Finishing Up My Thoughts

Sorry about my last post I suffered from an acute case of blogpostthoughtinterruptictis, and since that post I've been on vacation in Ohio and Michigan so I haven't had a chance to finish my thoughts.

I've talked about how foundational epistemology is dangerous both in my previous post and in this post where I talked about Descartes' philosophy of cogito ergo sum.  If we're to use foundational epistemology, the foundation has to be rock-solid.

This brings me back to the relationship between epistemology, conspiracy theories, and the Jesus myth theories.  Much of my interest in the topic of the historical Jesus started with my listening to Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ on Audible.com.  I highly recommend you check it out since he puts the case for Christ so much better than I can especially in such a short space.

There are people out there that believe in crazy things and one of the craziest things someone can hold to is that Jesus, as described in the Bible didn't ever exist.  I forget where I read it and I don't remember the exact wording but Jesus the best documented first century person.  Now, many skeptics might say that that kind of statement is biased because it's based on the Bible, which they wouldn't/don't trust.  But, there are many problems in that kind of thinking.  First off, even with only a layman's understanding I know that it's foolish to throw out the Bible as a valid historical source.  The process of textual criticism has been thoroughly studied for so many years that it would be completely foolish to throw out that entire body of work.  And, according to textual criticism there are more sources for the Bible (as we currently have translated today) than ANY historical text.  This chart from Charm.org describes the situation perfectly:

Author	Date Written	Earliest Copy	Approximate Time Span between original & copy	Number of Copies	Accuracy of Copies
Lucretius	died 55 or 53 B.C.		1100 yrs	2	----
Pliny	A.D. 61-113	A.D. 850	750 yrs	7	----
Plato	427-347 B.C.	A.D. 900	1200 yrs	7	----
Demosthenes	4th Cent. B.C.	A.D. 1100	800 yrs	8	----
Herodotus	480-425 B.C.	A.D. 900	1300 yrs	8	----
Suetonius	A.D. 75-160	A.D. 950	800 yrs	8	----
Thucydides	460-400 B.C.	A.D. 900	1300 yrs	8	----
Euripides	480-406 B.C.	A.D. 1100	1300 yrs	9	----
Aristophanes	450-385 B.C.	A.D. 900	1200	10	----
Caesar	100-44 B.C.	A.D. 900	1000	10	----
Livy	59 BC-AD 17	----	???	20	----
Tacitus	circa A.D. 100	A.D. 1100	1000 yrs	20	----
Aristotle	384-322 B.C.	A.D. 1100	1400	49	----
Sophocles	496-406 B.C.	A.D. 1000	1400 yrs	193	----*
Homer (Iliad)	900 B.C.	400 B.C.	500 yrs	643	95%*
New Testament	1st Cent. A.D. (A.D. 50-100)	2nd Cent. A.D. (c. A.D. 130 f.)	less than 100 years	5600	99.5%*

*Not sure why there isn't a percentage of accuracy for all the texts.  The accuracy percentage was taken from comparing all the different copies and showing what percentage the copies agreed with each other.  The differences in the NT copies do not occur in major theological parts of the NT and do not affect the doctrines espoused by most Christian churches.

So, now that we've established the validity of the copies of the New Testament, let's examine how trustworthy a document of this type would have be in the light of the concept of conspiracy theories.

For these copies to be completely fake, dozens of people would have to all come together and collude to create a document over about fifty years.  They would have to get their stories straight, so they agreed, but not too much, because if the four Gospels were identical, it would be obvious that they were copying one another.  They would have to slowly, over time produce a variety of texts that don't sound like they're all written by the same people.  Then they have to all go out and convince others that what they're writing is a true, all the time knowing that it's a lie.  Think about the vastness of this lie.  The text says that Jesus appeared to over five hundred people at the same time (1 Cor 15:6), and remember these texts were written within 10-70 years of the events described and they even encourage people to seek out these people and seek the Truth.  So, if one really wanted to kill Christianity in its infancy, all one would have to do is point to a grave with a still buried Jesus and go, "Well, they're all liars."  Or, something more gruesome like put his body on display or something.  But no, early detractors from Christianity don't do anything like that.  In fact, according to scholars of ancient literature, the first century Jewish writings agree that there was indeed an empty tomb and they sought to explain away the issue with other stories like grave robbery.

This brings us to another important idea behind debunking the Jesus mythers.  Think about and compare people that believe in the moon landing conspiracy.  In today's day and age the people that believe such things are labeled nutjobs or crazy etc.  But, in all reality what does one risk to oneself by disbelieving in the moon landing or perpetuating a similar lie?  Nothing much, maybe a little ostracization for being abnormal, maybe derision from people who know the truth.  But, what happened to the people that perpetuated the story of Jesus?  According to this site it is highly likely that eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred.  Now, okay it does admit that some of the stories of their martyrdom are more speculative, but to say the least most of the disciples were killed for their beliefs.  Now again, we're talking about a conspiracy theory here right?  So, let's assume these apostles were the original source of this huge conspiracy, what happened to them after they spread this lie?  They paid for it with their lives.  So this conspiracy not only bears no benefit to the conspirators, it will most likely lead to their death.  This brings up an interesting question though.  Others will and have died for their beliefs so that doesn't prove Christianity as right or wrong.  However, there's a clear distinction that this objection misses is this: the many martyrs for various religions died and still die for things they believe with all their hearts as being true.  If they knew for certain that what they believed was a lie, they wouldn't have been as willing to go to their deaths.  According to Wikipedia Muhammad died of an illness, and Joseph Smith died at the hands of a lynch mob for apparently trying to set up a form of theocracy and trying to marry other men's wives.  Every martyr since these founders had set up their respective religions died because they believed the claims of the founders.

Still not enough?  Let's look at other sources.  Even if you still reject the Bible as historical at all, and hold on to the impossible theory that these men died for a huge lie.  There are other sources of evidence for the historical Jesus.  This site has a few of the non-biblical historical references for Jesus and according to the Strobel's book there are a number of things one can learn from non-biblical sources.  I don't remember the complete list as presented in the book, but here's what I remember.  He was born under questionable circumstances, He was considered from Nazareth, He performed signs and wonders, He was crucified, His followers continued to worship Him after the crucifixion claiming that He had risen from the dead, and these followers were regularly martyred for that belief.

So there you have it.  Still think Jesus was just a myth?  If so then you believe in the biggest most implausible conspiracy imaginable.  Hundreds of thousands of people had to be in on a lie and perpetuate that lie knowing that it would lead to their death.

View from Dobong Mountain (도봉산) Seoul S Korea

Conspiracy Theory and Knowledge

First off, let me point you in the direction of the article that made me think about this topic.  There was this article from HowStuffWorks.com about ten people that are considered really smart that have done really stupid things.  The list was interesting to me because it brought up the idea of how we know what we know and what it takes to convince us of something that we don't believe.  There's also this interesting article that I found more recently about a similar topic.  There was also an article about people refusing to believe in things that have been debunked by science but I can't find that link right now.  When I find it I'll add it.

So let's start off our discussion with defining 'conspiracy.'  Wikipedia defines it like this: "A conspiracy theory is an explanatory proposition that accuses two or more persons, a group, or an organization of having caused or covered up, through secret planning and deliberate action, an illegal or harmful event or situation."  Interesting that this definition has no bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim.  Here are some doozies (that's the technical term) that I can think of myself that I know some people actually believe, this is in no particular order: The assassination of JFK (specifically that more than Lee H. Oswald was involved), the moon landing (it was totally faked), the holocaust deniers, the birth certificate of sitting president Barack Obama, any number of Biblical conspiracies including numerology and "Jesus mythicists," vaccination hysteria (the far extreme being the operative position), the 9/11 cover up, and the Erin Brockovich and the PG&E Hinkley groundwater contamination cover up.  This is just my own list of conspiracy theories that I've been thinking about in regards to this entry; it is by no means meant to be comprehensive here's another wiki article (nearly all the previous links were to wiki articles) that has a much more interesting list.

Starting off with the most difficult one, the JFK assassination.  First off, what is the question?  Is the conspiracy that more than one assassin was involved?  So what?  That doesn't really affect the world in any way.  If the conspiracy is that the US government intentionally covered up the fact that someone in power wanted to oust JFK by assassination, and blame it all on one lone gunman, that's more significant.  Here's my basic answer to that kind of conspiracy: Two people can keep a secret, if one is dead.  This old saying applies to the USG as well!  I recently commented on a video on Facebook about this, "The US can't keep ACTUALLY SECRET things secret (Snowden ring any bells?)! How in the world could someone believe that the US government could keep a secret so huge that thousands upon thousands of people would have to be in on it?"  The same critique applies to the moon landing hoax claim.  Do you really believe that the USG could collude with thousands of people to hide a lie that huge, and get away with it?

The moon landing is so much clearer to me.  Though the actual artifacts left on the moon by the Apollo missions cannot be seen with the Hubble telescope, it can be measured.  So, how much disbelief are you willing to suspend?  Does the movie Watchmen convince you that there really was a JFK conspiracy?  Then maybe the lunar laser ranging retroreflector experiment won't convince you that people really walked on the moon.

Another totally crazy one, basically this one gives even ordinary conspiracy theorists a bad name, is that people that deny the holocaust.  While WWII is fading into memories there have been enough actual eye witness testimonies and legitimately researched and peer reviewed historical texts that clearly document the truth.  How can people really close their minds to truth?

The reason I listed the Erin Brockovich case is this.  The plaintiffs were dismissed as conspiracy nuts at first.  Then, after a thorough investigation, they settled for somewhere around $333 million!  While technically a settlement is not an admission of guilt, it doesn't lend credibility to their counter-claim that there was nothing wrong.  My point was that not all conspiracies are false.  I'm not trying to claim that all seemingly crazy claims are false, but here's the deal, what will you accept as evidence and what will convince you that something is true (or false)?  Also, what will happen to your epistemology?  If your epistemology is foundational and one of these conspiracies is part of your belief system you could be in a world of hurt if it's proven untrue.  Foundational epistemology is dangerous!

Since this post is getting too long and I need some rest, I'll complete this discussion some other time.

If this characterizes your epistemology, you're doing something wrong.