Origins Of Christianity

[Michael S. Pearl]

... we see substantive development across communities and decades—different Christological emphases, divergent eschatological timetables, and evolving church practices. That pattern is a textbook signature of human tradition adapting over time, not an invariant deposit of non-human speech.

Divine inspiration is not a matter "of non-human speech", and it is not a matter of invariance.

Regardless, it is not only practices and traditions which evolve over time; understandings can (and occasionally do) evolve over time as well, and sometimes it is furthered understanding that effects changes in practices and the establishment of what become new traditions, including new traditions (conventions) in ways of thinking.

This fact about human being is what warrants putting the matter of understanding and how it can and does develop as ultimately the prime focus. As you note, "Historical exegesis does not chase unverifiable inner states ... Private understanding can differ from expression, but historical inquiry is about the expressed artifact." Therefore, for those who are interested in understanding the understanding of other persons, more than text analysis is required.

Paul was not opposed to the furtherance of understanding: "When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. ... I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. ... What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us."(1 Corinthians 2)

Even Paul's report of inspiration was not intended or expected to be persuasive, yet Paul undoubtedly hoped to inspire others, to inspire the furtherance of understanding in others.

My claim is evidential: once we account for human composition and transmission, there remains no independent warrant to accept “not of human origin.” Absence of evidence is not proof of impossibility; it is decisive against acceptance.

Even Paul could respond saying that no one need accept that he was divinely inspired. Not the story of his experience but, rather, what he had to say (about God, Christ, Jesus, love, whatever) inspired other persons or it did not. There is reason to believe he would be far more interested in inspiring - not persuading - others with what others would experience or appreciate as a sublime wisdom, which those others would then undertake to understand, with those formulated understandings then being shared so as to be compared and contrasted with the expressions by still others - leading thereby to evolutions in thought, understanding, and expression.

To focus on evidence for and acceptance of Paul's alleged inspiration is to set focus upon a tangent of no significance. I should put that another way, because that issue is clearly of personal importance to some. This evidence/acceptance matter would be an occasion for taking account of the alternative possibility that the evidence/acceptance matter is of no great significance beyond being a subjectively interesting question or challenge.

 

[aupmanyav]

Origin of Christianity: The first Neanderthal shaman.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Divine inspiration is not a matter "of non-human speech", and it is not a matter of invariance.

If divine inspiration is neither non-human speech nor invariant content, you have stripped it of every objective marker that could distinguish it from ordinary human thought. A claim that tolerates wholly human wording and continuous change is, by definition, empirically indistinguishable from human tradition. What cannot be distinguished from a natural process by any observable criterion cannot be credited as a supernatural process in historical analysis.

Regardless, it is not only practices and traditions which evolve over time; understandings can (and occasionally do) evolve over time as well, and sometimes it is furthered understanding that effects changes in practices and the establishment of what become new traditions, including new traditions (conventions) in ways of thinking.

Exactly—evolving “understandings” are hallmarks of human cognition responding to new contexts. They do not evidence a non-human source; they explain the data without it. The observed trajectory—from early creedal kernels to later doctrinal elaborations and shifting church order—is fully accounted for by normal mechanisms of debate, memory, and community adaptation. Adding “divine inspiration” contributes no extra explanatory power.

This fact about human being is what warrants putting the matter of understanding and how it can and does develop as ultimately the prime focus. As you note, "Historical exegesis does not chase unverifiable inner states ... Private understanding can differ from expression, but historical inquiry is about the expressed artifact." Therefore, for those who are interested in understanding the understanding of other persons, more than text analysis is required.

To “go beyond the text” you need independent data—contemporary testimony, external documentation, or observable effects. We have none for Paul’s inner states. Without such data, appeals to subjectivity are speculation. Historical method therefore remains with what is available: the expressed artifacts and their transmission. On that public evidence, Paul claims revelation; the manuscripts and reception history display ordinary human authorship and editing. Nothing further is demonstrable.

Paul was not opposed to the furtherance of understanding: "When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. ... I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. ... What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us."(1 Corinthians 2)

That passage is rhetoric, not laboratory evidence. “Not with eloquence” is a standard ancient humility topos designed to build ethos; the letter itself is a tightly argued piece of deliberative persuasion that uses logic, analogy, and appeals to shared scripture. “Demonstration of the Spirit’s power” is asserted, not specified or independently attested. There are no named eyewitnesses, no described, verifiable phenomena, no external records. As history, this remains a claim about an internal conviction; as a text, it shows skilled human argumentation.

Even Paul's report of inspiration was not intended or expected to be persuasive, yet Paul undoubtedly hoped to inspire others, to inspire the furtherance of understanding in others.

Paul’s letters are explicitly crafted to persuade—he corrects behavior, settles disputes, defends authority, and instructs doctrine. Galatians opens by staking his commission “not from men,” precisely to convince readers to reject rival teachers; 1 Corinthians systematically addresses factionalism, ethics, and worship, aiming at concrete change. To claim these writings were not intended to persuade contradicts their structure, tone, and stated aims. They are persuasive documents through and through, and nothing in them supplies independent evidence that his message originated anywhere but the human mind that composed them.

Even Paul could respond saying that no one need accept that he was divinely inspired. Not the story of his experience but, rather, what he had to say (about God, Christ, Jesus, love, whatever) inspired other persons or it did not. There is reason to believe he would be far more interested in inspiring - not persuading - others with what others would experience or appreciate as a sublime wisdom, which those others would then undertake to understand, with those formulated understandings then being shared so as to be compared and contrasted with the expressions by still others - leading thereby to evolutions in thought, understanding, and expression.

That claim is flatly contradicted by the letters themselves. Paul does not merely “inspire”; he argues, rebukes, commands, and defends his status precisely by appealing to a non-human commissioning. Galatians opens with the assertion that his gospel is “not from man,” deployed to discredit rival teachers; 2 Corinthians expends chapters on vindicating his apostleship; Romans and 1 Corinthians lay out structured, stepwise arguments aimed at changing behavior and doctrine. Those are the marks of persuasion, not optional inspiration. If acceptance of his divine commissioning were “unnecessary,” he would not anchor his authority to a revelation claim or threaten anathema against contrary gospels. The documentary record shows a polemical, persuasive project tethered to the origin claim; it is not a loose invitation to appreciate “sublime wisdom.”

To focus on evidence for and acceptance of Paul's alleged inspiration is to set focus upon a tangent of no significance. I should put that another way, because that issue is clearly of personal importance to some. This evidence/acceptance matter would be an occasion for taking account of the alternative possibility that the evidence/acceptance matter is of no great significance beyond being a subjectively interesting question or challenge.

The origin claim is not a tangent; it is the fulcrum of Paul’s authority and the early churches’ reception of his letters. History distinguishes between what happened and what people later felt about it by asking for evidence. On the evidence we have—ordinary Greek prose, standard epistolary forms, context-bound argumentation, and a manuscript tradition full of typical human variants—there is nothing that elevates “not of human origin” from a profession of faith to an established fact. Declaring evidence “of no great significance” concedes the point: the claim is unfalsifiable devotion, not history. If the truth of a non-human source does not matter to the acceptance of the message, then the words “not of human origin” add nothing and should be dropped from the argument; if it does matter, then it must be tested—and on every historical test available, it fails.

NHC

 

[Elixir]

If divine inspiration is neither non-human speech nor invariant content, you have stripped it of every objective marker that could distinguish it from ordinary human thought. A claim that tolerates wholly human wording and continuous change is, by definition, empirically indistinguishable from human tradition.

Religion creates its own justifying logic, and a lexicon designed to permit it.
That’s why words like “exegesis” were invented. When you EXPLAIN why a claim of divine inspiration was made, the explanation might well include observable human neuroses, irrationality, and a host of intertwined psychological factors that might bear on why the claim was made.
OTOH, the exegesis of the claim restricts itself to the circular “logic” and tenuous conclusions that typify religious nonsense. But it’s exegesis! So the faithful swallow it whole, satisfied that “exegesis” (being so much more exotic and fancier) dispels explanations every time.

 

[steve_bank]

All the Christian theology stem from the a priori assumption that their god exists.

So if 2000 years ago somebody named Paul said his preaching came from god not man then that is good enough for them.

Paul speaks the word of god because Paul says he speaks the word of god.

And that define Chritianty as it has become today.

I hear it when I sample Christian TV and radio. God speaks through me to you.

In the extreme the RCC and its claim to absolute moral authority as coming down from god.

To understand how Christianity started look at Mormons. The origins of Mormonism are well documented. In a relatively short time it became a global religion. They have their own myths and drew on Chrtianity.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

If divine inspiration is neither non-human speech nor invariant content, you have stripped it of every objective marker that could distinguish it from ordinary human thought. A claim that tolerates wholly human wording and continuous change is, by definition, empirically indistinguishable from human tradition. What cannot be distinguished from a natural process by any observable criterion cannot be credited as a supernatural process in historical analysis.

If divine inspiration is ever actual, then it is a personal - a subjective, an inner - experience which you have already noted as being inaccessible to historical analysis.

So what? That just shows a limit to the applicability of historical analysis. Does that bother you? If so, why does it bother you?

With regards to the notion of "invariant content", I will again use love as an example. Do all instances of love have any commonality? Let us just stipulate that all love has this in common: Love as an act is an intention made manifest as a doing done for the sake of an other. We could just as well say that this is invariantly the case, and, yet, the content or details of love can be - and in fact are - situationally unique, anything but invariant, and very much non-ordinary even when made humanly manifest. That regards one aspect of the indeterminateness of love, and it shows that "invariant content" is not necessary for inspiration to have a divine origin, given a divinity closely associated and identified with love.

To “go beyond the text” you need independent data—contemporary testimony, external documentation, or observable effects. We have none for Paul’s inner states. Without such data, appeals to subjectivity are speculation.

You need "independent data" for the application of historical analysis. "Observable effects" can be the previously mentioned what follows from an experience issue. Paul's story is that he was a persecutor of heretics come to be called "Christians". Is there data independent of that story? Is there the same story told by someone who has no dog in the hunt, so to speak? Lack of such "evidence" would in no way justify restricting what one is willing to consider only to those strictures which historical analysis deems acceptable. After all, non-pathological radical changes in the outlook and behavior of individuals is not unknown - even if such conversion is relatively rare. Accordingly, speculation is absolutely legitimate with regards to attempts at fathoming inner states. That is unless one is disinterested in the inner states of humans.

So, if Paul's person was converted, what matters is not whether he was divinely inspired. What matters is the what comes after his being allegedly inspired. Maybe he was divinely inspired. Maybe he was not. Maybe what had been for him the sense-less babblings of those Christians were made more sensible by the operations of his ever-working mind. For that matter, based on his own telling of his story, the operations of his ever-working mind were essential even after the alleged divine inspiration.

The point is that divine inspiration in no way eliminates the necessity of the thoughtful mind. To put it another way, the reason why divine inspiration is inspiration is because what you refer to as "ordinary human thought" is always necessary following any sort of inspiration - if understanding is to be developed at all. Without understanding and what follows from understanding, inspiration (including divine inspiration) is worthless - and that would be the case from the divine perspective as well.

the letter itself is a tightly argued piece of deliberative persuasion ...

Whoa! Hold on there! You are making a claim about his inner state. That is, by your reckoning, speculation. I, of course, have no problem with speculation in itself. But, putting aside how "tightly argued" his musing actually is, let us continue.

that uses logic, analogy, and appeals to shared scripture. ... If acceptance of his divine commissioning were “unnecessary,” he would not anchor his authority to a revelation claim or threaten anathema against contrary gospels.

Sticking with the inspiration issue for the moment, it is necessary to distinguish between authority as experienced and authority demanding deference.

Authority as an experience (Jesus teaching as one with authority and not like the teachers of the law) is about human experience, reactions and, ultimately, the fact that human understanding is never instilled but only developed. It relates to how humans come to understand apparently new and/or apparently unconventional or even what at first exposure can seem to be eccentric teachings or viewpoints proffered by others.

Generally speaking, it is very rare indeed for the thinking of a person to be converted or transformed immediately as a result of an experience or upon being exposed to some new information or an apparently novel perspective. A person might be immediately and deeply moved by an experience, a presentation, a message, an explanation, a teaching proffered by an other person. Sometimes a person can be deeply moved by the style, the aesthetics of a presentation. Sometimes a person can be deeply moved by the unexpectedness of a perspective, its very newness. Not the newness of being different simply for the sake of being different, not for mere originality of presentation, but because the very content presented brings to the fore matters that the message recipient holds to be significant, matters which have seemingly been missed or ignored or trivialized in the explanations or teachings which have until then been most widely accepted, even emphasized.

This is to say that sometimes a person can be deeply moved - sometimes a person can be astonished - by what amounts to an encounter with information or insight that exceeds even the most well-established, rationally justified conventional thinking or personal way of thinking. Such a thought that exceeds what is already accepted is experienced as an encounter with authority even if, at least initially, its being experienced as authority is not readily, rationally explicable.

An encounter with authority is not experienced as confirmation of an already held belief or bias; authority is not vindication. This is because authority is more a sense which is perceived despite yet lacking explication; hence, that sense is but a seed for an understanding that is yet to be developed or otherwise made manifest.

If a person responds to a teaching (such as any of those put forth by Jesus or Siddhartha Gautama or Gandhi or whomever) with immediate astonished appreciation, that only indicates that the teaching was concerned with some matter(s) already of some concern in the mind of the communication recipient, regardless of whether or to what extent such concerning matters have ever been expressed by the communication recipient.

In such cases, the astonishment occurs in part as appreciation for the fact that some other person has managed to give expression to thinking about some matter(s) of importance which the recipient had not yet likewise been able to produce. Hannah Arendt maintains that any awareness of “what authority really is” “has vanished from the modern world.” Of course, we still have the word authority; we still use the word, but, according to Arendt, authority now “is commonly mistaken for some form of power or violence”, whereas actual “authority precludes the use of external means of coercion”. She adds, “where force is used, authority itself has failed.” Arendt also says that authority “is incompatible with persuasion, which … works through a process of argumentation. Where arguments are used, authority is left in abeyance.”

In this regard, authority imparts a sense of being veritably self-evident although still needing further development in order to become understanding manifest in acts and including the production of explication if only to render the understanding in the form most suitable as communication for the benefit of other persons. According to Arendt's characterization, authority does not wield power; it does not threaten or coerce, and it does not seek to persuade. And, yet, authority is somehow not inert. In fact, according to Arendt, “authority always demands obedience”. But, by her reckoning, authority demands obedience without a resort to coercion or (even implied or threatened) violence or persuasion through argument. This means that authority does not impose; it is not an imposition; it does not so much demand obedience as it elicits or evokes or inspires a response, a reaction to the experience of an encounter with authority, a reaction to the recognition that authority has been present and made noticeable, for example – in an expression of some sort.

It is a common mistake to think that the use of logic in expression necessarily indicates an attempt at argument and persuasion. Logic is absolutely compatible with an attempt at expressing the experience had of authority as well as the insight or understanding which follows from such an experience. Logic is compatible because logic is useful for organizing and expressing thinking - even thinking that seeks neither to argue nor persuade but, instead, simply hopes to be useful for others.

Authority as an experience can serve to inspire; it can be an inspiration. Authority demanding deference is an entirely different matter.

To be brief about it, the authority which demands deference is more a political or sociological - let us call it a more immediately practical - matter, and it has nothing to do with divine inspiration (or so I claim). If you want to argue that Paul was in effect taking God's name in vain (or some such similar criticism) as he tried to define and organize the faithful into a church, fine, go for it. That is a different discussion. That discussion does not speak to the good news which Paul preached, and it does not touch upon the question regarding whether Paul could have been or was divinely inspired to preach whatever was/is that good news about God and the relationship between God and human individuals.

The origin claim is not a tangent; it is the fulcrum of Paul’s authority and the early churches’ reception of his letters.

The authority issue has been addressed above. Whatever was Paul's initial appeal to others, it would have been (in varying degrees across the spectrum of individuals) most like the inspiration of authority. The authority of demanded deference would only - could only - appear after there had been a gathering of the identifiable sufficiently-like-minded. It is also to be kept in mind that Paul was not engaging with scholars as he tried to form/find a community. But all that goes to the inner states of his mind as he faced different situations. The origin issue is an insignificant tangent. That does not mean the tangent is uninteresting.

I was recently visiting family out of town, and a younger family member wanted to go to a baseball teammate's bar mitzvah; so, I took him. The rabbi's homily was about The Story of the Aleph, the point of which the rabbi said boils down to this: We see God in the face of the other person. And the point for this discussion is that there is no talk about God that is not talk about human understanding and human "inner states".

Any "historical analysis" which in effect claims to have discerned Paul's inner states when he spoke as he did in each situation fails as analysis when it does not extend its speculations to alternative explanations for why Paul expressed himself as he did. Such failed analysis as has been presented (and to which this is a response) contributes nothing to considerations into the question of whether Paul's claim of having had an experience of divine inspiration should be accepted. That claim of Paul's is - as has been repeatedly explained - utterly immaterial to what Paul preached about God and the relationship with humans. What he preached was an understanding which itself was and has always been subject to reconsideration, re-expression, and evolution. And the fact of there having been (along with the fact of there being in the future still further) development of understanding does not speak at all against - or for - Paul as ever having been divinely inspired.

the claim is unfalsifiable devotion

Non-sense. It is not - and cannot be - a matter of devotion since it is immaterial. Failure to recognize the immateriality can result in devotion as self-idolatry, but nothing more substantial or useful than that.

You do realize that nothing I have said depends on the actuality of the experience which Paul alleges, don't you? That in itself demonstrates that the claim is not a fulcrum for whatever was the good news Paul preached. The actual issue is understanding and the development of understanding. The issue is not whether Paul was ever divinely inspired. This is the case if one believes in God and if one does not believe in God. Of course, anyone who has never been inspired will likely have a more difficult time in realizing the relationship between inspiration and understanding, but such a person could investigate their own subjective experiences had of having come to understandings - although that will likely be immensely more difficult if their understandings are always rote.

 

[bilby]

If divine inspiration is ever actual, then it is a personal - a subjective, an inner - experience which you have already noted as being inaccessible to historical analysis.

If divine inspiration is only ever personal - a subjective, an inner - experience, then the gods are too small and impotent to be worth bothering with.

And are indistinguishable from psychiatric illness.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

If divine inspiration is ever actual, then it is a personal - a subjective, an inner - experience which you have already noted as being inaccessible to historical analysis.

If divine inspiration is only ever personal - a subjective, an inner - experience, then the gods are too small and impotent to be worth bothering with.

And are indistinguishable from psychiatric illness.

Meh, that's one possibility.

It's the possibility preferred by those with a subjective inclination to value above all else (and to fantasize about) the power to control. And surely that is not a pathological psychiatric condition, because it is far too common and ordinary to be a disease.

 

[bilby]

It's the possibility preferred by those with a subjective inclination to value above all else (and to fantasize about) the power to control.

Is it? Do you have any evidence for this slur, or indeed any evidence that it is ONLY people with that inclination who would reach this obvious conclusion?

 

[bilby]

And surely that is not a pathological psychiatric condition, because it is far too common and ordinary to be a disease.

On the contrary, the claim of divine inspiration is pretty rare - and in modern times is almost invariably viewed as a symptom of psychiatric disorders.

As Billy Connolly put it: "Show up at any psychiatric hospital and tell them you are in communication with God; They won't even let you go home to fetch your pyjamas".

 

[NoHolyCows]

If divine inspiration is ever actual, then it is a personal - a subjective, an inner - experience which you have already noted as being inaccessible to historical analysis.

So what? That just shows a limit to the applicability of historical analysis. Does that bother you? If so, why does it bother you?

With regards to the notion of "invariant content", I will again use love as an example. Do all instances of love have any commonality? Let us just stipulate that all love has this in common: Love as an act is an intention made manifest as a doing done for the sake of an other. We could just as well say that this is invariantly the case, and, yet, the content or details of love can be - and in fact are - situationally unique, anything but invariant, and very much non-ordinary even when made humanly manifest. That regards one aspect of the indeterminateness of love, and it shows that "invariant content" is not necessary for inspiration to have a divine origin, given a divinity closely associated and identified with love.

Then you have conceded my point. A claim that is, by definition, private and inaccessible to public testing cannot underwrite a public assertion like “not of human origin.” Personal experiences can motivate belief, but they do not constitute evidence that binds anyone else. Once Paul makes a historical claim about the source of a message, it is judged by public criteria—texts, transmission, corroboration. On those criteria, everything we observe is fully human.

It doesn’t “bother” me; it sets the boundaries of warranted belief. Where methods cannot reach, the honest verdict is “not established,” not “therefore accept it.” History’s limits do not convert private certainty into public fact. If a claim cannot be checked, it cannot carry authority in argument. At best, it remains a personal conviction; at worst, it’s indistinguishable from any other unfalsifiable story. Either way, it gives no rational basis to affirm “not of human origin.”

An analogy to love does no evidential work here. Love is a human psychological state with well-studied cognitive and neurobiological correlates; calling it “invariantly” oriented to the other is a definition, not a demonstration of divine causation. Definitional invariance about an abstract concept does not license a leap to “therefore divine origin can be real without observable markers.” Paul’s claim is not about the phenomenology of care but about the source of a message. If you detach “divine inspiration” from any objective signature—no unique linguistic features, no early stable text, no independent attestations—then it becomes empirically indistinguishable from ordinary creativity. What cannot be told apart from a natural process by any observation cannot be credited as supernatural in historical analysis. Your appeal to love simply relocates the discussion to a domain where human explanations already suffice, and it leaves the evidential status of “not of human origin” unchanged: unsubstantiated.

You need "independent data" for the application of historical analysis. "Observable effects" can be the previously mentioned what follows from an experience issue. Paul's story is that he was a persecutor of heretics come to be called "Christians". Is there data independent of that story? Is there the same story told by someone who has no dog in the hunt, so to speak? Lack of such "evidence" would in no way justify restricting what one is willing to consider only to those strictures which historical analysis deems acceptable. After all, non-pathological radical changes in the outlook and behavior of individuals is not unknown - even if such conversion is relatively rare. Accordingly, speculation is absolutely legitimate with regards to attempts at fathoming inner states. That is unless one is disinterested in the inner states of humans.

So, if Paul's person was converted, what matters is not whether he was divinely inspired. What matters is the what comes after his being allegedly inspired. Maybe he was divinely inspired. Maybe he was not. Maybe what had been for him the sense-less babblings of those Christians were made more sensible by the operations of his ever-working mind. For that matter, based on his own telling of his story, the operations of his ever-working mind were essential even after the alleged divine inspiration.

The point is that divine inspiration in no way eliminates the necessity of the thoughtful mind. To put it another way, the reason why divine inspiration is inspiration is because what you refer to as "ordinary human thought" is always necessary following any sort of inspiration - if understanding is to be developed at all. Without understanding and what follows from understanding, inspiration (including divine inspiration) is worthless - and that would be the case from the divine perspective as well.

Independent data aren’t optional when you move from private psychology to public claims. Paul’s conversion is reported in his own letters and, decades later, in Acts—both Christian sources with theological aims. There are no contemporary non-Christian attestations of his vision or commission, and no external documentation of the event. Radical conversions occur naturally and frequently across religions and ideologies; as “observable effects” they have zero discriminating power about cause. They are fully compatible with cognitive dissonance resolution, grief, social realignment, or intense visionary experiences—all human mechanisms. Speculation about inner states may interest psychologists or pastors, but it is not historical evidence and cannot establish “not of human origin.”

What came after—letters, communities, doctrines—matters for sociology and intellectual history, not for validating a supernatural source. Utility, influence, or moral appeal do not verify origin; many impactful movements arise without any divine input. Your “maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t” concedes exactly my point: there is no warrant to affirm divine inspiration. If origin doesn’t matter, drop the claim; if it does (and Paul deploys it for authority), then it must be evidenced. On the record we have, it isn’t.

Whoa! Hold on there! You are making a claim about his inner state. That is, by your reckoning, speculation. I, of course, have no problem with speculation in itself. But, putting aside how "tightly argued" his musing actually is, let us continue.

Calling Paul’s letter “a tightly argued piece of deliberative persuasion” is not a peek into his inner psychology; it’s a description of observable features on the page. The rhetoric is public and measurable. He lays out theses, marshals reasons, anticipates objections, issues imperatives, and seeks concrete decisions from his audience—exactly what classical rhetoric labels deliberative (aimed at future action), as distinct from forensic or epideictic. In 1 Corinthians, you can track the argumentative scaffolding chapter by chapter: he identifies a problem and urges a resolution (1:10), then prosecutes factions with chains of reasons (1:10–4:21); he commands communal discipline (5–6) and supports it with consequences; he shifts into structured responses marked by “now concerning” (peri de) to address contested topics—marriage (7), food offered to idols (8–10), assembly practice (11–14)—and he argues the resurrection with explicit conditionals and reductios (15:12–19: if the dead are not raised, then Christ is not raised; then your faith is futile; then we are false witnesses). Those are not guesses about mindset; they’re surface-level features any competent reader can verify.

The same is true in Galatians. He stakes an authority claim at the outset (1:6–12), offers autobiographical evidence to counter rivals (1:13–2:14), argues from Scripture with cited texts and analogies (chapters 3–4), then moves to paraenesis with imperatives and practical directives (5–6). He also uses diatribe techniques—posing questions to an imagined interlocutor (“O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?”; “Did you receive the Spirit by works of law or by hearing with faith?”)—a recognizable argumentative form, not an introspective report. None of that requires speculation about what Paul felt; it is classification by genre and method based on the text’s structure, markers, and logic.

So the point stands: Paul’s letters are crafted to persuade—through reasons, commands, and expected behavioral outcomes—not merely to emote or “inspire” in some vague, non-argumentative sense. And because their composition, language, and transmission all look exactly like ordinary human literary work, the claim “not of human origin” still lacks any independent, testable warrant.

Sticking with the inspiration issue for the moment, it is necessary to distinguish between authority as experienced and authority demanding deference.

Authority as an experience (Jesus teaching as one with authority and not like the teachers of the law) is about human experience, reactions and, ultimately, the fact that human understanding is never instilled but only developed. It relates to how humans come to understand apparently new and/or apparently unconventional or even what at first exposure can seem to be eccentric teachings or viewpoints proffered by others.

Generally speaking, it is very rare indeed for the thinking of a person to be converted or transformed immediately as a result of an experience or upon being exposed to some new information or an apparently novel perspective. A person might be immediately and deeply moved by an experience, a presentation, a message, an explanation, a teaching proffered by an other person. Sometimes a person can be deeply moved by the style, the aesthetics of a presentation. Sometimes a person can be deeply moved by the unexpectedness of a perspective, its very newness. Not the newness of being different simply for the sake of being different, not for mere originality of presentation, but because the very content presented brings to the fore matters that the message recipient holds to be significant, matters which have seemingly been missed or ignored or trivialized in the explanations or teachings which have until then been most widely accepted, even emphasized.

This is to say that sometimes a person can be deeply moved - sometimes a person can be astonished - by what amounts to an encounter with information or insight that exceeds even the most well-established, rationally justified conventional thinking or personal way of thinking. Such a thought that exceeds what is already accepted is experienced as an encounter with authority even if, at least initially, its being experienced as authority is not readily, rationally explicable.

An encounter with authority is not experienced as confirmation of an already held belief or bias; authority is not vindication. This is because authority is more a sense which is perceived despite yet lacking explication; hence, that sense is but a seed for an understanding that is yet to be developed or otherwise made manifest.

If a person responds to a teaching (such as any of those put forth by Jesus or Siddhartha Gautama or Gandhi or whomever) with immediate astonished appreciation, that only indicates that the teaching was concerned with some matter(s) already of some concern in the mind of the communication recipient, regardless of whether or to what extent such concerning matters have ever been expressed by the communication recipient.

In such cases, the astonishment occurs in part as appreciation for the fact that some other person has managed to give expression to thinking about some matter(s) of importance which the recipient had not yet likewise been able to produce. Hannah Arendt maintains that any awareness of “what authority really is” “has vanished from the modern world.” Of course, we still have the word authority; we still use the word, but, according to Arendt, authority now “is commonly mistaken for some form of power or violence”, whereas actual “authority precludes the use of external means of coercion”. She adds, “where force is used, authority itself has failed.” Arendt also says that authority “is incompatible with persuasion, which … works through a process of argumentation. Where arguments are used, authority is left in abeyance.”

In this regard, authority imparts a sense of being veritably self-evident although still needing further development in order to become understanding manifest in acts and including the production of explication if only to render the understanding in the form most suitable as communication for the benefit of other persons. According to Arendt's characterization, authority does not wield power; it does not threaten or coerce, and it does not seek to persuade. And, yet, authority is somehow not inert. In fact, according to Arendt, “authority always demands obedience”. But, by her reckoning, authority demands obedience without a resort to coercion or (even implied or threatened) violence or persuasion through argument. This means that authority does not impose; it is not an imposition; it does not so much demand obedience as it elicits or evokes or inspires a response, a reaction to the experience of an encounter with authority, a reaction to the recognition that authority has been present and made noticeable, for example – in an expression of some sort.

It is a common mistake to think that the use of logic in expression necessarily indicates an attempt at argument and persuasion. Logic is absolutely compatible with an attempt at expressing the experience had of authority as well as the insight or understanding which follows from such an experience. Logic is compatible because logic is useful for organizing and expressing thinking - even thinking that seeks neither to argue nor persuade but, instead, simply hopes to be useful for others.

Authority as an experience can serve to inspire; it can be an inspiration. Authority demanding deference is an entirely different matter.

To be brief about it, the authority which demands deference is more a political or sociological - let us call it a more immediately practical - matter, and it has nothing to do with divine inspiration (or so I claim). If you want to argue that Paul was in effect taking God's name in vain (or some such similar criticism) as he tried to define and organize the faithful into a church, fine, go for it. That is a different discussion. That discussion does not speak to the good news which Paul preached, and it does not touch upon the question regarding whether Paul could have been or was divinely inspired to preach whatever was/is that good news about God and the relationship between God and human individuals.

Paul collapses that distinction in practice. He does not merely evoke a sense of “authority”; he claims it and enforces it. He anathematizes rival gospels in Galatians 1:8–9, orders communal exclusion in 1 Corinthians 5, and asserts that what he writes is “a command of the Lord” in 1 Corinthians 14:37. That is authority demanding deference, not merely an ineffable experience in listeners’ minds.

Human reactions—astonishment, conviction, awe—are real, but they are psychological outcomes, not evidence of a non-human source. Crowds respond similarly to philosophers, reformers, and orators across history. Those responses verify rhetoric’s impact, not a supernatural origin.

Exactly—and none of that warrants a divine hypothesis. Novelty, aesthetics, and fit with prior concerns are well-known human drivers of persuasion. They explain uptake of Paul’s message without invoking “not of human origin.”

“Exceeding convention” is still compatible with entirely human creativity. Revolutionary ideas arise in science, politics, and ethics without any claim to non-human origin. Feeling “authority” does not convert a subjective impression into public evidence.

A sensed “seed” remains subjective and non-transferable. Historical claims stand or fall on public artifacts and corroboration. Paul’s letters and their transmission are those artifacts, and they exhibit ordinary human composition and editing. Private “senses” do no work in establishing non-human origin.

Agreed—this is a statement about audience psychology. It neither supports nor rescues the claim that Paul’s message bypassed human origin. It explains reception, not source.

By Arendt’s own criterion, Paul’s letters are not “authority” in abeyance of persuasion; they are saturated with persuasion. Galatians, Romans, and 1–2 Corinthians argue point by point, cite precedents, anticipate objections, and demand specific actions. Paul does not set arguments aside; he relies on them. He also polices boundaries with threats of anathema and exclusion. That is institutional authority seeking deference, not a pure, non-argumentative aura.

Paul’s practice contradicts that model. He persuades with argument, invokes revelation to ground status, and enforces obedience through community sanctions (for example, “do not associate,” 2 Thessalonians 3:14; “hand this man over,” 1 Corinthians 5:5). Whatever one makes of Arendt’s theory, it does not describe Paul’s epistolary method. His authority claims are operationalized through rhetoric and discipline—decisively human means.

In Paul’s case, logic appears in explicit argumentative structures coupled to imperatives and behavioral outcomes: “I appeal to you… that there be no divisions” (1 Corinthians 1:10), “expel the wicked person” (1 Corinthians 5:13), “stand firm” (Galatians 5:1). These are not neutral reflections on an inner experience; they are arguments aimed at decisions. The letters’ genre, structure, and directives leave no doubt about intent.

And Paul deploys both. He appeals to an experiential “demonstration of the Spirit” and, simultaneously, to commands he says come from the Lord. The second moves the discussion squarely into claims about origin and authorization, where public evidence is required and, in this case, absent.

NHC

 

[DBT]

This is not about everything about Paul or what he may have said, generally speaking.

Then what you need to show is that the substance of Paul's teachings -not a phrase here and there, but the core ideas he considers his "gospel" - are lifted from Greek sources. You have not demonstrated anything of the sort, only that Paul used some common quotations in his public letters.

What is unique about Paul's teaching? Greek mythology has the elements of sacrifice, death and resurrection in the form of Dionysus, Prometheus, etc, and some of Paul's moral lessons are clearly taken from Greek philosophy, what can we point to as an example of Divine Inspiration, that this is ''not the work of man,'' that this comes from Jesus as the son of God?

Without that, what is left?

 

[NoHolyCows]

The authority issue has been addressed above. Whatever was Paul's initial appeal to others, it would have been (in varying degrees across the spectrum of individuals) most like the inspiration of authority. The authority of demanded deference would only - could only - appear after there had been a gathering of the identifiable sufficiently-like-minded. It is also to be kept in mind that Paul was not engaging with scholars as he tried to form/find a community. But all that goes to the inner states of his mind as he faced different situations. The origin issue is an insignificant tangent. That does not mean the tangent is uninteresting.

I was recently visiting family out of town, and a younger family member wanted to go to a baseball teammate's bar mitzvah; so, I took him. The rabbi's homily was about The Story of the Aleph, the point of which the rabbi said boils down to this: We see God in the face of the other person. And the point for this discussion is that there is no talk about God that is not talk about human understanding and human "inner states".

Any "historical analysis" which in effect claims to have discerned Paul's inner states when he spoke as he did in each situation fails as analysis when it does not extend its speculations to alternative explanations for why Paul expressed himself as he did. Such failed analysis as has been presented (and to which this is a response) contributes nothing to considerations into the question of whether Paul's claim of having had an experience of divine inspiration should be accepted. That claim of Paul's is - as has been repeatedly explained - utterly immaterial to what Paul preached about God and the relationship with humans. What he preached was an understanding which itself was and has always been subject to reconsideration, re-expression, and evolution. And the fact of there having been (along with the fact of there being in the future still further) development of understanding does not speak at all against - or for - Paul as ever having been divinely inspired.

Paul did not treat origin as a tangent; he weaponized it. Galatians opens by staking his commission “not from men,” and he immediately anathematizes rival gospels. In 1 Corinthians he issues non-negotiable commands and says his instruction is a “command of the Lord.” In 2 Corinthians he spends chapters defending his apostleship precisely to secure obedience. That is deference demanded from the start, not a late sociological by-product once a like-minded group coalesced. Whether his audience were scholars is irrelevant; authority claims function the same in any literate community. If origin were insignificant, those appeals to revelation and to the Lord’s command would be absent. They are central because they are his warrant over competing teachers. Strip out the origin claim and you reduce his letters to ordinary moral exhortations competing on equal footing, which is exactly my point.

That homily concedes the crux: if “talk about God” collapses into talk about human understanding, then Paul’s origin claim reduces to psychology, not history. Ethical resonance and subjective meaning explain why people were moved; they do not verify a non-human source. Historical analysis exists precisely to separate inner impressions from public fact. On the public facts—language, genre, argumentative structure, and a manuscript tradition shaped by human hands—Paul’s letters are ordinary human products. If you redefine the discussion so that only inner states matter, you’ve admitted that the origin claim cannot bind anyone beyond personal conviction.

Sound historical analysis does not diagnose inner states; it evaluates public artifacts against alternative explanations. Those alternatives fit the evidence perfectly: Paul’s rhetoric functions as community leadership and boundary-setting amid rival missions; his letters use standard Greco-Roman epistolary and diatribe forms; the textual record shows normal scribal change; doctrines and practices evolve as communities argue and adapt. None of that requires a non-human cause. Calling the origin claim “immaterial” contradicts Paul’s own use of it as his warrant. Either origin matters—in which case it must be evidenced and it isn’t—or it is immaterial, in which case it adds nothing and should be dropped. Development and re-expression are exactly what we expect from human traditions; they are neutral with respect to metaphysics but decisive against accepting “not of human origin” as a historical conclusion. Your position leaves only two options: a testable origin claim that fails on the evidence we have, or an untestable one that is irrelevant to public argument. Under either option, the rational outcome is the same: do not credit the claim.

Non-sense. It is not - and cannot be - a matter of devotion since it is immaterial. Failure to recognize the immateriality can result in devotion as self-idolatry, but nothing more substantial or useful than that.

Calling the origin claim “immaterial” does not make it so. Paul explicitly leverages it: “not from men nor through man… but through Jesus Christ” in Galatians, “the command of the Lord” in 1 Corinthians, anathemas on rival gospels, disciplinary orders to communities. Those are not decorative flourishes; they are the stated grounds for his authority over competing teachers. When a community accepts such claims without independent checks, that acceptance rests on an unfalsifiable commitment—devotion in the precise epistemic sense: a belief maintained regardless of disconfirming absence of evidence. If the claim truly were immaterial, it could be dropped with no loss; yet Paul himself does not drop it when he needs to settle disputes. That demonstrates its functional centrality, not immateriality.

You do realize that nothing I have said depends on the actuality of the experience which Paul alleges, don't you? That in itself demonstrates that the claim is not a fulcrum for whatever was the good news Paul preached. The actual issue is understanding and the development of understanding. The issue is not whether Paul was ever divinely inspired. This is the case if one believes in God and if one does not believe in God. Of course, anyone who has never been inspired will likely have a more difficult time in realizing the relationship between inspiration and understanding, but such a person could investigate their own subjective experiences had of having come to understandings - although that will likely be immensely more difficult if their understandings are always rote.

If your position does not depend on Paul’s alleged experience, then you’ve conceded my point twice over. First, you’ve admitted the origin claim adds no evidential weight to the content; the “good news” can be evaluated as ordinary human philosophy and ethics, which is exactly what I’m doing. Second, by detaching content from origin, you confirm that “divine inspiration” functions here as an unfalsifiable add-on—invoked when asserting authority, declared irrelevant when asked to substantiate it. Historical method cannot credit a cause that makes no testable difference. As for “inspiration” as a human feeling: people in every tradition report it—mystics, artists, reformers, and ideologues—without implying a non-human source. That universality undercuts, rather than supports, Paul’s exceptional claim. The record we can actually inspect—language, genre, argumentation, and the manuscript history—shows human composition and human transmission. Once those are accounted for, there remains no independent warrant to accept “not of human origin.” If origin truly doesn’t matter, drop it; if it does, demonstrate it with public evidence. In either case, your own framing leaves no rational basis for treating the claim as anything other than untestable belief.

NHC

 

[Politesse]

This is not about everything about Paul or what he may have said, generally speaking.

Then what you need to show is that the substance of Paul's teachings -not a phrase here and there, but the core ideas he considers his "gospel" - are lifted from Greek sources. You have not demonstrated anything of the sort, only that Paul used some common quotations in his public letters.

What is unique about Paul's teaching? Greek mythology has the elements of sacrifice, death and resurrection in the form of Dionysus, Prometheus, etc, and some of Paul's moral lessons are clearly taken from Greek philosophy, what can we point to as an example of Divine Inspiration, that this is ''not the work of man,'' that this comes from Jesus as the son of God?

Without that, what is left?

Paul doesn't mention Dionyssus or Prometheus, though. The only textual evidence you've provided so far has been that in some of his public letters, Paul alluded to other popular authors occasionally. If you're now changing the standard of evidence to "any mention of sacrifice, death, or resurrection is proof of a Hellenistic influence", then literally every sacred text ever written is plagiarized from the Greeks, because I know of no religious text of any length that does not mention death, of all things. The Bhagavad Gita, the Popul Vuh, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Cherokee morning prayers, all copied from Plato apparently!

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

It's the possibility preferred by those with a subjective inclination to value above all else (and to fantasize about) the power to control.

Is it? Do you have any evidence for this slur, or indeed any evidence that it is ONLY people with that inclination who would reach this obvious conclusion?

Slur?! Awwww. You like to dish it out but can't take it yourself? Come on. You're a growed up man, and growed up men can handle joshing.

But wait. Is it possible that you thought you had put forth an actual argument? Hmmm. If so, then I'm sorry for having a little fun with that sort-of-argument.

With regards to evidence, do you mean something like the quality of Billy Connolly evidence? I know. I'm terrible for seeming to belittle that evidence when I was, in fact, once again just joshing.

Being perfectly serious now - I do think that the Connolly remark can be regarded rightly as evidence. However, I am not at present going to discuss the nature of evidence and its necessary and sufficient conditions, which musings would tie in with the contingency of most truths (certainly the interesting ones) and which contingency is to be celebrated (although it more often seems to be more like regretted).

For now I will just note this about the Connolly quotation: In many places in more ancient times, and depending on the intended audience, you often had better claim to have been divinely touched if you wanted that audience to even be bothered with paying any attention to you. For that matter, that same sort of audience can be found today, but those folks are more often than not on the society periphery; so, they have no say in whether claiming to be divinely inspired is sufficient for concluding that such a person is assuredly certifiably insane.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Then you have conceded my point. A claim that is, by definition, private and inaccessible to public testing cannot underwrite a public assertion like “not of human origin.”

No. I said that you said that a subjective experience is inaccessible to historical analysis, and I agree with you on that point. It does not follow from that agreement that a claim of having been divinely inspired cannot be tested. What I hold is that during testing (just as in real life post-any-alleged-inspiration), the fact of being divinely inspired will diminish in significance once understanding begins to develop and will continue to diminish in significance as understanding is furthered.

Personal experiences can motivate belief, but they do not constitute evidence that binds anyone else.

Personal experiences can certainly constitute evidence. That being said, even if Paul's inspiration was of divine origin, it is true that his experience obligates no one. For that matter, his understanding obligates no one.

When the context of the preceding is taken as including the question concerning the development of understanding, then Paul would be rightly most concerned about how his own developing understanding can be best communicated to others. Those others are not obligated to understand Paul, but they might nonetheless be interested in developing an understanding about what Paul is saying or trying to say. Anyone interested in engagement with Paul could try to develop an own understanding of Paul's understanding and in so doing take account of the contexts in which Paul expresses his understanding, yet no one is ever obligated to try to understand Paul's understanding during an engagement with Paul.

Once Paul makes a historical claim about the source of a message ...

Be careful. Sticking the word "historical" in front of "claim" does not justify the application of what you have been referring to as historical analysis - if it is in fact a fact about historical analysis that it has no access to subjective experiences, subjective inner states.

it is judged by public criteria—texts, transmission, corroboration. On those criteria, everything we observe is fully human.

First of all, in accord with the applicability limits of historical analysis, every result from such analysis will always appear "fully human." After all, if Paul was actually divinely inspired, that was a personal, subjective experience which cannot be observed during or as a result of historical analysis.

Secondly, even if Paul's experience was actually one of divine inspiration, what Paul will make evident is his own human understanding. His inspiration can be of divine origin with his subsequently developed understanding naturally being fully human.

It doesn’t “bother” me; it sets the boundaries of warranted belief.

What I do not seem to be able to successfully communicate to you is that even unwarranted unbelief about an actually divine inspiration is not a problem. It is not a problem, because it is irrelevant to understanding Paul's understanding which can also be thought of - and tested - in terms of Paul's expression of his understanding. Although no one is ever obligated to (try to) understand Paul's understanding, any engagement with Paul's understanding can be assessed/judged in terms of the manner undertaken in order to understand Paul's understanding. If someone is stuck on the question of how is that person to know that Paul was actually divinely inspired, that person has not yet gotten to the attempt to understand Paul's understanding.

Love is a human psychological state with well-studied cognitive and neurobiological correlates; calling it “invariantly” oriented to the other is a definition, not a demonstration of divine causation.

Saying that love is a "psychological state with well-studied cognitive and neurobiological correlates" is fluff because it neither bolsters your position nor rebuts my remark. If you pay attention to what I said, you will notice that I never even tried to put forth "a demonstration of divine causation" with regards to love or any other matter. Rather, I corrected you by showing how you can have invariance despite there being variation in content.

Calling Paul’s letter “a tightly argued piece of deliberative persuasion” is not a peek into his inner psychology; it’s a description of observable features on the page.

Look at that word "observable". Its use there entails a subjective perspective, an interpretation. That is fine, but the legitimacy of that interpretation is compromised by the failure to take account of other perspectives/interpretations. Your "observable" has left the realm of historical analysis. You are not controlling for context variables which is something that is essential - but only if the goal is to understand the understanding, the expression of an other person, a goal which no one is obliged to pursue.

Paul collapses that distinction in practice. ... Paul’s practice contradicts that model.

Paul did not treat origin as a tangent; he weaponized it

What you call a collapse is more aptly described as an apparent inconsistency, quite possibly even a contradiction, and I told you that what appears to be at least an inconsistency is a legitimate entrance point for a different argument. However, that would be addressing a different issue than the matter of the alleged divine inspiration that gave rise to the understanding preached as gospel. As Politesse has repeatedly tried to make clear, not everything Paul said and wrote was the allegedly inspired gospel preached.

Human reactions—astonishment, conviction, awe—are real, but they are psychological outcomes, not evidence of a non-human source.

This was addressed above, but, to reiterate: the fact of being divinely inspired will diminish in significance as understanding is furthered. If someone is stuck on the question of how is that person to know that the origin of Paul's inspiration was "a non-human source", that person has not yet gotten to the attempt to understand Paul's understanding.

A sensed “seed” remains subjective and non-transferable. Historical claims stand or fall ...

All claims are historical in that all claims occur within time, within history. And, yet, not all claims are accessible to historical analysis - by your own reckoning and admission. This means that something other than historical analysis is necessary. But only if understanding the understanding of an other person is what is sought.

That homily concedes the crux: if “talk about God” collapses into talk about human understanding, then Paul’s origin claim reduces to psychology, not history

And you have already admitted that historical analysis is not applicable to inner states such as understanding. As you say, "Sound historical analysis does not diagnose inner states".

If God is, maybe God is not the egomaniac that so many humans describe and/or expect. Imagine being concerned with the development of others' understanding, particularly with the development of others' understanding about the understanding of others. When someone is able to so imagine, then the very arbitrariness of the burden of proof assignment becomes not just apparent but obvious. But there might be another aspect which it is necessary to realize. Not all claims are intended to convince. Sometimes claims are invitations.

you’ve admitted the origin claim adds no evidential weight to the content; the “good news” can be evaluated as ordinary human philosophy and ethics, which is exactly what I’m doing.

I do not see you doing exactly that or anything close to that, because you have not made evident any evidence that you are concerned with understanding the understanding of Paul or others.

That being said, the "good news" is for humans; therefore, it most definitely is to be evaluated and further developed in understanding by humans. That fact is perfectly compatible with - and does not at all detract from - belief in God and continued belief in God. Except maybe for those believers who have interpreted/imagined the good news or God-belief as having somehow delivered them from the burden of having to further the development of their understandings and their persons. Indeed, that has been the gist of much Jewish criticism regarding how the Christianity of/for the common man and woman in particular has developed. But that is a different tangent.

 

[Elixir]

Personal experiences can certainly constitute evidence.

“I think I found yer problem here ma’am.”


Evidence is shared*. It is EVIDENT to others, not only one’s self.
Your personal experience is neither evident nor evidence to others; they have their own personal experiences. That’s why we call them that.
To say otherwise is either confusion or deception.
If you bend language like that to assert your point, it rather undermines it.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Personal experiences can certainly constitute evidence.

“I think I found yer problem here ma’am.”
View attachment 51794

Evidence is shared*. It is EVIDENT to others, not only one’s self.
Your personal experience is neither evident nor evidence to others; they have their own personal experiences. That’s why we call them that.
To say otherwise is either confusion or deception.
If you bend language like that to assert your point, it rather undermines it.

The first thing you need to do is pay close attention. Notice the word "can" in what I said: "Personal experiences can certainly constitute evidence."

The next thing you need to do is note that on the basis of your description of evidence, evidence is indistinguishable from agreement. That is because you have not characterized evidence - for instance, in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.

Then, once you realize you need to distinguish between evidence and agreement, you need to consider how evidence becomes "EVIDENT to others". Have fun with that. I might jump into such an evidence undertaking if it seems to be so far off target that it becomes uninteresting.

 

[Elixir]

Notice the word "can" in what I said: "Personal experiences can certainly constitute evidence."

Read carefully since my post went over your head:
NO IT CANNOT.
To have meaning, you would have to specify -
Which of the 4 types of evidence?
Conflating “testimonial evidence” with statistical or scientific evidence is bad enough. But insisting upon it is a smarmy practice common to religious dogma.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Conflating “testimonial evidence” with statistical or scientific evidence

Do you mean to claim that there is nothing in common between testimonial evidence, statistical evidence, and scientific evidence? Are you asserting that there is no necessary condition of evidence to be found in each of those evidences?

If you think that there is no necessary condition common to all those evidences, then that is all I need to know.