Well, if we can have a genuine discussion about this ....
I would like that. I was enjoying our conversations, actually. This thread has gone downhill fast..
OK, good. So lets keep it that way
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... the precise answer is "no", I would not agree that "such a definition of evidence invalidates almost every ancient historical event and character", because first of all I did not try to do anything so specific or precise as offering a universal definition of what "evidence" actually is.
My point is this: a LOT of historical records are nothing more than someone reporting about someone else or some event that we otherwise have no evidence for. If we're to interpret such evidence as one for "belief about" rather than "existence of" such a person or event, then I would say we should do it for all such things, not just Jeebus.
OK, well we are inevitably just going over the same ground covered in my previous post. But I‘ll try to put it in different terms ...
... in the case of the bible we are not actually talking about "historical records". We are talking only about religious devotional writing, most of which is simply presented as preaching of religious beliefs in the supernatural.
Whether any actual historical records, i.e. not religious eulogies to heavenly beliefs, should also be described only as "beliefs", depends on what was written. If those historical records only ever came from authors who themselves had not known any of the events, but who said that other unknown people of the past had once believed that a vast string of supernatural events was actually true, and that all readers should accept that as fact taken upon un-evidenced faith, then any "historical records" like that certainly should be described as no more than the writers un-evidenced superstitious beliefs.
And secondly, for many important figures in history we do have much more than anonymously written religious beliefs about a figure that nobody had ever met.
Of course ! As I said "most", not all.
And even in the cases where famous figures are known from little more than the sort of writing that we have for Jesus, those other figures are nowhere near as directly important as Jesus is to the daily lives of virtually everyone on this planet, ....
I think this was the crux of our disagreement in the past. Although the relative importance of Jesus historically should certainly influence our desire to know the truth about the biblical claims (magical or otherwise), in the sense that believe in him has had quite an impact in history, it shouldn't influence the logic of what we consider evidence about historical characters. In other words, the standard should be the same for all such characters.
Which other important figures in ancient history are believed to be real, on the basis of evidence as poor as the biblical writing about Jesus?
As I just tried to show, the bible really is the only known original source for any mention at all of a figure named Jesus being the claimed messiah of OT prophecy.
But the biblical writing is -
1. completely anonymous
2. from authors who never even tried to claim that they had ever known Jesus
3. who were apparently repeating earlier legend obtained from other unknown anonymous sources
4. where those unknown anonymous sources claimed that Jesus was witnessed to be overtly supernatural on almost every single page in almost everything he ever did.
5. and where there is no other independent evidence of any kind for Jesus, i.e. -
i. no physical remains of any kind
ii. no contemporary writing by Jesus himself
iii. no contemporary writing by anyone who ever claimed to have met Jesus
iv. no official records of any kind ever mentioning anyone called Jesus
But where on the contrary -
vi. it has been shown beyond all doubt that the biblical writers were certainly taking their Jesus stories from what had been written centuries before in the OT.
Which other important figures in history, are seriously claimed by historians, to have been most probably real upon evidence as poor as that, and with no other independent evidence at all?
IOW - it does not really matter if Pythagoras actually existed ... what matters is that one or more philosophers around that early date certainly did produce various philosophical ideas as well as a mathematical theorem which we know today as “Pythagoras Theorem”..
Again, as a matter of consistency, would the existence of Jesus also not matter, if we focus on his "philosophy" ? I disagree, of course, but if I were to agree that the existence of Pythagoras doesn't matter, I would have to agree to the same about Jesus..
If I understand you correctly - then Yes ... if all we were talking about, and all that the current day worldwide Christian church claimed, was to say that although Jesus may never have existed, the church and Christians were in fact only ever concerned with the biblical writing as a guide for living a good and charitable life, then yes, we would in that case only be talking about whether or not there was ever a written bible with people called Christians who believed it's stories in the 1st century ... and no sceptics here are claiming that the bible never existed or disputing that there were religious followers in the first few centuries who we now call "Christians" ... none of that is in dispute.
What is in dispute is whether or not the biblical writing is credible evidence of reliable historical fact in what it's unknown authors said about the existence of an unknown un-evidenced messiah called Jesus. That's what is in dispute.
And the comparison which HJ people so often make to figures such as Pythagoras, is not a valid comparison, because as I just tried to explain - it does not matter if Pythagoras really was the one and only real individual responsible for Pythagorean Philosophy and/or Pythagoras Theorem. Because one or more real living individuals certainly did produce that particular philosophy and that particular theorem at a very early date around the time claimed for Pythagoras ... so those are real remaining tangible things which can be shown to have been produced by someone at that early date.
But if we are to compare that to the biblical writing about Jesus, then what that analogy shows is that it similarly does not matter if Jesus was a living person who was responsible for the religious "philosophy" (if it could ever be called a "philosophy") given in the bible. What in that case would matter, and what is not in dispute here by anyone, is only that some individuals certainly were responsible for writing those gospels and letters which comprise the bible ... that is not in any dispute by anyone, i.e. - the gospels and the letters certainly do exist and certainly were written by someone at an early date in the first few centuries AD. But that is a million miles from being any kind of evidence that Jesus himself was responsible for any of those stories in the biblical writing.
However, having said that - I would agree that the whole concept of "evidence" is problematic, at least in the following sense - if we say that A is truly evidence of the existence of B, then we are implicitly requiring that B is in fact true. Because, as I think others pointed out re. your "bloody knife" analogy (I did not actually see your post with the analogy), you cannot have genuine evidence of the truth of something that itself turns out to be untrue. ..
That's one way of seeing things (which I disagree with, but for the purposes of this discussion, let's agree to it.) However since you do not know the truth value of the claim or hypothesis, how do you evaluate if something is evidence or not ?..
OK, well any of us can always have different opinions. But as I have tried to explain - if a claim turns out to be entirely untrue, then it's literally impossible for any claimed evidence to be actually evidence of the truth of the untrue claim.
For example if it's claimed that the moon is made of cheese, and the claimed evidence is that it appears to have the correct yellow colour of cheese, then if (and only IF,...written in maths as "IFF") it is later decided that the moon is in fact not made of any cheese at all, then it was untrue to claim that it's yellow colour was indeed evidence of the moon being made of cheese.
What appears to be confusing people here is that the yellow colour of the moon is indeed "evidence". But it is not evidence that the colour was due to cheese ... it was not evidence of the particular claim which was being made.
As I say, if you want to relate that to the biblical writing as evidence of Jesus, then - what appears in the biblical writing is certainly "evidence", but it is only evidence of what it's authors believed about Jesus from other earlier unknown un-evidenced sources. It's not actually evidence of Jesus known to any of those biblical authors ... it's only evidence of their religious beliefs in earlier ancient legends of Jesus ... and where those ancient legends are themselves un-evidenced in respect of Jesus being known to any of those earlier unknown sources ...
... but where there is if fact a very well known earlier source!, ...and that is the OT. That was certainly being used by the gospel writers as a source for creating their Jesus stories.
OK, I hope that explanation is not too obscure, too convoluted, or too difficult to follow. But just to relate that directly to the issue of Jesus ...
No, it was clear. I simply disagree that testimony in court isn't evidence. I think that all of it is evidence. Some of it support guilt, the rest does not, and it is the preponderance of evidence which will determine the verdict (in theory). I think it should be the same here.
Well you'd be wrong on that point as a matter of fact. What is produced in court as witness statements, is "evidence", but it's not necessarily evidence of that which is being claimed. E.g., DNA evidence offered by an expert witness is indeed evidence of something, e.g. evidence that somebody's DNA was present at the crime scene, but it is not literally evidence that the defendant was indeed guilty of the crime. It's a matter for the jury, having heard that expert testimony about the DNA results, to decide on subjective grounds whether or not that DNA testimony should be judged to be genuinely evidence of that which is being claimed, i.e. that the defendant is thereby "proven" guilty to their satisfaction.
The point is that you have distinguish carefully and clearly between what is “evidence” of some sort about something, vs. whether or not that particular evidence is in fact evidence of that which is being claimed.
And in the case of the biblical writing, what is offered there as evidence in the stories of Jesus, is only in fact evidence of the un-evidenced religious beliefs in Jesus expressed by the unknown writers who were taking their beliefs from what other earlier unknown people were thought to have once believed. That is not any kind of evidence that the beliefs were true ... it’s just evidence of a chain of un-evidenced religious legendary beliefs ... beliefs that are in fact now known to have been “copied” from various parts of the OT
