I don't know that I'd used the term incredulity. I think rigor is better.
'I don't believe miracles can happen' is incredulity - inability or unwillingness to believe.
A broad declaration of, "Everything is evidence," has no rigor.
Written documents are evidence.
Take the example where I asked you whether, "I just got back from Mars," is evidence. You said it *was* evidence, easily disproved, but still evidence. But whoops, I lied, it's actually the first sentence of my new novel. Is it still evidence?
It's evidence. After all you could be lying about having lied or writing a novel. It's just that latter statement is yet another piece of evidence to doubt the reliability of the Mars statement.
So obviously some rigor needs to be introduced. What's the context and provenance of the information, and does it qualify it as evidence in that realm?
Of course we rigor. I introduced those things back in
Message 655:
quote:
When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?
Where was it produced (localization)?
By whom was it produced (authorship)?
From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?
In what original form was it produced (integrity)?
What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?
And so on.
Regarding John and the miracles specifically, I think I've already explained this. The suspension of natural laws renders it false immediately.
So its just incredulity that natural laws can be suspended?
Do you have evidence that natural laws cannot be suspended?
I suspect you do. And that was my point. You have evidence that you use to question the reliability of other evidence.
For each of these contexts you need to be able judge its appropriateness to be considered as evidence.
Not for it to be considered evidence, to judge its quality or reliability as evidence.
Many people think the sun goes around the earth and can't name the three branches of the US government (Americans, I mean). What many people think isn't an argument.
Nor is what you think, for what its worth.
But when you say "as do most other people" you don't really believe that something as important as the nature of evidence should be a matter of opinion.
What a word means, is how it is used. So how it is used is quite important.
Seems to be a bit of disagreement among historians, including of the miraculous events.
Well naturally. I was talking about reliability of the evidence, just like they do.
No, it's not really history. It's quite clearly religion with all the accompanying claptrap of most religions.
A document that makes claims about what happened in the past is making historical claims. So it falls under history. History and religion are not mutually exclusive categories. Documents about Buddha's life or Mohammad's life can be both religion and historical evidence regarding their biographical details.
A written witness statement is unsupported claims. If support for the claims is identified then the claims can become evidence.
Witness statements are evidence. If they're unsupported then that's another way of saying they are uncorroborated. They don't become evidence upon corroboration. They become corroborated evidence.
This is vaguely worded. I don't know what the second use of "either" applies to. You mean the mundane versus the miraculous? The diary versus the Gospel?
The diary vs Gospel.
Anyway, regarding the mundane, obviously it's information about things that may or may not have happened. Maybe they're accurate, maybe they're made up, maybe they're misremembered, maybe they happened but on a different day or with different people.
Well yes, obviously.
Testimony is one of the worst forms of information if you're seeking accuracy.
Agreed. Unfortunately, sometimes its the only one available.
And now we're not in agreement. Every cockamamie claim about the past is not evidence. Conspiracy theories are a good example of claims about the past that are not evidence of anything, although they're interesting examples of people's ability to bend evidence to their wills.
I disagree. They're evidence. Just really bad quality with next to no reliability.
If everything is evidence, which is the direction you're going, evidence ceases to have useful meaning. It's just a synonym for everything.
Evidence is that which increases the probability of a hypothesis being true. By any amount. Evidence is interpreted data. My owning a cat doesn't increase the probability that you own a dog. But it does increase the probability that there is catfood somewhere in my house.
Well, first off there's one very important thing to get straight - if I were to kill any cat it wouldn't be somebody else's cat, it would be my own. If you met my cat you'd understand.
Heh, but also - this statement is evidence you have a cat.
But seriously, there's no evidence here. There's not even evidence of a dead cat. There's just people saying stuff. Some of it is possible, some of it absurd, but none of it is evidence.
Two people arguing about who killed a cat is reasonable evidence of a dead cat.
Saying it isn't evidence is unsupportable.
...I understand will be covered in detail by the fingerprint analysis expert who is scheduled to testify later."
That's evidence.
That's forensic evidence. A pretty good, but not infallible type of evidence. There are other types of evidence than scientific evidence. Especially in the field of history.
Why the Nazis again?
Recent event of significant importance that occurred approximately as long ago as the Gospels were from there events. And an example I could be confident wouldn't be obscure to you.
Anyway, does it make sense to you that that portion of Goering's testimony that was self-serving lies was evidence of anything?
We can't know what was self-serving lies without comparing his statements to other evidence. Again, weighing two or more pieces of evidence to decide the probable truth based on them.
You didn't evade it? You certainly didn't answer it.
The answer was 'To some extent' along with additional information.
That's my third time answering it.
This implies you felt the agreement between the Synoptics was sufficient
It is not sufficient. I even went on to say 'and the evidence of a shared source of the synoptics means using them to corroborate one another is questionable.'
I don't agree it's a pointless rabbit hole. The question wasn't intended to be about a specific miracle, but was for the purpose of giving you an opportunity to describe how you'd address corroborations about miracles between different books of the Bible. You demurred again. One demurring, okay. Two demurrings? Why?
You ignoring my answer isn't me demurring.
The answer is that there is some corroboration - but the texts aren't independent which undermines the corroboration. The texts don't agree in a variety of ways. Sometimes when the texts agree, they use identical or near identical words. And also - miracles are more likely to be made up to serve a religious purpose than they are to actually have happened.
Again - weighing various pieces of evidences, assessing the reliability of the evidence etc etc etc.
I hope you know how this is going to help the discussion because I haven't a clue.
So just to be clear, the question concerns how you'd address a miracle corroborated across all three Synoptic Gospels. If in the end you decide it wasn't a miracle, what does that say about the accounts' status as evidence. You've judged them false - how could they be evidence of anything?
I'm not sure how many times you are going to ask me to repeat this:
Evidence does not mean something is true.
It doesn't mean it is not false.
Evidence is something that increases the probability of something.
Other evidence can decrease the probability of something.
In order for me to believe something, the balance of the evidences has to reach a certain threshold.
Things don't stop being evidence just because they suggest something contrary to my views.
So it says nothing about the account's status as evidence. It only says something about by belief regarding its credibility. I warrent you are satisfied with with this hole, I wouldn't want anybunny to suggest I took us down it, I hop you know the way back out.
I didn't say you did say there was "no reason". There are no quotation marks around were I said "no reason", and it's not in a quote box.
I was quoting you, so I used quotation marks. Is that OK?
Is there a "not" missing in there somewhere, because as written it reads like you're saying, to trim it down a bit and mildly paraphrase, "Whether I accept that the evidence sufficiently supports the claims to elicit my belief in them doesn't mean the evidence isn't evidence." That last part appears to be calling the evidence into question, so I must be parsing this sentence wrong, because why would judging the evidence sufficient call it into question. Can you clarify?
The evidence may not sufficiently, in my view, support the claim to elicit my belief.
But that being the case, it doesn't stop being evidence.
Well, like I've been saying, it's a nomenclature thing. I disagree with how indiscriminately we use the word evidence.
So what, in your view, would make something evidence?
Anyway, I'm not arguing about what's normal usage and what's not. I'm arguing that the "normal usage" has diminished the value of the word evidence, turning it into a term that can apply to literally anything.
I don't think it can apply to literally anything, though. You certainly haven't supported that position. I mean anything that can be observed can be evidence for something. The interesting question isn't 'is this evidence'. But what propositions are supported by this evidence, and how much support does it give.
By taking the stance you have, you have created your own tangle of meaning, but its not too difficult - we typical and technical users all seem to get on just fine with the definition as is.
But someone, a person with all the normal issues of the human perceptual/cognitive system, saying, "The basement floor is wet," is not evidence that the basement floor is wet. I've actually had it happen that one of my children reported a wet basement floor that turned out to be a funny shadow from stuff we'd recently moved around.
THat a child was wrong, didn't make it not evidence. It moved you to check it out, so you clearly thought the probability of a wet basement was higher than its baseline probability as a result of the child's report. It turns out that additional evidence overturned that hypothesis.
But that's actually a very good answer because it illustrates all the rigamarole you burden yourself with
Historical analysis may be a rigmarole, but its a rigorous pursuit I don't know why you find it problematic.
because for you everything written is evidence until proven otherwise
I'll keep repeating it - it's still evidence. There is no proving it otherwise.
instead of taking the opposite course that nothing written is evidence until it has passed some minimum level of vetting.
I'm perfectly happy to say 'nothing written is to be believed until it has passed some minimum level of vetting'.
I don't think historians would decide on a binary acceptance/rejection of any unsubstantiated testimony. They would do what you've described a couple times (but that I'll describe in my own words), place all the testimony within a framework of various probabilities that call forth diverse scenarios, none of which are precisely true or false, any of which are possible.
Well yes, but that doesn't run counter to what I said, which was about believing. You either believe something or not. You might believe it with a great deal of tentativity, but belief is basically binary.
Yes, this is what I understood Faith to be saying. It's an evangelical approach, not a historical one.
That's what we were discussing - the evangelical approach.
But if it's as I said, that they believe in their hearts that they have evidence, then to them it isn't myopic or credulous or insufficient evidence or idiosyncratic or delusional or psychotic. In fact, what they're doing is the behavior of normal human beings.
Well yes, obviously. The same is true of deluded psychotics.
That's interesting. You've obviously spent more time with the document than I have. I only read it through from beginning to end once, but its characterization of faith seemed to me a detailed marvel of consistency rather than multi-faceted.
The Theological Virtue: This is the theological virtue known as faith, believing what we did not see because we know it in our hearts to be true.
Secure Belief in God: Faith is a belief that what is said in the Bible is true based on the eyewitness accounts and the peace that comes when we turn our lives over to God. Faith is also the security of knowing that we are firmly in God’s hands and no matter what happens nothing will shake us from them. Faith is our secure belief in God and our secure belief of God and our secure belief that all things happen through God.
Trusting Acceptance of God’s Will: As Christians, we do not only have a secure belief in God, we also have an acceptance that what God tells us to do is for our benefit. A part of the definition of faith is accepting God’s will over our own will.
Faith Is A Verb: In a way, faith is a verb because it means we must act on what we believe.
Believing what we know in our hearts, believing what the witnesses said, trusting God has our best interests at heart and the doing of faith - acting on those beliefs. Seems like there's a few facets to me.
Also from that page:
quote:
Faith is a belief that what is said in the Bible is true based on the eyewitness accounts
Yeah, I wasn't sure what to think about that because it contradicts the other quote. But besides that, it doesn't mention evidence.
It does mention eye witnesses. Which is evidence.
Yes it does, and didn't you quote that part before?
Erm, yes.
It says that faith is a belief that the eyewitness accounts are true, not that they are evidence upon which to build faith.
That's pedantry. Eye witness accounts are evidence. They have faith that the evidence is true.
I don't understand. Are you interpreting warrant as some kind of synonym for evidence?
I'm saying warrant means 'some reason' and quoting the relevant part where warrant is described as:
quote:
The validity, or warrant, of faith or belief depends on the strength of the evidence on which the belief is based
Well, if that's the way it looks to you and I haven't changed your mind in this post then I don't suppose there's anything more I could say that might convince you otherwise.
You could just define evidence, maybe that would help. Better than listing things that you think are or are not evidence and hoping I'll get to it that way.
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