The history you believe is based on the "appeal to popularity" as much as the Jesus miracle acts are. I.e., it was recorded because folks said it happened.
The evidence we have for this is greater than for many historical facts we routinely accept. Many facts are accepted on the authority of one source only. The only evidence for any historical facts are documents reporting them and which were written near to the time that the events allegedly happened.
This criterion rules out virtually all miracle claims, before modern times, which were ever made. Only the Jesus miracle stories are not ruled out by this criterion, while virtually all others are ruled out. (Maybe not 100%. And this rule may be only 99.9% correct, but close enough to be a good rule.)
See, this is a classic example of what I mean when I (rightly) accuse Lumpenproletariat of employing the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. First of all, there is often considerably more evidence for historical facts than just documents reporting them . . .
But it's only the documents which tell us what happened. The other "evidence" adds to it, but it's the documents which tell us the events that happened. And for most facts there is nothing but the documents.
Why won't you test this with an example of an historical fact you know. For any example, it's what they wrote in the documents that you rely on -- whatever the writer(s) said is what you believe is history, i.e., whatever they said happened. For almost any example you can offer it's the documents ONLY and nothing else -- you probably can't name a single exception.
Just give an example for us to consider. You won't, because it will prove the point that it's mainly the documents you rely on for the historical facts. If not, then you would give an example to show otherwise.
Obviously there are MILLIONS of historical facts based on documents only and not any other evidence whatever.
. . . reporting them which were written near to the time that the events allegedly happened.
Or even written 100 years later, 200 years later, 300 . . . The later-recorded facts are not necessarily ruled out. Sometimes these are the only source for facts that we accept. And yet you can't name an historical fact which is based solely on archaeology or artifacts and no documents. (Actually you might claim that a piece of pottery they turned up tells us that someone 1000 years ago handled this piece of pottery, if that can be called an "historical fact" -- nothing about the events, other than this one object being there at the time.)
Secondly, he inserts the irrelevant criterion "before modern times" which allows him to draw this bulls-eye around his favorite fairy tale.
It's not irrelevant that writing and publishing and printing is so much easier today. Obviously you can claim we have a dozen sources, or 2 or 3 dozen, for some televangelist today, or some Hindu guru, etc.
We can take these into account, and assess these claims, compare them to other cases. But it's important that before 1000 AD there are no published miracle legends other than the Jesus case. Why are there no others? Why is there only this one?
We can still make the comparison to modern cases, but simply counting how many sources we have for the story is not the same "evidence" today as for an event 1000 or 2000 years ago. Obviously with modern publishing there might be a dozen publications, but this does not mean the modern story is thus more credible than the one from 1000 or 2000 years ago simply because we have these extra sources.
You might argue that some modern case is more credible because it was checked by a modern investigator who verified it by interviewing the witnesses, etc., or in other ways. But the mere fact that there are more publications or websites today for this claim than there is for a case 1000 or 2000 years ago cannot be given as evidence for higher credibility.
You can't be so bone-headed as to fail to understand this distinction between the information for today's events vs. the information we have for events 1000 or 2000 years ago.
You have to compare those ancient events to other ancient events, so we can see if any one stands out from the others as more credible. And when this is done, we have to ask why we don't have a similar volume of written evidence for Apollonius of Tyana or for Hanina ben Dosa as we have for Jesus, who were all 1st-century reputed miracle-workers, and yet we have no 1st-century sources for Hanina or Apollonius whereas we have 4 (5) for Jesus.
Why are you having so much trouble admitting that we have more evidence for Jesus than we have for these other two contemporary reputed miracle-workers? Why can't you deal with this relevant question? and instead take so much glee in dragging out Joseph Smith or other modern figures for whom a vast publishing industry obviously provided the extra sources?
You cannot figure out why this is a false comparison?
The implication is that somehow human nature evidently completely changed between the period ill-defined as "before modern times" . . .
No, the implication clearly is that with modern publishing there can be far more "evidence" in the form of published accounts whipped out of the print shop than anything possible 1000 or 2000 years ago. It has nothing to do with "human nature" but with human technology which changes over the centuries and has changed the meaning today of "sources" for these facts. Today an event of interest for which there is some report or evidence is published widely, whereas for 1000/2000 years ago that same/similar event would be totally unrecorded and forgotten and lost to history.
. . . ill-defined as "before modern times" and whatever he arbitrarily calls "modern times."
The definition is very obvious: "modern times" means since the invention of printing or since the widespread establishment of publishing. And this doesn't mean any precise date -- we can roughly put the date at 1500, but 1600 or 1700 could also be used as the date. It is silly to quibble over this "definition" except that you are desperate to find a way to escape from your problem of trying to explain how it is that we have this unusually-high volume of written evidence for the Jesus miracle events and no comparable evidence for other cases of alleged miracle-workers or miracle legends.
In order to justify this exclusion an objective justification has to be offered.
The invention of printing is not something "objective"? New technology is not "objective"? More sources has no "objective" meaning? We have written sources telling us that something happened -- these documents, manuscripts are not "objective"? Those scrolls? They don't tell us something about what happened 2000 years ago? We don't use them to determine what happened? Past events are not "objective"? History is not "objective"? Again, your argument really is that no historical evidence is valid, no historical events are verified.
Isn't it history and past events and written accounts of past events that we're talking about? Why do we have so many more sources for modern events than we have for events of 1000 or 2000 years ago? Is this rocket science? You can't figure it out that 2000 years ago they didn't write down as much stuff as we do today? Why are you having trouble figuring this out?
The ancient events DID happen, even though we have only a fraction of the sources telling us of those events. The chance that none of it happened is not increased by the extremely lower quantity of sources, as your logic suggests.
We have no way to determine how many accounts of miracle-working events were written in antiquity that have failed to survive.
We don't need to determine this. We know definitely that many claims were made which were never recorded, and many events (like probably 99.99999% of them) were never recorded, and much also was written down which still did not survive because it wasn't copied. We don't need to know "how many accounts" did not survive. It might have been a thousand, a million, billion, etc. Whatever this number is, it does not change the point that we know most documents perished, and there were a vast number of miracle stories which are totally lost.
There's so much we don't know, and yet we can draw some conclusions from the part that we do know.
But we do have irrefutable floods of evidence that this sort of thing goes on constantly today.
And we have plenty of evidence that miracle stories went on constantly 1000 and 2000 years ago, but most of it was not recorded like it is today. We know that because we're not idiots. And why weren't they published? probably because hardly anyone believed them.
Did human nature fundamentally change just because literacy and the resources to write things down became more common?
No, it's obvious that what changed is the quantity of what was recorded in writing, which was scarce back then but vastly greater today. Not just the amount of writing, which is a minor change, but the quantity of writings COPIED so that dozens and hundreds and thousands of readers could have access to the same one document and learn the events, which is vastly greater today than it was 2000 years ago. (Does someone really have to explain this to you?)
Or is it possible that Lumpenproletariat is abusing the fact that interested parties made handwritten copies of his favorite fairy tale and . . .
But why only this fairy tale and not any others? What was so special about this story that so many writers wanted to copy it? -- not just 1000 years later, but in 100 and 200 and 300 AD?
. . . continued to propagate it through the centuries in order to fabricate a fallacious claim that this somehow proves the recorded events actually happened?
Right, the same as they've conned us into believing the Roman Empire existed and that George Washington was the first President. They just planted all that evidence and copied it, all those documents and artifacts, and had their agents spread this evidence everywhere and programmed people to believe it all actually happened.
You're making a strong case that no historical events really ever happened but rather are a product of the fabrication and propagation of this artificial evidence, which we believe because they proliferated these documents "in order to fabricate a fallacious claim that this somehow proves that the recorded events actually happened." Why can't you tell us why the gospel accounts are not credible without also telling us why ALL historical documents are not credible? Again you're just giving reasons to reject ALL historical facts.
ALL historical knowledge is based on evidence showing that the events were believed to have happened, and thus they were "popular" or believed by a large number, and this is the main evidence that those events really happened.
This is a ridiculous statement. Laughable. Evidently Lumpenproletariat is unfamiliar with "He said, she said."
But isn't all our history just based on "he said, she said" documents, where someone says something happened? Which documents are NOT "he said, she said"? In every case isn't the history source a "he" or a "she" who wrote something, i.e., who "said" it happened? Which source is not?
The ability to convince lots of people to believe one version of a story has absolutely no bearing on the truthiness of the story.
This is just as easily an argument against believing the "story" of the Persian Wars by Herodotus. Where did Herodotus get his "story"? From people who were convinced it was true. That the sources he used were people who believed the events happened has "no bearing on the truthiness of the story" told by Herodotus. Likewise any other historian.
What else do you have for the history you believe other than accounts from writers who got their "story" from people who believed it happened, or were convinced to believe it?
Again, every reason you give for disbelieving the Gospel accounts for the events is also a reason to disbelieve ANY accounts for any historical events.
It also completely ignores the very real possibility that many people who heard these ridiculous myths did not believe them.
No, that possibility is not ignored. Probably some did not believe the claims -- there's no way to figure how many.
But the fact of the recorded documents is evidence (not proof) that the reported events did happen. If not, then why do we believe any historical documents? More documents reporting the same events makes it more likely that the events did happen. However many did not believe the reported events, the existence of the written accounts is evidence that those events did happen (not proof), and, a higher number of sources for the same event increases the credibility of it, or the probability that the event did really happen.
And if this were not so, how could we have any credible historical facts?
(And if we had documents from the time saying the Jesus stories were fabrications and were disbelieved by many, that would reduce the credibility of the accounts.)
The existence of these gospels and pockets of believers is evidence that people got sucked into a religious movement.
Again, this comes only from your dogmatic premise that any reputed miracle event has to be fiction, no matter what. And not everyone has to accept this dogmatic premise.
The existence of these documents, their proliferation, multiple accounts attesting to the same events, is an indication that the reported events did happen, even if there are also some false reports among them. It's also evidence of some rumors or confusion or conflicts between different factions or different sources, or different cults -- it strongly indicates that something real did happen, something resembling the general accounts, even though there may also be distortions or mistakes or some fabrications added to it.
Big whoop. Millions of Mormons today believe that Jesus ministered to ancient native Americans. The original stories about that were allegedly written near the time they happened . . .
There's no reason to believe that. We do know when the Gospel accounts were written and when the miracle events allegedly happened. We have to know this in order to judge the credibility of the claims about the events. These dates are supplied by mainline historians and scholars, not by some cult. But we don't know when the Book of Mormon events happened, from the text, nor when the accounts of them were written (i.e., the accounts which JS translated).
. . . and translated into English by Joseph Smith much more recently.
But we don't know if the translation is correct, because there's no way to check the early manuscripts as we can do with the New Testament writings. So we really cannot verify the content of the Book of Mormon as we can that of the Greek New Testament.
Oh that's right. This happened in "modern times" so obviously the fact that human nature had completely changed . . .
No, whether it's "modern times" or earlier, we need the date when the document was written and also the date of the reported events. And for the Book of Mormon we have neither.
. . . by then lets us excuse this from Lumpenproletariat's special pleading criteria for accepting the Jesus Myth.
You cannot make these comparisons of the New Testament to the Book of Mormon if your only interest is to trash the Book of Mormon like this. You're offering us nothing. You obviously consider the Book of Mormon to be nothing but garbage for idiots. If you want to get serious, provide a real presentation of its claims, describing the reported events, when the account was written, and take it seriously.
The New Testament writings are taken seriously, with various dates determined for most of the writers, and criticism of certain parts that are less credible. If you want to do this with the Book of Mormon and defend its credibility or show that it's equally credible as the Gospel accounts, then get serious and present the information.
But if all you can do is ridicule it and snicker and cackle at it like an immature child, then you need to place your post into the topic for child's play or into the "horsing around" topic rather than here where we're discussing something serious.
Like always, you are just giving reasons to reject ALL historical sources or documents for anything ever used as a source for historical events.
For serious inquiry into this we need to know the approximate date the document was written and the approximate date of the alleged events, and we need to look at the claims made in the document, which we have done regarding the Jesus events in the gospel accounts. When you're ready to get serious, find out when the Mormon text was written, according to scholars, and when the events in them are supposed to have happened.
This is nothing more than a desperate attempt to shoehorn "appeal to popularity" in as an actual respected historical methodology, and it's not going to work.
It's already working for you, in all examples of historical facts which you believe.
You already follow this "appeal to popularity" for the facts of history that you believe. You can't give any example of an historical fact you believe that is not based on what some writer claimed and on how many writers claimed it, i.e., on the "popularity" of those facts. And what the writers claimed was based on what people told them, i.e., on the "popularity" of the claims of what happened.
If you had anything other than this for determining the historical facts, you would have presented an example of it. You have no example to offer. EVERY historical fact you believe is based on what some writer(s) said in documents that have come down to us and on nothing else.
Which is also essentially what the Jesus miracle claims are based on.
