The Cumulative Weight of Circumstantial Evidence

[JapaneseKappa]

But all those scenarios take only a tiny amount of evidence (for example, you mention no martyrdoms). And it is the nature of circumstantial evidence that many minor pieces add up. Each of them proves little by itself, but all of them together prove much more.

Also, they can work “backwards”. If they demonstrate that people (for example, we) would not believe something like resurrection without adequate evidence, how do you explain the fact that a significant number of people did believe the resurrection proclaimed by apostles? If your demonstration was good enough, that would lead to conclusion that evidence was much closer to being adequate, wouldn’t it?

You are also avoiding directly answering the question. How much, and what sort of, evidence would you personally need to be convinced of a modern day resurrection? Without some sort of basis for comparison, making claims about how much evidence is sufficient for Jesus is just hand waving. Start by setting some evidence-threshold-for-belief because if you do it after, you’re just asking for bias to seep into the equation. If you’re biased towards believing something, there is a strong temptation to add up the evidence first, then set your threshold-for-belief below your recently-summed evidence.

I was asking people how much evidence they would personally need, not how much evidence other people would need. In fact, my “listen to the testimony of a believer” and “story with numerous quotes” scenarios do require you to consider how strong 1st and 2nd hand accounts are. Personally, I think that the fact people were convinced is evidence, but it is only the weakest sort of evidence when those people are uneducated and superstitious to begin with.

If dying for your beliefs is somehow “strong” evidence, then I suppose you find the claims of the Heaven’s Gate cult at least somewhat compelling.

 

[MPat]

You are also avoiding directly answering the question.

Ah, yes, there was a question as well. Sorry about that.

How much, and what sort of, evidence would you personally need to be convinced of a modern day resurrection?

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be “I don’t know.”… Of course, I don’t think I must know. Also, if I understand the question correctly, that is going to be quite a task… To list all possible sets of pieces of evidence that would be “just above the threshold”? I am not sure if that can be done…

Of course, if you feel that the task is not impossibly hard, can you give your own answer?

Without some sort of basis for comparison, making claims about how much evidence is sufficient for Jesus is just hand waving.* Start* by setting some evidence-threshold-for-belief because if you do it after, you’re just asking for bias to seep into the equation. If you’re biased towards believing something, there is a strong temptation to add up the evidence first, then set your threshold-for-belief below your recently-summed evidence.

That doesn’t look right. Do you think that one cannot, for example, find out if it is raining, unless one first makes a list: “I will accept that it is raining if: 1) I see rain, 2) I hear rain, 3) I am told by Mr. A that it is raining, 4) I receive an SMS message from Mr. A saying that it is raining, 5) I am told by Mr. B that it is raining, 6)…”?

That seems to be absurd. One would never reach any decision if it was necessary to make such lists beforehand.

I was asking people how much evidence they would personally need, not how much evidence other people would need. In fact, my “listen to the testimony of a believer” and “story with numerous quotes” scenarios do require you to consider how strong 1st and 2nd hand accounts are. Personally, I think that the fact people were convinced is evidence, but it is only the weakest sort of evidence when those people are uneducated and superstitious to begin with.

Good. It is nice that we agree that it is a piece of evidence - by no means an overwhelming one, but still a piece of evidence.

If dying for your beliefs is somehow “strong” evidence, then I suppose you find the claims of the Heaven’s Gate cult at least somewhat compelling.

Being martyred for one’s beliefs (not just dying, as one can also die in war etc.) is strong evidence that those beliefs were sincere. Then one has to check what those beliefs were. And if we find that apostles sincerely believed that they had observed the resurrection, that becomes strong evidence for it.

 

[oldcelt]

But the question is not “Can you find some excuse to rule the evidence inadmissible.”. It is “Is the evidence sufficient?”. And even bad evidence needs an explanation. For example, a forgery still needs a motive. And it looks like only the resurrection can explain all existing evidence. Everything else leads to great difficulties.

Then my answer is a simple, no. Forgeries are intended to give the appearance of legitimacy where none exists. Why would that have been necessary if there was a preponderance of circumstantial evidence?

 

[MPat]

Then my answer is a simple, no. Forgeries are intended to give the appearance of legitimacy where none exists.

And why did someone want to do that? Such questions would still remain.

Why would that have been necessary if there was a preponderance of circumstantial evidence?

I meant that it is not a good idea to declare that something was a forgery and to ignore it just because we can formulate such an idea.

For example, a version that claims that Gospels are inaccurate and deliberately so, still needs to explain why such inaccuracies were included. If it cannot explain all the facts (and is contradicted by them), while some other version (for example, the one claiming that Gospels are accurate) can, we should choose the second version and not the first one.

 

[Bradski]

Being martyred for one’s beliefs (not just dying, as one can also die in war etc.) is strong evidence that those beliefs were sincere.

Very strong evidence indeed. But certainly not evidence that the beliefs were correct.

 

[oldcelt]

And why did someone want to do that? Such questions would still remain.

I meant that it is not a good idea to declare that something was a forgery and to ignore it just because we can formulate such an idea.

For example, a version that claims that Gospels are inaccurate and deliberately so, still needs to explain why such inaccuracies were included. If it cannot explain all the facts (and is contradicted by them), while some other version (for example, the one claiming that Gospels are accurate) can, we should choose the second version and not the first one.

You most certainly can…whether you should is an issue only you can decide through faith.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

That doesn’t look right. Do you think that one cannot, for example, find out if it is raining, unless one first makes a list: “I will accept that it is raining if: 1) I see rain, 2) I hear rain, 3) I am told by Mr. A that it is raining, 4) I receive an SMS message from Mr. A saying that it is raining, 5) I am told by Mr. B that it is raining, 6)…”?

That seems to be absurd. One would never reach any decision if it was necessary to make such lists beforehand.

Of course, but not all decisions involve the amount of bias that core tenets of religious belief do. There are plenty of examples of setting out criteria before beginning an investigation. For example, p-values in science:
blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/17/five-sigmawhats-that/

Usually there is a pre-established threshold in a field of study for rejecting the null hypothesis and claiming that A and B are correlated. Values of p=0.05 and p=0.01 are very common in many scientific disciplines.

 

[ynotzap]

If the entire circumstances of Christianity, its history, beliefs, organization of the Church with all of it historical records, history of it’s members would definitely cast a favorable weight in the direction of believing in the Resurrection. But belief would clinch it because then one could experience the events that happened after the Resurrection personally and collectively, the reality of our Faith in a profoundly spiritual way. No matter what the circumstantial evidence might present, it would still be circumstantial and wouldn’t be definite proof

 

[oldcelt]

If the entire circumstances of Christianity, its history, beliefs, organization of the Church with all of it historical records, history of it’s members would definitely cast a favorable weight in the direction of believing in the Resurrection. But belief would clinch it because then one could experience the events that happened after the Resurrection personally and collectively, the reality of our Faith in a profoundly spiritual way. No matter what the circumstantial evidence might present, it would still be circumstantial and wouldn’t be definite proof

Very well stated as long as one remembers that faith does not necessarily equal fact and accumulating “knowledge” based on a presupposition is poor science.

 

[MPat]

Of course, but not all decisions involve the amount of bias that core tenets of religious belief do. There are plenty of examples of setting out criteria before beginning an investigation. For example, p-values in science:
blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/17/five-sigmawhats-that/

Sure, choosing a single number is not impossible. And in those cases it is useful. But it is not very useful here. Yes, it is possible to say something like “I would accept resurrection if its probability reaches 0.5; unless Pascal’s Wager applies - in which case 0.05 will suffice.”. But where will we get those probabilities? Just making numbers up (or making numbers up and manipulating them with Bayes’ theorem) is not much of an improvement over “less formal” investigation…

Of course, if you can think of a good way to do anything like that, you can try to do it yourself. I’d be happy to observe.

 

[ynotzap]

Very well stated as long as one remembers that faith does not necessarily equal fact and accumulating “knowledge” based on a presupposition is poor science.

Also one should remember that Faith if true does necessarily equal facts, and accumulated knowledge if true also equal facts, and that makes good science, philosophy and Religion. If truth is presented and one does not understand it how is it possible to attain it? Especially Religion? The rest of m;y statement applies, one has to experience it on a spiritual level, because we are talking about God, and He alone can give us this understanding, this enlightenment>

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Sure, choosing a single number is not impossible. And in those cases it is useful. But it is not very useful here. Yes, it is possible to say something like “I would accept resurrection if its probability reaches 0.5; unless Pascal’s Wager applies - in which case 0.05 will suffice.”. But where will we get those probabilities? Just making numbers up (or making numbers up and manipulating them with Bayes’ theorem) is not much of an improvement over “less formal” investigation…

Of course, if you can think of a good way to do anything like that, you can try to do it yourself. I’d be happy to observe.

You’ve missed the forest for a single tree. I didn’t ask you to ascribe a value, but to sketch out what sorts of evidence would make you certain about a modern day ressurection.

Since you seem to be unable or unwilling to come up with your own ideas, I will oblige you with mine:

A resurrection claim has two critical parts:
A. Someone must actually die.
B. That person must later be alive.

We should therefore require two sets of evidence, one to prove A and one to prove B.

To prove A, I would be satisfied with an official autopsy report from an official source and the testimony of a few people from the office who carried it out. Simply put, if someone wasn’t dead when they went into an autopsy, they would be after being autopsied. Any question about “states that look like death” would be moot. I would only be worried about forgery if there were local superstitions or spiritual expectations about the individual, or if acquaintances of the deceased stood to gain something from a resurrection. For example, if the person had declared that he was about to be resurrected and he had some sort of followers interested in making the claim come true.

In the absence of an autopsy report, it would be much more difficult to convince me someone was thoroughly dead, instead of in some form of comatose state. Obviously, some forms of death would be exempt from this skepticism, such as decapitations. In the case of non-obvious causes of death, it would be ideal if the person were observed to be partially decomposed, buried for >5 days (i.e. longer than you can survive without food+water,) embalmed prior to burial, and/or buried in a non-survivable manner (e.g. sky burial.) If none of were met, I would probably not describe myself as “certain” about their death.

Certainly, it is possible to defeat some of these, e.g. if the embalmers were scammers and didn’t do their job or if the people who buried the “deceased” left him food/water, so I’d prefer two of them take place.

I would require only minimal evidence to agree that someone was alive, the bulk of the evidence in B has to be directed at the question “is this the same person who died?” A DNA test would be very nice. Fingerprints would be very nice. The testimony of friends/loved ones isn’t great as evidence, but it is a necessary condition (i.e. if the friends/family denied it was the same person, resurrection claims would be in trouble.) I would also need evidence of the lack of a twin or other close relative (or if there were twins/doppelgangers, I would want to see both the newly alive and the doppelganger together.) It would be very good if the deceased had some special skill or talent which was easily identifiable. For example, if he were a painter, we could compare the resurrection candidate’s painting style to that of the deceased. Or if the deceased was a mechanic, we could test his mechanical knowledge.

Obviously, the above could also be defeated if people were deliberate and careful about it. Therefore, I would be most certain if there were no prior expectations of resurrection. The more people seemed to expect a resurrection, the more likely it is that someone would orchestrate one.

I would be comfortable with getting all the above information from a disinterested 3rd party, e.g. scientific institution, or reputable investigative reporter. I would be more skeptical about local-government-run publications, or publications with overt religious influence.

 

[thinkandmull]

Here’s the thing - for those who already believe, even the smallest amount of evidence is enough. For those who refuse to believe, no amount of evidence would be sufficient - they would refuse to believe even if they personally saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes.

But, see, here’s the thing: we know that Jesus’s tomb was found empty, with the stone rolled back, on the third day (Sunday), and that His corpse was never found. As such, there are only two possibilities. Either a Divine Miracle occured, in which Jesus rose from the dead, or the body was stolen and moved to somewhere where it would never be found. Really, those are the only two possiblities. There is no third possibility.

Now, here’s the thing: Jesus’s disciples would have had motive to remove the body. But it’s highly unlikely (if not nearly impossible) that they would have had the opportunity. There was a Roman guard in front of the tomb, and the stone required several men to move. Even if Jesus’s disciples assembled a large enough group to move the stone, it would have been noticed - and they would have been killed on sight.

The other people who could have stolen the body are Caiaphas and Pilate. But, had they stolen the body, it would have been to demonstrate to all that Jesus was still dead, and they would have displayed the body for all to see. This did not happen.

The only alternative is that a Divine Miracle occured, and Jesus really did rise from the dead. Those who do not believe would consider this impossible. Yet, for us that do believe, it is the only scenario that makes sense.

Maybe Caiaphas and Pilate stole the body in order to root out people who believed in Jesus strongly. But then again, the Bible actually says He rose to Heaven, so why are we even going to the Bible to try to prove something historical? Anyway, this was written 2000 years ago. I have faith in the stories. I don’t have faith in the ability to know things from a historical sense. Historical arguments are for the most part silly.

 

[MPat]

You’ve missed the forest for a single tree. I didn’t ask you to ascribe a value, but to sketch out what sorts of evidence would make you certain about a modern day ressurection.

Since you seem to be unable or unwilling to come up with your own ideas, I will oblige you with mine:

A resurrection claim has two critical parts:
A. Someone must actually die.
B. That person must later be alive.

We should therefore require two sets of evidence, one to prove A and one to prove B.

To prove A, I would be satisfied with an official autopsy report from an official source and the testimony of a few people from the office who carried it out. Simply put, if someone wasn’t dead when they went into an autopsy, they would be after being autopsied. Any question about “states that look like death” would be moot. I would only be worried about forgery if there were local superstitions or spiritual expectations about the individual, or if acquaintances of the deceased stood to gain something from a resurrection. For example, if the person had declared that he was about to be resurrected and he had some sort of followers interested in making the claim come true.

In the absence of an autopsy report, it would be much more difficult to convince me someone was thoroughly dead, instead of in some form of comatose state. Obviously, some forms of death would be exempt from this skepticism, such as decapitations. In the case of non-obvious causes of death, it would be ideal if the person were observed to be partially decomposed, buried for >5 days (i.e. longer than you can survive without food+water,) embalmed prior to burial, and/or buried in a non-survivable manner (e.g. sky burial.) If none of were met, I would probably not describe myself as “certain” about their death.

Certainly, it is possible to defeat some of these, e.g. if the embalmers were scammers and didn’t do their job or if the people who buried the “deceased” left him food/water, so I’d prefer two of them take place.

I would require only minimal evidence to agree that someone was alive, the bulk of the evidence in B has to be directed at the question “is this the same person who died?” A DNA test would be very nice. Fingerprints would be very nice. The testimony of friends/loved ones isn’t great as evidence, but it is a necessary condition (i.e. if the friends/family denied it was the same person, resurrection claims would be in trouble.) I would also need evidence of the lack of a twin or other close relative (or if there were twins/doppelgangers, I would want to see both the newly alive and the doppelganger together.) It would be very good if the deceased had some special skill or talent which was easily identifiable. For example, if he were a painter, we could compare the resurrection candidate’s painting style to that of the deceased. Or if the deceased was a mechanic, we could test his mechanical knowledge.

Obviously, the above could also be defeated if people were deliberate and careful about it. Therefore, I would be most certain if there were no prior expectations of resurrection. The more people seemed to expect a resurrection, the more likely it is that someone would orchestrate one.

I would be comfortable with getting all the above information from a disinterested 3rd party, e.g. scientific institution, or reputable investigative reporter. I would be more skeptical about local-government-run publications, or publications with overt religious influence.

Unfortunately, all those “would be very nice” do seem to make your answer practically useless…

But let’s try it out. I am going to take the case study from Soviet comedy “Жених с того света” (“Groom from the other world”).

The relevant part of the plot concerns two bureaucrats - director of some agency Petukhov (Петухов) and his deputy Fikusov (Фикусов). Petukhov goes to meet his bride. Meanwhile, his wallet with internal passport is stolen. The thief dies in a car accident. Since he has a wallet with Petukhov’s documents and Fikusov confirms that it’s Petukhov’s corpse (without looking, being too scared to look at a corpse), the militia officer prepares a death certificate of Petukhov. Next Petukhov returns. Being a bureaucrat, he cannot just ignore or destroy a document, thus he goes to a hospital to get a certificate confirming that he is alive. Eventually one doctor agrees to prepare it, but needs a document confirming the identity (“a certificate that I am me” )… Finally, militia officer destroys the death certificate…

So, let’s see. First step - death. There is a death certificate, presumably, there was an autopsy report as well. You say that would be sufficient. Next, being alive seems to be confirmed as well. Finally, the identity. Testimony of friends - the deputy should count as a friend. Talent - I guess being bureaucratic can count as one. No reason to suspect presence of twins. And everyone involved can be assumed to be atheists (that’s USSR, after all). Thus, no “religious influence”.

So, I guess that you would have to conclude that we do have a resurrection in this “case study”.

That, of course, is absurd. So, would you like to patch up your requirements? Ah, but, unfortunately, you have also claimed this:

Start by setting some evidence-threshold-for-belief because if you do it after, you’re just asking for bias to seep into the equation.

So, I guess you cannot change the threshold after seeing the evidence…?

Of course, I would say that avoiding complete nonsense is far more important than avoiding mere bias. And thus it is pointless to set such a detailed and inflexible threshold before we can see what evidence is available. Otherwise we’ll run in to something we didn’t consider. And the result will not be good…

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Unfortunately, all those “would be very nice” do seem to make your answer practically useless…

“I would require only minimal evidence to agree that someone was alive, the bulk of the evidence in B has to be directed at the question “is this the same person who died?” A DNA test would be very nice. Fingerprints would be very nice.”

I’m not sure how you would get around the fact that the corpse’s fingerprints and DNA did not match the living person’s. So since they did not match, we would conclude the deceased and the live person are not actually the same.

 

[zamyrabyrd]

Maybe Caiaphas and Pilate stole the body in order to root out people who believed in Jesus strongly. But then again, the Bible actually says He rose to Heaven, so why are we even going to the Bible to try to prove something historical? Anyway, this was written 2000 years ago. I have faith in the stories. I don’t have faith in the ability to know things from a historical sense. Historical arguments are for the most part silly.

Do you believe anything in history?

 

[MPat]

“I would require only minimal evidence to agree that someone was alive, the bulk of the evidence in B has to be directed at the question “is this the same person who died?” A DNA test would be very nice. Fingerprints would be very nice.”

I’m not sure how you would get around the fact that the corpse’s fingerprints and DNA did not match the living person’s. So since they did not match, we would conclude the deceased and the live person are not actually the same.

That is exactly what I meant when I said that “would be very nice” makes your list too vague to be useful. So, now “would be very nice” means “is required”? I was pretty sure it was supposed to be far more optional.

Also, original list demanded DNA test and fingerprints. It did not say that it was necessary to compare corpse and living human. On the contrary, it said that death could be proved by a document (autopsy report), thus the corpse is not necessary. And if we look at the document, we see the name of the person. We compare DNA or fingerprints of the living human with DNA or fingerprints of that human (from some personnel file or something). Yes, they match, as that is the same person. And if you insist on keeping your threshold inflexible, you still have to conclude that we are dealing with a resurrection. And I could provide an example where resurrection wasn’t even claimed.

And it is not hard to find more obvious flaws of your threshold. For example, it does not instantly rule out cases where the corpse is still present. Another example would be not mentioning any other biometric information (I’d say there is no reason to ignore iris scan, if it is available). It is possible to list still more.

Not that it was hard to predict that the threshold was going to have some significant flaws. It is not possible to think of everything that can go wrong. That’s why it is not reasonable to set such complex and inflexible thresholds before seeing the evidence. You might note that such things are not done in criminal investigations either.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

That is exactly what I meant when I said that “would be very nice” makes your list too vague to be useful. So, now “would be very nice” means “is required”? I was pretty sure it was supposed to be far more optional.

My post was already long. I didn’t feel like making the descriptions lawyer-proof because, seeing as they are an informal statement of my own standards, defending them against deliberate byzantine interpretations is a prerogative I can simply decline to exercise.

Also, original list demanded DNA test and fingerprints. It did not say that it was necessary to compare corpse and living human. On the contrary, it said that death could be proved by a document (autopsy report), thus the corpse is not necessary. And if we look at the document, we see the name of the person. We compare DNA or fingerprints of the living human with DNA or fingerprints of that human (from some personnel file or something). Yes, they match, as that is the same person. And if you insist on keeping your threshold inflexible, you still have to conclude that we are dealing with a resurrection. And I could provide an example where resurrection wasn’t even claimed.

But now, like a lawyer, you’re abusing the letter of an informal law, not its intent. Which would be fine in some context I’m sure, but here it is again missing the point; something you seem to be good at. With these statements, I’ve set out an initial lower bound on the quality of the evidence. Your objection is essentially that I ought to have set higher or more rigorous standards; that as they stand my criteria might yield false positives.

Why not try anyway? If I use my too-low-standards, how does the Jesus Resurrection evidence hold up? Rather poorly, I would have to say. First and foremost, none of the evidence for the Resurrection comes from disinterested parties. Secondly, in the accounts there is no account of the death that would satisfy my “definitive death” requirements. Thirdly, there is no identification of the “later alive” person as the same as the “earlier dead” person that meets my standards. Therefore, I could never describe myself as “certain” about the Jesus Ressurection event.

So, you can continue to lawyer-ize my general criteria, but in the meantime I will simply point out that they were good enough to complete the exercise.

 

[MPat]

My post was already long. I didn’t feel like making the descriptions lawyer-proof because, seeing as they are an informal statement of my own standards, defending them against deliberate byzantine interpretations is a prerogative I can simply decline to exercise.

Exactly. As I have noted, making such a treshold is just a waste of time.

But now, like a lawyer, you’re abusing the letter of an informal law, not its intent. Which would be fine in some context I’m sure, but here it is again missing the point; something you seem to be good at.

It is nice to hear I am good at something.

You have claimed that one must specify a threshold before looking at the evidence, for defining the threshold after looking at the evidence is “just asking for bias to seep into the equation”:

Start by setting some evidence-threshold-for-belief because if you do it after, you’re just asking for bias to seep into the equation. If you’re biased towards believing something, there is a strong temptation to add up the evidence first, then set your threshold-for-belief below your recently-summed evidence.

Well, if the threshold is flexible and informal, you can still do exactly the same thing. You put in a lot of work and still get the same bias.

With these statements, I’ve set out an initial lower bound on the quality of the evidence. Your objection is essentially that I ought to have set higher or more rigorous standards; that as they stand my criteria might yield false positives.

No, my objection was that your threshold had a lot of flaws. That was just a demonstration of one of them. There are more.

Why not try anyway? If I use my too-low-standards, how does the Jesus Resurrection evidence hold up? Rather poorly, I would have to say. First and foremost, none of the evidence for the Resurrection comes from disinterested parties. Secondly, in the accounts there is no account of the death that would satisfy my “definitive death” requirements. Thirdly, there is no identification of the “later alive” person as the same as the “earlier dead” person that meets my standards. Therefore, I could never describe myself as “certain” about the Jesus Ressurection event.

Sure, otherwise you would have “Christian”, “Catholic” or something similar listed as your religion.

Also, you did choose the threshold after seeing the evidence. You say that encourages bias - and in this case I guess that it really does. It certainly did look like the threshold was meant to exclude just that one Resurrection. And yes, it does that - although, as I have shown, it is good for little else…

 

[thinkandmull]

Do you believe anything in history?

Have you ever seen the internet? People like to write stuff. There is not evidence any of it is true apart for having faith in the rainbows and beyond the clouds