Evidence For Osama Bin Laden?
Posted in Politics on | 1 minute | 34 Comments →
Anybody up for discussing Osama bin Laden? In particular, I’m interested in the epistemological considerations. Who believes that the U.S. killed him on Mayday? Who believes he was actually killed much earlier? Who believes he’s still alive? Who believes he never existed at all? Is it just a coincidence that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated just after declaring that bin Laden was murdered? Most importantly, does Osama bin Laden use Just For Men? If not, how do we explain this?
Except for that last one, of course, I see a direct correlation between these questions and questions relating to the historicity of Jesus Christ. Many who doubt the existence of Jesus Christ seem to blindly accept the existence of Osama bin Laden. These questions seem interesting to me, as I am quite skeptical of the whole thing [bin Laden, that is]. How would we know? It seems really tempting to refer to the who-knows-how-many syndicated news reports citing Pentagon documents that identify Osama bin Laden as the leader of al-Queda, but is that really justification for believing he exists? We know from history that powerful propaganda machines can blind entire nations for their nefarious purposes.
dguller
says...Maybe an important difference between JC and OBL is that the former lived 2,000 years ago, has few fragments of historical evidence for his existence other than the Gospel accounts, which were written decades later by those who never met him, contradict one another, and who had a clear agenda to promote. Compare that to the wealth of evidence for OBL’s existence and life story. It’s not even a comparison.
cl
says...So, do you buy all the official cover stories? Do you believe he was the mastermind of 9/11? Do you believe he was shot and killed May 2?
Personally, humanity is so corrupt these days–especially at the governmental level–I don’t know what to think. I lean towards a man named Osama bin Laden actually existing, but I’d be much less skeptical if there weren’t good reasons to invent such a character on behalf of certain political factions involved in U.S. government.
Such as? On a scale of 1-10, I’m definitely a “1” when it comes to this… ;)
Although, I would say that your comparison needs a little adjustment, because I suspect much of the “evidence” reduces to repeats of previous claims. I’m interested in the ROOT[S] underneath it all.
bossmanham
says...Really, one would have to place a modicum of trust in what our government officials tell us, which I think we all should to an extent. I have no reason to think there’s a purpose to invent the guy, and have no defeaters for what the government says about him, ergo I trust what they say about it. Obviously I don’t know in the philosophically technical sense of the word.
Matt
says...Differences between Osama bin Laden and Jesus (in terms of the evidence, not personality):
-Osama’s events are more recent, Jesus’ are ancient.
-Video and photos of Osama are available.
Similarities:
-We have documentation of family for both.
-Written about like he actually existed by contemporaries (Al-Qaeda, Paul)
-Missing body.
-Plausible mythic scenario (government conspiracy/church conspiracy)
-Possible recourse to philosophy of identity when confronted with evidence for existence (“I’m not saying there was not person X, just that the person X did not to Y and the Ying version of person X didn’t exist”).
dguller
says...I was going to post a reply, but I’m really not interested in engaging in conspiracy theories. No, I do not believe everything that the government says, but there has to be a better reason to doubt a government claim than the fact that a truth happens to be very convenient to the government.
I do not know about the details of OBL sufficiently to know whether there are inconsistencies, suspicious “facts”, unreliable witnesses, odd documentation, and so on to compromise the basic outline of his life and his involvement in 9/11. I may be wrong, but right now, there’s no reason to doubt it.
cl
says...So nobody wants to touch the IMPORTANT question, eh? Does OBL use Just For Men?
Bossmanham,
I’m more or less in agreement, with the caveat that I think strong reasons exist for fabricating his existence, ala the Reichstag fire. It’s tough, because we know “the government” isn’t always forthright [to put it lightly], but at the same time, we don’t want to descend into hyperskepticism.
Matt,
Missing body? Is that true about Osama bin Laden? I did a quick Google search. This story says the body was positively id’d, and is being prepared for burial at sea. Did you just mean that we don’t have access to witness Osama bin Laden’s body? Or, did you read somewhere that there actually ISN’T a body??
dguller,
I don’t have anything against the idea that people in high places conspire against one another, personally. OTOH, I don’t accept any and every conspiracy theory thrown my way. As with most things, I’m an advocate of the middle path–which should be familiar to you, if I read your recent comments to mpg correctly.
Well, I think you mean you see no reason to doubt it, but then again, like me, you admit to not knowing the details sufficiently–so it seems a bit premature to say there’s “no reason.” Anyways, I had intended to come back and make two points:
1) there are contradictions in various accounts of bin Laden’s death, and here is some evidence;
2) where is the evidence for your claim of contradiction regarding Christ? Remember, claims without evidence should be assigned a “very low likelihood” of being true–your standard, just sayin’.
woodchuck64
says...I see no room for skepticism of OBL’s death now that at least three Al-Qaeda groups have confirmed it.
dguller
says...cl
>> 1) there are contradictions in various accounts of bin Laden’s death, and here is some evidence;
Yeah, I read about those contradictions. I find it telling that they were corrected within a few days after new information came in. This is consistent with an evolving narrative that is revised in light of new information. I think that this is inconsistent with propaganda, which would stick with the party line, explain away contradictory information, or just suppress it entirely. Again, I do not get the sense that the White House is trying to evade or hide anything, but that’s just my take.
>> 2) where is the evidence for your claim of contradiction regarding Christ? Remember, claims without evidence should be assigned a “very low likelihood” of being true–your standard, just sayin’.
I cannot remember the specifics, but aren’t the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life contradictory in certain respects? I can look up the specific contradictions if you like, but it would save us both time if you could state whether you already know about them.
cl
says...To clarify, I’m not promoting skepticism or belief or anything, really. I’m just saying that I am personally skeptical–of the whole thing from 9/11 and before, to today–and that when it boils down to it, I’m not familiar with much original evidence. At the end of the day, it seems we’re all just stuck taking big media / big government’s word for things.
woodchuck64,
I understand, but doesn’t this entail some degree of, “I have faith in major media corporations with undisputable ties to political parties and various agendas?” It seems to me that the same problems plague us here as they do in any other assessment. Don’t you think people are conditioned to, “the media says it, so I believe it?” I mean, surely we can’t say that a claim is more likely to be true based solely on the number of sources that repeat it, right?
dguller,
Well, that’s old school propaganda, but propaganda–like anything else–also evolves, and I suspect that “evolved propaganda” would attempt to make things look more natural.
Now see, I like that. It’s conservatively phrased, and doesn’t leave me with the impression that you think your opinion is the only one justified by the evidence. IMO, those are the types of statements we ought to aspire to. Also, just to clarify, I’m not saying the White House is trying to evade or hide anything. I don’t know a damned thing here, but if there is a conspiracy at work here, I would suspect that it’s on a meta level, not the simplistic “the U.S. government” level. IOW, I would expect the White House to be as much a pawn as the rest of us.
Wait–WHAT? If you can’t remember the specifics, why would you claim that they are contradictory? I’m not trying to be provocative or confrontational here, but that strikes me as completely out of line with everything else you write about epistemic responsibility. Are we supposed to have evidence for all of our claims, or not? If yes, what happened here? If no, which types of claims are we supposed to have evidence for? I’m getting a mixed message here.
woodchuck64
says...cl,
I would say a claim’s probability of being true is higher based on the number of sources that are expected to be independent. My trust in media news rests on two empirical claims:
1. The effort to coordinate and protect purely manipulative and manufactured lies across multiple organizations and political factions for any length of time is enormously difficult. We know this in many ways, but perhaps notably from watching the steady stream of successful civil and criminal prosecutions in any court of Law, each case invariably demonstrating the difficulty of deception.
2. Historically, media have gotten things mostly correct and only infrequently screwed up big-time. Therefore, the odds are good that they’ve gotten it right this time.
Now if there are a few supernaturally smart, incredibly lucky and diabolical people out there who can do (1) for long enough to make (2) meaningless as well, then my belief is wrong. But I have not yet seen any good evidence for
that.
dguller
says...cl:
>> Well, that’s old school propaganda, but propaganda–like anything else–also evolves, and I suspect that “evolved propaganda” would attempt to make things look more natural.
Old tricks die hard, though. Look at how the Bush administration used propaganda to sell the Iraq war, massive tax cuts, and other lies. That was textbook propaganda. The only difference was that in old school propaganda, the government directly owned the media, and thus could control its output. In the modern world, the government can manipulate the media more indirectly, and it was only because the media failed in its adversarial role that the Bush administration was able to pull off so many scams upon the American people.
>> Wait–WHAT? If you can’t remember the specifics, why would you claim that they are contradictory?
I do not keep Bible contradictions in my memory, because I know that I can find them when I need to. Such as here: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html
cl
says...woodchuck64,
I see what you’re getting at, but it just seems like an assertion supported by the very trust I’m questioning. How do we know those two claims are true? To your knowledge, is there any full-scale evaluation of media claims over, say, the past few decades or so, such that we could arrive at a reliable comparison between “mostly correct” and “mostly incorrect” stories?
Either way, my gut tells me that yeah, most stories probably are more truth than fiction–but like I said, that’s just my gut. We know how unreliable guts can be, but at other times, guts are quite reliable.
I can’t say I necessarily share that opinion, although I see the purported logic behind it. If a really top-level agency fed the same thing to dozens of lower-level agencies, it wouldn’t seem that hard to maintain an illusion. One’s trust in any given story seems, to me, to require a decent amount of faith–just like many other things.
cl
says...dguller,
That’s part of what I’m getting at, right there.
As far as the contradiction thing, your link to infidels.org kinda misses my point, but I’d rather not press it. Either way, I’m familiar with much of it, and much of it can’t pass as “contradiction” by any sense of the word. For example:
Questions aren’t contradictions. Other alleged “contradictions” hinge on the author’s interpretation of various passages:
Others so-called “contradictions” are simply asserted, for example:
The author’s opinion that Josephus would have mentioned Herod’s “greatest crime” in no way establishes contradiction or error. Other so-called “contradictions” are straight-up laughable, for example:
I mean, give me a break. There’s quite a lot in that link, and most of it strikes me as amateur atheist apologetic. The editor even seems to concede a certain lack of persuasive power here, in the disclaimer.
Ana
says...dguller,
“Maybe an important difference between JC and OBL is that the former lived 2,000 years ago, has few fragments of historical evidence for his existence other than the Gospel accounts, which were written decades later by those who never met him.”
Are you saying this (“written by those who never met him”) is the case with all four gospels? (If) so, how do you figure?
More importantly than who wrote a gospel, is from whom does the information provided in the gospel come from. Something can be eyewitness testimony without having been physcially written by an eyewitness.
-They were written decades later,
It’s not uncommon in ancient writings for written reports to be composed non-contemporaneously. That the gospels were composed in the very century of the events they narrate, is superb.
Avoid imposing modern reporting- standards upon ancient standards.
Here’s something to keep in mind:
“We have the gospels…and it is not correct to dismiss them as works of history, just because they became sacred texts. The gospels and letters of Paul speak of a man named Jesus. Had these texts not become sacred, they would be counted as valid history at some level. Thus, a Jewish man named Yeshua who traveled around teaching and preaching, and was later executed, probably lived.”
(emphasis mine)
Excerpt from a an email response I received (to an inquiry I sent out) from Barbara S. Boyd of the University of Oklahoma.
Ana
says...cl, do you mind it if I post two videos on the geneology issue in the comment section, as they might be of interest to dguller?
cl
says...Ana,
Of course. You can post any videos you like here, any time. Thanks for asking, though.
Wow. I had come to this conclusion independently earlier this afternoon. I thought to myself, “You know, self… if the Bible wasn’t a religious document, I bet its historicity would be much less contested.” After all, many inferior non-religious documents have central figures whose historicity isn’t contested at all. If anyone would like me to expand on that claim, I’d be more than happy to. Pressed for time at the moment…
spec
says...Numerous eyewitnesses exist in the present day, who were aware of him before, during, or after 9/11, who include a large number of relatives, acquaintances, and al Queda members. His existence is implicit in a multiplicity of disjoint governments and organizations and their internal affairs as well as public actions regarding OBL. We have pictures, writings, and even video (implicitly plus audio) of him speaking, sometimes with interviewers. His family members are even talking today.
There are four fundamental strains of information that can be abridged as one question: What is his (non)existence (in)consistent with? The entries in this 2×2 matrix encode the data necessary to determine if it is reasonable for one to believe he ever existed. I have not done any actual paper calculation, but the face-value glance-over demonstrates belief in his nonexistence is, ostensibly, vastly more presumptuous.
Conspiracy theories tend to be weighed down by the number of assumptions they make – especially when those assumptions include so large a number of independent and unconnected factions with unrelated interests. If bin Laden never existed, his identity would be, to my knowledge, the most successful, expansive, and sophisticated – as well as risky, costly, and self-destructive – government fabrication ever pulled off in the history of the world, by many orders of magnitude, and would effectively signal the utter and final end of all reliability of international facts of any sort whatsoever, excepting perhaps those that have come to you via direct immediate experience. A complete global solipsism and a permanent eclipse of planetary knowledge.
What concerns me, cl, is that you’ve not (to my knowledge) demonstrated similar skepticism in Jesus. Nor have you, indeed, apparently bothered using even the most trivial amount of brainpower to distinguish the case of JC from that of present-day OBL in an epistemological sense, despite demonstrating ample ability to have done so if you wanted to. (Do you remember your invocation of the columns in False Argument #22?) You are most certainly not living up to your “freethinker” banner when you so straightly stick to an agenda (that of raising Christianity’s relative plausibility) despite the relative ease with which you could do otherwise.
—–
His body, according to the US gov at least, went into the sea within 24 hours of his being killed, before Obama even gave his address.
I think you’re totally wrong. Most falsehoods (a major source of which appears to be John Brennan) from the initial accounts were in accordance with American interests and put bin Laden in a negative light, and every single contradiction I’m aware of the White House either explained away or did not comment on. Namely: that top security personnel were able to monitor the action in real-time (this speaks to America’s supercool technological capabilities), that bin Laden tried to protect himself using one of his wives (implying he’s a rat-bastard and a coward), that bin Laden tried to fight against the military operatives (justifying the legality of lodging a bullet in his skull), that bin Laden’s compound was worth a million dollars (the big bad living lavishly surely deserves some comeuppance). Even some of our true information is indicative of propaganda: Obama referred to Pakistani agreement and cooperation over bin Laden’s death, giving the illusion Zardari was compliant with the territorial intrusion, and Obama explicitly stated bin Laden was killed after a firefight, corroborated by one of bin Laden’s daughters – meaning the team really had simply captured and then executed him instead of aiming to defend themselves.
When you criticize X, in this case where X = “it takes effort to sustain a lie across multiple independent factions”, it is illogical to negate the very hypothesis you wish to criticize and then attack the negated hypothesis as if that has any bearing on the original. That’s called straw-manning, obviously. In this case you’ve reframed independent factions into a top-down hierarchy, which was not part of the original picture. Also – completely regardless of control structure – the larger the total agency responsible for carrying out a task is, the more degrees of freedom the system has to deviate. This is pure mathematics. And tell me, have you heard of WikiLeaks?
Also, do you have knowledge of secular documents, containing proposed facts contrary to our modern-day beliefs similar in effect to that of religious documents, which have not received as much scholarly scrutiny as said religious documents? What do you think the implications of such would be for our historical-analytical method and the epistemology of religion?
P.S. bin Laden doesn’t use Just for Men because that product doesn’t even exist. The website is a parody and all commercials were part of a practical joke made by four teenagers in the USA. If you personally use JfM then you’ve been sold fraudulent property and should seek the relevant authorities. Your welcome.
[Too lazy to bother looking over my comment another time so I hope it’s polished now.]
dguller
says...Ana:
>> It’s not uncommon in ancient writings for written reports to be composed non-contemporaneously. That the gospels were composed in the very century of the events they narrate, is superb.
That may be good for ancient documents, but it is not good for evidence. Just imagine if a new religion was founded in our century, and was based upon a few documents, each written decades after the events in question, and by authors who never knew about the events first hand, and which contradict themselves. Would you honestly give them a high deal of validity, or would you rightly say that decades are plenty of time for people to distort their memories, to fabricate and confabulate about matters of great importance to them?
I think that all ancient writings should be treated identically as historical documents, and none preferred to any other on the basis of one’s belief system. There are ancient documents that claim that Plato was born of a virgin who was impregnated by Apollo. There are so many ancient documents of people claimed to be fathered by gods, who had supernatural and miraculous powers, and so on, that you would likely have no problem treating with utter skepticism, and reject as mythological. I think that you should apply the same standards to Christian documents about Jesus’ life.
>> Avoid imposing modern reporting- standards upon ancient standards.
Why? Modern standards exist for a reason, i.e. to minimize bias. If you are going to throw them out the window, then you open the door to larger deviations from the truth. You might as well have told me not to use modern logical standards upon ancient documents. After all, logic is only applicable to our day and age.
Furthermore, the farther back we go in history, the less evidence we have, and the less certain we can be of our conclusions. Again, it comes down to sample size. The smaller the sample size, the more likely that random variation can distort results. In other words, if I only question 10 people about something, instead of 500, then I may get a biased sample, and thus my conclusions would be tenuous at best.
dguller
says...cl:
Here’s another one: http://www.innvista.com/culture/religion/bible/contrant.htm
Oh, and are you saying that there are no contradictions in the New Testament about Jesus’ life and message?
dguller
says...And just one more thing about ancient texts.
Muslims made great efforts to not only transmit the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad, but also to record the chain of transmission, and to scrutinize the chains for validity. Only that body of texts that was transmitted by unbroken chains of reliable transmitters and that formed a coherent body of knowledge were accepted as “sound”.
I find that approach far more appealing and legitimate than following documents that were written decades after the events in question, by individuals who were not eyewitnesses, who did not record their chain of transmission, and whose content contains contradictions.
dguller
says...And just some quick mathematics on the reliability of transmission of information. Let us say that whenever a piece of information is transmitted, it remains 99% true. In other words, there is only 1% deviation from the original piece of information.
So, say that the earliest Gospel was written around 70 CE, i.e. the Gospel of Mark. Jesus died around 35 CE, which means that there were around 35 years of verbal and textual communication before the Gospel of Mark was written down. How many times do you think that this information was passed from person to person, or text to text in handwritten copies? Let us say that it was passed on only 20 times, which is ridiculously low, but let’s start there. If it was transmitted 20 times at 99% accuracy, then by the 20th time, it is 81.7% reliable. That means that 20% of the information has been changed already.
It is more likely that information was transmitted hundreds of times, whether verbally initially, and then subsequently recorded and copied. Even if you start with a 99.9% accuracy of transmission, then once you get to 100 links in the chain, then you are down to 90% accuracy by the end, and 200 links in the chain results in 82% accuracy by the end.
And the problem is that without the original sources and information on chains of transmission, we do not know whether what is in the New Testament about Jesus is reliable and what is not, because even those Gospel texts that agree could have been based upon an earlier text that contained an error.
I think that it is fine to speculate about what may have happened in the ancient world, but no-one bets their soul on the details of Caesar’s life, and Caesar is a far better documented figure than Jesus was. The bottom line is that getting to the truth about what happened in the ancient world has an extremely limited range, and should be treated much like trying to predict the weather one month later. There are just too many variables that could distort the accuracy of one’s prediction.
cl
says...spec,
Ha! I didn’t know that about Just For Men.
Very well said, and I agree. Scary thought, isn’t it? I’ll get to the rest of your comment later.
dguller,
Just a few days ago you affirmed to Crude your belief that the positive claimant retains the burden of proof, correct? We can trade links all day, but in this discussion between YOU and I, the burden of proof is on you to prove a genuine contradiction, and then show why–presuming you can prove one–that should be reason to doubt the set of Christian claims, if that is in fact what you are suggesting. You haven’t even lifted a finger yet, so I’m going to invoke your own standard every time, until you do.
therealadaam
says...Hehe, I actually am VERY skeptical about the whole Osama dead thing…
First thing I said was, “Hmm…why no body?” And, like Christ, no body, no crime….err, no person.
Well I’m not sure if Osama was killed way before, if he is still alive, or if he was a scape goat for a bigger conspiracy. It’s possible that our government got him just like they said they said…
dguller
says...cl:
>> Just a few days ago you affirmed to Crude your belief that the positive claimant retains the burden of proof, correct? We can trade links all day, but in this discussion between YOU and I, the burden of proof is on you to prove a genuine contradiction, and then show why–presuming you can prove one–that should be reason to doubt the set of Christian claims, if that is in fact what you are suggesting. You haven’t even lifted a finger yet, so I’m going to invoke your own standard every time, until you do.
Fine. Let’s talk about Jesus’ lineage.
First, why include his lineage on Joseph’s side at all, if God was his real father?
Second, the lists are identical between Abraham and David, but otherwise differ. One says Joseph’s lineage is through Abraham’s son Solomon (Matthew 1:6), and another says it is through Abraham’s son Nathan (Luke 3:31).
There’s your contradiction.
Explain away.
Matt
says...“Did you just mean that we don’t have access to witness Osama bin Laden’s body?”
In Osama’s case there IS a body somewhere. The official story is that he was buried at sea (I hear different reasons, the most popular one seems to be so that there is no shrine at his burial for fanatics). Unless I missed a development in the story, however, all the evidence we have to go on his dead body existing at all is from the official story since pictures (besides that fake one some guy put out on the internet) have not been released.
woodchuck64
says...cl,
I’m sure we can trust our memory on this one. How often does the media get things mostly correct compared to mostly incorrect? I’d say way more than 1000/1 since I can’t put my finger on too many dramatically wrong accounts at the moment. Now if there are numerous massive mistakes that have never come to light, that’s a different story; but that falls into my third option.
This reads to me as an appeal to my third option as well, which is that incredible smart, lucky and diabolical people might exist that can orchestrate complex, serious deception for long periods without ever getting caught. Although such people and machinations might exist, I view Occam’s razor as making it unnecessary to consider them until there is some sort of evidence for their existence that is not also consistent with their absence.
spec
says...dguller,
I think when it comes to merely the historicity of Jesus, Gospel contradictions are relatively moot. You’ve yourself intimated his existence would be followed up by error propagation inherent in the mechanism of oral tradition, thereby demonstrating that the presence of inconsistencies cannot be used to distinguish between a legend and a nonfiction. Thus, amusingly, you shoot your own argument in the foot with that concession. If I misunderstand your train of thought feel free to correct me.
woodchuck64,
First off, my personal impression is that 1000:1 is a dramatically wrong figure. IIRC, about three weeks before April 1st the New York Times reported Merriam-Webster was just about to publish a prank dictionary with “gullible” taken out. Turned out the MW’s website was hacked at about the same time the reporter was tipped off, and they didn’t do any extra research to verify the claim. (The article has, predictably, been taken off the website.)
Second off, your gut feeling will be based off of what news you read and not on what news you don’t read, so it will be biased according to your reading preferences. This is called selection bias, and it is much stronger than you think, if only because the world is a very, very diverse place.
Thirdly, painting a simple ratio over the entirety of media is a pretty useless activity when there is much more complexity behind the situation. Specifically, the distribution of error rates will likely be stratified according to topic, outlet, and even time frame. Breaking news tends to be filled with a lot more falsehoods than less time-constrained research. Sensational topics will attract overblown headlines and exaggerated claims. Political issues and errors derived therefrom will depend on the author, and the political composition of the authors of one outlet is generally distinct from that of another outlet. And so on and so forth.
Fourth, as a more technical point, even when media gets all of its facts literally correct, the subtext and connotation never explicated can often be false and unfounded. Although there’s no body language, no voice intonation, there’s often a psychological foundation of nuanced beliefs underlying the text that can sometimes analyzed by reading the words deeper than face value.
Ana
says...dguller,
” Why? Modern standards exist for a reason, i.e. to minimize bias.”
In modern times, reports of events can even be transmitted live — as they’re happening. In modern times, technology largely facilitates not only the reporting process itself, but corroboration as well. So because we have become accustomed to immediate written (and other forms of) reporting, people now use this expectation of prompt reporting as a litmus test for the gospels.
The better thing to do, is to compare the gospels with other ancient writings — not with our modern practices.
So when skeptics dismiss the gospels on the grounds of the decades gap between when they were written and when Jesus lived, citing it as a “long time” — well long relative to what?
Instead, they should ask themselves : how “fast” were other documents/biographies of the ancient world compiled after the time of the events/people they attest to.
Also, we are not an oral-tradition dependent culture. We are a culture of writing and mass literacy. That was not the case in ancient Palestine, the setting of the gospels. In the ancient world, the vast majority of people could not read or write. Oral transmission of information was customary, so it was of utmost importance. The Jews trained their memories well (memorizing the Old Testament).
Sometimes skeptics try to undermine the faithfulness of oral transmission, by talking about the telephone game — but again, this comparion isn’t a just one. If we were a society that was just as meticulously trained in the art of oral transmission, then we could more accurately compare ourselves to the apostles and what they passed on.
Anyways — we’ve digressed a bit. The issue was the existence of Jesus (which is not compromised just because miracles are associated with his name). When it comes to his existence — whether he really did walk the earth 2,000 years ago — the gospels suffice. To claim Jesus existed is not an extraordinary claim (so to anyone who faithfully adheres to Carl Sagan’s standard) his existence doesn’t need extraordinary evidence.
As to distinct nature of the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, consider the following…:
1. theory that both genealogies are of Joseph — one through his biological father, the other through his father according to Jewish law)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3bsAMyRwbw
2. Matthew’s genealogy is of Joseph — purpose of including his analogy (though counterintuitive to us living in a modern non-Jewish context) was to show that Joseph could NOT be Jesus’ father. Including the name of gentile women served to show Jesus was coming to redeem Jew and Gentile alike. Luke’s genealogy is of Mary — shows Jesus inherits kingship, is descendent of Adam (hence has a human nature), etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qavIXRNXCbY
(2) is the more interesting and meaty one … but (1) has the more appealing visuals!
spec
says...Ana,
You make a valid and important point that, before communications technologies, people would be better trained in oral traditions. However, the following is a dizzyingly wrong idea in isolation:
Truth and reliability are not relative. If two societies have differing capacity to sustain reliability of information (which is the hypothetical contention here), it does not make sense to artificially elevate the perceived reliability of claims in the society with inferior aforementioned capacity. In the above quote you’re basically arguing for an affirmative action stipulation in epistemology; to the contrary, I think a consistent single-standard meritocratic approach is the most intellectually honest one in the general pursuit of truth. Yay or nay?
dguller
says...spec:
>> I think a consistent single-standard meritocratic approach is the most intellectually honest one in the general pursuit of truth. Yay or nay?
Yay.
dguller
says...Spec:
>> I think when it comes to merely the historicity of Jesus, Gospel contradictions are relatively moot. You’ve yourself intimated his existence would be followed up by error propagation inherent in the mechanism of oral tradition, thereby demonstrating that the presence of inconsistencies cannot be used to distinguish between a legend and a nonfiction. Thus, amusingly, you shoot your own argument in the foot with that concession. If I misunderstand your train of thought feel free to correct me.
I think that you and I are actually in agreement. My point was that when it comes to ancient documents, we must be very, very cautious about our interpretations. With the exception of a small set of statements, we really do not know much at all, in fact. The smaller the set of texts, both written and archeological, the less certain we can be about our inferences and interpretations, and when that set of texts contains contradictions, then we must be doubly careful.
With regards to Jesus, I would say that it is possible that a man named Jesus existed, but that the outlines of his life and teachings are just not possible to reliably determine, given the fact that there are few independent corroboratory accounts, and the primary texts were written by partisans with an agenda to promote the Christian religion. Just as one would be cautious about the truths contained in Pravda during the height of the Soviet Union, one must be cautious about the facts presented in the New Testament.
I also agree with your contention that one should adhere to a single standard of the evidentiary support. Otherwise, one would be forced to believe that the Prophet Muhammad was a prophet of God, that he rode a magical beast to Jerusalem one evening and rose to heaven to pray with the other prophets. Why would one reject that textual account and not the Gospel account of Jesus’ miracles? There is no reason other than partisan preference, at least as far as I can see.
woodchuck64
says...spec,
I think it would help if you explained what error ratio or what degree of trust in the media you think is actually warranted. I can read and agree with your four points, and yet find no reason to change my view that the media gets things mostly correct far more often than they get things mostly incorrect. In context, I’m referring to a magnitude of error that would make this article mostly incorrect.
Ana
says...“Truth and reliability are not relative.”
I entirely agree that truth isn’t relative.
As to reliability … isn’t reliability by its very nature a subjective judgement? (Which should explain why there is a spectrum of scholarly views on the reliability of the gospels, from very liberal to very traditional-conservative).
” I think a consistent single-standard meritocratic approach is the most intellectually honest one in the general pursuit of truth. Yay or nay?”
Yay. (At least, what you describe is the ideal anyway).
I want to say though, I was not promoting a sort of, by- default granting of the reliability of the gospels.
Rather, that by the same token, the gospels — which are intended biographies — shouldn’t be swiftly dismissed as unreliable simply because they (and non-uniquely at that) don’t conform to the modern advantage of quickly-textually relaying information.
cl
says...Spec,
My apologies. I said I’d get back to the rest of your response later. I didn’t mean months later… :)
Yes, I understand that. My point is, first-century Christians said the same thing about Jesus.
Similarly–if we take into account the fact that modern record keeping has evolved into an categorically separate species than its first-century predecessor–Jesus’ existence is implicit in a handful disjoint, extant historical references.
Jesus’ family members were also talking then. First-century documentation lacked the privileges of photography and video. I’ll grant that so far as we know, Jesus left no original writings. But there has to be something more than original writing that flips the switch here.
Regarding the existence of OBL, I tend to agree. This is why I think those who claim Jesus never existed are vastly more presumptuous than those who accept the evidence.
Your concern is unfounded. This blog has over 500 posts last I checked, and even if we’re conservative and claim that only 400 of them relate to skepticism in Christianity and Jesus, that’s still a sufficient demonstration of the “skepticism” required to investigate a matter thoroughly.
Hmmm… not really sure how to respond to that. The “columns” logic inspired this post. It appears you think I’m just lollygagging my way through this, but that says more about your opinion of me, than me.
Ah, yes… because giving thoughtful consideration to contemporary issues related to Christianity is *so* sticking to an agenda.