Met, Tom. Fleet, all--Bayes anyone?

[Metacrock]

hat I'm incensed about: there is a person named Richard Carrier he has big credentials as a historian, part of secular web, Jesus myther. He wants to use Bayes theorem to assert proof in history because he thinks he can make it say Jesus did not exist.

I say it's just the illusion of technique. One will never be able to overcome bias to set the prior. William Lane Craig uses it to say Jesus did exist.

I was reading a thing that was supposed to be explaining it as a history method. It Bayes will help us sort out out thinking. The example was it will tell us that the preponderance of the evidence validates a hypothesis. I need Bayes to tell me this?

I think it's a gimmick. It's BS. It has its uses but telling us if Jesus was historical is not one of them.

[sgttomas]

How could it be anything else than an argument that the considered evidence is not a compelling argument for the existence of "Jesus"?

What are the crucial arguments?

-Sgttomas

[sgttomas]

Double post

[sgttomas]

Karl Popper and David Miller have rejected the alleged rationality of Bayesianism, i.e. using Bayes rule to make epistemological inferences:[22] It is prone to the same vicious circle as any other justificationist epistemology, because it presupposes what it attempts to justify. According to this view, a rational interpretation of Bayesian inference would see it merely as a probabilistic version of falsification, rejecting the belief, commonly held by Bayesians, that high likelihood achieved by a series of Bayesian updates would prove the hypothesis beyond any reasonable doubt, or even with likelihood greater than 0.

Source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

[met]

Well, it may be an interesting historian's thing - probability of the existence of the secular Jesus - but if it's an argument against xianity, it's quite silly. No-one who believes not only "there was a guy named Jesus" but also "he was God" and "he rose from the dead and up into heaven" is going to be much impressed with the statistical doubtability of the first thing. That's ridiculous!

Then again, in the final analysis, it's all those other beliefs that make anyone take much interest in the first thing , isn't it?

Beyond that, I don't even know - can't even imagine - what it means. I would have to see a paper on it, or something..

[Metacrock]

How could it be anything else than an argument that the considered evidence is not a compelling argument for the existence of "Jesus"?

What are the crucial arguments?

-Sgttomas

sure but why not just say that? why the Bayes craze?

[Metacrock]

Well, it may be an interesting historian's thing - probability of the existence of the secular Jesus - but if it's an argument against xianity, it's quite silly. No-one who believes not only "there was a guy named Jesus" but also "he was God" and "he rose from the dead and up into heaven" is going to be much impressed with the statistical doubtability of the first thing. That's ridiculous!

Then again, in the final analysis, it's all those other beliefs that make anyone take much interest in the first thing , isn't it?

Beyond that, I don't even know - can't even imagine - what it means. I would have to see a paper on it, or something..

I think it means people are brainwashed to think like machines so they need the illusion of technique.

[Metacrock]

Karl Popper and David Miller have rejected the alleged rationality of Bayesianism, i.e. using Bayes rule to make epistemological inferences:[22] It is prone to the same vicious circle as any other justificationist epistemology, because it presupposes what it attempts to justify. According to this view, a rational interpretation of Bayesian inference would see it merely as a probabilistic version of falsification, rejecting the belief, commonly held by Bayesians, that high likelihood achieved by a series of Bayesian updates would prove the hypothesis beyond any reasonable doubt, or even with likelihood greater than 0.

Source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

hey that's great man thanks. My hero popper and my old debate partner from college (although that was another David Miller). could you get me more stuff on this?

[met]

Well, it may be an interesting historian's thing - probability of the existence of the secular Jesus - but if it's an argument against xianity, it's quite silly. No-one who believes not only "there was a guy named Jesus" but also "he was God" and "he rose from the dead and up into heaven" is going to be much impressed with the statistical doubtability of the first thing. That's ridiculous!

Then again, in the final analysis, it's all those other beliefs that make anyone take much interest in the first thing , isn't it?

Beyond that, I don't even know - can't even imagine - what it means. I would have to see a paper on it, or something..

I think it means people are brainwashed to think like machines so they need the illusion of technique.

Well, it's well-known that our sense of "the odds" is dubious, in fact often dead wrong, in some kinds of situations. Maybe it's an attempt to play on that fact?

[sgttomas]

This does a good treatment of "illusion of technique" that imputes legitimacy to the conclusions: https://irrco.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/ ... d-carrier/

He even criticizes how the probabilities were derived:

I felt there were severe errors with his arguments a fortiori (i.e. a kind of reasoning from inequalities — the probability is no greater than X)

...but didn't elaborate in the "interest of space".

That's an interesting blog https://irrco.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/types-of-god/

-sgtt