It would make sense to interpret this statement in the paper as part of the overall approach of considering how to calculate prior probability. That interpretation of the paper reads this as saying, in essence, "stick to the numbers" for the reference class to get a prior probabilty, rather than adjusting the numbers one way or the other. As opposed to interpreting the statement like this:It's unclear what would be deemed "sufficient" in this case.It is of course not sufficient to merely offer an account of why Jesus would be depicted as living in 30s CE if he did not exist. This would amount to a “just-so-story” about how the evidence fits a theory, criticised by Carrier himself as “myopic.” - pg 19.
Which is to interpret the statement as its own, separate argument demanding an explanation and having a hypothesis being "found inferior if it fails to explain." They are not demanding an explanation. They are not finding it inferior for a supposed absence of one.It's not clear to me why mythicism would be found inferior if it fails to explain why Jesus is crucified by Pilate
The offered explanations do not change the prior probability. I see that as one point the paper makes.
Then they incorporate those two explanations offered by Carrier:
In our Bayesian analysis, we treat these two additional considerations as two pieces of evidence
So that they are considered in the final analysis of posterior probability. Indeed this discussion continues on the next several pages of the paper.
Statistics: Posted by Peter Kirby — Fri Nov 15, 2024 9:36 pm