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).

So shes basically a mythicist. I lean more towards historicity.

But I thought you might get a chuckle on 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.

Success!

It did. Excellent.

Success indeed!

Success!