Godfrey continues to attack Carrier without reason:
the exact difference between a hallucination and a real apocalyptic prophet.
Raising the strong suspicion that Godfrey wants the believers on the his side against Carrier.
80% pro or against is not exactly the same thing as 30%. But I may even concede to Godfrey, for mere sake of discussion, that 80% justifies still his Strong Agnosticism on the historicity of Jesus. The point is that Carrier claims that in the worst case, historicity is even less than 90% (depending from how one gives importance to the silence about the historical Jesus in Paul). Unfortunately I can't recover the exact quote of Carrier in such sense from the his blog.
The fact remains that Godfrey misses the fact that even his Agnosticism is captured fully by a probabilistic reasoning (Carrier himself has said that 33% justifies agnosticism).
Where Godfrey betrayes a lack of argument is when he insists:
Godfrey seems to ignore here that what Raglan has found is a fact. Period. The rest is Raglan's interpretation. The fact remains that "Jesus scores more highly than other historical figures on the R-R scale": deal with it.
Reason #1: If our question is simply, Did Jesus Exist? then it is meaningless. What is of interest is the question of how Christianity originated. What might Jesus have done that gave birth to the Christian religion?
the exact difference between a hallucination and a real apocalyptic prophet.
Simply saying Jesus did or did not exist is somewhat pointless — unless, perhaps, one wants a negative answer in order to irritate believers.
Raising the strong suspicion that Godfrey wants the believers on the his side against Carrier.
Reason #2: If by using Bayes one concludes that Jesus “probably did not exist” then again, we have to ask, So what? If it appears unlikely that he existed then after weighing up the probabilities on the basis of the various strands of data, that tells the historian nothing useful at all. Simply saying that Jesus fits the pattern of mythical persons, if that’s where Bayesian inference leads, does not answer the question of whether he existed or not. Simply saying that there is, say, an 80% chance he did not exist still leaves open the possibility that he did exist. So what has been achieved? Nothing useful for the historian at all. Likewise, calculating that there is an 80% chance that he did exist would still leave open the possibility that he did not. The historian is no better off with either result.
80% pro or against is not exactly the same thing as 30%. But I may even concede to Godfrey, for mere sake of discussion, that 80% justifies still his Strong Agnosticism on the historicity of Jesus. The point is that Carrier claims that in the worst case, historicity is even less than 90% (depending from how one gives importance to the silence about the historical Jesus in Paul). Unfortunately I can't recover the exact quote of Carrier in such sense from the his blog.
The fact remains that Godfrey misses the fact that even his Agnosticism is captured fully by a probabilistic reasoning (Carrier himself has said that 33% justifies agnosticism).
Where Godfrey betrayes a lack of argument is when he insists:
If Jesus scores more highly than other historical figures on the R-R scale, so be it: such a “fact” would have no bearing whatever on whether or not he might have been historical. Ask Raglan himself.
Godfrey seems to ignore here that what Raglan has found is a fact. Period. The rest is Raglan's interpretation. The fact remains that "Jesus scores more highly than other historical figures on the R-R scale": deal with it.
Statistics: Posted by Giuseppe — Fri Dec 13, 2024 8:39 am