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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   5440 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for January 2023

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

This month we have another special AAQC recognition for @drmanhattan16. This readthrough of Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality garnered several AAQC nominations throughout the month:

Part 1 – The History of Transgenderism

Part 2 – The Causes and Rationalization of Transgenderism

Part 3 – How Transgenderism Harms Women And Children

Part 4 – How Transgenderism Took Over Institutions And How Some Women Are Fighting Back

Part 5 – Conclusion and Discussion

Now: on with the show!

Quality Contributions Outside the CW Thread

@gattsuru:

@Rov_Scam:

@OracleOutlook:

@popocatepetl:

@AmrikeeAkbar:

@urquan:

@Chrisprattalpharaptr:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@erwgv3g34:

@ymeskhout:

@aiislove:

@faul_sname:

@throwaway20230125:

Contributions for the week of December 26, 2022

@FiveHourMarathon:

@dr_analog:

Contributions for the week of January 2, 2023

@FiveHourMarathon:

@Rov_Scam:

@JhanicManifold:

@screye:

@problem_redditor:

@veqq:

@daezor:

@LacklustreFriend:

Contributions for the week of January 9, 2023

@naraburns:

@huadpe:

@Stefferi:

@FCfromSSC:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@Dean:

Contributions for the week of January 16, 2023

@Dean:

@ControlsFreak:

@Stefferi:

@DuplexFields:

@ymeskhout:

@strappingfrequent:

@doglatine:

Contributions for the week of January 23, 2023

@gattsuru:

@TracingWoodgrains:

@arjin_ferman:

@vorpa-glavo:

@Amadan:

Contributions for the week of January 30, 2023

@gattsuru:

@TracingWoodgrains:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

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Secure Signals is applying the standards of a modern criminal investigation rather than of history. In particular, the level of evidence that is required to convict someone. A person who goes missing under suspicious circumstances is sufficient to consider the possibility of homicide, and if you do have a body, you can absolutely say that a murder likely took place even if you can't prove the specific sequence of events leading to it to the standard that a court would require in order to convict a suspect.

In contrast, in the study of history, we often are required to use slim evidence in order to conclude anything at all, and the further you go back, the less evidence. For example, I've read that Hannibal is not referenced by any primary source, nor by any known source at all until at least several decades after he died. (This is sometimes given as a contrast to Jesus, for whom we have several different records within a few decades of death, by people who allegedly knew him personally, which is fairly unheard of for a regular person from 2000 years ago, and so by historical standards, it is considered quite likely that a historical Jesus did exist. You can object to this standard--but then you should probably be rejecting everything we allegedly know about history prior to the year 2000 or so, rather than quibbling over the details of one particular event).

For example, they write:

The Holocaust is the only controversy where you can just list a name, Date of Birth, "some sort of police document" and then claim that she was murdered without any factual basis.

This is probably more evidence than we have for the existence of victims of most historical atrocities, including the Holodomor, Rwandan Armenian Genocide (not sure how I made that mistake), Rape of Nanking, the Belgian Congo, deaths of slaves in the Western Hemisphere, murder and invasion of Native Americans, Gengis Khan's pillaging, etc. Maybe they think we shouldn't believe any of those happened either, but it certainly is not the case that the Holocaust is being held to unusual standards.

I think this is a great instance where Bayesian reasoning is helpful: If the Holocaust happened pretty much as claimed by most historians, then what evidence would you expect to still exist and have been found? Would you expect lots of detailed records to have ever existed for most people in that time period? Would you expect them to survive the war? On the flip side, if it didn't happen, would you expect any of the evidence that faul_sname points out in his comments? Standards for scientific journals or criminal trials exist for a reason, but that doesn't mean that those standards have to apply to every question.

I think the "Christ myth" example is a good analogy. People who maintain that Jesus never existed require a level of evidence that would also disqualify them believing in the vast majority of figures of Classical antiquity; yet for some reason they never extend that skepticism to Alexander or Hannibal (or my namesake, Fabius Maximus).

Originally much of the arguments against Jesus' existence centered on Pontius Pilate, who as a Roman governor would be the type of person you would expect to show up in the historical record regardless, and yet when he subsequently did so it was only in the context of his relation to Jesus. Therefore if no Pilate, no Jesus. Again, nevermind that it wasn't exactly uncommon for Roman officials to slip through the cracks of history, and if one were to require multiple independent mentions to justify the belief that a given Roman official existed you'd start running out of them fairly quickly. Luckily though a series of archaeological finds in the 1940s-60s unearthed various other contemporaneous evidence of Pilate's role as Roman governor of Judaea and that particular argument got put to rest.

Of course to this only shifted higher the burden of proof for Jesus' existence, because the root of the argument is based in its rhetorical utility against organized religion, not its factual merit.

I think the "Christ myth" example is a good analogy. People who maintain that Jesus never existed require a level of evidence that would also disqualify them believing in the vast majority of figures of Classical antiquity; yet for some reason they never extend that skepticism to Alexander or Hannibal (or my namesake, Fabius Maximus).

This is what rank and file Reddit atheists might say, but arguments of top Christ mythers are more substantial.

You are right they are rejected by mainstream ancient historians as strongly as Holocaust revisionist takes are rejected by mainstream WWII historians or "ancient Egyptians invented light bulbs and airplanes" takes are rejected by professional Egyptologists.

Most "respectable" Christ myther today is Richard Carrier (genuine ancient history PHD, as he never forgets to introduce himself).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier#Celestial_Jesus

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55723528

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/21964522

TL;DR of his basic argument is

I think it is more likely that Jesus began in the Christian mind as a celestial being (like an archangel), believed or claimed to be revealing divine truths through revelations (and, by bending the ear of prophets in previous eras, through hidden messages planted in scripture). Christianity thus began the same way Islam and Mormonism did: by their principal apostles (Mohammed and Joseph Smith) claiming to have received visions from their religion’s “actual” teacher and founder, in each case an angel (Gabriel dictated the Koran, Moroni provided the Book of Mormon).

On this model, Christianity, as a Jewish sect, began when someone (most likely Cephas, perhaps backed by his closest devotees) claimed this “Jesus” had at last revealed that he had tricked the Devil by becoming incarnate and being crucified by the Devil (in the region of the heavens ruled by Devil), thereby atoning for all of Israel’s sins, so the Jerusalem temple cult no longer mattered, the sins of Israel could no longer hold back God’s promise, and the end of the world could soon begin. On this theory, Christians did not go looking for proof-texts after their charismatic leader died, but actually conjured this angelic being’s salvific story from a pesher-like reading of scripture, finding clues to the whole thing especially in the conjunction of Daniel 9, Jeremiah 23 & 25, Isaiah 52-53, and Zechariah 3 & 6. Because it solved a major theological and political problem of the time: how the world could be saved when God’s temple (and thus atonement for Israel’s sins) remained in the hands of a corrupt elite “obviously” rejected by God.

It would be several decades later when subsequent members of this cult, after the world had not yet ended as claimed, started allegorizing the gospel of this angelic being by placing him in earth history as a divine man, as a commentary on the gospel and its relation to society and the Christian mission. The same had already been done to other celestial gods and heroes, who were being transported into earth history all over the Greco-Roman world, a process now called Euhemerization, after the author Euhemerus, who began the trend in the 4th century B.C. by converting the celestial Zeus and Uranus into ordinary human kings and placing them in past earth history, claiming they were “later” deified (in a book ironically titled Sacred Scripture). Other gods then underwent the same transformation, from Romulus (originally the celestial deity Quirinus) to Osiris (originally the heavenly lord whom pharaohs claimed to resemble, he was eventually transformed into a historical pharaoh himself).

.......

Originally much of the arguments against Jesus' existence centered on Pontius Pilate, who as a Roman governor would be the type of person you would expect to show up in the historical record regardless

No, he would not.

Few people are aware how sketchy are our sources from ancient world, how big gaps are in our knowledge, and how well is history of province of Judea documented compared to the rest of Roman Empire.

For example, do you know who exactly was governor of Sicily (far more important and influential part of Roman Empire than some eastern desert shithole) at the time?

You do not, and neither do ancient historians, at least until some lucky find brings new dated inscription.

Few people are aware how sketchy are our sources from ancient world, how big gaps are in our knowledge, and how well is history of province of Judea documented compared to the rest of Roman Empire.

I was paraphrasing the argument of Christ mythers. I'm well aware of the kind of knowledge gaps that exist in the Classical/Medieval period.

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