(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151) EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS Stephen Law Abstract The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of indepen...
Stephen Law is a philosopher and author. Currently Director of Philosophy and Cert HE at Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. Stephen has also published many popular books including The Philosophy Gym, The Complete Philosophy Files, and Believing Bullshit. For school talks/ media: stephenlaw4schools.blogspot.co.uk Email: think-AT-royalinstitutephilosophy.org
Comments
It's a false analogy relative to the EGC. The good god hypothesis isn't significanly more reasonable than the evil god hypothesis.
Both fall far short in explanatory power relative to a 3rd hypothesis: the source(s) of all matter and energy are either a mix of good and evil (if teleological) or amoral (whether teleological or not).
If I see an oil painting composed of various shades of blues & reds, and I'm convinced that its creator belonged to an "omni-red-ist" aesthetic movement, I'd have to address the Problem of Blue. The hypothesis of an "omni-blue-ist" creator must address the Problem of Red.
The person who posits the existence of an unbiased source of the painting, like a deist or atheist relative to theistic hypotheses, has no need of theodicies.
I keep hearing this divine nature/character/essense response to the Euthyphro. Do any philosophers of religion (not apologists) take this response seriously?
These are the same people who (properly) point out the naturalistic fallacy when it arises. You cannot derive an ought from an is. yhwh's nature _is_ compatible with global drowning of babies, rape, genocide, slavery, etc. Just because that _is_ its nature, is that how it _ought_ to behave?
No one determined what yhwh's nature would be, as it was uncreated. Does this not mean yhwh's nature is arbitrary?
Enjoyed the heavy breathing, though.
He rather scared me by the irrationality of his beliefs.
His Final Response is particularly chilling in its disconnect from reality.
I just can't put myself in the mind of somebody who could write such words.
However, I advocate Polytheism--hopefully getting a case for Polytheism published soon--and don't think we need to entertain the ultimatum: there are both good and evil deities. I believe it's reasonable to infer the moral character of deities from our perceptual knowledge of them. You might say even if there were veridical religious experiences of deities that appeared to be good or evil, they could just be fooling us. But, I see no reason to think it's *irrational* to maintain our normal epistemic practice of trusting that things are as they appear to be until we have good reason not to.