I will be speaking on Bayesian history and epistemology for Columbus Rationality and the Secular Student Alliance at OSU in Columbus, Ohio, on Monday, November 16th, at 7:30pm in Lazenby Hall (room 021) on the OSU campus. Details here.
I Will duscuss Bayesian reasoning and its application and status in the field of historical research; and how the analysis of the methods actually used by historians today reveals it is all Bayesian, and can be improved and better understood by recognizing this. I will also discuss the role and contents of my book Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (available in print, kindle, and audible); and likewise of supporting books by Aviezer Tucker, David Hackett Fischer, and C. Behan McCullagh.
I’ll have copies of Proving History and On the Historicity of Jesus on hand.
How hard some people work trying to disprove a silly myth. It shouldn’t be so difficult. So far, not one scintilla of evidence exists demonstrating Jesus isn’t. All speculation and endless theories attempting to dismiss him over the past 2,000 years have failed.
I won’t be discussing the historicity of Jesus at this event.
But for those who are interested in the evidence he didn’t exist, and there is indeed some evidence, I have documented it all in my book On the Historicity of Jesus, published by Sheffield-Phoenix, a publishing house at the University of Sheffield. That book also documents the even more extensive evidence that there is no reliable evidence for a historical Jesus.
“How hard some people work trying to disprove a silly myth”
You have no idea.
“Sheffield-Phoenix, the publishing arm of the University of Sheffield. ”
On Discus I have been dealing with a person who is claiming that because it has a .com domain Sheffield-Phoenix is NOT an academic publisher. When I produced proof that via Oxford University Press that this was nonsense they claimed that example was a “bookstore page”. They also claim that since it is independent that it doesn’t count as a University Press…even though there are examples of University Presses that are autonomous from their universities (University of California Press is one such example and Princeton University Press is another).
The lengths that people will go to to deny that finally the Christ Myth theory finally has a peer reviewed scholarly published work is staggering.
It’s laughable. Because these same people will tout the credentials of books and authors they approve of, which in fact are notably inferior in relevant standards (e.g. college degrees from non-accredited universities, or in non-comparable subjects; books not published under peer review; etc. … for example, Bart Ehrman has never published a single thing on the historicity debate under academic peer review—no article or book, ever; nor did Maurice Casey or James McGrath; or anyone at all who has attempted to criticize my thesis).
But this is one common tactic for resolving cognitive dissonance. If they can come up with any harebrained rationalization to ignore the book, because the book is too damned scary, then they will come up with any harebrained rationalization. “University presses are businesses, therefore they aren’t presses at universities” is an example. Irrational as fuck. But alas.
Note that it wouldn’t actually matter if my book were even self-published, since it’s the genetic fallacy to claim it’s false because of where it came from. All that credentials do is assure you the material has passed some rigorous tests already, which can motivate your reading (vs. ignoring) it. That’s what peer review is for. To make our lives easier by ensuring what we read has met at least minimum expert standards (we can then ignore the vast mountain of what hasn’t passed that test, if we lack the time to attend to it). But as to evaluating whether it’s right, you really need to do that by looking at the argument and its evidence, regardless of where it is written down (and then compare it to the same procedure conducted on those opposed).
But admitting all that requires being a rational person.
BTW, another argument they try is that Sheffield-Phoenix operates in the hands of University faculty and not under University administration; its facilities are still on the campus, and it is still a prestigious and fully peer reviewed academic press; indeed, it is distributed in the U.S. by the Society of Biblical Literature, the largest Biblical academic society in America, so it’s hardly a disrespected entity in the field. But to not feed into their attempts to deny this, I have revised all my mentions of SPP that I can find to say my book was published “at the University of Sheffield,” with a link to the page explaining what that means, which is more than enough to establish its credentials.