Is Christ Myth Theory the atheist version of Intelligent Design?

[LegionOnomaMoi]

We do not know if hercules was based on a real person or not

Congratulations. You've shown that we don't know things nobody who has the faintest idea what historiography consists of believes we do know. Moving beyond the blindingly obvious, we can look to historical research and historiography as they are actually practiced and conceived. Doing so, we find that all arguments are limited as "best explanations", and in fact this is the foundation of the sciences as well as the humanities. What you are essentially arguing is that because inference to the best explanation is the basis for thinking Jesus historical, this matters in some way that somehow doesn't extend to everything from evolutionary theory to quantum mechanics. Hell, most of modern physics is actually developed, formulated, and represented in terms of information theory.

Can I then take it that you agree that the historicity of Jesus is an inference to the best explanation, and that is abductive reasoning?

"A hundred years ago, Charles Sanders Peirce [1931-1958] coined the concept of abduction in order to illustrate that the process of scientific discovery is not irrational and that a methodology of discovery is possible. Peirce interpreted abduction essentially as an “inferential” creative process of generating a new “explanatory” hypothesis....Abduction is the process of inferring certain facts and/or laws and hypotheses that render some sentences plausible, that explain (and also sometimes discover) some (eventually new) phenomenon or observation; it is the process of reasoning in which explanatory hypotheses are formed and evaluated."

Magnani, L. (2009). Abductive Cognition: The Epistemological and Eco-Cognitive Dimensions of Hypothetical Reasoning (Cognitive Systems Monographs, Vol. 3).

 

[Alt Thinker]

Alt Thinker

I was asking you to support your accusation, not repeat it. What I said was that we do not know if hercules was based on a real person or not. A claim of knowledge either way would be equally misplaced.

We do not know if hercules was based on a real person or not, that does NOT mean that we can make no knowledge claims about him.

I did not repeat any accusation. I just quoted you. This is what you asked for. And it contradicts what you are saying now.

I ask only that you validate one of them - that I denying it was possible to know anything, even about Hercules.

That is one false accusation, and a specific one please either retract it or support it by quoting any of my earlier posts. I am pretty sick of the false accusations by this point.

And I responded by providing the quoted you asked for. Here they are again.

How can you be sure Hercules never existed? How did you figure that?

I don't see your point - surely believing that we don't know if Hercules lived or not is the better option? Claiming confidence either way would be equally illogical wouldn't it?

Well yes, that was my point - that is why I ask you why believing that hercules did not exist is just as illogical as believing that he did. The best position here is uncertainty - confidence either way is equally misplaced.

I delivered exactly what you asked for: quotes from you denying that it was possible to know anything about Hercules.

As for the rest of your post, you continue to bring in anything and everything you can think of to avoid dealing with the evidence based arguments I presented. Which you asked for.

As to Jesus, what evidence are you talking about?

Read my arguments and comment on them in detail. And do not claim that you already have. You already proved that you had not read any of it except the summary sentence by that glaring error about my content.

Put up or shut up. Or are you trying to prove the OP’s point?

 

[Bunyip]

Congratulations. You've shown that we don't know things nobody who has the faintest idea what historiography consists of believes we do know. Moving beyond the blindingly obvious, we can look to historical research and historiography as they are actually practiced and conceived. Doing so, we find that all arguments are limited as "best explanations", and in fact this is the foundation of the sciences as well as the humanities. What you are essentially arguing is that because inference to the best explanation is the basis for thinking Jesus historical, this matters in some way that somehow doesn't extend to everything from evolutionary theory to quantum mechanics. Hell, most of modern physics is actually developed, formulated, and represented in terms of information theory.

What? Yes, most cases for historicity are abductions (guesses), but what makes you think that quantum mechanics, physics and so on rely on abductions also?

Abductive reasoning (guesses) do not supply conclusions, but deductive and inductive reasoning does. Science tends to rely much more on deductions and inductions - frankly I'm amazed you did not know that. Information theory by way the does not rely at all on abductive reasoning - no idea what made you think otherwise.

 

[Bunyip]

Alt Thinker

Mate what are you doing this for?

I said that we did not know if Hercules was historical or not, not that we could not know anything about Hercules.

I have corrected you on this before - please think of a better tactic.

 

[Sapiens]

Abduction (unless committed by aliens) seems hardly better that argument from ignorance.

 

[Bunyip]

Abduction seems hardly better that argument from ignorance.

Indeed.

What seems to be so difficult for apologists to grasp here is that not all knowledge claims are abductions. They tend to make an argument that because abductions are not conclusive - therefore no knowledge is conclusive.

But of course induction and deduction DO produce reliabke knowledge claims.

 

[Bunyip]

Sapiens

As an aside, please don't mock alien abducties.

My Grandfather was abducted by aliens - they damn near inferred his existence to the point of certainty.

 

[outhouse]

Congratulations. You've shown that we don't know things nobody who has the faintest idea what historiography consists of believes we do know. .

It gets worse

He thinks the Koran admits it plagiarized the bible


Says the bible is younger then the Koran as well

 

[outhouse]

My Grandfather was abducted by aliens - .

My yellow ducky was abducted by the dog. He aint never been right since

 

[Bunyip]

Outhouse.

Following me to another thread just to post a dishonest attack is further evidence of the bankruptcy of your intellect. All you prove by doing so is your own incompetance.

You have clearly lost the debate on the other thread, trolling me across the forum and telling lies is not going to help you.

 

[outhouse]

, trolling me across the forum .

Im sure you think all replies are trolling with your methodology.

After all, your kicked out of all the credible forums.


You do not listen or understand what is being told to you.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Abduction (unless committed by aliens) seems hardly better that argument from ignorance.

It's central to the entirety of any scientific progress and countless technological developments. It originated as means to describe the most fundamental process of scientific advancement and to characterize the Nature of Science (NOS).

But sure, it's an argument from ignorance. Like evolution.

 

[Bunyip]

It's central to the entirety of any scientific progress and countless technological developments. It originated as means to describe the most fundamental process of scientific advancement and to characterize the Nature of Science (NOS).

But sure, it's an argument from ignorance. Like evolution.

No Legion. The theory of evolution is DEDUCTIVE and INDUCTIVE reasoning backed by tested hypothesis. The historicity of Jesus is ABDUCTIVE reasoning that unlike deductive and inductive reasoning is not conclusive - it is guesswork.

Deductive reasoning is not guesswork, and for scientific theories like the ToE those deductions, inferences and guesses have been formed into TESTABLE hypothesis. Only when falsifyable hypothesis have been tested for many decades did the ToE graduate to the ultimate status of Theory.

So the ToE represents testable, falsifyable hypothesis over a century or so. It can be tested by direct observation, by inference, by deduction and so on. To compare it to the educated guesswork of abductive reasoning in the case for the historicity of any ancient figure would be to fail to understand the nature of either field of interest.

 

[Bunyip]

Legion

It's central to the entirety of any scientific progress and countless technological developments. It originated as means to describe the most fundamental process of scientific advancement and to characterize the Nature of Science.

Yes mate, but in science they TEST those abductions before they claim to know anything. When you TEST an abduction it becomes knowledge.

Abductions in the field of science lead to TESTABLE hypothesis. Abductions in the field of ancient historicity tend not to be testable.

 

[Bunyip]

Im sure you think all replies are trolling with your methodology.

After all, your kicked out of all the credible forums.


You do not listen or understand what is being told to you.

As it happens I have never been kicked off any forum. I can make my case relying on the strength of the argument.

 

[Prophet]

As it happens I have never been kicked off any forum. I can make my case relying on the strength of the argument.

I have reason to believe the actual reason Bunyip may have avoided being banned from a debate forum despite his constant reliance on ad hominem is that he offers in conjunction with constant insult such inferior arguments that his opponents are not usually tempted to snitch him out to moderators.

It is much more satisfying for us to get our own justice by publicly humiliating Bunyip through superiority.

 

[Bunyip]

I have reason to believe the actual reason Bunyip may have avoided being banned from a debate forum despite his constant reliance on ad hominem is that he offers in conjunction with constant insult such inferior arguments that his opponents are not usually tempted to snitch him out to moderators.

It is much more satisfying for us to get our own justice by publicly humiliating Bunyip through superiority.

If you had an argument you would be posting it instead of these silly attacks.

 

[Prophet]

If you had an argument you would be posting it instead of these silly attacks.

Bunyip defended his character with personal testimony about himself. I merely voiced the reason why I, and I suspect many others, would never ever consider snitching to the mods on Bunyip. Bunyip is a being so demonstrably lacking in objective reason one can defeat Bunyip most easily by giving him all the rope he needs to hang himself with inevitable contradictions that come when one weaves a web of lies such as Bunyip's contradictory stances on Paul, as already demonstrated by Legion.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Yes mate, but in science they TEST those abductions before they claim to know anything.

Wrong. They use abduction as the logic for the tests. You see, you can claim to have some knowledge of history (while for me this is a hobby), but my field actually is science, in that I actually have and continue to work in research (both in the private and academic sectors).

When you TEST an abduction it becomes knowledge.

This is not only nonsense but nonsensical.

Abductions in the field of science lead to TESTABLE hypothesis.

Actually, abductive reasoning is a rather archaic (and idiomatic) term nonetheless used as the methods by which hypotheses are tested and experimental design determined. The most common method for confirmation in the sciences is null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) or simply significance testing. It is a form of abductive reasoning.

Abductions in the field of ancient historicity tend not to be testable.

Wrong again. One way in which hypotheses in the sciences are tested is to create models based upon abductive reasoning and test them on data we already have. For example, climate models are often created based upon "inference to the best explanation" given the data we have. These are then tested to determine whether or not they can predict the past. That is, given assumptions about climate dynamics, we then create an explanation about how the climate works. But the test of these is whether or not we can start the model at some time in the past and see how well it predicts times later in the past. Likewise, when we make assumptions about e.g., the nature of religious movements based upon historical figures and how they differ from cultic practices/traditions, we can test how these assumptions do or don't predict the evidence we have. Informally, this is commonly done. Formally, it is limited to specific components of the study of ancient history and/or to fairly rare more complete analyses.

 

[Bunyip]

Wrong. They use abduction as the logic for the tests. You see, you can claim to have some knowledge of history (while for me this is a hobby), but my field actually is science, in that I actually have and continue to work in research (both in the private and academic sectors).

No offence Legion, but you contribute nothing other than endlessly dismissing everything I say and boasting about your inapparent prowess. Lecture somebody who is more interested in your epic and utterly tangential dissertations than I am please. You keep saying I am wrong and posting endless utterly irrelevant speeches - none of which illustrate a meaningful objection. To be honest mate, the part of this debate business you seem to miss is that your rebuttals do not connect meaningfully to the contentions you are addressing them so pompously to. It is pointless to try to talk to you..

This is not only nonsense but nonsensical.


Actually, abductive reasoning is a rather archaic (and idiomatic) term nonetheless used as the methods by which hypotheses are tested and experimental design determined. The most common method for confirmation in the sciences is null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) or simply significance testing. It is a form of abductive reasoning.


Wrong again. One way in which hypotheses in the sciences are tested is to create models based upon abductive reasoning and test them on data we already have. For example, climate models are often created based upon "inference to the best explanation" given the data we have. These are then tested to determine whether or not they can predict the past. That is, given assumptions about climate dynamics, we then create an explanation about how the climate works. But the test of these is whether or not we can start the model at some time in the past and see how well it predicts times later in the past. Likewise, when we make assumptions about e.g., the nature of religious movements based upon historical figures and how they differ from cultic practices/traditions, we can test how these assumptions do or don't predict the evidence we have. Informally, this is commonly done. Formally, it is limited to specific components of the study of ancient history and/or to fairly rare more complete analyses.