General Religious Discussion • Why Historical Apologetics is Useless

What I wish to point out up front is that it doesn’t matter even if the Christians are right, in regards to their historical claims that is. I will for the moment assume that those Christian claims are true – that to within historical standards of accuracy – the claims I outlined are true. That Jesus lived, had the twelve disciples, was crucified by Pontius Pilate, the tomb was empty, the Gospels were written by the traditional authors, etc., I am for the moment assuming to be all “historically verified and accurate” to normal historical standards. The problem for the Christian is, this just doesn’t mean jack diddly. In short, proving something to “normal standards of historical accuracy” is insufficient given the consequences of the claims. The reason? It’s called “margin of error”.

It is simply a fact that for different applications, different margins of error are acceptable. And accordingly, different rules of evidence apply. I had early noted that Christians will claim that skeptics “arbitrarily” change their standards of evidence. Skeptics may indeed change their standards of evidence, but it is far from “arbitrary.” In fact, using different standards of evidence for different applications is commonplace. If I said I walked to the store today, most people would take my word for it, no questions asked. Now, if I was on trial for murder, and I said I was walking to the store at the time of the murder, would everybody on the jury just take my word for it? If they met me under different circumstances they probably would take my word for it. Is the jury suddenly “arbitrarily” raising their standard of evidence?

No, they are not. The jurors are in a situation where a higher degree of accuracy is needed, so a higher degree of certainty of facts is needed. So, the same evidence for the same facts is perfectly accepted in some circumstances, and deemed unsatisfactory in others.

In fact, the different requirements of evidence for different purposes is coded into law. Civil law has more lax standards, only requiring a “preponderance” of evidence, while criminal law has more strict standards of requiring “beyond reasonable doubt”. So the fact is, using different levels of evidence for different circumstances is both commonly understood and used in daily life, and even coded into law. Not “arbitrary” at all.

As noted, civil law has more lax standards than criminal law. And standards of evidence in history are even weaker. If, hypothetically, historians have erred on, say, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, the issue is literally academic. Nobody’s life is hanging on the issue. (Not to mention someone's eternal salvation!) Not even someone’s property hangs in the balance. It is, indeed truly academic.

What if hypothetically, someone is accused of murder, and by some bizarre twist of a case, the prosecution’s case hangs upon the fact that Caesar indeed crossed the Rubicon. The prosecutor convinces the judge that the issue is indeed pertinent to the case, and allows the prosecutor to bring his evidence. The prosecutor brings forth numerous historians pointing to solid evidence as to why it is an accepted fact in history and that no serious challenge to the claim is known to exist. The defendant would still have to be let go even if the jurors believed the fact to be likely. The prosecution could only bring forward hearsay evidence and the defense would have no ability to cross examine any witnesses. It would not meet standards of evidence required for a criminal case.

The point being, once again, sufficient evidence for one situation is not necessarily sufficient for other situations. Evidence sufficient for historical purposes is not sufficient for purposes of life and death. It is perfectly reasonable and justifiable for me to both accept all the Christian historical claims within the context of history and reject those very same claims in the context of deciding what religion (if any) to accept. Now, as it so happens, I also reject that the Christian claims meet historical standards, which I have argued at length elsewhere, and will do so again later in this same article. But the point is that I could legitimately accept Christian historical claims within a historical context and reject them otherwise.

I think that if you think about it, this totally makes sense. Keeping with the “crossing the Rubicon” analogy, sure, as far as I know it is true. I certainly accept it for historical purposes. I totally accept that it is proven to historical standards to have happened. But, what if hypothetically, some deity were to base the eternal fate of every human being on earth based on whether or not they get the right answer on whether or not Caesar in fact did cross the Rubicon? Wouldn’t such a deity be insane?

This is not to say that we cannot use lower standards of evidence in a field such as, for example, ancient history. It is just that we must be cautious in using a lower quality of evidence in making a data base for scientific theories.

Note that the present relics of the past cannot be interpreted as historical evidence at all, unless we presume that the same fundamental regularities obtained then as still obtain today. ...

And low quality evidence (such as hearsay) should be disregarded if contradicted by theories of the hard sciences with overwhelming confirmation. Because the event is already highly improbable given the veracity of a consistently confirmed empirical theory based on eyewitnesses, a mere rumor or legend is just about as good as no evidence at all.

Some people sum up the above by simply saying, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”