A few readers have indicated to me that my recent series of posts on the problematic use of Bayes Theorem for assessing “historical claims” have failed to make their intended point.
Hopefully here I can succinctly explain why Bayes cannot help us decide whether Christianity began with a historical Jesus.
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? What did others do during the time of Jesus or after him that shaped or established Christianity? Those are the meaningful questions. Simply saying Jesus did or did not exist is somewhat pointless — unless, perhaps, one wants a negative answer in order to irritate believers.
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.
I suspect King Philip II of Spain saw the odds of his Spanish Armada crushing the English fleet as overwhelmingly high. The odds against an event happening are irrelevant are irrelevant if they happen. And many times the unexpected and “out of the blue” does happen in history. That they may have been judged to have been unlikely at the time makes no difference to the fact that they happened and are part of the historical record.
Most historical events are “unlikely” or unforeseen until after they happen. After they happen commentators and the rest of us can see how “inevitable” they were. We can always predict what will happen after it happens. Carrier’s mythicist hypothesis can predict the type of evidence the historian will find after the hypothesis was originally formulated on the basis of that evidence. One might look at any number of events in the past and ask, What was the likelihood of X happening? The chances that I will be struck by lightning are very slim indeed. But if I were to be struck by lightning this weekend — stormy weather appears to be approaching — the odds against it happening will mean absolutely nothing against the fact (fingers crossed it won’t be a fact) that it “happened”! Odds against something happening are meaningless when investigating “what did happen”.
We don’t need Bayesian calculations to decide whether there was a Roman empire, or whether its emperors were worshiped as deities, or whether the Roman power destroyed the Jewish temple in 70 CE. The kind of evidence we have for the “raw facts” of the past, including who lived and who did what, are grounded in the same kinds of judgments we make in testing the authenticity of modern claims, whether they be events reported in the news or checking the reliability of advertised claims about a product that interests us. Some of us are less careful with respect to such matters than is healthy and easily believe false claims, present and past. When a historian is interested in whether “new facts” can be dug up to throw new light on a question, it is to the archives, to official records, to diaries and letters and reports of various kinds that they turn. These are tested for authenticity and reliability. If there is doubt about any detail it is more likely to find its way into publication by way of a footnote — with its questionable status clearly noted.
The only justifiable approach to reconstructing Christian origins is to build on the sources we have and on what we know about them — not on what we surmise about them. That approach will not allow us to join in the games of imagining what Jesus and his followers may have done. (We have stories of Jesus and we cannot assume — without justification that would pass the test in any other field of sound empirical inquiry — that they must be based on true events.) We will not have the wealth of details we would like if we avoid make-believe games. But the professional will not apologize for tailoring the question and scope of inquiry to accord with the extent and nature of the source material.
Sure, there is room for Bayesian probability when it comes to drawing certain kinds of inferences from archaeological data or for comparing the likelihood of competing hypotheses, but claiming that so-and-so did or did not exist is by itself a rather meaningless exercise for the reason I stated above.
(See also the section of my earlier post pointing out that not even postmodernist historians work with “what probably happened“.)
To address one specific point I referred to in my recent series: It may well be that one can find in literature more mythical persons who fit a Rank-Raglan hero type, but that is irrelevant to the fact that some historical persons did resurface in later literature wearing Rank-Raglan features (born of a virgin, died on a hill, etc). But even Raglan himself understood that the historicity of a figure was unrelated to the fact that fanciful tales were later told about him or her. 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.
Neil Godfrey
Latest posts by Neil Godfrey (see all)
- Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context - 2025-01-10 21:18:06 GMT+0000
- New Book Questioning Authenticity of Paul’s Letters - 2025-01-09 00:00:44 GMT+0000
- Justifiable Appeal to Consensus; Take 2 - 2025-01-08 05:10:28 GMT+0000
If you enjoyed this post, please consider donating to Vridar. Thanks!
I am not a scholar, just a person raised and educated Roman Catholic who developed, in high school, a curiosity about the nuts and bolts of early church history. Research into what objectively is known and objectively can be known eventually led me to the following attitude: Given how deeply Jesus or the Jesus character is embedded in Christian-rooted cultures, I happen to find it immensely interesting to have concluded that we can’t know if Jesus or anyone like the Jesus character actually existed. As to the origins of Christianity, we assume that stories about Jesus or some sort of Jesus character were somehow at the root of what has come down to us as Christianity. The stories could have some degree of historicity or not — it makes no difference in their ability to inspire belief in or appreciation of a wide range of Christianities from fundamentalist to metaphorical or allegorical.
Hermann Detering was a Christian with a _principled_ objection to believing that Jesus was a historical figure. He seems to have felt that Christianity was too noble a belief system to be corrupted by reality (not a quote or even a careful paraphrase).
As another Catholic-raised present-atheist, that’s the kind of Christianity I could join.
Thomas Brodie was another. He likewise held fast to the Christian faith while believing the Jesus story to be a “noble myth” about God’s love.
Agreed. Yes, the question is of public interest and personal relevance to many. The most responsible answer a historian should offer is that we cannot know, that we have no evidence for his existence that is comparable to the kinds of evidence we have for other known historical persons.
The more fruitful historical question is this — if Christianity never existed, what would exist in its place?
For example, would Morality be much different than it is today? Bruno Bauer (the young Hegelian) showed how much New Testament authors owed to Roman Moral philosophers like Seneca the Younger.
John Dominic Crossan, for example, recently posited that a historical Jesus is hardly distinguishable from itinerant Cynic philosophers so common in the Roman Empire.
Even Hegel (1830) had shown Virgin Births, Divine Incarnations, Trinities, and promises of Immortality long before Christianity.
Even the Morality of persecution of gay people long predates Christianity — famous in ancient China and ancient Persia, for example.
What would the world look like WITHOUT Christianity? Nietzsche (“The Antichrist,” 1888) was mistaken, I say, to imagine a utopian world of Roman aristocrats worshipping Dionysus.
A quasi-Christian global civilization existed long before Christianity in Rome, Persia, and much of the ancient world. Monasteries and convents, for example, were unknown in Judaism and first century Christianity — but were centuries old in the Far East and already common in Rome.
As for a historical Jesus — the scholar Morton Smith (not an apologist) did much to recognize the flesh-and-blood figure of Jesus in his book, “Jesus the Magician,” (1977). It does not matter that Magic is superstition — what truly matters is that Magicians were always a historical typus — and everything about Jesus matches that typus.
What made Jesus of Nazareth unique was that he was the first (and perhaps only) Jewish prophet who was also an exorcist — and the first (and perhaps only) exorcist who was also a Jewish prophet. Yet both are recognizable social types from the ancient Levant.
As for the Jewish doctrine of an End Time, a General Resurrection, and a Last Judgment in which the righteous are sent to heaven for an afterlife with angels, while the wicked are sent to hell for an afterlife with demons — all that is much older than the Jewish prophets.
Apocalyptic culture reaches back to the Gathas of Zarathustra, which date before Exilic times (~540 BC; perhaps earlier than ~900 BC, according to some historians).
It is no coincidence that Apocalyptic religion began with the Persian “Farsi” priests and appeared in Judea among “Pharisee” priests only after the Persians had populated Yehud (~540 BC) in Judea.
Nor is it a coincidence that the so-called Apostle Paul was raised as a Pharisee before becoming the most influential of all Christians. Nor is it a coincidence that whole segments of Paul’s Epistles match whole segments of the writings of his contemporary, Seneca the Younger — as demonstrated by Bruno Bauer (1877).
If not Christianity, what? That’s the question historians should ask, in my reading.
No that question isn’t useful for historians either. Counterfactuals aren’t particularly productive in historical analysis because there is simply no way to predict or determine what would have been there instead of Christianity. As Neil points out, you can’t account for so much of history, because so many unlikely and unpredictable things happen. So, these sort of “what if Christianity never existed?” questions are completely pointless except to science fiction and historical fiction authors who want to sell a novel or two. Actual historians shouldn’t waste time on useless hypotheticals that will accomplish literally nothing.
It’s like the philosophical trolley problem (which has been criticized as a semi-useless tool, and non-educational for decades now). A complete waste of time, with no real application or relation to morals in the world, and only exists for college classrooms, so students can meander over a ten page term paper. These kinds of thought experiments are, functionally, useless except as entertainment. Same goes for these counterfactual “what-ifs” of “what if Christianity didn’t exist?” So what? Who cares? It doesn’t change the world we live in, even if you could reasonably answer that question (which you couldn’t).
Re “What might Jesus have done that gave birth to the Christian religion?”
This implies that Jesus was the founder of Christianity and it seems not to be the case.
Point 1: Is Christianity more about Jesus or about Paul?
Point 2: In the book “The Jesus Hoax: How St. Paul’s Cabal Fooled the World for Two Thousand Years” the author, David Skrbina makes the case that Paul created Christianity to undermine the Roman empire and save Judaism. This not outlandish and fits all of the data and also provides a motivation for the spread of Christianity.
Point 3: In the book “After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements” it is made clear that “Christianity did not exist in that time period. There were so many types of groups one could categorize as Jesus followers, that one has to ask. If the people of that time couldn’t figure out what Christianity was, why would we think we can?
With regard to your point of using Bayes theorem on historical issues (and my experience is almost exclusively from reading Richard Carrier’s works, the objection I had was that Carrier was too generous in providing priors to many of the questions he addressed. Since even with those oh, so generous priors assumed, the probabilities of there being many truths available was still minimal, I guess that is why Carrier did his analyses that way.
And, as far as saying Bayes theorem is not applicable, that is nonsensical. It is a tool, designed to evaluate claims, and using it is no different from using a magnifying glass to see something small.
Re “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.”
So, his doesn’t even serve as an assessment of the current state of the evidence? You aren’t looking for proof, are you? All historical facts are probabilistic in nature. There is no such thing as proof.
Re “Sure, there is room for Bayesian probability when it comes to drawing certain kinds of inferences from archaeological data or for comparing the likelihood of competing hypotheses, but claiming that so-and-so did or did not exist is by itself a rather meaningless exercise for the reason I stated above.”
So, it is not the use of Bayes’ theorem that is problematical, it is the questions addressed by the researchers? So, why is the title of this piece “The Folly of Bayesian Probability in Doing History”?
This is the first piece of yours I have read, and I have been reading them for a long time, that seems strangely biased.
“So, it is not the use of Bayes’ theorem that is problematical, it is the questions addressed by the researchers? ”
The trouble is that probably all interesting historical questions are too complex for statistical analysis. Mathematics in general, including its half-brother statistics, deal only with idealized and exsanguinated abstractions, and are not applicable to the real world.
That said, Carrier’s book has a lot of interesting content; but it was silly to try to precisely quantify his analysis.
I disagree. There is nothing probabilistic about “the fact” that Japanese aircraft bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. There is nothing probabilistic about the fact that Rome once ruled the Mediterranean or that her armies destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. Those are known facts empirically established.
I know one hears so often that we can say nothing certain about the past but that claim is confusing two different things. I illustrated these two different things with the way Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor can be described by historians. The fact of the event is not a probability. What is open to debate are other questions arising from that known and sure fact of history. See my illustration of this point.
Nothing wrong with Bayes as a tool for calculating probabilities. Nothing at all. But what I disagree with is that “doing history” is fundamentally about “probabilities”. Historians study the past events. Those events are on the whole known facts empirically established. They are not, for most part, probability statements.
Historians explore questions arising from those empirically established known and certain events of the past.
I think the fundamental point of difference between your view, Neil, and those who disagree is summed up in these quotes from you:
“Historical events are unique and not subject to probability calculations.”
“The fact of the event is not a probability.”
“Those events are on the whole known facts empirically established.”
Those of us who disagree with you, I think, disagree here. Petr spend a long time explaining the maths, partly I think because the probability does not get to 1. It just doesn’t, that’s not how it works! It also shifts more than you might expect after a few iterations.
Similarly, ALL reasonable claims came to be credible through at least subconscious Bayesian reasoning. So the (maybe subconscious) reason you don’t doubt the Pearl harbour narrative is because you have gone through a process of assessing multiple bits of evidence **in exactly the way RC does for the Jesus example** and the result is very close to, but not actually 1. When people reason validly, that’s what they do. I imagine you disagree with this assertion!
Also to quick point on the lack of multiple ‘rolls of the dice’: it is not the event itself that is repeated, but bits of evidence considered one after the other. Exactly as has been done to establish the Roman Empire and WW1 and Pearl Harbour. There is mountains of ‘expected’ evidence which would be ‘predicted’ on the hypothesis that WW1 happened. All this evidence can be plugged into a Bayesian calculation. There is not some magic, separate process for determining these ‘known’ facts that differs from false or unsure ones.
Is there not a difference between empirically determining that an event happened or a person existed and assessing the probability that an event or person happened? The difference is one of method and conclusion.
Carrier speaks of certain types of information being beyond Bayes — such as knowing for a fact that you are reading these words on a screen right now. But Carrier would have done well to have paused to think through that exception and to ask where the dividing line might be between empirical and probability determinations. He would have had to conclude, I believe, that there is no sliding scale but a difference in types of knowledge and the grounds for different types of “knowing” — that is, two different types of knowledge each in their own buckets. Not a sliding scale.
Our belief that we really are reading these words right now is empirical knowledge, not probability assessments. We are relying on the evidence we can see before us to know, empirically, that we are reading these words. Empirical knowledge extends to what we learn from reading inscriptions on coins or monuments uncovered by archaeologists. There is room for debate over the contents of what we read, but that someone produced those coins and inscriptions is empirically determined and not a question of probability assessment.
Our knowledge or belief that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor does “reach” 1 so there is no room for any doubt at all. The only room for doubt I can see here is if we go all the way and say we cannot know anything, period, such as not even knowing for sure that we are reading these words right now. In that case, literally everything is probable so that probability itself loses its meaning and usefulness as a concept.
We can choose in retrospect to apply Bayesian reasoning to whether the Pearl Harbor attack happened, but that is a theoretical exercise in retrospect and is not the reason we know it happened.
It is the difference between empirically derived information and probability assessments.
But in history we do know that certain events happened in the past and certain actors did such and such, etc. There are no doubts with empirically established information. That Julius Caesar existed and did certain things (conquest of Gaul, reforms in Rome, etc) has no room for probability assessments except in retrospect as a theoretical exercise. We have the independently confirmed and established evidence that leaves no room for doubts as to the basics. The historian does not dispute those. Questions arise over motives, consequences, details but not the core events.
In another discussion thread (Part 2), I have expressed my (vague) future plan to write a summary of my understanding of what is going on here.
Now I just feel like adding a remark on my impression that the basic notions around which the discussion evolves are not clarified; then the discussion can be endless, making not much sense after all.
Instead of Pearl Harbor, let me take the Apollo moon-landing event (that I saw on TV as a boy) as an example, which can hopefully lead towards a clarification of one basic notion.
I voice several assumptions, testing if we all agree on them:
1/ One can create a scenario S in which the Apollo moon-landing event in 1969 did not happen, since it was only faked; we know that such scenarios were indeed suggested.
2/ If such a scenario S is very carefully elaborated then all the evidence that we have cannot really contradict S.
3/ The meaning of the word “impossible” (for the use in this discussion) does not allow us to say “it is impossible that S of the case 2 is true”. We are only justified to say “S is extremely improbable”.
4/ If a scenario S is not impossible but “only” extremely improbable, then the probability that S is true is non-zero (for us, who only have the evidence that we have). This entails that the probability of any scenario S’ that contradicts S is not 1 (for us).
Exactly so — your shift in an illustration for the point of discussion only illustrates my point. Conspiracy theorists jettison empirical testing of ideas and substitute question-begging, confirmation-bias notions. Of course Bayes is great for challenging conspiracy theories. A perfect and valid use of Bayes.
But you cannot apply probabilistic reasoning to the empirically established events of history for reasons I have attempted to explain.
Petr, a constant theme in your responses is, it seems to me, an attempt to explain the process of Bayesian reasoning as new information comes to light. I understand the process and the mathematics used. See, for example, my use of Bayes theorem applied to the question of the “Brother of the Lord” — https://vridar.org/2012/04/22/putting-james-the-brother-of-the-lord-to-a-bayesian-test/
I earlier posted a link to around 50 other posts of mine about Bayes. To keep it simple, here is just one more: https://vridar.org/2011/06/08/bayes-theorem-and-the-jesus-mythicism-historicity-conflict/
I believe I do understand the process. I “believe in Bayes”, you might say — but I do not believe it can be used for one off contingent events that are empirically established. And every known event in history falls into that category. We know Julius Caesar was assassinated by empirical confirmation from the sources. Probabilistic reasoning used to confirm that event and it is not an event that has any smidgen of a degree less than a probability of 1.
My sentence “I voice several assumptions, testing if we all agree on them:” was meant as a yes/no question; let me formulate the question explicitly:
Neil, do you agree with my assumptions 1,2,3, and 4? Yes, or no?
Why do you ask? What are you trying to argue? I agree and acknowledge that Bayes theorem is a valid tool in many situations. Are you trying to convince me to accept what I already accept? Do you understand what my point is? Can you encapsulate in your own words what I am arguing?
Petr — if you are serious about an honest and serious discussion, I implore you, please try, just try, to set out what you believe my argument to be. What is it you think you are trying to argue against? Please … I am really confused by what seems to me to be a wild series of attempts to simply avoid the point I am trying to make. I have asked for this more than once, now, and you seem to refuse point blank. If you continue in your refusal I will begin to think you are a troll.
But if you think it is relevant, here are my responses to each point:
We can imagine anything we like. What is your point and how does it relate to my argument? You asked if I agree with your “assumptions” — I don’t see any “assumption” here, I only see a point blank proposition. What is your point?
So? What does this have to do with empirically establishing an event in reality? Are you really positing a scenario where I have to accept only evidence you allow for a particular mind-game? Αnything can be proved if we make up rules like that. What is your point? Again, you are not presenting an assumption here but rather a point blank proposition.
I don’t know of any scenario that I have encountered arguing for the moon landing being a hoax that leaves anything that is not “contradictable”. Are you trying to tell me that there are water-tight arguments that the moon landing was a hoax and no-one can dispute those arguments? If so, I have to disagree with you.
But this is becoming tiresome. I am beginning to think you have not bothered a moment to try to understand my argument and are only flying off the handle in some misguided attempt to say Bayes is a valid way of reasoning about everything.
Again, what is the assumption you are asking me to agree to? Of course if you set the rules as to what is impossible etc you leave me no choice but to play your game. Now please Petr — I have attempted to understand your point of view so please try to understand mine. What is it that you are arguing against? What is it that you think I believe that you have to prove wrong?
>4/ If a scenario S is not impossible but “only” extremely improbable, then the probability that S is true is non-zero (for us, who only have the evidence that we have). This entails that the probability of any scenario S’ that contradicts S is not 1 (for us).
So what? Do you not understand a word of my argument? Do you know the difference between empirically established event and a probability of an event?
Are you trying to prove to me that the Pearl Harbor bombing “probably happened”? It is your turn to answer my question. Is that what you are saying?
Are you trying to persuade me to agree that there is no certainty about ANYTHING (that is, “anything” beyond something as basic as ‘knowing you are reading these words right now’) in life and that EVERYTHING is a matter of degrees of probability? Is that your position? If so, please say so directly.
What do you understand by empirically established fact? Does such a concept exist in your thinking?
If you are not simply a troll then answer my questions.
Neil, I have no interest to engage in an emotional discussion.
I felt indebted to you, since I read many interesting texts on your blog in the past. Now I was hoping to provide some useful feedback to you, but this obviously has not worked. So I am now just sending best wishes to you.
(Of course, you can have a last word here if you wish, it is your blog anyway; but I do not plan to react anymore.)
I simply asked you to tell me what it is that you think I misunderstand or what, specifically, I am in error in stating. Asking for you to clarify your disagreement with me is not “an emotional discussion” from my part. But your refusal to do so despite my repeated requests does wear my patience a little. I believe I have been very patient and “unemotional” with your responses, taking time to respond fully. I only ask you do the same with my requests of you.
Proposing fanciful scenarios in an effort to respond to my real-world ones does lead me to think you are not grasping my point. I am disappointed you are bowing out without explanation or clarification of what, exactly, I have misunderstood about Carrier’s use of Bayes — after all the time I have taken to try to engage with you.
Perhaps someone else who has been following this discussion might like to take Petr’s side and try to explain to me what exactly I do not appear to have understood about Carrier’s use of Bayes.
I re-read my earlier reply and can see how you took it as “emotional” — but I can assure you I was quite serious and and honest in my questions — they were sincere questions, not emotional reactions. I really am trying to understand what it is that you believe I misunderstand. I am getting quite lost with your alternative scenarios of which I am having great difficulty seeing their relevance to my position.
I am still once more responding, so that you do not think that I am impolite or that I am unable to “swallow” your sentence “If you are not simply a troll then answer my questions.”
(Btw, I am aware that there is a -nonzero- probability that you wrote, in fact, “If you are not simply tired …” but on the way from your keyboard to the server the sequence “tired” changed to “a troll” by errors of the communication lines. Nevertheless, I use Bayesian reasoning, and though my prior expectation (also called probability) of your possible using of “troll” was low, now, by getting the evidence I have, my posterior confidence (probability) that it happened is virtually 1.)
In my opinion, the main problem of your several-part treatise can be demonstrated on your currently last sentence “Empirically established knowledge is not the same as Bayesian probabilistic knowledge.”, by which, from my viewpoint, you create a false dilemma.
I suppose we both agree that no historian is born with the knowledge whether or not Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, or whether or not Pontius Pilate ordered Jesus of Nazareth to be crucified, etc. etc.
But you seem not to agree that such events, as well as surrounding circumstances etc. etc., should be approached (by the historian) with -the same kind of reasoning-, which can be characterized as Bayesian reasoning.
Neil, you might surely conclude that I (and some other people, including Carrier) have not understood your point, though you have written so much on this here.
But do not take it as impolite, please, that I really can see no sense in continuing this discussion, so I -really do not plan to react anymore-.
A troll is someone who ignores what is being said and continues their own agenda without engaging with the logic of the other. I have implored with you repeatedly to identify where you see me to have misunderstood Carrier only to be given reasons you cannot do that, from what I have understood of your comments. That, and the ever more bizarre fantastical examples being proposed in preference to empirically established events. That was what led me to begin to wonder if you were trolling. I regret making that comment and apologize. I should have been more patient.
Well if you won’t reply any further I will leave you with the final word of argument. (I did post a reply a while ago but decided to delete it, thinking it added nothing to what has already been said.)
Carrier has only responded to my posts, as far as I am aware, with the false rebuttal that I was claiming he was saying his theory predicted something very specific about the sources. The only criticism of his that I have seen has not attempted to address the point I was making.
As I wrote (in the last year 🙂 ), I did no plan to react anymore, since I felt no sense in a further discussion. Now I have got a new impulse when seeing that Richard Carrier has again reacted, and you have written “I think we are talking past each other.” to him (similarly as to me previously).
This also reminded me of Tim W.’s sentence (in another context) “The political left, center, and right sometimes talk past one another because they often use the same words to mean different concepts.”
I also recall my sentence “Now I just feel like adding a remark on my impression that the basic notions around which the discussion evolves are not clarified; then the discussion can be endless, making not much sense after all.”
I hope that we agree that it is a necessary prerequisite of any reasonable discussion that the meaning of the used notions is clarified among the discussing parties. So I try to do one more attempt to clarify at least one issue.
The word “probability” is generally used in various contexts. One context is exemplified by random processes studied in pure mathematics, another context is the case of criminalists who try to find out what has most probably happened ….
One axiom that is generally accepted can be formulated as follows:
if a hypothesis (aiming to explain a past event, to be more concrete) cannot be shown to be impossible by the evidence that we have, then it must have a nonzero probability for us (which might be extremely small but is necessarily greater than zero).
Does the concept of probability that you have in mind satisfy this axiom?
(I hope it is clear that it is a YES/NO question.)
Again I think we are talking past each other 😉 .. I have always tried to point out that I fully agree that Bayes is just fine for assessing hypotheses about what might have happened. Richard appears not to have responded to the content of my posts but only to (“decontextualized”) comments that were part of a subsequent exchange. What I would appreciate is a response to the core arguments of my posts. I get the impression — you can correct me if I am mis-stating things here — that I am thought not to understand Bayes and how it applies to hypotheses. But that is not what my posts are about.
(Technical remark. I have been trying to post this several times but it seemed to fail.)
You write “Again I think we are talking past each other”; to overcome this, I try hard to clarify how you understand the notions that you are using.
But instead of getting a clear answer to my question, I get
“What I would appreciate is a response to the core arguments of my posts. I get the impression that I am thought not to understand Bayes and how it applies to hypotheses. But that is not what my posts are about.”
You can see that it is unclear to (at least some of) the readers what your core arguments really are.
First of all, you can only be understood if the readers understand the concepts that you have in mind (and that you have not really explained in your long texts that touch on many issues).
Your former comments have already demonstrated to me that you have not thought through the core of the Thomas Bayes’ ball experiment that you yourself recalled.
(E.g., you said “… after being allowed only three guesses. He would say, no, that’s not what
this theory is about.” [I suppose that by “guesses” you meant the results of the described experiments.] I tried to explain that in such case TB would simply calculate an interval inside which the ball is with probability 95%, say. If he gets more evidence, then the calculated interval gets narrower; that’s all. This has nothing to do with needing to have countless experiments at our disposal, or so.)
Also, you have not recognized a correct application of Bayes’ theorem, when writing
“… your calculations are erroneous within the constraints of a limited number of throws. (Endless throws is something quite different and exactly where probability theory works – with data that is theoretically infinite.)”
It is frustrating for me that you neither demonstrated the errors you claimed I was doing, nor withdrew your claim. Therefore I am afraid that you still do not understand that I demonstrated a standard usage of Bayes’ Theorem … 🙁
I could return to this in more detail, if you are really interested, but here I would like primarily to clarify your opposition to Carrier’s axiom
Axiom 4: Every claim has a nonzero probability of being true or false (unless its being true or false is logically impossible). . .
Please, let us restrict ourselves just to the claims on what and how something happened in history,
which is the crucial subject here. You seem to think that you have demonstrated that it is reasonable to not accept this axiom, though you have not demonstrated any instance where this axiom can lead (or even has lead) to some unreasonable consequences.
Your examples like “Japan attacked Pearl Harbor” are surely not such demonstrations.
(I hope that I do not need to stress that I cannot go and observe that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. I can only study the evidence that I have at my disposal now, and conclude that I cannot -reasonably- doubt that it happened; the hypothesis that it did not happen, while we still have the evidence that we have, is extremely improbable; that’s all.)
You seem to simply insist that we must not say “extremely improbable” but we must say “impossible, with probability being the absolute zero”. This is one of your core arguments?
I feel that you might say that your opposition to Axiom 4 does not belong to your core arguments after all. If this is the case, then you should clearly say this and hopefully withdraw your opposition to Axiom 4 altogether (unless you clearly demonstrate where Richard Carrier was mislead by using this axiom).
When this issue gets clarified, we can proceed further if you wish.
I don’t know why but your comments were going straight to the blog’s spam folder. Hopefully that will not happen again (I could see no reason for the spam filter being activated — neither your name nor email or IP address were listed there.)
I am trying to zero in on the difference between “the facts” historians work with and hypotheses they construct to explain those “facts” or “events”. The events themselves are not hypothetical statements. They are empirically established. There is no probability about them except the “probability” of 1, which is really not a probability ratio estimate at all.
Carrier confuses two things when he refers to “claims” by historians. From my reading of Proving History (and I have tried to support my interpretation of what Carrier has said with relevant quotations) he treats as common “claims” both empirically established events and hypothetical explanations for events. This, I believe, is an error. Only the latter are open to Bayesian assessments. The former are not established on the basis of probabilities but on the basis of hard and undisputed evidence that is agreed can have no other explanation. Historians did not examine the probabilities of this and that in order to weigh up if it was likely that Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. There is a difference between empirical facts and probability hypotheses.
Yes, it is possible for us to sit back and look at all the empirical evidence for Hitler’s assumption of power and weigh up probability estimates for each bit of it, but that’s all an arm-chair exercise in retrospect. It is not how the event itself was known to have happened. Carrier might say that subconsciously we are in the back of our minds weighing up frequencies of this and that, but as I try to point out in my latest post that is not how historians think.
This is part 2 of my reply to your above comment:
I read your disagreements with me, but I thought at one point — I may be wrong — that you said you did not understand my point of view in a way that you could explain it in some kind of ah-ha moment. I may have misunderstood you.
If my texts are too long to engage with or understand, I guess they are not for everybody. If parts are unclear people can ask for clarifications.
Yes. Pearl Harbor is only an example, but the point is Yes. Some facts — Carrier refers to the fact of reading these words right now — are clear facts with no probabilities about them at all. Yes or No. Black or White. What he is saying is that direct empirical evidence is clear cut and no probability or Bayesian analysis is needed. I agree. But I believe he misunderstands the nature of the evidence or reasons we believe certain historical events happened in the past. I believe he is confusing hypotheses and explanations with our empirical knowledge the actual events themselves.
I may have misunderstood or not been as aware of Carrier’s position as I should be, but I am left with the impression, right or wrong, that he has not engaged as fully with the question of the nature of historical knowledge (as discussed among historians and philosophers of history) as he might.
Neil, I suppose you would surely feel unfair to be viewed as “someone who ignores what is being said and continues their own agenda without engaging with the logic of the other”. (I am using your own words here.)
But when you look back at your reactions to all critical remarks, can you at least somehow understand that some of us can be getting a sort of such an impression?
(I sincerely hope that you do not mind not taking yourself too seriously, and that you thus take my comment with a sense of humor.)
Here I try to recall two concrete issues for your possible reconsideration, one mine and one Geoff’s from the top of this thread.
1/ I could not believe that you make no conceptual difference between “impossible” and “extremely improbable” when we try to describe what happened in the past; I hoped to clarify the situation by presenting my extraterrestrial and other examples.
Now I understand that you indeed make no difference between such concepts. It is your choice, and it is surely reasonable from the practical point of view. (Even our justice systems, when sending people to prison etc., are satisfied with proving the convicts guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, not necessarily beyond any doubt.)
But I find your criticism of the (cautious) axiom “Every claim (on what happened in the past) has a nonzero probability of being true or false unless its being true or false is logically impossible” as completely unfounded. You have demonstrated no single concrete instance when the application of such an axiom has led Carrier (or another scholar) to an unreasonable conclusion; you were simply inventing strawman-examples.
So, please, either show an actual example where this axiom has clearly misled someone, or admit that your criticism is unfounded.
2/ Look at Geoff’s comment above (Geoff 2024-12-14 11:10:07 GMT+0000 at 11:10).
In my viewpoint, your response “Is there not a difference between empirically determining that an event happened or a person existed and assessing the probability that an event or person happened?” completely misses the point Geoff is making.
Can you reconsider this, please?
I have set the agenda with my posts. I have been at a loss to understand how your comments relate to my arguments. (Looking back I can see why you were rightly offended at the tone of my replies and I apologize again on that score.)
I do not say Carrier reaches “unreasonable conclusions”. That’s why I haven’t supplied evidence that he has done so. 😉
Carrier writes “Axiom 4: Every claim has a nonzero probability of being true or false (unless its being true or false is logically impossible). . . . All claims have a nonzero epistemic probability of being true, no matter how absurd they may be (unless they’re logically impossible or unintelligible), because we can always be wrong about anything. And that entails there is always a nonzero probability that we are wrong, no matter how small that probability is. And therefore there is always a converse of that probability, which is the probability that we are right (or would be right) to believe that claim. This holds even for many claims that are supposedly certain, such as the conclusions of logical or mathematical proofs.”
I disagree with Carrier’s words above. I cannot agree that a historical claim that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor is even possibly — however remotely — wrong. I don’t see that as a straw man example. It’s a test case of Carrier’s words. Carrier is asking us to accept that however small the probability, we could be wrong about that claim just as surely as we could, however unlikely it might seem, be wrong about the calculation of pi.
I don’t accept that.
What Carrier is doing is trying to force probabilistic reasoning into every situation of what people claim to know — except for (his examples) “immediate experiences that at their most basic level …. that you see words in front of you at this very moment, or that ‘Caesar was immortal and Brutus killed him’ is logically impossible”.
I disagree with that attempt. Most historians that I have read who discuss their methods disagree — including those listed by Carrier. (I am thinking of doing a post placing quotes from those historians Carrier cites against his own explanation of historical reasoning. Carrier wrongly asserts their methods are at bottom Bayesian without them realizing it.)
The one person the axiom has misled is the one who proposed the axiom in the first place — Richard Carrier. All historical claims are not determined by probabilistic reasoning. Far from it. Carrier argues that they should be and that historians are deep down, “beneath the lid”, really appealing to probabilities, but by his explanation then if probabilistic reasoning applies to pretty much everything then it is meaningless as a distinguishing and defining term.
I gave an example in my latest post on Carrier’s view: the reasoning that a historian applies to suspecting a murder plot is background knowledge of what is required to take full control of a state treasury. That is the background knowledge the historian also appeals to in the reader. I cannot believe, and there is no evidence to support Carrier’s assertion, that the historian somehow was perhaps subconsciously letting known instances and frequencies of other takeovers of bureaucracies guide the historian’s conclusion. Such an explanation is far less probable (in Bayesian terms! 😉 ) than the former explanation — that the historian was drawing on background knowledge and not probabilities or frequencies.
If it appears that I have avoided your questions then I apologize. But I find some of your questions going past me because I cannot understand how they relate to what I’ve attempted to explain. I will promise to be more patient and watch my tone in future.
Now to address your other request re Geoff’s comment….
As I understand Geoff, he is saying that we can look at all the evidence and apply Bayesian reasoning to it all and come up with the historical events the evidence points us to. Yes, and I think I have said this before, that we can do an arm-chair reflection of all the evidence and do that theoretical exercise. But all of that is in retrospect. It is not how historians came to know the events happened in the first place.
Carrier says that “beneath the hood” if we look we can see the reasoning was based on probabilities. And Geoff argues that we can examine the evidence in Bayesian terms and come to the conclusion that historians have reached about what happened. But that’s all in hindsight and it does not prove that that’s how anyone came to know those events happened. Simply saying that a Bayesian look can lead to result X, therefore the historians used — at some deep unconscious level perhaps — saying that therefore historians used Bayesian reasoning does not follow.
Take for example the evidence for World War 1. Geoff writes:
This is circular reasoning, not Bayesian reasoning, in my view. In hindsight it is easy to say that this and that piece of evidence “predicted” WW1 — but it doesn’t really. The evidence has been selected because it meets the criteria of being able to predict WW1. If historians could look at evidence and make genuine predictions from it they could do the same with the evidence around us in the world today and predict the future.
Can I ask what, exactly, you see me as arguing that is in error? What, exactly, have I misunderstood about Carrier’s writings?
A few points to the above three reactions of yours:
1/ No need to apologize again for the former tone of your replies. I surely appreciate your overall friendly approach and what I find as your honest desire for mutual understanding
(that’s why I am still reacting). My comment tried to draw attention to the fact that it seems that none of the critical remarks of all readers here has lead to a slightest change of your position so far. This is simply surprising for me (I have not expected that 🙂 ).
2/ You say “The one person the axiom has misled is the one who proposed the axiom in the first place — Richard Carrier.”
You say that you do not accept this axiom. I can say that I personally have no problem to accept this. All our knowledge about the past is clearly a function of the evidence we currently have, and I do not see any reason to insist that we must single out some past events for which we must claim -absolute- certainty.
Btw, if I tell you that by such singling out you would at least subconsciously use Bayesian reasoning anyway, then you will protest, since you do not do this by sitting down in the armchair and starting some probability calculations …
I find such protests of yours simply as terminology misunderstandings, and I thus cannot see that you have exposed any real weakness in the respective reasoning by Carrier and others.
3/ Regarding the reaction to Geoff, I am afraid that you keep missing the point. You say
“In hindsight it is easy to say that this and that piece of evidence “predicted” WW1 …”
though Geoff wrote
“There is mountains of ‘expected’ evidence which would be ‘predicted’ on the hypothesis that WW1 happened.”
You see, nobody was talking about predicting WW1, so you just confirmed my previous suspicion that you mix different uses of the notion of probability in your texts:
It is quite a different thing to try to assess the probability of future “contingent” events on one hand, and to try to assess our confidence in understanding what happened in the past, based on the evidence at our disposal, on the other hand.
It seems to me that you are just misled by the use of the word “predicts” when we speak on assessing the hypotheses concerning the past.
I also find your claims like “This is circular reasoning” absolutely baseless.
All this is just a terminology mismatch, in my opinion.
The reason I do not accept the claim is because Carrier confuses different terms under the one label “claim”. I tried to point out somewhere that Carrier brackets together as “claims” both the “factual events” themselves ALONG WITH interpretations and explanations and hypotheses about those events. Not all “events” have a “nonzero probability of being false”. That is simply not so.
Carrier frequently confuses different things. He fails to provide clear definitions of his terms at the outset and this is where much of the confusion of his argument arises.
I do not believe in mind-reading as a valid criticism. We need to look at the evidence that explains or otherwise a particular “claim” in the mind of a historian. There are far simpler reasons for much of our knowledge. To the one with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. There really are other tools in the historian’s toolkit that Carrier simply refused to recognize.
You are quite correct and I did once again go on autopilot with that comment.
But the point you are making is the other point I have been making in the posts and in these comments: There can be no such thing as a “hypothesis that WW1 happened”. That is not a hypothesis. This IS where circularity enters. Even if we could bizarrely say “I have a hypothesis that WW1 happened”, then one has to ask the basis for that hypothesis. It can’t come from thin air without any awareness of history. The hypothesis (if we call it that), arises BECAUSE of the evidence in the first place.
This goes back to my point that the Christ Myth theory exists BECAUSE certain types of evidence exist. Carrier then claims the hypothesis “predicts” or “expects” certain types of evidence.
That is invalid circularity.
I’m not sure you understand what my position is — 😉 (Can I ask again: what is it that you believe I misunderstand about Carrier’s position?)
For me it is interesting that you say
“Carrier frequently confuses different things. He fails to provide clear definitions of his terms at the outset and this is where much of the confusion of his argument arises.”
while I have such an impression when “Carrier” is replaced with “Neil Godfrey”.
I hope, Neil, that you are not offended by my frankness; I am just reacting to your general bold claim that only makes sense if it is carefully demonstrated by concrete (non-strawman) examples.
Regarding Carrier, I accept that he could/should have been more careful with his formulations using the words like “prediction”, to avoid any possible confusion. But in his first reaction to your current texts he wrote:
“This analysis only requires a single sentence to refute: the word “predict” simply means “makes probable,” and a prediction becomes “evidence for” a theory when that theory makes the predicted outcome probable and no other (plausible) theory makes it as probable (i.e. when the other theory does not predict that outcome, or not well).”
I can say that I understood this well when reading his book OHJ, but you seem to have not understood this (so far).
So you can take this as a partial answer of mine to your question “what is it that you believe I misunderstand about Carrier’s position?”
Two concrete points regarding you:
Your formulation “Not all “events” have a “nonzero probability of being false”. That is simply not so.”
is not quite clear to me but I guess that you meant it as “There exist claims on what happened in the past whose validity is -absolutely- certain”, and you find insisting on the word “absolutely” important, though you have not demonstrated how rational persons can be misled if they do not insist on this “absolutely”.
So here you do not seem to misunderstand Carrier, but your criticism of his axiom seems vacuous to me.
Your claim “That is invalid circularity.” was dealt with by several people here but you seem to simply repeat your claim on circularity without engaging with the logic of the responses.
Finally, I can say that I have no ambition to somehow argue with you. From the very beginning I was hoping to provide some feedback that you might find useful.
If you do not find my inputs anyhow helpful, then we should really stop our discussion.
What would be helpful and positive is if you would give specific examples of what concepts I have confused.
There was no confusion with Carrier’s use of “predict”. It is you who assumed — wrongly as I tried to explain — that I was confusing the meaning of his word “predict” and that “expect” would have been clearer to the mark. But I fully understood from the beginning that that’s what Carrier meant. It makes no difference to my argument. I tried to explain that I understood that his use of “predict” embraced the meaning “expect”.
That was a useless troll-level comment. Carrier was not prepared, it seems, to bother to try to demonstrate his claim with even a single point I made in the post. It was a cheap and lazy response.
So you say. I disagree. When I say something that Carrier said you say he didn’t say or mean that — so I point to where I have quoted him. What, exactly, do you think I have misunderstood about Carrier’s argument in Proving History? …. Okay — I see you have answered that question as I read on….
Let me try to explain again where the confusion lies here. I was referring to Carrier’s Axiom 4. Here are Carrier’s words which I was addressing:
Axiom 4: Every claim has a nonzero probability of being true or false (unless its being true or false is logically impossible).
If you read Carrier’s Proving History it will readily become apparent that by “claim” here Carrier includes both “events” as well as “hypotheses” about events. That is where his conceptual confusion begins — lumping events with hypotheses about events under the catch all term “claims”.
The reason I disagree with Carrier’s axiom 4 is that I do not believe “events” per se have a nonzero possibility of being false. Yes, hypotheses have a nonzero possibility of being false. But not all events do. Does anyone really believe there is a nonzero possibility that there was no Second World War? Or First World War? Or American Revolution/War of Independence? Of course not. Carrier’s sweeping claim is simply not so.
No. The criticism of mine that you cite (invalid circularity) was NOT a criticism of Axiom 4. It was a criticism of another claim — the one you said I had not given an adequate response to earlier. The “circularity” criticism was directed at the claim that a “hypothesis of WW1 predicts/expects certain kinds of evidence”. Carrier has the same circularity when he says the Christ myth hypothesis “predicts/expects” certain kinds of evidence. The reason it is circular is because the hypothesis itself was born from the same “certain kinds of evidence” that it then turns around and “predicts/expects”!)
Addition:
ChatGPT told me
“The word “vacuous” can carry a negative connotation, as it implies that something is empty, lacking in substance, or thoughtless, which might offend the person being addressed if not delivered carefully.”
and suggested that I write
“I find your criticism of this axiom unconvincing.”
Ok, I thus apologize and follow the recommendation 🙂
No need. The context sets the tone, rarely a single word. I want understanding between us.
By the way, with respect to something you said in your other comment, it never occurred to me that we were arguing — but rather discussing and trying to understand each other.
So I understand that you can still see as sensible to continue our discussion; I will just not be always quick-responsive (due to the pressure of other things in my life).
At the moment, I again show a short conversation with ChatGPT, to save some time.
My question to ChatGPT (without any preceding discussion on this matter):
Are there claims on historical events to which we can attach the probability 1 absolutely, or is it reasonable to always leave some, maybe astronomically tiny, room for doubt?
(Abridged) answer of ChatGPT:
In history, it’s generally considered unreasonable to attach a probability of 1 (absolutely certain) to any event, even when the evidence is overwhelming. The reason lies in the nature of historical knowledge and the limitations of evidence, interpretation, and human understanding.
Here’s why leaving room for doubt is usually seen as reasonable:
…..
A Historical Example:
Take a well-established event like the moon landing in 1969. The overwhelming evidence — from photographs, videos, eyewitness accounts, and the physical samples brought back — makes it extremely unlikely that this event didn’t happen. However, even here, some might argue (though it’s a tiny fringe view) that there’s still room for doubt due to the possibility of new, undiscovered information or a misinterpretation of existing data.
In summary, while it may be reasonable to be highly confident about some events (such as the moon landing or World War II), the idea of leaving even a tiny room for doubt is generally a good practice in historical analysis. History tends to be about probabilities, not certainties, because new evidence or perspectives could always emerge.
Neil, at this moment I would just ask if I understand you correctly that you find such an answer unreasonable (for some reason that you think you have clearly explained) …. ?
Hi Petr and thanks for replying. I thought I had lost you for a moment there.
I find the answer inadequate. It is “reasonable” in that it is making a “reasoning” case, but its assumptions and starting position are not those of the real world.
Carrier speaks of there “always” being room for some doubt but that is only so in the theoretical world of mind-games and is not part of the real world. Here is where we have the difference between verifiable facts or events and hypotheses about them.
Take a court case, for example. The jury has to prove beyond “reasonable doubt” the guilt of a person for a murder. There can always in the decision be room for the infinitesimal slither of doubt that for practical purposes leaves no “reasonable room for doubt”. But the murder itself may be a verifiable fact of absolute certainty, all other things being equal. That the accused’s fingerprints are on the knife is a verifiable fact and there is not even the slightest room for any doubt (not in the real world). Whether the accused further stabbed the victim is initially open to question — hence the court case.
In the real world there is not the slightest room for doubt about events that are clearly verifiable. — If I am caught on camera running a red light and get a notice for a traffic violation complete with photo of my car and the red light, there is no room for even the tiniest doubt about what happened. In theory I can claim that someone with a hatred against me in the Traffic Bureau hates me and doctored the photo but I am only playing unrealistic mind-games in desperation if I think so.
Carrier raises possible doubts, extremely unlikely doubts, alongside the world of reality — he would say that we have to admit the possibility of some unrealistic explanation. His examples that he gives in Proving History of such doubts are in fact so unrealistic as to be nonsensical in my view. (I can provide/quote examples if you wish.)
In the real world is there any room for any doubt, however small one might like to measure it, that the Archduke of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in 1914 and that World War 1 followed? There IS room for some doubt, small though it might be, that the assassination was in some way responsible for WW1, but there is no room in the real world for the fact that the assassination happened and that WW1 happened. (Historians will debate why WW1 happened, and even the nature and extent of WW1 in some ways, but the event itself is clearly verifiable. No room for any doubt unless one lives in an unreal theoretical world that has no relevance to reality.)
Is there any room for doubt that Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and WW2 followed? Same as above. But to justify his use of Bayes Carrier has to say that even those events have SOME room for doubt, however small. I disagree and say that historians do not use Bayes to verify such events. There is NO room for doubt about many/most of the events used by historian in their debates about hypotheses and interpretations.
In my view Carrier has overreached. It is the same with his On the Historicity of Jesus. He presented too many new and untested arguments and thus opened himself to unnecessary criticism. He would have made a stronger case by focusing just on a few core arguments, in my view.
It is the same with Bayes — Carrier has attempted to apply Bayes to too much. He even lists about a score of historians whom he says use methods that can be reducible to Bayesian methods. I suspect Carrier never actually read many of those historians with any care because I can provide quotations from several of them that flatly contradict Carrier’s claim about their methods. If Carrier had limited himself to using Bayes to test hypotheses, that would have been enough and would have made his point. But he has gone beyond that attempt and asserted that “all claims” by historians — and he means to include what others deem to be “verifiable events” — have some room for doubt. If an event is verified in the real world there is no room for doubt in the real world. And verification appeals not to probable notions but to other verifiable evidence.
A second point follows from the above.
Just because a hypothesis argues that the existence of Jesus is unlikely (Carrier says at best it is 30%), it does not follow at all that Jesus therefore “probably didn’t exist”. Events like the historical existence of some persons are not subject to probability analysis but to verification. If he existed then it would only mean that more fanciful stories were told about him than about many others. That has no bearing on the question of whether he existed or not. I can remove all the evidence we have for Julius Caesar and look at the evidence of ancient Rome prior to Caesar and conclude that the Roman government was set up in such a way to prevent the rise of a dictator … therefore it is unlikely that Caesar would have become a dictator. But all of the practices of Rome, all their safeguards, all their reliance on a great army to protect them from the overthrow of their ways, made no difference to the fact that Caesar became dictator. We might argue that an unlikely event (probability wise) happened. That’s how history works so often.
Let me try to be more direct than my reply above, and then I want to add one other point.
No. Photos etc are only a small part of the evidence. There is nothing “extremely unlikely about it not happening”. That is simply bizarre as a mere suggestion and it is not addressing reality. There are no doubts at all — not “extremely unlikely”, rather “it did in fact happen”. To say it is “extremely unlikely” not to have happened is to yield even too much ground to the conspiracy nutters. It did happen. There are no doubts AT ALL. (Except among circular reasoning confirmation biased conspiracy theorists — some of whom also presumably believe aliens built the pyramids and Atlantis was once a real place.)
No historian says “it is extremely unlikely that it didn’t happen” or they’d have their audience of fellow historians rolling their eyes in dismay. It sounds like it is being conceded that there may be some very tiny possibility it didn’t happen. That kind of thinking is for abstract theorists who are out of touch with reality.
That’s nonsense. We don’t know about the reality of the moon landing because of scattered pieces here and there of items of data. It was a major grand program involving many thousands of participants to make it happen and millions to make it available to be witnessed world wide. Let the conspiracy nutters go to some other universe. They are not living in reality.
Is that statement really saying that we should leave some room for doubt — just as a tiny tiny possibility — that WW2 did not happen? I don’t know what sources ChatGPT was using but it is simply nonsensical to “leave a tiny room for doubt” about WW2 or any other “verified” historical event. Verified means it’s true. It happened. Historians don’t doubt the events per se. They doubt and debate various hypotheses and interpretations and reconstructions of those events. (I’ve found ChatGPT even makes mistakes in straightforward translations. It is a machine, not a historian.)
Define history. The events are not the probabilities. It is the way they are put together to form a certain type of narrative, or the way they are explained — that is where “probabilities” etc arise.
Now for my other bit that I wanted to mention:
Carrier claims to have discovered the logical “secret” that lies at the heart of all historical reasoning and claims. He has little modesty about this achievement. At the head of his chapter explaining in some detail the Bayes formula he places this quote from a historian as a way of introduction:
Carrier has not discovered it at all. In another place I provided another quote from the Preface of the same book by that historian debunking the possibility that historians could be guided by Bayesian reasoning as some kind of catch-all for what they do.
If Carrier wanted to demonstrate that all valid historical methods or “claims” are at bottom Bayesian he could have done so but it would have been a longer book. He claimed here in comments that he had demonstrated it but I don’t think he stuck around to read my rejoinder that all he did was assert it and then list a score or so of historians’ names as “evidence”. I know several of the historians he listed and I know for a fact that they simply outright reject anything approaching Bayesian reasoning as the foundation of their “claims”. I hope to post something to show that.
If Carrier had really discovered what he claimed it would be well known and discussed in major history journals. As it stands, I don’t think Proving History was accepted by any major academic publisher and was taken up by a publisher interested in debunking Christianity and other myths.
Carrier could not even bring himself to read in context any of my comments and he sure as hell didn’t bother to read posts he left comments on. He is evidently not prepared to defend his thesis except to smugly dismiss all opposition as “Bayesian without them knowing it.” I really expected him to have some interest in engaging with a discussion. I am not rejecting Bayes outright but believe Carrier has simply gone too far with it. But I have now been left with the sneaking suspicion that he has no confidence in engaging other historians with his “discovery” and is a fraud getting high on hits from a lay public who want to debunk Jesus.
How the hell Columbia University awarded him a PhD in history when he has never once demonstrated the slightest awareness of how historians really work and write — sorry, I really am dismayed that he could be espousing a kind of approach to history that the field of historians almost entirely debunked in the first half of the last century.
Even though it can’t be proven that Jesus was historical or not, like Robin Hood or King Arthur (once thought to have existed and today carry no weight whatsoever as being historical), maybe by weighing Jesus with the likes of such figures of the Roman, Egyptian, etc. gods we can get rid of the fallacies that now exist within the religions of the world. I welcome all research into such religious matters.
Re: Point 1
There are too many historical possibilities for the origin of Christianity to fit neatly into any framework suitable for statistical analysis: from the inerrancy of the gospels, through Jesus as composite character, to conscious fraud by some Flavian, with many offshoots along the way. I don’t think it’s even clear what the “minimal historical Jesus” would really consist of – e.g. how many red-letter passages in the NT would have to be authentic? 95%, 51%?
As I understand:
a) The core question for historians is not simply whether Jesus existed but rather how Christianity originated. Investigating the actions of Jesus and the subsequent activities of his followers is crucial for understanding the religion’s development.
b) Even if Bayesian analysis suggests a high probability of Jesus’ non-existence (or existence), the outcome remains inconclusive. The historian gains no substantial insight into historical events or the factors that shaped Christianity.
Argument 1:
• Degraded Focus: True historical interest lies in understanding the origins and evolution of Christianity.
• Limited Scope: A simple “yes” or “no” answer to Jesus’ existence provides minimal information about the complex historical processes involved in the religion’s formation.
Argument 2:
• Lack of Practical Application: Regardless of the probability assigned to Jesus’ existence, the historian remains uncertain about the actual historical reality.
• Unhelpful for Historical Reconstruction: Bayesian probabilities, even if seemingly strong, do not provide concrete evidence or insights to guide historical interpretation.
• False Sense of Certainty: The numerical probabilities can create an illusion of certainty that may not accurately reflect the complexities of historical evidence.
Caveat emptor:
“a) The core question . . . Investigating the actions of Jesus and the subsequent activities of his followers…”
To date, however, investigating the actions of Jesus—like the “Jabberwocky” poem by Lewis Carroll—has been one of literature’s epic bits of nonsense 🙂
I don’t think the scholars who do this are engaging in “nonsense”. I think they are genuinely trapped in thinking that they are being objective. The right approach is to try to shed light on the areas where they blur the lines and shapes of what they are investigating. To this end, I see the work of Stephen Young as particularly useful. I posted about his work some years ago but since then he has produced more along the same lines: https://www.academia.edu/73040566/_Lets_Take_the_Text_Seriously_The_Protectionist_Doxa_of_Mainstream_New_Testament_Studies
I am writing about historical methods and historical knowledge because I think not many biblical scholars have thought through these kinds of questions. Even some “nonbiblical” historians tend to sidestep examining face to face their methods. I began my little journey of studying the nature historical knowledge and methods used to build historical knowledge over 20 years ago, initially prompted by the questions raised by Earl Doherty. How do we know anything about the past? Bart Ehrman attempted to answer that question in his published tirade against mythicism but he opined shallow notions from the top of his head and clearly had never taken the trouble to study the question seriously. It’s a serious question and most of what I write, if not everything related to this question, is informed by reading works on the philosophy and methods of historians, past and present.