I was wondering if you were going to respond to me.  :)

We have two issues here.  Let's say miracle x was witnessed by 500 people.  That would be an epistemological pipe, especially in comparison to one witnessed only by one.  In this regard, you are making a categorical mistake, because with Jesus we will see that there were for some miracles 2,000 and more witnesses and participants.

But your concern is not without merit, it just speaks to a second issue.  Now, let's say that out of that experience we only have one account given.  This raises a problem, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it is insurmountable or that it reduces to an epistemological bottleneck just because we have one account.  Granted, it may be conceivable that having   500 accounts of miracle x is of value.

For example, it is best practice by investigating officers to get statements from any and all witnesses to an event, preferably earlier rather than later.  This is essentially an epistemological pipe.

However, all those accounts must be analyzed.  Some will be of better value than others.  When the trial comes, look at what happens:  all of the data is put back into what would seem to be an epistemological bottleneck.  The people testify but there is only one account produced, and that is by the court stenographer.  Is the account generated by the court stenographer to be dismissed because it is a bottleneck?

No, not at all.  Nor do we dismiss investigative reports that gather various accounts and produce a final work.  Or produce an anthology, for example.  It is a different category of analysis that we'll have to address.

Now, you are probably thinking right off the bat that in the case of our court trial we did have the numerous statements and depositions as underlying data.  That is certainly good to know, but if there is an appeal all the findings of fact that can be consulted are that which has been submitted in the earlier trial.  Cimics can help me if I over-generalize, here.

My point is that we may find that there are some other factors involved that may helps us see that what would appear to be a 'bottleneck' in the final reporting (not the observing) is not necessarily a deal breaker.

For example, did you know that the Gospel of Luke explicitly points out that there have been many other accounts?  (I just submitted this to Copernicus as evidence that the postulation of proto-gospels isn't actually something that bothers me and conservative scholars).  This is actually how it begins:

"Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.  Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."  Luke 1:1-4

So in fact it would appear that there were quite a few 'depositions' and 'statements' available as underlying data.  Luke is aware of this and seeks to be a compiler and sorter of that information.  His account is a sort of 'bottleneck' but not in a detrimental sense.  He would be like the detective gathering the witness accounts and/or like the court stenographer passing along what he had heard.

And if the modern Jesus Seminar type scholars are right, there are all sorts of source documents that they feel they can derive.  They invent them often enough to escape various uncomfortable conclusions, but I certainly agree that there was stuff floating around (I can explain what my objections are if you like).

 If liberal scholars are out there arguing that all of these docs did exist, you especially (since you've said you think it wise to defer to them) should not be entertaining the notion that we have bottlenecks here.  We certainly have pipes.  What we don't have... actually in hand... are the underlying documents.  Sure that might be nice, but we have to ask the question- just how important is it that we have them if we feel we have a proper and thorough setting forth of the main salient points?  Like for example in Luke/Acts?

(Remember, Luke and Acts are both written by the same fellow.  Acts can be thought of as Luke part 2).

We also have to point out that ancient standards are not the same as today.  The historians didn't think it important to cite their references, for example.  They didn't think it important to gather statements and depositions and retain them.  So we should be careful we don't hold the Bible we don't hold to other ancient historical accounts.  But note this big thing:  the ancients didn't have that standard, but in fact the Bible in many places does cite its sources and despite the fact that ancient standards were different, Luke, for example, relies on 'statements and depositions.'  In some respects, they were ahead of their times.

I was wondering if you were going to respond to me.  :)

We have two issues here.  Let's say miracle x was witnessed by 500 people.  That would be an epistemological pipe, especially in comparison to one witnessed only by one.  In this regard, you are making a categorical mistake, because with Jesus we will see that there were for some miracles 2,000 and more witnesses and participants.

By that standard, though, I would doubt any religion gets rejected on epistemological pipe / bottleneck status.  For example, Mormonism has signed statements by primary sources claiming to have witnessed angels collecting the golden plates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates#Witnesses_to_the_plates

The Three Witnesses

Its killing me to stay away from this tier stuff.  But if you're interested in trying to figure out where you're going wrong, a friend reminded me of the fact that your view on this would be categorized as a heretical view of God, that is... Monism.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism

I give wikipedia just a little leeway.  It does a fair job on Monism and also panENtheism, also listed.  Note this quote on the monism page: 

Monism is to be distinguished from dualism, which holds that ultimately there are two kinds of substance, and from pluralism, which holds that ultimately there are many kinds of substance.

Monism is often erroneously seen in relation to pantheism, panentheism, and an immanent God.

Emphasis mine.  Anyway, as much as I've wanted to jump in on that, that's all I'm going to say for now.  That you've come as far as you have is an improvement.  You will recall that I said your model was a great start... but you haven't arrived until after you've correctly approximated the actual Christian perspective.

The witnesses appear to have seen a vision of the plates, not the plates.  And one of them later is alleged to have denied it.  By all means, examine the Mormon story.  It becomes very clear that it relies heavily on Smith for all of its important points.  And... where are the plates today?  Convenient, don't you think?

Very convenient.  I'm trying to figure out your pipe / bottleneck thing.  Obviously, I find even the primary accounts by the 11 witnesses to be bunk.

I don't know where you got this nonsense about as late as 130 AD.  Even your own reference puts 100 as the latest.

Sure, I'll buy that.  I'm not the expert.  I got it from the earlychristianwritings.com website, I think.

If you are living and dying by 'consensus' you have actually put Luke's reliability on firmer ground.  In 85 AD he is writing about an event that is not more distantly removed than a 1990's historian's effort in talking about world war 2.  He has the advantage, just like a historian in the 90s, of having access to living witnesses- which most historians would die for, actually.  Not only does Luke himself say that there are other written accounts to work with- just like historians working on ww2- but it is a point of contention that in fact it can be determined that Luke relied on a particular one... Q.

You didn't offer a date for Q.  But if the synoptics, including Mark, rely on Q and you have an early date within your own reference for Mark at 68 AD, that puts Q even earlier, well within 20-30 years of the events.

Sure.  So you have Mark about 30 years after Jesus died (37ish, right ?), with a sayings document (my understanding of what Q is thought to have been.)

Your argumentation, especially your 'consensus' argumentation, has effectively put you into a position where you must acknowledge the existence of a written, pre-70 AD source.

Mark is considered what, 65-80 ?  or 68-73 by wiki ?  Sure.  So we have a first document, written from oral stories (and possibly a sayings document Q), which ended after Mark 16:8.  People decided to exaggerate and expand it, adding some post-resurrection appearances.  In Matthew and Luke the story got bigger, and in John it got even bigger.

Wow.  What a good read.  Learned some important info... again, as usual.

Quote

But you still did not answer my challenge to prove this more limited consensus.

I would doubt that you will accept any source I cite. But, anyway [site links]....

The method I demonstrated was not going to one or two (or twenty) hand-chosen sources. I said: Use these search terms (early+date+gospels), and these search terms with an opposite word (late+date+gospels), take an equal number straight off the top of both lists, and count if they have concensus. Selecting only sites (however many) that show what you want is not a way to prove consensus.

If I take two pieces of bread and put some peanut butter on them, I have not caused anything to begin to exist. I have assembled a sandwich.

So far, we used the term begin to exist in different ways. If you put peanut butter on bread and put 2 slices together, you caused a sandwich to begin to exist. The bread and peanut butter existed, but the sandwich did not exist before. Similarly, there is consensus among scienticsts that this universe with it's laws, only started existing at the big bang.

What methods lead you to believe that a being can cause something to begin to exist ?

You have seen beings cause something to begin to exist. Most people do not keep on drawing, but as a preschooler you probably caused a few crayon drawings to exist. Carpenters cause furniture to exist that did not exist before, etc.

There are plenty of plausible explanations. None of them have been demonstrated or accepted as the explanation for how things happened. It is, however, one of biology's most worked on problems.

None of them plausible enough to count, for the Origin of life foundation, as " a highly plausible mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life." The foundation  probably regard the "plausible explanations" in your link as very ad hoc, and not plausible enough yet. Or perhaps they do not find them "consistent with empirical biochemical, kinetic, and thermodynamic concepts" as delineated. Perhaps this link ( http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/004/9.38.html ), with a bit of material from the book "The edge of evolution" would show something of this. Michael Behe says: "In short, complexes of just three or more different proteins are beyond the edge of evolution." In other words, if it's alive and smaller than a cell, then science is pretty much clueless concerning its origin." He calls a lot of statements concerning evolution "just so stories." In other words, he calls them ad hoc. (I'll point out myself that Behe, a lot more knowledgable than I, would disagree with something I said here about macro-evolution. But the statement of mine he disagree with was not a central point. The central point I was busy with at the time was that evolution tells many ad hoc stories on some points. That Behe says as well- much better than I can.) This lack of knowledge of a mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions, despite it being one of biology's most worked on problems for very long, is enough reason to call these stories you call "plausible" quite ad hoc.

I don't know what Gould knows.

What are you talking about?

You see. About some things you do even know what the objections are, or why people find the explanations ad hoc. No wonder you cannot see that there are ad hoc stories in evolution.

Quote

And "looking at things as a whole" is not an opposite of "a two-tier way of seeing." What if the whole is a two-tiered reality? ...

You are seeing my point, maybe. You can artificially make a distinction for the aquarium where the things outside the aquarium are miracles or supernatural and the things inside are natural. But it doesn't do anything beyond arbitrarily label things a certain way. Using empirical observations, you can arrive at an explanation of (at least much of) both the inside and outside of the aquarium as one system.

Yes, we can call it parts of one system,(that is acceptable terminology for me). If we use the aquarium analogy, a fish clever enough to understand something of his fellow fish and his water will know less about humans than of his own species. It is even possible that he lives far enough from a large aquarium's glass sides never to have seen a human. Still, he belief they exist because other reliable fish tell him they saw them. And if the beings outside the aquarium act in a way unpredictable to the fish, (perhaps because they are much smarter and have more concerns than just the aquarium, where the fish think of everything in aquarium terms?), fish can only say ("write down") what they have experienced from humans without making a science of predicting what they will do.

Quote

But you study a living, sentient being, who can choose where and whether he wants to interact, in a different way from neutrinos or quantum events

. If he chooses to interact rarely or never, I doubt we would be able to gain very much reliable information.

"If he chooses to interact ... never" is not on the table. We say he chooses to interact. You probably think he do not exist- not that he exist and choose never to interact. "If he chooses to interact rarely ..." is relative. You can have a lot of reliable info on say, an aunt who visits once every six months. We can have "very much reliable information" on someone we interact with "rarely." (Taking into account the relative nature of both "very much" and "rarely")

If you have no known mechanism for some observation, proposing a new being AND no mechanism doesn't really help any.

There is the known mechanism of historical writing here. We know several reasons -from history, from human nature, that makes these historical documents more likely. (We also know some things that make them less likely, I know.) It would seem that the gospel writers wrote down what they saw (Matthew and John), and what the people they talked to saw. (Mark and Luke.) 
Your own sources:

* Mark: c. 68

The method I demonstrated was not going to one or two (or twenty) hand-chosen sources. I said: Use these search terms (early+date+gospels), and these search terms with an opposite word (late+date+gospels), take an equal number straight off the top of both lists, and count if they have concensus. Selecting only sites (however many) that show what you want is not a way to prove consensus.

If you can find a way to limit google results to historian's scholarly journal articles, I'm all ears / eyes.

Quote

If I take two pieces of bread and put some peanut butter on them, I have not caused anything to begin to exist. I have assembled a sandwich.

So far, we used the term begin to exist in different ways. If you put peanut butter on bread and put 2 slices together, you caused a sandwich to begin to exist. The bread and peanut butter existed, but the sandwich did not exist before.

And what is the sandwich other than the bread and peanut butter re-arranged ?

But, sure, I'll bite.  What did God assemble the universe out of (cause the universe to begin to exist) ?

Similarly, there is consensus among scienticsts that this universe with it's laws, only started existing at the big bang.

What ?  No.  Not even close.

The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe whose primary assertion is that the universe has expanded into its current state from a primordial condition of enormous density and temperature.

All the stuff was very close to each other, in one small volume, and expanded outward from there.  Even if you assume everything was packed in so tightly that it represented a singularity, the singularity is considered part of this universe.  The Big Bang describes a period of history of the universe, possibly a beginning of space-time, possibly not.

Perhaps this link ( http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/004/9.38.html ), with a bit of material from the book "The edge of evolution" would show something of this. Michael Behe says: "In short, complexes of just three or more different proteins are beyond the edge of evolution." In other words, if it's alive and smaller than a cell, then science is pretty much clueless concerning its origin." He calls a lot of statements concerning evolution "just so stories." In other words, he calls them ad hoc. (I'll point out myself that Behe, a lot more knowledgable than I, would disagree with something I said here about macro-evolution. But the statement of mine he disagree with was not a central point. The central point I was busy with at the time was that evolution tells many ad hoc stories on some points. That Behe says as well- much better than I can.)

Behe would disagree with you over many things.  He also accepts universal common descent, including humans being part of the ape family.  In any case, his views have little merit, as he routinely claims observed phenomena to be impossible or unobserved.  Behe's fellow professors in his university department have disassociated themselves from his views for good reason.

You see. About some things you do even know what the objections are, or why people find the explanations ad hoc. No wonder you cannot see that there are ad hoc stories in evolution.

Come up with specific questions and I'll give specific answers.  I hate crevo debates, and am unfamiliar with your short-hand. 
 

Yes, we can call it parts of one system,(that is acceptable terminology for me). If we use the aquarium analogy, a fish clever enough to understand something of his fellow fish and his water will know less about humans than of his own species. It is even possible that he lives far enough from a large aquarium's glass sides never to have seen a human. Still, he belief they exist because other reliable fish tell him they saw them. And if the beings outside the aquarium act in a way unpredictable to the fish, (perhaps because they are much smarter and have more concerns than just the aquarium, where the fish think of everything in aquarium terms?), fish can only say ("write down") what they have experienced from humans without making a science of predicting what they will do.

Sure.  So how much will the fish get right, given their lack of intelligence and lack of observations ?  Very, very, very little.

"If he chooses to interact ... never" is not on the table. We say he chooses to interact. You probably think he do not exist- not that he exist and choose never to interact.

True, but I fully admit that if he existed and never interacted it would look exactly the same. 

"If he chooses to interact rarely ..." is relative. You can have a lot of reliable info on say, an aunt who visits once every six months.

That's a difficult analogy, because much of the information about the aunt would actually come from interacting with other people continuously in the meantime.  (Head on a neck from shoulders, probably two legs, two arms, two eyes, male or female, etc.)

We can have "very much reliable information" on someone we interact with "rarely." (Taking into account the relative nature of both "very much" and "rarely")

Probably too relative to be meaningful, but anyway:  OK.  How ?  Whatever the reason for the Pioneer anomaly, it is a rare interaction.  What is causing it ?  With little data to infer from, I don't see how you can find out very much.  You are claiming otherwise.

Quote

Quote

If you do not exclude the possibility of a higher being outside your system right from the start, there comes a time when "this was done by a being from outside this system" becomes the more plausible explanation.

If you have no known mechanism for some observation, proposing a new being AND no mechanism doesn't really help any.

There is the known mechanism of historical writing here.

You switched meanings mid-stream.  If we have an observation that we can't explain by any mechanism of which we are aware, then proposing "this was done by a being from outside this system" with (still) no mechanism doesn't do anything.  In both cases you have "how? dunno."  Just in the "this was done by a being from outside this system" you have added an additional being.

Bias can be demonstrated in your sources: Only on Matthew is it mentioned that "some conservative scholars argue for a pre-70 date."  That gives an impression that no scholars argue for a pre-70 AD date for the others. (It is fairly common among scholars to argue for an early date for all gospels except John. There are even a minority who would date John pre-70.)

Well, show me historians (not Christian theologians) who date the gospels to these dates.

An unbiased mention of early dating would at least say "some conservative scholars argue for a pre-70AD date for Matthew, Mark and Luke." But even then, your own sources (as snt Johnny pointed out), biased away from early dating, claim that at least two gospels have been written in the lifetime of witnesses, using eyewitness accounts and available written material.

They may or may not be using eyewitness accounts.  They are believed to have been written in Greek.

The quote- from benjdm's sources - put Mark at 68-73 AD. If Jesus died 37ish (benjdm's estimate), that is about like a late seventies or very early eighties account of WW2.

Exactly!  So if an anonymous American writes down a story in English in the late 1970s with a French resistance leader who had his head blown off and put it back on and kept on fighting, killed 5 Germans with a look, and fed an entire battalion with one ration, and claimed to be a prophet of the GKM, is that sufficient to accept the account ?  Hell, even if it's an eyewitness account, you would probably be justified in thinking the account is exaggerated by followers of the resistance leader or made up out of whole cloth.

Why? Give some good reasons why the disciples would risk their lives to tell "exaggerations."

Dunno.  Why did Jim Jones' followers?  Why did the Hale-Bopp cult?  David Koresh's group?

According to historic documents, 10 of Jesus's original 12 disciples died for spreading the message.

There is a pretty big disconnect on what theologians think they can get out of these documents and what you can get out of them by historical method standards.  There's a pretty good (I think) summary of both sides in the William Lane Craig - Bart Ehrman debate about the historicity of the resurrection here.

And an earlier point that Bill made was that the disciples were all willing to die for their faith. I
didn

The upshot of this is that whether you go 'liberal' or go 'conservative' you're going to be left with the view that immediately following the life of Christ there were numerous accounts that sprang up.

True.

It is much more of a 'pipe' than a 'bottleneck' in terms of sources, though of course we are hampered by not having these accounts.   However, we can reasonably say that the shared material between the synoptics can reflect a shared source which we can deem to be earlier and presumably therefore more reliable.

Maybe true.  My understanding is that Q may have come before Mark or it may not.

We have not yet spoken about the Pauline epistles.  Though they do not give us as many details about the life of Christ, almost everyone, liberal or otherwise, agrees that they are very early, 50-60 AD.  Allegations that there was exaggeration as you suggest is greatly diminished by the fact that Paul attests to a resurrection from the dead not more than 15 years later and cites an early creed (1 Cor 15) that is believed to be not more than 3-5 years removed from Jesus' death.

You might say, "Oh, well, but things like walking on the water could have been added and embellished!"

The response, simply, would be that if you're already touting the claim that Jesus actually rose from the dead, something like walking on water and feeding five thousand such embellishments are hardly necessary.  In the legendary hypothesis, it would make sense if things like walking on water and healing sick people would be early while the extravagant and brazen claims would come later.  But here we see that it was the extravagant claim- the resurrection- that is the earliest to be attested to.

There is debate (semantic and I avoid it like the plague) about what Paul meant about Jesus being risen.  In any case, I don't see why exaggerations would occur in any particular order.

When I found Christianity unpersuasive as a youngster I thought the gospels were primary, firsthand, contemporary accounts.  You can find such accounts by invested followers for just about anything.

So... bottleneck/pipe.  Sources to work on that we've covered just this far... Q, Synoptic borrowed materials (pre-Matt/Pre Luke) that can be inferred from keeping just what they share, the Didache, Gospel of Thomas if you want it, Paul's early and accepted writings.   We are looking at about 5 different strands here, and it is my contention that this is starting to look much more a pipe than a bottleneck in terms of our sources available.

And you think... ?

Paul's writings at least would fit as a pipe to a revelation by a vision of Jesus, I think.  Synoptic borrowed materials = Q, I thought.  (I've seen >2 source hypotheses but have not read much about them.)  I never heard of the Didache until today.  After looking up, both Didache and Q are thought to have originally been written in Greek.

We have Jesus living 4ish BCE (I forget) - 37ish CE.  If anyone who was directly in contact with him wrote anything down, we don't have it.

It's your classification and I don't think we're disagreeing on much about the sources' dating or language in this thread.  If you want to call it pipes, I'm OK with that.

(I'm making two posts in a row here, because there is something that deserve an answer before making a concluding post in which I do not want to answer anything else.)

Quote

Quote

If you have no known mechanism for some observation, proposing a new being AND no mechanism doesn't really help any.

There is the known mechanism of historical writing here.

If we have an observation that we can't explain by any mechanism of which we are aware, then proposing "this was done by a being from outside this system" with (still) no mechanism doesn't do anything. In both cases you have "how? dunno." Just in the "this was done by a being from outside this system" you have added an additional being.

Well, according to the gospels, there was a character (Jesus), who claimed to be a messenger of one particular God. This character fulfilled scores of detailed prophesies in the Old Testament, a book about that particular God, on what the Messiah would be like. (http://biblia.com/jesusbible/prophecies.htm I don't ask you to believe everything on this list. I myself find verses on such lists that seems not to refer to Jesus in my mind. But make your own calculations. If they claim in the OT that the messiah would descent from Abraham, one in every how many people of the time when the prediction was made was a descendant of Abraham? If they predict He'd be preceded by a messenger, one in every how many people are preceded by one? Etc.) He said he will show the truth of what He says (among others, on the topics of being God and having the right to forgive sin) by raising again when He dies. He then dies in public and seemingly hundreds of people saw him alive again. His followers, who make no secret of their previous cowardice, is suddenly brave enough to tell this at any cost. They say it is because Jesus told them to do so.

Thus: The disciples cannot explain how a resurrection happened. But the resurrected man told them - before and after - that it happens because of God. It works, because God is stronger than death. The same way that I, if seeing a prototype of a little technological gadget I never encountered, would trust the inventor, who demonstrated it working, to explain how it works. They did not suddenly invoke something entirely new either - this character fitted in with lots of old prophesies.

(I know, you'd want to tell me that the gospels are not proved. But within the framework of the Bible, the idea that the disciples suddenly just thought up their own new idea to explain something that fits into no frame of reference is unacceptable - the unusual observation of a resurrection fitted in with what their old writings and leader told them would happen.  It was so wonderful that they still struggled to believe it, but they did not just say

At the risk of opening a moldy can of worms, here's a brief comment:

Why don't we see if we can come up with a list of what is acceptable to use (documents, methods, etc.) and try to see if we can find a consensus on that? If someone wants to add to the list later, we can debate that at the time.