How We Know, and Relative Application of Motive. I mention an essay where the author discusses the different weight of validity in what we determine is evidence of something and how we make that into our realities. It’s important to analyze evidence rationally and reasonably in order to recognize what is fact, most likely fact, improbable, and impossible and all shades of the continuum. Because what we know IS a continuum of believability.

For example, on one end we have immutable facts, and I think most scientists and philosophers (except post-modernists and some transcendentalists) both would agree that the only thing that might fall on one extreme of “fact” is mathematical calculations. One item plus two items equals four items, regardless of the words that have been made up to represent the concepts of “two” and “four.” On the other end of the continuum is possibly the most surreal hallucinations of a schizophrenia sufferer. Between the two is everything else, and everything else falls on the continuum based on how much evidential support there is for it.

Creationists love to harp on the slogan “Evolution is only a theory, it’s not a fact!” That’s mainly a matter of semantics. A scientific “theory” is what an explanation of a complex system of events based on research, observation, successful prediction of outcomes, and some experimentation. In essence, evolution IS a fact, but the method of explaining it is theory. Where it would fall on the continuum of reality wouldn’t be as far as mathematical “truth” but very darn near. Why? Because of a century of biological and paleontological and anthropological research, two centuries of geological research, fulfillment of scientific prediction of findings, and the use of the theory to produce working products from its understanding. Among other reasons. Because it lies on a continuum, because 1% of working scientists believe instead in Creation, which because of its significant lack of evidence, logical fit into what we know about the world, and lack of use in predicting outcomes or use in experimentation, doesn’t mean that it’s any less an accepted “truth” of reality.

Let me refine for a second: The continuum doesn’t represent reality itself. Reality itself is binary: It happened or it didn’t happen. It exists or it doesn’t exist. It can happen or it can’t happen. What the continuum is is our understanding of reality! The weight of the evidence we have for something in reality. Evolution is a fact or it’s not. What we understand about evolution falls on a continuum of understanding. The evidence we have for evolution is so far to the extreme of being understood, that we can comfortably call it “fact” while Creation’s evidence puts it so far on the other extreme that it can comfortably be accepted as myth. The fact a smattering of people believe that continuum is reversed doesn’t change the preponderance of logical acceptance of the evidence.

Now comes the problem of why belief can’t be part of the continuum. It skews the evidence of reality and prevents actual understanding while elevates anything into probability. It’s prejudiced, arrogant, self-absorbed, and hypocritical. By that I mean, a belief allows itself to be given an elevated sense of factuality while preventing other beliefs with the same or even greater level of basis in reality from being considered.

Take for example, of course, Christian belief. The evidence for the existence of Yahveh, the Christian God, and Jesus, is found only in a book and in personal belief. The historicity of the book is in extreme uncertainty and believers rely on their belief to give them certainty of its validity in reality. But they exclude all similar examples of book and belief as impossible. Until recently there were more Muslims in the world than Christians for centuries. Even today I’d give Islam a leg up on Christianity for the sheer number of hardcore devout fundamentalists in that belief. There’s as much historical evidence for the believability in the Koran as for the Bible and nearly as many believers, but each refute the other as being “truth.” The Bhagavad Gita is the book of Hindu belief. The Iliad is one of many books exemplifying the belief of millions of ancient Greeks, there are countless tablets of Sanskrit giving words to countless Sumerian beliefs. Look at Amazon and try to count how many books there are giving textual “truth” to beliefs of ghosts, alien abductions, ESP, crystals, Atlantians, etc. ad nauseum.

A belief is nothing, a belief with very questionable textual backing still nothing, when weighing its location of the continuum of reality. And the problem is, most people who rely on a belief for their reality have little understanding of how evidence for fact is weighed. Because in their belief anything is possible, they have no respect for how reality is examined and investigated. It’s just as easy for them to believe in talking donkeys and talking bushes as it is to believe in the very very small, questionable, and often out-of-date and disproven “counter evidence” to evolution, and think of these small bits of unscientifically valid “evidence” as trumping the mountains or valid evidence. They’ll use science as much as it serves their interests to prove their side, and then dismiss science as ideological and faulty when it works against them. They offer up shaky evidence of Irreducible Complexity as proof of Intelligent Design, but dismiss any attempt to show evidence of Unintelligent Design. They’ll use archaeological methods and tools to try to prove existence of empty tombs and shrouds of Turin, and then dismiss the science as ideological when it proves them wrong.

They so lack any sense of reason and rationality that they’ll use arguments from absurdity (such as claiming Richard Dawkins doesn’t exist if you don’t meet him personally in some twisted transcendentalist argument) to refute logical arguments for why 2nd-hand hearsay stories with a religious agenda doesn’t amount to evidence of the existence of God. (See: Ironic Delusion.) They simply can’t recognize the differences in weight and validity of evidence because of the belief that trumps all.

But if belief were enough, if all it took was faith for something to be real, then we’d be inundated with gods and goddesses and faeries and monsters and aliens and magic and pseudoscience. Science takes the individual out of the equation. It takes belief out of the equation. And once we started doing that, we entered the age of working medicine, food preservation, vaccines, humane medical procedures that work, humane treatments for mental illness, space exploration….

So the article I saw today is “Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?“. There’s a PDF transcript of a debate between two scholars. Now, debates never prove anything, except who’s the better speaker. But they’re good sources for food for thought. For example, in this debate the idea of the validity of the gospels is supported by the belief that the early Christians would never have put women in as much of an important role as finding the empty tomb and speaking to…whoever it was they spoke with depending on which gospel. The speaker for the side questioning the historicity brings up the fact that Paul’s letters which were written before the gospels never mention who found the empty tomb nor the events that supposedly transpired there, but more importantly, the author of the first written gospel (Mark) has a perfect literary reason for using women: His entire gospel is filled with reversals of expectation. The people closest to Jesus, family and disciples, supposedly never understood him but unexpected people did (such as the centurion at the crucifixion.) It made sense to have women discover the tomb when his closest disciples didn’t understand. Mark is filled with reversals such as the Joseph who was removed from Jesus gave him his tomb while Joseph the father which would have played an important role in tradition, did nothing. Simon the stranger carries Jesus’ cross while Simon the disciple does nothing. The first shall become last and the last first, etc. Mark’s gospel has the hallmarks of being a literary fiction (even if a fiction based on events) designed entirely to teach and convert. It’s historicity is extremely questionable.

Anyway, check the debate out. It’s an interesting read. And the next time you’re told “all you need to do is believe!”, “all you need to do is have faith!”, think of how filled the Earth would be with sasquaches and psychics and Yahvehs (and his different believed in versions) and Vishnus and Zeuses and Osirises and Odins and Enki’s and….