On the Historicity of Jesus
Did Jesus of Nazareth exist, yes or no?
A lot of people tend to answer yes, even if they’re not Christians themselves. They don’t think to question it, just because the answer has been assumed to be yes for almost two thousand years now.
The evidence isn’t as strong as you might believe, though. There are no eye-witness accounts at all.
(This post is really long, but bear with me. I’ve included Javascript toggle thingers for easier reading.)
Biblical Evidence (hide)
And even if you’re willing to assume that the Jesus stories were passed down verbatim, the writers of the New Testament and the committee that assembled it very obviously had an agenda to promote Christianity and the divinity of Jesus.
Still, let’s take a look.
It goes without saying that the Old Testament doesn’t mention Jesus at all.
The New Testament consists of the Gospels, the Acts, and Epistles, and Revelation. The Acts aren’t relevant, since they are set after the death of Jesus.
Revelation is interesting. It’s hard to date, and the Jesus Christ mentioned (sporadically) in it is very obviously supernatural.
It describes dreams (”revelations”; hence the name), so it’s not really relevant, but there is some evidence to suggest that the supernatural “Lamb” of this blend of Jewish mythology and ancient astrology was in Revelation first, and later repurposed to be the man-like Jesus of Nazareth.
Either way.
The Gospels, then.
It’s worth noting that the authors are unknown. Irenaeus of Lyon later (around 180 CE) said there were four, and gave them their names, but there is nothing to suggest that he wasn’t just making stuff up.
The Gospel of “Mark” is the oldest. It was written somewhere around 70-90 CE, so this Mark could not have been a contemporary of Jesus. Assuming Jesus was born in 1 CE (his date of birth is something the gospels are in contradiction about, of course) and crucified in 33 CE, and a reliable eye-witness would have had to be at least 13 years old at the time, Mark would’ve had to be 50 to 70 years old when he wrote the gospel, which is somewhere between very unlikely and down-right impossible, at the time, and even if he were, waiting forty to sixty years to write about something is bound to taint your memory of the events a bit.
Either way, the gospel itself suggests Mark had never even been to Palestine.
For example, Mark 10:11-12 (New International Version):
11 He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.
In Palestine at the time (and probably now as well), a woman could not divorce her husband at all. Only the man could decide this.
This is just an example. There are more to be found, if you want to look for them, including ignorance of basic local geography.
Point is, Mark never knew Jesus personally, and wasn’t, apparently, afraid to make stuff up.
Then there are Matthew and Luke. These draw heavily from Mark… Well, honestly, they plagiarise considerable parts of it outright, sometimes almost verbatim. They do expand upon it, though.
Either way, they’re obviously later works, so it’s even more unlikely the authors were alive when Jesus was supposed to have lived, and eye-witnesses don’t just lift other people’s stories.
So they can be ignored entirely.
The Gospel of John is the latest, having been written around 110 CE—clearly far too late to be an eye-witness account.
Not only that, the Jesus is even more god-like than the others, so it’s safe to assume it was entirely fabricated.
So much for the Gospels. The Epistles, then.
Thirteen of them have traditionally been credited to St. Paul of Tarsus. Of these, only about four (or seven, depending on who you ask) can be said to have the same author with some degree of certainty.
These include the letters to the Corinthians.
2 Corinthians 11:32 mentions dealing with a King Aretas of Damascus. This person died in 40 CE, so if Paul, if he is indeed the author of this letter, isn’t just making stuff up, he is probably the earliest biblical source of information on Jesus.
Paul, né Saul, never met Jesus in person, though—he came to him “in a dream”.
So, secondary source, at best. Even so, Paul’s primary source must’ve been awfully shitty.
He never mentions the virgin birth, Jesus’s trial by the Romans, the place he was executed, Peter’s denial of Jesus, any miracles at all, Judas, &c.
He never even mentioned Nazareth, even though the Jeez is so often known as “Jesus of Nazareth”.
He can’t really be blamed for that last thing, though, seeing as how there almost certainly was no town called Nazareth in the first century CE. Interesting, neh?
The first mention of Nazareth by the Jews was in the 3rd century CE. Archaeological finds suggest that the earliest there certainly was human life in what is now Nazareth was in the 2nd century. Before that, just a graveyard.
Nazareth almost certainly sprung into existence after Christianity itself was already well underway, and it’s relatively safe to assume the earliest settlers were Christians.
This as an aside, though.
Paul does mention Peter, but doesn’t suggest Peter knew Jesus in person either, and he made the same mistake as Mark when he said “To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband” in 1 Corinthians 7:10.
So much for the Pauline Epistles.
The other Epistles aren’t particularly relevant, and they’re not as old.
If you want to argue the New Testament Apocrypha should count as evidence, well, they generally date from the middle of the 2nd century CE, so they aren’t old enough either.
I think the point that the Bible is a terrible, terrible source of historical facts has been adequately made.
Moving on.
Non-Biblical Evidence (hide)
The one most often brought up in these sort of discussions is Josephus, the 1st-century Jewish historian. In his Antiquities of the Jews, he mentions Jesus twice.
The longest is the so-called Testimonium Flavianum.
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
Well, can’t argue with that. Early source (93 CE, actually, so not as early as all that), seems to at least partially confirm some of the Gospels. Case closed, right?
Well, no. The Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery.
Not even going to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it “almost certainly” is a forgery—there’s really no doubt about this.
The writing style doesn’t mesh with the rest of the book, and the passage didn’t appear at all until several centuries after Antiquities of the Jews was written.
Origen, an early Christian theologian, said Josephus did not believe Jesus was the Messiah, and indeed he didn’t, as his other writings show. He did call Emperor Vespasian, his patron, the Messiah a few times.
The other mention of Jesus is in a short passage about a guy called James (Jacob, in the original) “brother of Jesus, who was called Christ”.
James (Jacob) is and was a common enough name, and there is evidence to suggest that “Jesus, who was called the Christ”, or at least the “who was called the Christ” bit, was a later addition to the text.
This was a very early modification, though. That bit was already in many copies of the text by the time of Origen (the 3rd century CE), though not in all of them. As such, this too can be dismissed as a forgery.
Who else?
Ah, Tacitus.
Tacitus mentions the Christians, not Christ himself, and it’s obvious his source is some poorly educated Christian slave, as evidenced by the fact that he uses Christ as a proper name rather than a title.
That is, if he even wrote that passage himself. He doesn’t mention the persecution of Christians anywhere else, and this particular passage isn’t quoted by anyone until much later, even by early Christian apologists who definitely would have used this as propaganda if they could have.
In fact, the passage didn’t appear at all until the 15th century, when Johannes de Spire published the works of Tacitus in Venice. It is almost certain it was a creative “improvement” on his part.
There isn’t much else, I’m afraid.
Pliny the Younger mentions the Christians, but not Jesus himself.
Suetonius wrote of Jews being agitated in Rome by a man named Chrestos, but this was some time after Jesus was supposed to have died.
Chrestos was a common enough name for slaves in Rome, so he could’ve been just a rebel slave. Alternatively, Suetonius could really have been talking about Christians, and had heard something about how they followed a man named Christ, and made some assumptions in his writing.
Either way, while there is enough evidence of the early Christians causing trouble, there are absolutely no non-biblical sources suggesting that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (hide)
Absence of evidence, for a person claimed to have been as important and influential as Jesus of Nazareth, is, for all intents and purposes, evidence of absence.
It makes absolutely no sense that there would be no writings about Jesus in his own generation, especially given that when he died, this happened (Matt 27:45-53):
45 From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. 46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”
48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”
50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. 52 The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
Solar eclipse, earthquake, exposed graves (for three days), and FUCKING ZOMBIES MARCHING THROUGH JERUSALEM.
It’s kind of hard to believe nobody would’ve noticed.
But even given that that bit wasn’t entirely factual, important community leaders, which the Jeez definitely would have been, generally don’t go unnoticed either.
The time Jesus of Nazareth was said to have lived was an age of prolific writers, many of them Jewish, so they would’ve had a personal interest in someone like Jesus.
Still, nothing.
As such, I find it pretty unlikely that there really was such a person as Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Tim McCormack said,
December 18th, 2006 at 3:39 am
All the same, it is hard to imagine the entire story being created out of nothing or out of scrabbled-together mythology borrowed from other traditions. I think it highly likely that there was a person called “Jesus” (or the contemporary equivalent) who was either a street preacher or a charismatic leader. The rest could all be conflation, exaggeration, and invention. (For example, the solar eclipse + earthquake + OMG zombies would have been added in later, in the hopes of spicing the story up a bit.)
Skatje said,
December 18th, 2006 at 3:49 am
I deserve a cookie for reading through all that. Or possibly a picture of a kitten.
I’ve always just taken like there probably was some guy named Jesus just because it’d be easier to make something up about a real guy and fancy up that story than fabricate the entire thing. I guess it wouldn’t matter anyway.
I suck at comments because mostly what you’re doing is educatesing me. And you’re pretty much just right so I can’t argue anything.
I concur!
Terras said,
December 18th, 2006 at 4:15 am
Quite, I don’t doubt that Jesus was most likely made up~ There was probably some tin-foil guy preaching reform that had a small following before he died somehow, and exaggeration from there.
Unlike that Moses bastard, way to rip off Osiris, Jews. O\__/O
Cairnarvon said,
December 18th, 2006 at 4:33 am
Actually, it’s really surprising how much the Jesus story matches some of the other traditions of the time, particularly (but by no means exclusively) the older Mithraism.
The Jesus story wasn’t so much cobbled together as it was just copy/pasted, with more details being added over time.
I don’t really see how the story would be more likely to come together like that if there were a historical Jesus.
All in all, though, I don’t think historicity is at all relevant to the message of Christianity. Biblical literalists are missing the point of the Bible, and whatnot.
(And most people who are likely to talk about the “message of Christianity” tend to get it wrong as well, AFAICT. But that’s a different point entirely.)
Tim McCormack said,
December 20th, 2006 at 6:01 am
I agree that historicity is irrelevant to practical Christianity — it’s just an interesting topic.
I think a couple fragments of the Bible exhibit tremendous realism. I’m no Bible scholar, but I did have a few things to say about the Sermon on the Mount:
http://www.brainonfire.net/2006/06/08/mythology-of-the-bible/
Executive summary: The Sermon on the Mount really doesn’t contain action sequences, and has less of a mythic feel to it (to me). I think the passage is very likely inspired by an actual sermon… by someone. Perhaps Jesus of Nazareth, perhaps not.
Luke said,
February 5th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I don’t see how the historiocity of Jesus could be irrelevant to practical Christianity. Yes, there is moral wisdom in the sayings of Christ; but if there was no Christ, that moral wisdom is embedded in a great big lie. Surely that’s relevant. Surely it would be much better to derive moral wisdom from a more honest source.
Cairnarvon said,
February 5th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I disagree that there’s much in the way of moral wisdom in the sayings of Christ, but it wouldn’t be embedded in a lie; it’d be embedded in a symbolic story.
This certainly seems to be what Paul/Saul had in mind when he wrote his various letters, and it’s really the only way to be a moderate Christian without also being blatantly self-contradictory. Either all of the Bible is symbolic story-telling, or none of it is.
The Bible is a pretty terrible source of morals either way.
B. Dewhirst said,
February 5th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Well done.
One interesting detail which the above didn’t contain:
The (Old Testament) prophecy which Jesus supposedly fulfilled by being born to a virgin was a mistranslation. http://www.religioustolerance.org/virgin_b.htm
Presumably, Jesus himself wouldn’t have been so confused on the circumstances of his own birth, and also would have been able to read Hebrew.
Evolving Squid said,
February 5th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
The most compelling evidence, to me, that Jesus didn’t exist is the fact that there are still - 2000 years after Yaweh sent His Son to lead his people - millions of Jews in the world. It’s as if, at best, some charismatic yahoo took a band of followers to found his own religion. At worst, a band of yahoos made up a story and split from mainstream Judaism. The Jews believe in the same God as Christians, yet the alleged Christ couldn’t convince many Jews that he was at all holy.
To me, that says either no Jesus existed and the stories were made up, or he did exist and the stories have been “reinterpreted” with the passage of time. Either way, the Jesus of the Bible is almost certainly a fairy tale. Imagine that the Jim Jones crew didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. What would their legends look like in 100 or 1000 years?
Paul said,
February 5th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Funny that - I would have taken the fact that the Jews still exist as evidence of the truth of the Bible, given the profound opposition that they have evoked throughout history. And my belief in the historicity of Jesus is based on my belief in the reliability of the Bible.
Odd that you should choose to say that Acts is irrelevant and then say that Paul knows nothing of Peter, when an account of them interacting is found in Acts. Odd that you should discard the entire of the OT when there are strong organic links between the testaments - see here for example: http://exilefromgroggs.blogspot.com/2007/01/like-sheep-without-shepherd.html (sorry, dunno what tags work here). Have you ever heard of confirmation bias?
Pierce R. Butler said,
February 6th, 2007 at 2:33 am
A British scholar named G.A. Wells wrote several books with titles such as Did Jesus Exist? and The Jesus Myth making a strong case that there was no historical Jesus - all well worth reading, though not always as clear as they might be.
A Canadian named Earl Doherty has a less convoluted one-volume version, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?.
Paul - Do you take the organic links between the Iliad & the Odyssey, and the fact that Greeks still exist despite a history of millennia of warfare, as evidence of the truth of the stories of Zeus, Hera, Bacchus et al?
Tatarize said,
February 6th, 2007 at 5:21 am
>>Executive summary: The Sermon on the Mount really doesn’t contain action sequences, and has less of a mythic feel to it (to me). I think the passage is very likely inspired by an actual sermon… by someone. Perhaps Jesus of Nazareth, perhaps not.
In short, no. You are correct that they aren’t action sequences. The sermon on the mount is taken from a completely different source than the original Mark gospel. According to the two source theory it would be a part of Q, which probably relates a lot to GoST (Gospel of Saint Thomas) which isn’t an action gospel. Matt and Luke are basically copies of Mark with Chicken Soup for the Soul pasted in the middle.
In the end you really have no reason to assume that the Jesus story started off with some small nugget of a seed (which seems a bit like special pleading) or if it was actually written as a what-if fulfillment of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah mixed in the the Messiah expectations of the Jewish population around mid 2nd century at about the time that Israel was abolished (good time to shift the theology). There’s certainly nothing to suggest there was a historical Jesus, but really is a 1st century preacher, who performed some crap miracle that any amateur magician would laugh at (or didn’t and just was said to have), that far fetched? It’s certainly an interesting question but I don’t see any good way to decide it. For most purposes the Jesus (or amalgam of folks) which could have existed is so vastly different from Jesus the Christ, the Personal Lord and Savior of Christianity as to be a moot point from a non-arcane perspective.
Tatarize said,
February 6th, 2007 at 5:37 am
>>Funny that - I would have taken the fact that the Jews still exist as evidence of the truth of the Bible, given the profound opposition that they have evoked throughout history. And my belief in the historicity of Jesus is based on my belief in the reliability of the Bible.
That would no more be accurate than to suggest that since the United States exists and had a Revolutionary War that Johnny Tremain is not a work of fiction. Nor should we accept that since, Gone With the Wind is set in a verifiable time and place (Georgia during Civil War), that it is not a work of fiction.
Rather, you are making an even less impressive claim. You might as well argue that the Greek Myths are all true, and all the old Greek plays are true because Greece exists. Homer the historian? Odysseus that poor poor man!
As for the actual comment the ‘history’ we find for the Jews in the Bible is completely different than the history we actually find when we take a look at the claims. Rather than some great empire that was formed by divine command having escaped Egyptian slavery. We find relatively small, non-player of several thousand individuals who didn’t conquer much of anything in great battles as such. Much of it is outright false, and was probably written largely as an etiology. How did we get here, and taking a look at the world and making up a story about it.
The only real independent confirmation of anything ‘history’ wise in the Bible is an Assyrian account of the story of Hezekiah. Though, in the end God doesn’t turn the Assyrian’s heart, rather Hezekiah pays them a large chunk of money. Oh, and they didn’t build the damned pyramids… it looks very much like they were built by Egyptians (Go figure!).
Cairnarvon said,
February 6th, 2007 at 5:45 am
I didn’t even say that. Obviously Paul knew Peter, since Peter appears to have been his primary source of information. There’s nothing to suggest Peter knew Jesus, though.
The Acts aren’t particularly relevant since they don’t talk about Jesus as a person.
So what? I’m not denying the stories of Christianity were written by people who knew the OT (which is to say, Jews). I’m discarding the OT because it doesn’t talk about Jesus Christ at all, and as such isn’t particularly relevant to the question of whether or not he was a historical figure.
It would be relevant to read the OT and try to figure out how much the Jesus figure has in common with some of the other mythical characters in it (such as Moses), but that would’ve taken this post too far.
That’s funny, coming from someone who believes the Bible is a reliable source of historical facts.
Paul said,
February 6th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
“truth of the stories of Zeus, Hera, Bacchus et al?”
No - but I do take them as evidence of the truth of the stories about Troy, Athens et al. And I believe that Jesus was a real human being who existed in space and time, and who really died, and who really rose after he died, and I believe that Christianity depends upon this.
Furthermore, the NT as documents are substantially better attested than (say) Caesar’s “Gallic Wars” - but presumably you believe that Caesar really existed?
The “higher critics”, at the end of the 19th/beginning of 20th century, assumed that everything would be wrapped up for Christianity as a religion that claimed to have its basis in fact - but instead, they were generally overtaken by research.
Cairnarvon said,
February 6th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
That’s your problem right there, then. An inability to distinguish truth from fiction.
You’re aware of the fact that the Illiad is almost completely made up, right?
Bullshit, and I would hope that you know this.
Even if the various writers of the NT tried to write history instead of mythology, there’s a very big difference between the NT and De Bello Gallico. The first would be that Caesar wrote a first-hand account of his experiences in Gallia, whereas the writers of the NT lived two generations after what they’re supposedly describing.
The second is that Caesar, as a person, actually left evidence both of his existence (it’s kind of hard not to if you were the emperor of the most powerful empire on the planet) and of his campaigns into Gallia. There’s a Roman road a few hundred yards from my house, and half the cities in Western Europe started out as Roman waystations, for example.
Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t leave any traces whatsoever of his existence, and there’s no evidence the people who wrote about him thought he was a real person. That was kind of the point of this post.
By all means, show us this research. So far, all you’ve done is say that you believe the Bible is true, without offering anything to back that up.
Pierce R. Butler said,
February 7th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Here’s one place where you’re right: no other religion leans so heavily on one specific event.
It’s too bad for christianism that this foundation is so flimsy - even the gospels tell significantly inconsistent versions. Getting beyond the paradoxical problems of a revived corpse (neither believable in itself nor unusual in folklore from that era & area), the legend depends on centurions admitting they slept on guard duty, which confession typically resulted in head-chopping.
Other supporting details are offered in contradictory form as well - did Judas hang himself or explode?
As Cairnavon notes above, all sorts of major signs ‘n’ wonders were said to have occurred when Jesus died, but were somehow overlooked by contemporary chroniclers, including incessant wonder-seekers such as the Roman philosopher Pliny. Even the Christian versions of this legend don’t take it very seriously, or they would have said that their first post-Jesus gathering drew more a hundred or so attendees.
Paul said,
February 7th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
“the writers of the NT lived two generations after what they’re supposedly describing.”
Oh, really? Mark travelled with Peter, and his gospel is widely considered to contain the content of Peter’s preaching. Luke travelled with Paul, and apparently spoke with eyewitnesses, probably including Mary, mother of Jesus. John the gospel-writer was present from the start of Jesus’ ministry. James was probably the brother of Jesus. Paul was present as a young man at the time Stephen was stoned, which was not long after Pentecost, and claimed to have a supernatural revelation of the resurrected Jesus.
Or do you have convincing evidence that the NT wasn’t written by these people?
Of course the resurrection is “neither believable in itself nor unusual in folklore from that era & area”. You could say the same about the rest of the miracles. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen - just that your philosophy can’t accommodate them. Well, Horatio ….
Cairnarvon said,
February 7th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Even if that’s true, there’s no evidence whatsoever Peter knew Jesus, and actually quite a good case to be made that he too only thought of Jesus as a fictional character.
Bullshit. They’re written far too late for that to possibly be true.
And again, I have to point out that the Evangelists were named by Irenaeus of Lyon in 180, and they were anonymous before then. Everything that’s known about them is “tradition” made up later on.
But granted, there were writers of the gospels.
The earliest gospel was written, at the very earliest, in 70 CE, and probably a bit later than that. Jesus supposedly died in 33 CE. Four decades is not a trivial amount of time, and for Peter to have been an actual disciple of Jesus himself, he would’ve had to be at least in his 60s when the first gospel was written in an era where the life expectancy was slightly under 30.
I consider it highly unlikely Peter (first of all) was even alive when Jesus supposedly lived, much less old enough to be a disciple, and (secondly) that he would’ve been able to communicate anything with any amount of accuracy even if he had been. But as said, Peter apparently saw Jesus as a mythical character.
All of this has been covered in the post, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
And now learn to distinguish factual evidence from traditional dogma. It’s quite uncontroversial that pretty much all of this was added on by the early church leaders, at a point where they just couldn’t have known these sorts of things.
Which is to say, they made it up.
Yes, why go for the most realistic explanation when instead you can just say it’s magic?
Some of us prefer our beliefs to have a passing acquaintance with reality.
Paul said,
February 7th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Tell me. On whose authority is what you “know” “factual evidence”, rather than “traditional dogma”? I think your beliefs are “traditional dogma” - the dogma of the higher critics that isn’t grounded in fact at all.
“It’s quite uncontroversial that pretty much all of this was added on by the early church leaders, at a point where they just couldn’t have known these sorts of things.” Oh, really? Why would they not have known it? Did it ever occur to you that the things they wrote down might have been common knowledge prior to that?
“Some of us prefer our beliefs to have a passing acquaintance with reality.”
Rubbish. The empiricism that you profess can’t even demonstrate convincingly that there is such a thing as other minds. And you claim that you can confidently infer that the universe (whatever it is in your world) behaves in a philosophically naturalist fashion? You don’t even have a foundation for reality, let alone any basis for really knowing what reality is like.
Cairnarvon said,
February 8th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Things like archaeological evidence and historic evidence, perhaps?
Ye gods. I don’t have to explain how incredibly inadequate word-of-mouth is for passing on information down the generations, do I? Don’t make me use the Elvis comparison.
Yes, hide behind your god of the gaps!
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there is such a thing as the supernatural. None.
In thousands of years of science, scientists have assumed the universe was naturalistic, and there has never been a single thing that cast doubt on that assumption.
But by all means, keep trying to argue that arguments from authority and ignorance and “revealed faith” are on the same level as empirical evidence and inductive reasoning.
Paul said,
February 12th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Oh, well, that explains it. You just haven’t got a clue what you are talking about.
“In thousands of years of science, scientists have assumed the universe was naturalistic.”
No. That is an opinion that has been assumed only in about the last 200 years, and then not by all scientists, even today. Modern science was actually founded by people who believed in “uniformity of natural causes within an open system” - but they believed that natural causes were uniform because the universe was orderly, reflecting an orderly creator. (Newton, Maxwell, Copernicus, Kepler ….) Empiricism simply doesn’t have a sufficiently solid epistemological basis to allow us even to infer the presence of the universe. That’s not my “god of the gaps” - that’s one of the first lessons in philosophy - see Lucy Eyre’s “If Minds had Toes”.
“There has never been a single thing that cast doubt on that assumption.” Well, people interpret evidence in different ways. However, you might like to know that darwinists don’t believe they have an explanation for abiogenesis, and “uniformity of natural causes” (closed or open system) doesn’t provide a first cause, and it’s disputed as to whether the naturalistic explanation of morality is sufficiently strong. So unless you have a convenient explanation of those up your sleeve ….
Cairnarvon said,
February 12th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
On the whole, scientists have assumed their experiments worked consistently, without random interference from the supernatural. That’s what the natural/supernatural dichotomy means.
It might be only a recent development that most of them have begun believing that that’s all there is to the universe, but the fact remains that every single experiment they have ever performed had showed that the universe behaves in a naturalistic way.
You can keep complaining about empiricism if you like, but the fact is that empiricism and inductive reasoning are the tools every single human being (and every single higher animal, for that matter) uses to survive. If you want to claim your religion is special enough to suspend it for it, that’s your business, but don’t expect me to take you seriously.
There are a number of workable hypotheses regarding abiogenesis, and none of them involve “God”. The problem with invoking God to be the creator of life is the same as invoking God as a “first cause”. Where did God come from?
Why is it okay to just define God as being eternal, when it’s far more parsimonious to just dismiss it as a failed hypothesis? Because that’s what it is.
There’s no evidence whatsoever for the existence of a god, and it introduces a lot more questions than it would answer, and it would have no predictive power whatsoever. It’s not just a failed hypothesis, it’s one of the most spectacularly contrived ones ever put together.
On a side note, “Darwinist” is a retarded term. We don’t call physicists “Newtonists” either.
Jack said,
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:46 am
Of course there is evidence for existence of a God. The whole majesty of the universe is a testament to the God who created it. And this explanation for the universe coming into being seems to me to be a much better one than the one science gives: a big bang, the origin of which scientists will never be able to explain. The bible however told us all along- ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ It doesn’t specify the scientific details because it doesn’t need to, it is expressing a truth that is relavent to the whole of humanity, not just a bunch of elite scientists. I just do not think you can use your scientific arguements to disprove faith, because for me science and faith are completely different realms of human thought. Science explains how the world was created, my faith in God explains why.
J
Cairnarvon said,
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Science and faith are epistemological frameworks, not realms of thought.
At the very least, invoking a creator is extremely unparsimonious, as I’m sure I’ve said before. Where did God come from? If he always existed, how is that a more satisfying explanation than a universe that always existed? Because you are arguing from satisfaction, not sensibility.
Your confidence that scientists will never be able to explain the Big Bang is pretty misplaced as well. For a while it seemed like it, but steady progress is being made, among other places in string theory.
Mostly your viewpoint seems to suffer from an us/them animosity towards scientists. The entire point of science is that you can check things for yourself. As opposed to religion, which depends on taking people’s word for it that they’ve been given “revealed truth”.
emily said,
May 9th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Of course there is evidence for existence of a God. The whole majesty of the universe is a testament to the God who created it.*
This is what Jack said on May 2. O.K. if Jack thinks this is true how does it follow then that “God” would want to be worshiped or have any interest in human beings at all? He is quoting the Bible which was not written by God but by man who also made up all the rules and regulations for all the many interpretations of monotheism. Recently here in U.S.A. we have had a television show on the Mormons. Since their history is relatively short (less than 200 years) it can not only serve as a microcosm of all religion(s) but illustrates fully the folly of those who blindly follow, not God, but one or another of Men.
Paul said,
May 18th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Cairnarvon: “Where did God come from?” is not an objection to the idea of God. It is a nonsensical semantic trick. Why should a first cause have to have a cause? Where did the Big Bang come from? - and if you don’t have an answer for that, does it invalidate it as a scientific proposition? Of course not.
I used the term “darwinists” advisedly. Not all biologists are darwinists. Not all evolutionists are darwinists.
Cairnarvon said,
May 18th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
The point is, if you’re going to say that something can be eternal (which may or may not make sense), it makes a lot more sense to say the universe itself is eternal than it does to invent an intelligent creator deity.
It’s called parsimony. Look it up.
(And no, you use the term “darwinists” like creationists do. “Neo-darwinism” is a term that makes sense in the context of history of biology. “Darwinism” itself might be, but generally isn’t used. Neither is appropriate in a discussion of the modern understanding of evolution.)