History and the reliability of religion

Gregory

Ok, I am going to use the case of Jesus as an example for my general question about the accuracy of historical and similar fields:

Miracles have been claimed in every religion, society, and region. Even the Illiad speaks of actions of "the gods". Two questions have to be asked about these claims:

1) what are the motives of those writing about the alleged miracles

2) did they get the facts right.

Although I believe miracle claims are a specific category of history, this raises questions about all history. What are the motives of the writers and did they get the facts right?

The case of Jesus seems unique in history because we have a number of detailed accounts of his life and resurrection. Christians even claim his life was prophesied, but I see flaws in this. Prophecy has to be about something unpredictable, highly unlikely, not deliberately fulfillable by latter people, and
certainly written earlier than the events. I don't think the old Testament passes this test. Now, the hole in the Jesus story itself is that the Gospels clearly appear to contradict each other. If they are accepted as the Word of God, you can use mental gymnastics to reconcile them. But as historical documents, we apparently have Christians either making up history or getting it wrong a number of times. It is
reasonable to wonder if Christians did the same from rumors 40 years before when Jesus died.

And again, there are miracle claims in every religion in history. That is essentially what a religion is (claiming the entering of the supernatural into history).

It seems to me we need to accept some of the miracle claims as real, although we don't necessarily have to attribute them to God and we are free to choose which ones to believe in. Miracle claims within history books don't bind us in conscience to believe anything. That is the flaw of people like William Craig who says all reasonable people must believe in the resurrection and in Jesus. Something that binds the conscience to a religion must be far more compelling then old documents from 2000 years ago, in my opinion. Craig can't prove that God resurrected Jesus either. Maybe God doesn't want us to
look for signs for the reason that we can't determine if they come from him, the devil, or somewhere else. Maybe Jesus was in cahoots with the devil, who then entered him and made him appear to die. There is no way to prove the source of real miracles.

Religion has been proven to be like a drug anyway, so it can make people think strange things happen when they really didn't. The Jewish people seem to have a history of schizophrenia too that might go back to the first century.

Now to the direct point: how reliable is history in general? Is it rational to deny that Gettysburg happened? Is it rational to say that Trump might be an extra terrestrial? We trust our history books, but do they accord with Soviet history books? How do we know when it is reasonable to believe in conspiracy, on say global warming, and when not to? Skepticism is a slippery slope, and it can lead someone to take cyanide through lack of belief that it is really poison.

Relativist

The case of Jesus seems unique in history because we have a number of detailed accounts of his life and resurrection. — Gregory

The problems with this claim is that the sources are not independent, the easiest version was written at least 30 years after Jesus' death, and they were written by writers in a different locale, who spoke a different language. Further, the authors , and the people orally transmitting stories before them, were credulous, commited, believers, not dispassionate investigators critically examining the claims. Their motivation was to get more people to believe.

Imagine receiving an analogous document today, written in a Chinese dialect, about a man allegedly rising from the dead in India 30 years ago. Would you consider this to be strong evidence of a miracle?

It doesn't matter if we're considering events from yesterday or 2000 years ago - the same epistemic standards apply.

It seems to me we need to accept some of the miracle claims as real — Gregory

Why think miracles are possible?

Frank Apisa

Why think miracles are possible? — Relativist

Why think anything not conclusively established as impossible...not to be possible.

Miracles may not be "miracles."

But if they are...why are you so certain they are not possible?

Relativist

Why think anything not conclusively established as impossible...not to be possible. — Frank Apisa

Not impossible, just not a live possibility. When your dog disappears, you don't seriously entertain the possibility he was abducted by aliens.

What are you getting at with "miracles may not be miracles"? Bear in mind that the only actual fact is that there is an old narrative before us. You seem to be treating the contents of the narrative as the facts. Consider the empty tomb narrative in Gospel of Mark: does this narrative conclusively establish that Jesus was buried in an identifiable tomb that was later found to be empty? The historical record shows that victims of crucifiction were typically left on the cross to rot and be eaten by animals - a visible deterent against committing crimes against the state. This doesn't preclude the possibility of exceptions, but a narrative written decades later in a foreign land by uncritical believers hardly constitutes strong evidence.

Frank Apisa

You originally wrote: "Why think miracles are possible?"

In response I posed the (appropriate) question: "Why think anything not conclusively established as impossible...not to be possible. — Relativist

Now you are saying, "Not impossible, just not a live possibility."

I'm not sure if you are just kidding around...or if you realize you made a mistake and are trying to avoid acknowledging the mistake by beating around the bush.

So, let me change the question to: Why do you suppose miracles are not a "live possibility"...whatever that means?

Relativist

↪Frank Apisa

Yes, I see that I made an error when I asked, "Why think miracles" possible? " and then shifting to "live" possibility. Sorry. But personally, I lean toward physicalism - which would imply miracles are not possible. I'm not committed to physicalism - I'm willing to consider miraculous explanations, but strong evidence would be needed.

So, let me change the question to: Why do you suppose miracles are not a "live possibility"...whatever that means? — Frank Apisa

A live possibility is one that you include in your epistemic analysis, particularly in abductive reasoning - identifying the best explanation for a set of facts.

I don't consider miracles a live possibility because I think physicalism is probably true. I admit to an anti-miracle bias, but I'm willing to reconsider if a good case can be made.

Enough about me, tell me why you think a miracle should be given serious consideration with respect to anything associated with Jesus. i.e. explain why you think miracles are possible, identify when you should consider a miraculous explanation (i.e. it's a live option), and then tell me what sort of evidence would be needed to establish any specific miracle.

Gnomon

Although I believe miracle claims are a specific category of history, this raises questions about all history. What are the motives of the writers and did they get the facts right? — Gregory

Obviously, the usual motive of Old Testament prophets was not to dispassionately record history, or to predict events thousands of years later. Instead, like modern pulpit preachers, they were admonishing and reprimanding their fellow countrymen who were straying from the strait & narrow path of their tribal religion. To drive home the point, they predicted swift & certain consequences of sin. They used allegories and metaphors to illustrate the strained relationship between God and Man. But those metaphors were never literally "true", and were intended for a specific time & place. Yet later interpreters liberally re-interpreted the intention & application of the remonstrations to suit their own time & place & purpose.

As for the miracles, most ancient peoples assumed that their gods and divine agents were capable of performing miracles. So, they either were awed by tricksters, or accepted miraculous stories on faith in second hand knowledge. Such faith in religious authorities was true for the ancient Greeks, and is still true for worldly cynical Americans. The difference is that now, with TV cameras and cell phones everywhere, we have the ability to document such supposedly supernatural events. But, it still requires a bit of skepticism to see the "trick" behind the miracle. :wink:

Re-interpretation of Prophecy : https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634

Indian Levitation Trick : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6cOmJjuh9o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8seNaEg-3K4

Frank Apisa

Relativist
1.2k
↪Frank Apisa Yes, I see that I made an error when I asked, "Why think miracles" possible? " and then shifting to "live" possibility. Sorry. But personally, I lean toward physicalism - which would imply miracles are not possible. I'm not committed to physicalism - I'm willing to consider miraculous explanations, but strong evidence would be needed.

So, let me change the question to: Why do you suppose miracles are not a "live possibility"...whatever that means?
— Frank Apisa
A live possibility is one that you include in your epistemic analysis, particularly in abductive reasoning - identifying the best explanation for a set of facts.

I don't consider miracles a live possibility because I think physicalism is probably true. I admit to an anti-miracle bias, but I'm willing to reconsider if a good case can be made. — Relativist

A quick comment or two here...then I'll got to your further question to me.

The "miracle" is a weird word...and needs lots of context. A simple thing like a flashlight would be considered a miracle if viewed in the context of a 5th Century setting.

Penicillin and its uses would have been considered a miracle in the context of 19th Century medicine. During Civil War days, Propofol would have been considered the greatest miracle of all time, both by surgeons and soldiers getting damaged limbs amputated. Ryan Newman surviving his crash at Daytona...is referred to as a miracle.

Enough...my point is that one man's "miracle" is another's product of physicalism.

Enough about me, tell me why you think a miracle should be given serious consideration with respect to anything associated with Jesus. — Relativist

I think none of those supposed "miracles" should be given serious consideration. Most of the so-called miracles associated with the ministry of Jesus sound like bullshit to me. But it is bullshit that makes many people happy...so I would say, FINE! Let them live with it...no need for me to burst any bubbles that are helping people be happy.

i.e. explain why you think miracles are possible, identify when you should consider a miraculous explanation (i.e. it's a live option), and then tell me what sort of evidence would be needed to establish any specific miracle.

I am of the Richard Feynman school of what it takes to "establish" any facts that can be used in a discussion of this sort. (It takes a hell of a LOT!)

If every newspaper on planet Earth received a mysterious letter-to-the-editor saying, "I am GOD...and to prove I am, I intend to cause the planet Jupiter to disappear from the Solar System for 24 hours beginning at 8:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time, June 1st, 2020 and ending at 7:59:59 AM on June 2nd...

...AND IT HAPPENED...

...I would NOT consider it a miracle.

To me, it would just be something that happened.

Same thing holds for other things that seem "mysterious"...which mostly means that we cannot explain them. I have no problem accepting that humans cannot explain EVERYTHING...and that there occasionally will be things that happen which no human will ever be able to explain.

I also have no problem with using the term "miracle" to denote such events.

BC

2) did they get the facts right. — Gregory

There are two histories to consider here:

a) whatever it was that actually happened
b) the account of what is believed to have happened

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (whoever they actually were -- we don't know), and Paul wrote down what they thought had happened. They, and others, wrote down, repeated from an oral record, or made up as liturgy a body of material which the early church edited into the New Testament book.

The account of what is believed to have happened is a reliable record. We can trust it. Some other group didn't come along 400 years (say, like in 700 AD) and rewrite it.

We have no record of what actually happened. No secretary or historian was following Jesus and the Twelve around Israel, taking notes, making sketches, conducting interviews, or arranging independent medical exams of the healed and resuscitated dead. Paul never met Jesus (he did meet Peter and another Disciple or two, and reportedly they did not spend their time together discussing the weather.).

The closest we can come to what actually happened is the record of what some people thought HAD HAPPENED quite a few years prior to their writing (or their birth, for that matter). We can be confident that the New Testament is an accurate and true record of what some people 1800 years ago thought to be the case.

Believe it or not? This is where the commitment to believe comes in. One can decide to believe that the New Testament is not only a record of what some people thought happened, but that it is an accurate record of what actually did happen. The gap has to be leaped over through the will to believe.

I am willing to conditionally believe that the New Testament probably has some sort of connection to aspects of the life of someone named Jesus, who was probably put to death, probably by crucifixion after his activities became intolerable to the establishment. Did he raise Lazarus from the dead? Don't know; Lazarus' body had already begun to rot, so... it seems extremely problematic.

If you want to believe in miracles (however you define them) then do so -- but for events termed "miraculous", I do not think there are any "facts" to be had. What are the facts about the miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes? Some girls reported seeing the BVM. That's about it for facts.

Relativist

↪Frank Apisa

OK, but that definition of "miracle" doesn't seem very useful. It's useful to have a term that distingushes between events that are physically possible (consistent with the actual laws of nature), and those that are not.

Frank Apisa

Relativist
1.2k
↪Frank Apisa OK, but that definition of "miracle" doesn't seem very useful. It's useful to have a term that distingushes between events that are physically possible (consistent with the actual laws of nature), and those that are not. — Relativist

There is a significant problem with that in the context of our present discussion, Relativist...one that should be obvious to everyone.

You essentially are saying, "Let us define "a miracle" as as something that is not physically possible...

...and then have a debate about whether miracles are possible.

Do you see the incongruity with that?

Relativist

There is a significant problem with that in the context of our present discussion, Relativist...one that should be obvious to everyone. — Frank Apisa

You can use whatever definition you like for purposes of your discussion. I was just making a general comment not directly related to what you were saying.

TheMadFool

del

TheMadFool

1) what are the motives of those writing about the alleged miracles

2) did they get the facts right. — Gregory

In my humble opinion the link between miracles, taken as they are as suspensions of the laws of nature, and god/the divine is very tenuous at best or simply nonexistent at worst. The idea seems to be that to break the laws of nature requires a higher power and for the faithful there's only one candidate that satisfies this condition viz. god.

I don't know how people convince themselves of the factuality of miracles but the normal reaction to extraordinary claims seems to be disbelief and prompts careful examination of the evidence rather than to immediately infer a divine hand. Doesn't this indicate in Humean fashion that people consider being mistaken or even deceived a more likely possibility than the occurrence of an actual miracle?

Those who wrote about miracles with total conviction of their actuality have passed the checkpoint of disbelief described above - the evidence supports a violation of the natural order. At this point they would require an explanation for the miraculous event and that explanation for theists can be nothing other than god. Is this reasonable?

Perhaps an example from science can shed light on the matter: Newton discovered his laws of motion that explained the movement of the planets and moons with one exception, Mercury, which then is a miracle in Newtonian physics but people, scientists to be specific, didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that Mercury's orbit was guided by the hand of god. Instead they looked for another better theory that could explain Mercury's motion. If I recall correctly, Einstein's theory produced the correct explanation for Mercury's orbit. So you see, a miracle may actually point to a deficiency in our explanatory theories/understanding rather than a violation of the laws of nature. In other words miracles may not be violations of the natural order but actually indications that our understanding of the universe isn't up to the mark.

Gregory

But if someone's dog go missing, why is it unreasonable to assume aliens did it? Is it because this makes the same mistake as the theists when in assuming God's hand? What is closest to us in causality is a mystery, but it seems to be blind force and human agency

tim wood

Now to the direct point: how reliable is history in general? — Gregory

Perhaps not so simple a question as you might imagine. There is a sense in which there is no such thing as history: that is, what passes for history is simply present activity. Not especially useful, but it directs attention to the activities and practices of the historian.

History itself is credited to Herodotus and Thucydides, both dying roughly 400 BC. Before them, it was myths and legends and stories about the gods. I, myself, cannot square this with the record keeping that older civilizations certainly did - a research problem.

The two Greeks made the effort to record events accurately by their standards. After them, and until (very roughly) 1850, history was usually and mostly the activity of citing ancient authority and perhaps adding one's own interpretive comment. Then, slowly, it turned to doing original research and reporting on that. A long-time assumption was that history follows certain laws, which it is (was) the business of historians to reveal, so as, presumably, to control it. Francis Fukuyama was only a more recent edition of those who thought that history would be revealed as the kind of thing about which a science would evolve, his contribution being that (c. 1992) history was at an end, meaning that government had achieved its terminal plateau in development.

I think it's fair to say that most historians today would agree that history has achieved a status as a science, not as a predictive science but rather in terms of the how it's gathered, presented, and understood. The lessons therefrom being cautionary and general rather than a priori.

How reliable is it, is your question. That, it seems to me, depends on exactly what history you're questioning, E.g.:

We trust our history books, but do they accord with Soviet history books? — Gregory

And this is interesting because reading a Soviet era encyclopedia is an eye-opening experience. Not because they materially misrepresent facts but because on a given canvas of facts they erect(ed) interpretations entirely at odds with democratic-capitalist interpretations. An indirect approach to experiencing something like reading a soviet-era encyclopedia is got in reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Not that he was anything Soviet, but rather that his book's presentation is a radical departure from the history that most of us learn in school.

My rules for my understanding history are, does it make sense? Could it have happened? Does it accord with reason and what is known? And anyone who thinks these should suffice might consider the histories of the development of the sciences of geology and paleontology. Bottom line: hearsay is automatically suspect. When infected with miracles, then no, with the caveat that the miracle reported may be just an attempt to interpret an event by people who did not understand it, but who had to give some account of it.

A good book about history is R.G. Collingwood's The Idea of History.

alcontali

Miracles have been claimed in every religion, society, and region. — Gregory

Ha, no, there are no miracles in Islam itself, i.e. performed by the prophet of Islam, may he rest in peace.

However, Islam refuses to comment negatively on miracles mentioned in other religions. Especially the miracles performed by Jesus are confirmed in detail and also in globo:

And We gave unto Jesus, son of Mary, clear miracles. — Quran 2:87

Gnomon

It seems to me we need to accept some of the miracle claims as real, although we don't necessarily have to attribute them to God and we are free to choose which ones to believe in. Miracle claims within history books don't bind us in conscience to believe anything. — Gregory

If you accept one "miracle claim" in an ancient text, on what basis could you reject other claims? We may be "free to choose" randomly, but that's not an informed or reasoned choice. The whole point of skepticism is to protect your own belief system from erroneous information.

That's why most of us judge the veracity of "historical" events, first -- as the opinions of fallible humans, and second -- in the context of our personal worldview. If you already believe in supernatural intervention in world affairs, you may be inclined to accept a miraculous claim, unless you have reason to be skeptical of the person recounting the story. You may reject his general worldview, because it differs from yours in some details. For example, if you are a Bible believing Christian, would you also accept stories of miracles in the Quran? If you believe that Jesus died and was resurrected, would you also believe that Muhammad rode a winged horse (buraq) to heaven?

As you say, just because miracles are presented in "scriptures" as-if they were actual historical events, readers are not bound (except by Blind Faith) to believe them without some verifiable corroborating evidence. That's why some dubious Christians and Muslims expend a lot of energy trying to find non-scriptural support for their belief in recorded miracles. Ironically, some even try to explain them in terms of natural forces (e.g. parting of Red Sea by earthquake), just to make them sound sensible, even though that waters-down the miraculous aspect. :nerd:

History and the reliability of religion

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