In my new book The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus I show mathematically why we are so confident in the existence of most ancient persons, and why we get different results for Jesus when we hold him to the same standard as everyone else—in the second section of chapter six, starting with Socrates and moving down the line all the way to mundane figures like Pontius Pilate and fabulized heroes like Apollonius of Tyana (whose existence is not as certain, but even then still more than Jesus). Two general facts intrude.
- First, the people we are certain of are usually mundane people with only some legendary development; while the people we expect don‘t exist tend to be heavily mythologized superheroes. This places them in a different reference class, because we expect mundane people to exist (they usually do), but we don’t expect superheroes to exist (they usually don’t).
- Second, the people we are certain of usually have substantially better evidence for their existence than we have for the likes of Jesus—which means, evidence very unlikely to exist unless they did. We usually even have direct contemporary evidence, often eyewitness evidence, sometimes even archaeological evidence (coins, inscriptions, even original documents).
Such evidence can include their own self-witness—for example, we have the writings of Josephus and they are credibly real, unlike the letter of Jesus to Abgar or most (but maybe not all) of the letters attributed to Apollonius. We lack that for Jesus—as also for Socrates, but for Socrates we have a lot of the other kinds of evidence. And even when we lack that other evidence (which is rare), we might still have something we don’t have for Jesus: credible testimonies and historical accounts within a century—narratives from rational historians known to use effective standards of research, who may even tell us their sources, or corroborate other evidence we have (like attesting that Josephus was famously attached to the Flavians or did indeed write what we have from him: which we have not just from Origen, Clement, Theophilus, and Tertullian, but also Felix and Dio, and even, in part, a contemporary of Josephus, Suetonius); or quotations of these accounts from later authors (e.g. we have later quotations of lost writings by Appian, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus also attesting Josephus and his writings), all going back to within a hundred years of Josephus. I document and discuss many different examples of this kind of evidence in chapter six of OPH.
But even when we lack any of this, if the person is a mundane figure (not someone heavily mythologized or appearing only in myth or fiction), based on precedent, we know they probably did exist (well enough even if not certainly), as long as there is no evidence calling that into doubt (as there is for Jesus or even Apollonius). Whereas, based on precedent, superheroes usually didn’t exist, so we need evidence to believe one of them an exception, rather than the other way around. Thus we don’t need additional evidence for mundane persons for whom no evidence exists to doubt them. But we do need additional evidence for superheroic persons, as in every other case that is already sufficient to doubt them. Yet even though we don’t need it, we often do have this additional evidence for those we’re confident existed. But we don’t have it for Jesus.
So What about Aristotle?
Everyone keeps trying new ones. I call this the Argument from Spartacus because that was the first one I encountered (and refuted) long ago (see Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?). But as soon as you embarrass anyone making this argument, they retreat to someone else, desperately trying to find “someone” historians are confident existed who rescues the argument. But there isn’t anyone. Anyone you pick is either not confidently conceded to exist by historians, or has better evidence attesting them than Jesus (even if just from the fact of being nonmythological). I now include Alexander the Great and Mithradates of Pontus as examples: heavily mythologized persons (thus starting with reasons to doubt them) who are very well attested by evidence (thus overcoming any initial doubts), evidence that does not exist for Jesus. Even Apollonius of Tyana has better evidence than we have for Jesus, and his existence is close to doubtable (there is no high confidence there—I run the numbers in OPH).
Lately someone retreated in desperation to claiming “Aristotle” wins the argument—that Jesus is “better” attested than Aristotle. But they’re clearly an amateur who doesn’t know how evidence works. Because they argue from manuscript dates rather than pertinent evidence. No mainstream historian doubts anything in antiquity merely from the lateness of surviving copies of it. And we don’t have this for Jesus anyway. Early manuscripts of myths about Jesus cannot prove he existed any more than they could Hercules or Apollonius. This fallacious argument is similar to the one made to attempt a claim that we have better evidence for Jesus than Julius Caesar. No, we don’t. See Is Evidence for Jesus Really as Good as for Caesar? where I already refuted this entire approach. Manuscript dates don’t bear much on anything here. The historicity of texts can be internally and externally corroborated without early manuscripts. The entire fields of ancient history and classics have concerned themselves with that very process.
The remainder of their arguments are equally bogus, reflecting amateur apologetics rather than professional historical reasoning. Arguments from consensus are fallaciously circular. A consensus relying on no legitimate evidence does not thereby create evidence to cite (see On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus). And like manuscripts, testimonies to the existence of myths about Jesus (as for example from Tertullian) cannot attest that Jesus was historical. That’s not even logically possible. All that does is confirm the myths existed then. Which we all agree on—even the most radical skeptics in the profession today. We need something more than that (see the examples I survey for Apollonius in OPH).
Likewise, “archaeological findings confirm numerous places” etc. which “reinforce the New Testament’s historical reliability” is a non sequitur. Ancient myth and fiction can easily get readily accessible background knowledge right when constructing their stories (see How We Know Acts Is a Fake History). They exhibit little interest in narrative realism beyond that (see All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark, for example) and get things wrong when they no longer care to get it right (there is no evidence of Herod committing genocide in Bethlehem yet would be; Pilate would never have had a custom of releasing murderous traitors on holidays; Mark gets the Pharisees completely wrong—most would actually have agreed with Jesus; and so on and so on). So in any final analysis the Gospels do not have any markers of reliability. They actually tick almost every box for unreliable narratives in antiquity.
And yet that’s all this Christian apologist had. Let’s compare it with what we have for Aristotle.
Difference in Prior Probability
First, of course, Aristotle is not a mythologized superhero like Hercules, Osiris, Moses, or Jesus. So unlike Jesus he starts out already more probably than not a real person. For mythologized superheroes I concluded a maximum prior probability of 1 in 3 in my original study, and this has since on new data come down to 1 in 4 (or 25%; really 26% but here I’m rounding to the nearest whole). But for mundane persons (like generals, administrators, scholars) it’s closer to 5 in 6 (over 80%). Neither is a certainty (lots of superheroes will have really existed if 25% did; and lots of regular people will not have existed if 20% didn’t). But they sit on opposite sides of likelihood here. If there is only a 25% chance Jesus existed, he probably didn’t (even if he still reasonably could have). But if there is an 80% chance Aristotle existed, he probably did (even if he still reasonably could not have). In reality the prior for Aristotle would be higher (here I am using the most unfavorable lower bound of the error margin) while for Jesus it would be lower (I am using the most favorable upper bound of 1 in 4, which is 3 to 1 against).
So we’ll set the priors here at 5/1 (five times more likely Aristotle existed than not, on precedent alone) and 1/3 (three times more likely Jesus didn’t exist than did, also on precedent alone). That’s 80% to 25% (~83/17 = 5/1; and 25/75 = 1/3).
But Aristotle is way better off than that. The odds on any thing being true equals the prior odds times the consequent odds. The consequent odds make the “likelihood ratio,” the ratio between the probability of the evidence consequent to the thing being true and the probability of that same evidence consequent to it being false. And the prior odds are how things have turned out before: do heavily mythologized superheroes tend to exist? Do ordinary historical people? The prior odds have to be multiplied by the consequent odds, as the latter represents the effect of all the evidence, one way or another, particular to the thing being questioned (apart from what we would predict from background knowledge alone). For Jesus, I assess all the evidence in my original study On the Historicity of Jesus. What about Aristotle?
Difference in Evidence
We actually have evidence for Aristotle that we don’t have for Jesus. A lot. Here I shall evaluate each independent category of evidence as if the others didn’t exist, and then combine them for the effect of having them all and not just one alone. This is unlike Tertullian quoting the Gospels as his only source attesting to Jesus, which only attests the Gospels, not Jesus, and so cannot add to whatever probability we derive from the Gospels (the probability that an attestation of the Gospels would exist given either theory of their production is the same on either theory and thus cancels out to 1). None of these evidences, altogether, is directly dependent on the others (e.g. even if some could have been produced in awareness of the rest, its contributing content cannot be explained by that). This does mean some of this you might rank better than I do, given all the other evidence. But I am here accounting for that effect by ranking them as if the other evidence doesn’t exist and then calculating the effect of having all of it.
Here we go:
- Like Josephus (and unlike Jesus) we have Aristotle’s own writings—extensively; even more, and more credibly, than we have for Paul, which is still a ton more than we have for Jesus (who, like Socrates, wrote nothing). The probability that all of the extant writings of Aristotle are fakes (given all the pertinent data, internal and external, apart from what follows) cannot plausibly be higher than one percent, because most of what we have is at least a hundred times more likely to be authentic than not. Not even once in a hundred times do we have a vast faked corpus like this, plausibly contexted (internally, and externally, by all the ancient discussions of Aristotle not already counted below).
That gets us a likelihood of 100/1.
Writings can have indicators of forgery, or lack indicators of authenticity; and can have external attestation or lack them. So this isn’t going to be the likelihood every time we have a purported writing. But it is for authors like Josephus or Aristotle—unlike, for example, Jesus’s “letter” to Abgar, some of the letters of Apollonius, or the New Testament forgeries attributed to Paul (e.g. the Pastorals and Deuteropaulines, 2 Thessalonians, even now Philemon), even the actual Pseudo-Aristotelian writings. There may be more evidence to doubt all the letters of Paul, for example, but still not enough to nix them. I might put the authenticity of his core six Epistles at twenty or fifty times more likely if he existed, or if being generous to skeptics, ten times. But that’s still ten times more evidence than we have for Jesus. And at a hundred times in the case of Aristotle this is already overwhelmingly more evidence than we have for Jesus. And it’s still not all we have.
- We have an inscription erected during Aristotle’s life by the people of Delphi honoring Aristotle (and his student Callisthenes) for completing their commission of him as a scholar to reconstruct the Pythian Games list that had been lost in a fire (Corpus des Inscriptions de Delphes, vol. 4, §10), which is also mentioned in later sources. This being a fake is damn near impossible. And we have no inscriptions like this for Jesus. The probability that this would exist and Aristotle not exist must be thousands to one against. But I will be excessively generous to skeptics and say it is only a thousand times more likely to exist if Aristotle did than if he didn’t.
This gets us a likelihood of 1000/1.
- We have an eyewitness account from Aristotle’s student, Aristoxenus, writing mere years after Aristotle died. We have no such record for Jesus. This is not a mythology but an ordinary science textbook discussing Aristotle’s teaching methods and things Aristotle had said to Aristoxenus about what it was like attending the classes of Plato (who was Aristotle‘s teacher). Given all we know (above, below, and beyond), the probability that this is in any relevant way fake can be no better than 10% (and is certainly less). Since it’s 100% expected if he existed (minus the coefficient of contingency that’s the same on all theories of its production and thus cancels out), its being only 10% expected if he didn’t exist means this evidence is ten times more likely if he existed.
That gets us a likelihood of 10/1.
- Arrian composed his history of Alexander the Great mid-second-century A.D. using an explicit method of only relating what he found in three eyewitness sources (then extant and attested apart from Arrian), including Aristotle’s nephew, student, and colleague Callisthenes (a scholar and attaché to Alexander). This is the same Callisthenes attested as Aristotle’s coworker in the Delphi inscription above (and as a commentator on Aristotle in a first century manuscript of Aristotle). So when Arrian attests to Aristotle’s connection to Callisthenes and Alexander (also Aristotle’s student) this is a reliable report from a serious historian who read several widely-published eyewitness accounts of Aristotle’s historicity. We have nothing like this for Jesus. We have a lot of it for Aristotle. This is easily a hundred times more likely to exist if Aristotle did. But I’ll be absurdly skeptical and say it’s only ten times more likely, again allowing a 10% chance it’s all fake or mistaken somehow.
And that also gets us a likelihood of 10/1.
- We have numerous ordinary attestations of Aristotle and his works within a century of his death. We have none for Jesus (only overt myths and implausible legends). For example, Antigonus of Carystus was already relying on the writings of Aristotle, confirming his authorship and some of their contents. We know from a later epitome of it that Eratosthenes cited Aristotle in his Catasterisms on matters of science—and not as a revelatory being, we should add, but as an actual scholar and author. We know from surviving quotations that just one generation after Aristotle the first librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria, Callisthenes, often discussed and cited him, too. And we know from surviving quotations that Aristotle’s contemporary Ephorus did as well—before Aristotle even died. It would be hard to have faked all of this. And if authentic, none of it makes sense unless Aristotle existed. So all of this evidence together has to be at least five times more likely if Aristotle existed. I’m thus allowing it an absurd 20% chance of these all being fake or mistaken somehow.
That gets us a likelihood of 5/1.
- Finally, we have credible serious historians, whom we know often relied on contemporary documentation for their reports, attesting Aristotle within two to three centuries (Polybius, Diodorus, Dionysius, and Strabo) and later historians who we know in general relied a lot on original documents and contemporary sources—most particularly Diogenes, who explicitly cites contemporary documents and sources, including credible quotations of Aristotle’s will. As another example, the medieval Simplicius repeatedly quotes a text by Theophrastus discussing Aristotle, his tutor and predecessor as head of Aristotle’s school, the Lyceum, and thus an eyewitness. We don’t have anything like these things for Jesus, either. For example, the first real historian of Christianity, Eusebius, writing three centuries after the fact, has no contemporary sources to cite for Jesus, explicitly relying solely on the Gospels (overt mythologies) and second or third century legends (like incredible unsourced tales from Papias, wild hagiographies from Hegesippus, post-Gospel apocrypha, or the forged letter to Abgar). For all the far better material we have for Aristotle to be faked or mistaken, with dozens of otherwise trustworthy scholars being duped by forgeries and legends, is harder to believe. It can’t be any less than twice as likely we’d have all of this material if Aristotle existed than if he didn’t. While we have nothing even like this for Jesus.
That gets us a likelihood of 2/1.
In my formal study I found the total likelihood ratio for Jesus to be more or less just 1. After all the evidence pro and con is balanced out, and at estimates as much in favor of his existence as reasonably possible, it’s all a wash. At more realistic estimates, it’s much against the historicity of Jesus and thus reduces the probability that he existed even from its best low starting point of 1 in 4. But let’s be generous and use the upper margins of error. In OPH now that gets ~ 1/4 × 1/1 = 1/4 or just, at best, a 25% chance Jesus nevertheless existed. Which is respectable, but not enough to appease those annoyed or terrified by the possibility that Jesus didn’t exist.
What do we get for Aristotle?
5/1 × [ 100/1 × 1000/1 × 10/1 × 10/1 × 5/1 × 2/1 ]
= 5/1 × [ 100,000,000/1 ]
= 500,000,000/1
In other words, the odds that Aristotle existed are five hundred million to one on current evidence. Indeed, even apart from Jesus being a heavily mythologized superhero (and Aristotle not), the additional evidence is still a hundred million times better for Aristotle than for Jesus altogether.
So, no. There can be no “robust defense” of the assertion that “the historical Jesus is better attested than Aristotle.” By the strength of the evidence surviving, Jesus is a hundred million times less reliably attested than Aristotle, and five hundred million times less likely to have existed. Even if you wanted to be absurdly skeptical and cut every high likelihood ratio down to 10/1, the evidence is still a hundred thousand times better for Aristotle, who then still ends up half a million times more likely to exist than Jesus. Which is why historians are so certain Aristotle existed—and have no reason to be so certain Jesus did.
This is sort of a side question to this debate, but how exactly do historians define “historical” when saying a person was a historical figure or not? For example, I’ll see interviews with Old Testament scholars where they’ll be asked if an Old Testament character like Moses is historical and they’ll give some answer about how he might be based off some ancient tradition of some guy who did something that got exaggerated over the centuries. But when it comes to Jesus, no one ever says that and historicists will argue that we have evidence that there was a guy who broadly did the things the gospels say he did like preach, start a following, and get killed.
Good question. I cover this in chapter two of On the Historicity of Jesus.
The short answer is, like anything, you have to define what you mean case by case, so people know what you mean (hence why I spend a chapter on it).
But the most common recourse is to mean not that they had that name then, but that the person who is the referent of statements about their existing at a particular time and place did exist (even if the place and date were off, though there is a diminishing limit on how far off). So, for example, Betty Crocker did not exist, nor Santa Claus, but Saint Nicholas and Colonel Sanders did.
What this means for Jesus I cover in that chapter.
For Moses it would have to be a military leader of a Jewish exodus from Egypt in the Bronze Age. Otherwise, it is meaningless to say things like, “well, they borrowed the name from this other guy or maybe made it up, and there was yet this other guy who sacked a village once and rescued a dozen Hebrews, and this other guy who bought his way out of slavery in Egypt and walked all the way to Palestine with his best friend a dog, but didn’t do anything else, therefore Moses existed.”
Remove any supernatural stories from our knowledge of Aristotle, and you have the historian’s picture of Aristotle, someone who has earned a prominent place in history.
But remove the supernatural from our story of Jesus, and you have just an ordinary peasant. He might’ve started a movement, as thousands have through history, but he was just an ordinary man.
Aristotle is everything without the barnacles of the supernatural, but Jesus is nothing without it.
Theologians keelhaul themselves across the (Darwin’s?)barnacles and proclaim that the lacerations only make their faith stronger.
The cure, of course, is a good dose of anti-fouling.
That’s, of course, the point in the priors. But remember: If you remove the supernatural from Alexander, you actually remove a lot, because he got quasi-deified. The same is true for the stories around modern people like the founder of the Falun Gong and L. Ron Hubbard, or even stories around Muhammad or the Buddha. Real people can become heavily mythologized, and cult leaders are particularly likely to as well. Yet we still need an explanation for the cult that isn’t a magical leader.
So the historical Jesus if he existed would just be a guy whose cult ascribed mythology to, either before or after he died. He might not even have been a Joshua, but given that name.
I’d agree that Jesus is uniquely highly mythologized, but that could be the result of us lacking so much about his group when the cult was formed. What is actually interesting is that Paul encounters so little apparent pushback from the other people in the church he adopted that he didn’t meet the real guy.
By his own account, Paul glommed on too late to have “met the guy”, had he existed. We have only his own report, possibly incomplete, on how much pushback he got from Pete. All we know is that the church that survived is Paul’s, with differences from Pete’s lost to time.
Everything notable about Alexander is non-mythological; the rest seems frankly perfunctory. We have reasonable doubts about Muhammad’s and the Buddha’s existence; both systems were heavily evangelized by conquerers who needed a unifying ethos for their respective empires. It would seem Alexander himself served in that role in his, for as long as it lasted. We may suggest the lack of a more durable figurehead is why it didn’t; this must have been noticed at the time.
Actually there were whole fabulous mythographies of Alexander, complete with submarines, talking snakes, discovering the fountain of youth, and cavorting with the Queen of the Amazons.
So we would indeed have every reason to doubt he existed if we did not have all the immense evidence that he did.
I hope I can get your new book soon, I’ve been interested in historical Jesus research for sometimes and your blog brought up certain very good prespectives I had not considered.
Btw, when you say “there is no evidence of Herod committing genocide in Nazareth yet would be” I think you mean “genocide in Betlehem”, right?
Oh, yes! Thank you. Fixed.
Dr. Carrier, in my previous life as a Christian, I often read extensively from both the OT and NT on the same day. During my readings (back in the 1980s), I noticed a pattern. I realized that the Christians had built their theology and eschatology within a symbolic framework based on the Jewish Feasts. It was this realization that contributed to my initial rejection of the historicity of Jesus. I realized that the narratives in the NT were crafted within this framework for theological and eschatological purposes, and that quite possibly none of the ‘characters’ mentioned in the book of Acts (for example) were historical figures.
The theological purpose of the Book of Acts was the symbolic fulfillment of both the Feast of First Fruits and the Feast of Weeks. Christianity evolved as a synthesis (syncretism) between Jewish Messianism and savior god mythology, using the symbolic framework of the Jewish Feasts to create the new religion. My scientific outlook inclines me toward the view that everything in nature (including religions) are natural phenomena that follow universal evolutionary principles. The explosion of numerous Christian sects over the centuries is an example of adaptive radiation (for example). I find it troubling that religious scholars do not approach the study of religions from a scientific perspective. The desire of William James for the creation of a science of religion can only be achieved by recognizing that science and religion are not NOMA ( non-overlapping magisteria as Stephen J Gould proposed. Religion is rather a topic for scientific examination, like other natural phenomena.
In the late 1980s, I applied General System Theory (Ludwig von Bertalanffy) to Christianity, recognizing that religions are complex systems that should be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective. I crafted the following general definition of religion:
“General definition of religion: A metaphysical system built on a framework of superstition and myth, that attempts to explain the nature of reality, and the relationship of our species to it, which along with a body of ritual, and an often static code of ethical precepts is perpetuated by sociocultural transmission, for the psycho-physiological relief of existential angst, and is epistemologically dependent on magical thinking, delusion and confirmation bias.”
Religions have ontological, epistemological, and eschatological components that distinguish them from other systems of thought.
Atheism is just a philosophical position that concerns the single concept of the existence of a deity. As such, atheism is definitely not a religion. A significant difference between religion and atheism is that religions typically have a metaphysical structure that includes a supernatural component to reality, and epistemological dependence on faith (what I refer to as the “epistemological doomsday device”) over reason.
But Secular Humanism is a religion by this definition. So are formulations of Buddhism. So is any worldview philosophy, and all atheists have a worldview, even if they don’t know or think about it, and even if it is not well constructed or even coherent.
While atheism itself is a singular position, atheists are people with worldviews—some atheist worldview or other. And sometimes it is indeed supernatural (there are lots of atheists who have supernaturalist worldviews). And even when it isn’t supernatural, it can still be just as mythological, delusional, and toxic (see my closing paragraphs of That Jordan Peterson Is a Crank: A Handy Guide).
So while yes, we usually equate religion with supernaturalism and some degree of fideism (admitted or not), it is folly to think that way because while we then confront those worldviews, we leave untouched the enemy from within: toxic worldviews that just happen to not have supernaturalism as a component and lack an expression of fideism (even as they pursue it anyway, under the form of emotionalism and pseudorationality).
The epistemological doomsday device is in every delusional worldview, secular or not, from flat earthism to manospherism to godless neoconservatism. So the presence of the supernatural is not really essential or even important here (it’s just easier to refute). Likewise fideism rests on an expectation of it being “called” faith, thus leaving us to miss all the fideism that is assiduously denied to “be” faith but feverishly insisted to be “rationality.” It walks in that disguise. But it’s fideism all the same. And so we should not become preoccupied with the word “faith” as if we can expect fools to go on using it. Its bad rap means they increasingly will avoid using it, even deny it. Yet go on doing it.
So, while I appreciate all you said, it’s reasonable, I worry it is a failure mode, that it is blinding us to the real problem which is not supernaturalism or explicit appeals to “faith” (those are just forms it takes, not the thing itself), but mythologism (which can be entirely naturalist and secular) and any kind of implicit emotion-before-reason thinking.
In what way is secular humanism, “A metaphysical system built on a framework of superstition and myth,…? What are the rituals and STATIC code of morality attributed to secular humanism? In what way is secular humanism transmitted via cultural transmission (in the way that religions are)? Is there a secular equivalent to the religious euphoria experienced in religions that provides the psycho-physiological relief of existential angst? One can readily see that religions rely epistemologically entirely on faith which is little more than magical thinking, delusion, and confirmation bias. I submit that in order for there to be a science of religion, that one must first define religion from a scientific perspective (which I believe that I have), recognizing that religions are natural phenomena, and a fit subject for scientific study (and that they should be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective). I am disappointed that you didn’t respond to the other points mentioned in my post. However, I acknowledge that you have no obligation to respond at all, so I thank you for taking the time. Have a happy Winter Solstice.
Note my explanation that superstition is no longer a relevant metric for defining religion. Religion is only relevant as a worldview, and Secular Humanism (unlike mere atheism) is a worldview. So any critique of worldviews applies to all worldviews. If SH is the most correct WV, it’s not merely because it got rid of explicit fideism and the supernatural. And no one is “just” an atheist; all atheists have worldviews. And for many, it’s not SH. So atheism does not get a pass.
Moving the goal posts doesn’t change this. For instance, you now claim religion has to have a “static” code of morality. Almost no religion has a “static” code of morality. Christianity writ large has constantly and substantially changed its morals, indeed so much so that it does not even slightly resemble the morals of Jesus (much less Moses).
Hence these cannot demarcate religion anymore. The only defining features are mythologism (which can exist without the supernatural) and emotionalist epistemology (which can exist without being explicitly described as “faith”). And atheists are as prone to these as theists or any other supernaturalists.
It is therefore folly to get hung up on these superficial details (like “static morals” that don’t exist, “supernaturalism” as if it were the only mythologism, things “called” faith as if the epistemologies of delusional worldviews weren’t all functionally fideist even if never called that).
We need to concern ourselves with mythologism and emotionalism. Not ignore half the mythologism and emotionalism in the world merely because it is framed differently. Atheists can be just as much a problem as theists. Because false worldviews exist on both sides.
And indeed, in every dimension. You move the goalposts again by referencing ecstasy as relief from angst. If you have not seen atheist MAGA experiencing this, or atheist white supremacists and flat earthers and manospherics and so on, you are deeply out of touch. Emotionalism is fundamental to all false worldviews. And seeking retreat from fears and doubts in mass euphoria (rallies, conferences, Jordan Peterson lectures, comraderie and righteous tirades in online forums, and beyond) that reaffirms dogmas against epistemic threats is found in every mass false worldview there is, whether it embraces supernaturalism or not.
So we can no longer afford to obsess solely over supernaturalist forms of this failure mode. And we certainly cannot falsely claim atheists are thereby immune to it. They are getting sucked into it at an ever increasing pace because of the false belief that “only” supernaturalism does this and therefore any form of atheism is “safe.”
That’s simply not true. And we need to get busy with realizing that.
This is the point of my entire article on Jordan Peterson.
Nonsense! Goodbye!
I’m so glad that you emphasize this, because I very often point this out to atheist critics who focus on religion as if it’s a particularly special causal variable. From my perception, it seems like the problem is extremist or irrational ideology of any variety and the association of that with power politics and identity politics. Religion has been the classical way this has been done, but we know from modern secular societies that you don’t need it.
Hey, Fred, I’m testing a fault in my comments system right now. Your comments are supposed to skip moderation. As soon as you see this comment, that should be fixed. But I’m concerned it’s still not working. So please reply to this comment with a test comment. Then we’ll see what’s up. :-/
Yep! Hasn’t been whitelisted since the new system.
Nor now. Damn. That means even my native solution is not working.
Back to the drawing board.
Let’s try another cycle.
I changed something.
Now if you comment, it will go to moderation, but then I will approve it, and (fingers crossed) your next comment should automatically post.
If that doesn’t happen I’m running out of fixes.
I just did that with a dummy account and it worked. So let’s see if it works for you.
If it does, then this means my whitelisting system is dead, and all I have left is auto-approval of anyone with a previously approved comment.
I don’t like that but for now it’s the only thing working.
Which means I have to be harsher in moderation, and readier to permanently block people, because those are the only moderation tools left.
I’ve hinted many times lately that I am working on a Methodology of Error book because I see the exact same toolbox being used by all delusional worldviews, atheist or not. Whether it’s the manosphere, flat earthers, climate deniers, antivaxxers, Christians, Muslims, archconservatives, Stalinists, wooists, dogmatic feminists, vegans, TERFS, Atwillian or Murdockian Jesus mythicists and the like, UFO or ancient aliens enthusiasts, or even any tinfoil hat no matter how fringe, they all argue in exactly the same way and exhibit all the same behaviors trapping them in their belief and rendering them immune to discovering they are wrong.
The two most overarching commonalities is a mythology (a set of false beliefs treated as sacred and incapable of being false or blasphemy to question, typically stories but sometimes just proverbs, often about history or current events but sometimes about science, including human psychology, gender science, race science, and the like) and emotion-before-reason epistemology (even if it is framed as reason-before-emotion, that they believe that is part of the delusion), where how something feels ultimately actually determines whether it’s true or happened or not (the rest is just post-hoc rationalization or confabulation), which ties into consequences determining facts (e.g. emotional dislike of the consequences of a belief can cause rejection of the belief itself, even though there is no rational connection between the consequences being desirable and the belief being true or false).
Because this describes literally everyone trapped in a delusional worldview, it describes plenty of atheists.
Spoiler:
A third commonality, which links both of those two together, is a “path of least resistance” recourse to pseudo-rationality: justifying beliefs (even to themselves) with modes of reasoning that look or sound just like legitimate rational arguments but are not, owing to the emotional salience of “seeming” to be rational and “not” seeming to be irrational. This causes an avoidance of egregious non sequiturs (that’s usually a sign of someone so insane they need serious medical help) and attraction to liminal non sequiturs, fallacies that look like real arguments (e.g. using ad hominem as if it were a legitimate argument, or false accusations of opponents using ad hominem, to dismiss legitimate arguments).
I have accumulated so many examples of this now that I can see a continuing pattern across all these disparate delusion-groups. And it explains everything they do; it explains why they are convinced so readily by some fallacies and not others, why they rely so heavily on fallacies yet never realize or admit this, and how they fall for (even generate) their worldview’s mythologies.
In my experience, that third category is occupied by more sophisticated manipulators who are more used to techniques of frame control and indirect dishonesty rather than the more brazen dishonesty, as well as people who value rationality in the abstract as a virtue (or, more usually, value the appearance of rationality).
Indeed, adherence to “free-market capitalism” is just such a delusional world view. Belief in a natural law that dictates its unavoidable emergence substitutes for woo, making libertarians a kind of secular fundamentalist. Leninist communism differs from that only in details: it amounts to capitalism with the Party as the sole monopolist, Dear Leader its CEO.
It is not clear whether it is possible for humans to function without a delusional world view that enables ignoring almost all of the crushing weight of daily experience.
I concur.
(Except I know it’s possible for us to function without a delusional worldview; we just don’t have a system that develops that widely.)
What I find particularly hilarious about the vast majority of conservative claims about X being natural, from hierarchy to free markets, is that it’s self-refuting.
If you need to tell me that hierarchy is obviously natural and everybody is hierarchical in nature, then it’s obviously false. Or else I’d already agree with you.
I have started listening to the audio of David Fitzgerald’s Playing God vol.1 based on your previous blog post (thanks for the recommendation!). I had just finished the section where Fitzgerald discusses Zarathustra when I read this new post, and it made me want to ask:
Do you see anything to tip the scales of probability on the historicity of Zarathustra one way or the other?
Frustratingly, I feel the answer is that we can never know because the evidence just doesn’t exist to make a case either way.
I get the same sense for Pythagoras. Neither “mythologized saviours” nor “just regular historical guys”, but legendary founders and teachers who are only known through later stories told about them. Do we just have to shrug our shoulders and admit we will never know?
Priors render it improbable. There is no evidence that can decide the matter. What evidence there is is a hopeless mess, and none of it encouraging. For example, Zoroaster was dated prehistorically by everyone until “suddenly” (sometime in the Middle Ages) he gets fixed into the Classical era, which we know is impossible (as otherwise the Classical authors would not have placed him prehistorically but as a near contemporary). And that’s just an example.
While it is possible for a real person to get moved around like this in history, it’s not probable, and the usual trend for prehistoric superheroes is that they don’t exist. And there’d be no way anyone even then could know he existed from prehistory, as no writing even would exist by which to have learned that, and oral lore (contrary to Christian apologetics) is deeply unreliable even on a scale of generations, far worse on a scale of millennia.
Pythagoras is more approachable. Historians do sometimes doubt his existence. Because the data is, again, not at all encouraging. However, we do have multiple independent contemporary attestation of him as a recent earthly man. Which we do not have for Jesus. So he would go into the category of heavily mythologized people who are well enough attested to be confident that he existed. At least a little, more so even than Apollonius (whose historicity is much shakier).
I haven’t done a complete study to ascertain all the evidence we have and assess it. But just on the material in the Stanford Encyclopedia alone we can see there’s better evidence than we have for Apollonius (whom I do analyze in OPH), so a fortiori, we can be more confident in Pythagoras. But a caution: the SE has a source list that annoyingly omits all the contemporary sources it later discusses (by listing the authors who preserved the earlier sources rather than singling those sources out on their own, which is like the manuscript dating mistake I call to task above). But it does go on to show why the sources are all problematic (e.g. Plato and Aristotle barely refer to Pythagoras beyond vaguely, creating a “minimal historicity” problem for Pythagoras: his historicity can only be maintained by supposing he was not as famous as later legends had it, which is also what we must do for Jesus).
The manuscripts attributed to Aristotle (or, basically, any other prominent ancient Greek author) are written in late Byzantine Greek. Aristotle would have written in Attic Greek. The difference between Attic Greek and Byzantine Greek is comparable to the difference between Vulgar Latin and Middle French, right? So, we don’t have any manuscripts of Aristotle but, at best, only translations of them.
Has anyone done a stylometric analysis of the manuscripts attributed to Aristotle?
We have pre-Byzantine manuscripts of Aristotle (I mentioned a first century find in my article ad there are others: P. Berol. 16550 and 5009, P. Lond. 13 (Pack 163 & 164), or P. Oxy. 3701 and 2403, for example).
But also, you seem to be confusing different things. Byzantine Greek is a lettering style. Attic Greek is a dialect. The Byzantine manuscripts of Aristotle are in Attic dialect, just with Byzantine lettering.
Most of the New Testament is like this: almost all mss. are Byzantine (and in Byzantine lettering) yet still in their original Koine dialect. Byzantine mss. of the NT are not “translations” into a different dialect. Neither are mss. of Aristotle.
There are translations of Aristotle that survive only as such (usually Latin), and they are assessed for authenticity the same was as any others (e.g. most of Irenaeus survives only in Latin translation, indeed a Latin more compromised than for anything by Aristotle).
I am not aware of any mathematical stylometrics on Aristotle, but standard philological stylometrics defined the entire field of Aristotelian studies for a hundred years. The modern corpus and its judgments is based on it (plenty of texts have been ruled inauthentic by that process, and a good case made for the stylistic coherence of the rest). This is aided the same was as for the NT by abundant quotations of Aristotle in other authors as essentially checksums against extant mss. (and unlike the NT, there was no tendency to normalize quotations of Aristotle to an official “church” text, so those quotations are far more reliable for the purpose).
When I was speaking of Byzantine Greek, I was speaking of this post-5th century CE stage of Greek language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Greek and not just the script. Are you saying that the extant Byzantine manuscripts attributed to Aristotle are in the original 500 BCE – 300 BCE Attic Greek?
Yes. They strive to exactly copy the words on the page, thus preserving dialect. Only new texts composed in the Byzantine era have the Byzantine dialect. Some scribal errors can result from differences in pronunciation (iotacism for example) but the intention was not to make those mistakes.
An analogy is Shakespeare: we preserve it pristine as written in its 17th century dialect (EME), but can translate it into modern English in adaptations when we want to now, and we can talk about it in ME while still quoting it in EME.
Indeed, this practice of preserving the language in quotation was so standard in Byzantine practice that modern studies of ancient Greek linguistics can mine Byzantine compendia to study lost ancient dialects of Greek (there are a lot, far beyond Attic and Koine—I took ancient Greek linguistics at Columbia, or rather Bernard in student exchange with Columbia, but I did a lot of this there).
This is why Josephus survives in Koine for us to study Koine by. The Byzantine copyists preserved its text as-was (minus errors and occasional meddling).
I would even argue that there is a weak historical necessity argument for Aristotle from his tutoring of Alexander.
So much of the ancient world actually looks different if Plato’s first “philosopher king” wasn’t Alexander the Great, someone who actually did not show any of the virtues of it.
It’s not the equivalent of crossing the Rubicon, but the connection between these two, in a way that isn’t flattering to Aristotle (though I suppose is somewhat to Alexander, but not in a way that’s actually suspicious or unlikely), is massive and important.
Note that attestation of Aristotle as Alexander’s tutor is not as good as for Aristotle himself. So it’s not actually as potent a point. One can more easily argue that was a later legend attached to a real man, than that it is evidence the man was real.
I’m not saying it’s legendary. But that it takes work to prove it’s probably not, and thus cannot circularly support historicity itself. It depends for its plausibility on his historicity already being established.
Fred, as soon as you see this, please post a comment in response (even if trivial) to test something for me.
Your posts should be posting without going to moderation and I want to see if I fixed that or not.
Working now! Thanks!
Thanks! It’s not working consistently for everyone though. I am still tinkering.
Okay. Now I am trying a new system.
It should still auto-approve you (and everyone else in the manual list) but no one else (they all go to moderation). So. Does it work? That’s the question!
So please post a comment again and let’s see. And I’ll watch what happens to everyone else.
Testing!
Still seems solid for me.
Success indeed!
Test
Second test.
Third test.
Fourth test.
Fifth test.
Hi dr. Carrier,
Could the Plato’s X (from Timaeus) be at the origin of the celestial crucifixion of Jesus insofar it was seen as symbol of a celestial portal?
I make the following simple case ad I ask if it is plausible according to you:
1) The Exodus is allegorized as symbol of the passage to the heaven (the Promised Land). Evidence: speculations in Philo and among the Therapeutae in Alexandria. Note also the Detering’s essay:
https://mythicistpapers.com/Detering/2017_ENG_Jesus_on_the_other_shore.pdf
2) speculations about he OT Joshua being superior to Moses insofar Joshua touched the Promised Land (made allegory of the celestial paradise) differently from Moses who died before to reach it. Evidence:
https://mythicistpapers.com/Detering/2017_ENG_Jesus_on_the_other_shore.pdf
3) The Plato’s X as symbol of a celestial gate and used as such on Roman coins. Evidence: this article: https://www.academia.edu/1535818/Platos_X_on_Roman_Coins
4) by going through the Plato’s X, Jesus/Joshua ascended to higher heavens. This was represented/misinterpreted as a crucifixion of Jodhua in heaven (outer space).
5) when in the fiction (Mark) the centurion hails Jesus as god of son, he is really meaning that Joshua has crossed the celestial gate (he is ascended to heaven).
Thoughts? Basically, I am saying that even the belief of the celestial crucifixion in outer space was a belief reserved to outsiders of first rank, exactly as, by logical extension, the belief of the earthly crucifixion in Jerusalem was a belief reserved to outsiders of second rank. The real insiders knew the truth: by ascending to the heaven through the Plato’s X (a celestial portal), Joshua was superior to Moses himself.
There is no evidence for any of these connections.
Good article, testing whitelist
Success!
Test comment. Delete or moderate. This should get through.
Success!
Test comment. Should get moderated.
It did. Excellent.
Bart Ehrman argues in the triumph of Christianity that even if Theodosius hadn’t made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire it would still be the dominant religion of the world. Do you agree with that?
He’s right.
Perhaps you are confusing Theodosius with Constantine. Christianity was already the dominant religion of the West for nearly a century by the time Theodosius outlawed not being Christian. So any ceteris paribus counterfactual would make the same future Age of Empires outcome (and thus world dominance) probable.
All that would change (assuming displacement doesn’t occur, e.g. remove Theodosius and someone else will step in soon to replace him and do the same thing, and I am assuming you are imagining “no displacement effect occurs,” somehow) is that medieval Christianity might be 10% less evil. Which is just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
No, the lynchpin decision was Constantine’s. Had he chosen a different religion than Christianity (a pagan, thus nonexclusivist cult), Christianity would never have become anything but a weird minority cult in thousands of years of continuing polytheism, with very different outcomes across the middle ages and into modernity and beyond.
If Constantine chose a science-friendly religion (something driven by, say, Stoics rather than Platonists; but such candidates were probably nonexistent by then, so we’d also have to counterfactually insert a new polytheistic cult for him to pick over Christianity, or remove the need of that decision at all by fixing things earlier in the causal chain, e.g. stopping the civil wars of the 3rd century leading up to that) then the Dark Ages could have been averted and the Roman Empire would have discovered steam power and the New World.
And though that would still be imperialist (with all the attendant evils), it would be very very different than what happened. The entire impact of slavery would be wildly different. Color racism would never have arisen. The pathway for Native Americans would have been better. Human rights would have accumulated a lot earlier. Democracy would have returned sooner. The industrial and scientific revolutions would have happened centuries earlier. And so on.
The wholesale absence of late, false eyewitness testimony for Aristotle should count in his favor. If you are inventing a figure, back-dated claims are safer than contemporaneous ones, as no one remains to contradict you.
It would count, by Aristotle’s probability not being reduced by as much as having that evidence would reduce it. This is the nature of counterfactual evidence: its absence is not evidence per se, but hypothetical evidence that, if it existed, would change the probability. Rather like saying the absence of hidden time-traveler video records confirming Aristotle didn’t exist counts in favor of Aristotle. Which is obvious, but its effect is already assumed. We’re only really tallying the effect of evidence that doesn’t exist if it did exist.
However, I am not sure there is an effect to count. The evidence of later fabrication only matters if there are no earlier sources. Otherwise, if there were an explosion of forged witnesses to Aristotle in the 4th century, that would hardly make his existence less likely given all the earlier evidence. For example, the forgery of a Seneca and Paul correspondence in the 4th century does not reduce the probability that Seneca existed (or Paul for that matter).
My 2nd grade daughter came to these conclusions on her own. We’re kind of like unitarians in my house. After hearing a story about Jesus, she said it sounded like myth, compared it to unicorns having powers (ie, she intuited what reference classes are), and pointed out we have no writings of Jesus. and she compared it against Little house on the prairie (more realistic = more likely). She was ok with granting the existence of Jesus if I could grant the existence of unicorns. She kind of won that debate rofl.
So shes basically a mythicist. I lean more towards historicity.
But I thought you might get a chuckle on that.