Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

cienfuegos, the problem of how the character of a messiah that gets crucified develops into a popular religion is a problem, no doubt about it, but I do not understand how the problem is solved by mythicism. With mythicism, you still have a myth of a messiah who gets crucified as a criminal. Either ...

If all competing theories both make that prediction, then no strong argument is made from absence of evidence. That doesn't make sense. OK, I think of the strength of an explanation as being relative rather than absolute. An explanation is strong only if it is stronger than all competing explanatio...

MrMacSon wrote:Yes, absence of evidence is predictive.

Yes, or theories are predictive, and one of the predictions may be absence of evidence. If all competing theories both make that prediction, then no strong argument is made from absence of evidence.

MrMacSon wrote:it's less likely to be 'the "twelve" '; it's more likely to be "the twelve".

OK, can you explain that? What is your interpretation of Paul's "the twelve"?

perseusomega9 wrote:Congratulations on undermining your own argument in a span of 21 minutes then

K.

perseusomega9 wrote:I'm sure you can show us Price doing that

The information comes via one of the listeners of his podcast, and I don't often listen to his podcast, so I don't know for certain.

MrMacson, expectations of a theory are essential. Another way to express the principle is "predictive."

Is it though? What's interesting about it? It's mirrored everywhere. People of every stripe have ignorance and prejudice as their sword and shield. Yes, but I do think mythicists are a special case in many respects. Some of the patterns of thinking I see among mythicists I don't see among other ide...

Absence of evidence can be either a strong or a weak argument for the non-existence hypothesis, depending on the respective expectations of each hypothesis. Maybe we really do strongly expect to find strong evidence given the existence hypothesis. If we do NOT expect to find strong evidence given th...