Talking too much about god is not viewed as serious philosophy in Europe anymore. However, just look at Charlie Hebdo, Putin, or the CIA accusing Julian Assange to have kissed a consenting woman wrong to see the error of the ways of ignoring how imbeciles think.
Ignoring Hitler was not profitable to higher intellectual types, let’s not repeat the mistake.
IF YOU BELIEVE JESUS EXISTED, SO DID MOST PLUTO SERVING MYTHS:
“Evidence”, in law, history, and much of science, is all about establishing in what “universe” (in the sense given in Logical Treatises) the logos of the debate is going to live.
Informal Bayesian analysis is used all the way to do so. It is informal, because it depends blatantly upon subjective elements (so does all and any logos).
It can be fraught: some used it to “prove” the existence of Jesus, or its opposite.
I wrote against the historicity of Jesus, for decades. In the USA, this makes you less appreciated than if you wrote against the car. But Jesus is central to tolerating the plutocratic order (strangely enough, as the Gospels clearly despise wealth).
Thinking Out Of The Box Works, Even For Gnus.
Carrier is a historian not infeodated to Christianism. In the USA, an entire propaganda is directed against these people, calling them “Gnu Atheists”.
I just consulted Carrier’s (very recent) work:
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2014/08/car388028.shtml
Carrier’s arguments about the inexistence of Jesus, the person, are purely logical, and similar to those I long published. However he misses more general arguments which I used. First observation: at the time, Jesus-like characters were a dime a dozen.
Some of the Jesus look-alike, who really existed, violated the law, and were tried and executed (we have the historical records). Some died in Rome, some in the Orient.
Before I pursue the general theory, let me insist a bit using more arguments against the existence of Jesus the person.
It is often say that Tacitus speaks of Jesus (however, Josephus, the top Jewish general, writing 39 years earlier his gigantic history of Judea, did not).
Tacitus wrote the Annals in 109 CE. That was 45 years after Saint Paul spent some time inventing Cristus in his golden prison in Rome (I say). According to me, Saint Paul was exfiltrated from Rome (for the same reason that he was brought to Rome in the first place, to escape execution in Jerusalem).
Saint Paul obviously had very high contacts inside the Roman state (his exfiltration from Judea was already quite a risk for Rome. Four years after Saint Paul’s writing, the first Evangels/Gospels are written by supposed “eyewitnesses” of Cristus (although Josephus, who was in the best position to know everything, was not in the know).
Many top Romans obviously felt Cristus was a better deal than those pesky Jews. And presented a golden opportunity for a universal religion (as all religion had a top god, it could be identified to the one of Jesus).
Indeed, by 300 CE, Christianism had extended massively a Romanitas of sorts, well beyond the Roman LIMES (the military border). (It is even rumored that at least one emperor was a closet Christian during the Third Century).
We know, from various documents, that very high officials in Rome, were engaged in the Christian conspiracy, early on. (Some declared they would write Gospels during their retirement…)
The idea of Christianism was not too bad, at first sight: it was to reintroduce the Republic, through the “Christian Republic”, a sort of sea monster that kept on reappearing until 1789…
As early as the Eight Century, the Venetian Republic blossomed under the wings of the Franks (Charlemagne no doubt saw himself as the new Augustus… Or more exactly, DAVID).
Last, no least: the Annals were discovered by religious people, in religious establishments. In various Abbeys, Monasteries, and Monte Cassino. Rumors of forgeries are as old as their discovery. Are the “Cristus” passages authentic?
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A good way to understand the root of a flawed reasoning is to understand the logic that exert psychological pressure to produce that lie. There was a need for a Jesus character, so plenty of Jesus characters were produced, by the general logic in attendance.
What was that logic?
Jewish faith was Judeo-centric. It had a great strength: an undivided god. Many religions recognized a god of the gods, but having no god but god was simpler, and less subject to contradictions, while being more sympathetic to a state led by just one “Prince” (Princeps).
A message more oriented towards all people, not just Jews, and normal human ethology, that is, with more love than Rome experienced, fit the species better.
Hence a full century before the alleged Jesus, there was another, just like him in his philosophical message, but this one gentleman was fully historically documented, in Alexandria.
The logic wanted a Jesus, so Saint Paul produced it (with several caveats in his writings which basically recognized he made Jesus up, and those caveats were produced by me, long ago, and Carrier, more recently).
When Laplace furthered “Bayesian” analysis, he was interested by some games of chance.
When philosophers produce truth, they do not blindly parrot gnu logic. Gnus are herd animals, travelling by the millions. Gnu Christians have stampeded all over civilization for 17 centuries.
How does new philosophy produce new truth? By pondering why gnus do what they do.
Why did Saint Paul want Jesus to be? Why was the “Jesus” message welcomed by the empire? Emperors and bishops who governed the empire in 400 CE, had interest to eliminate the logics those questions called for.
New truth is produced by introducing new facts, which break the universe the old logic rested on.
The best way to do that, is through a meta-logic making the old logic a special case (as General Relativity did to Classical Gravitation).
Arguably, Jesus was just the meta-logic towards a more human society, which the Roman Empire was sorely in need of.
Having a reason for Jesus the myth, makes the historical Jesus less likely. It explains the frantic anxiety of those fragile types who are afraid they cannot cuddle with their idol anymore.
What sort of reasoning is this? Having a different
reason for a hypothesis can make axioms that led to this hypothesis superfluous. This is not properly speaking what came to be called “Bayesian” (a recent term) analysis. But it is related.
When Laplace presented his book on Celestial Mechanics to Napoleon, the tyrant retorted: ”I do not see God in your book.” Laplace retorted: “I did not need this hypothesis.”
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 