The argument from precedent seeks to establish that a lot of the themes in Christianity were
also found in earlier ancient religions and that Christianity was therefore developed
from them.
Both minimal historicists and mythicists use this argument against triumphal historicists
or apologists in that they both hold that much of the mythology associated with Christianity
was derived from other religions but this is quite distinct from the specifically mythicist
argument from precedent that holds that not only the mythology of Jesus was based on precedent,
but the figure of Jesus was also.
The mythicism argument has two prongs.
One of these is to argue that the character of Jesus was copied from other gods of the
ancient world, rather than being based on a historical figure, and the other is that
the whole idea of dying and rising saviour God was very much in vogue with lots of examples
of which Jesus was simply the Jewish one.
Superficially, it is a powerful argument and consequently it is the leading argument used
in many mythicist presentations, perhaps most notable is the film Zeitgeist.
The idea is to present a number of ancient mythical figures and maintain that they had
similar characteristics to Jesus, such as being born on December 25, born of a virgin,
crucified and resurrected after three days etc.
Then point out that all of these mythical figures were just that, mythical, and then
ask, so why would Jesus not be mythical?
It's a beguiling argument and its counter is unfortunately tedious, complex and rather
esoteric.
To counter it therefore you have to put yourself in the unenviable position of arguing a complex
truth against a simple half truth, but that won't stop us here.
Note however that countering the argument from precident is not easy to do from the
pulpit or despatch box.
It is a job best suited to writing or the class room.
The flaw in the argument turns on data selection.
Let's suppose you want to make an argument that state-funded education improves literacy
rates.
You justify the claim with studies where you compare literacy rates between Communities
with and without state education; or before, during and after state education was provided.
You select the examples that illustrate the case best.
There are of course thousands of potential cases to study.
There are numerous countries and numerous education authorities within countries.
Furthermore there are numerous time frames during which state education was and was not
available.
You're obviously going to pick the case studies that illustrate your point.
Do a good job of this and you'll make a convincing argument, but there's a problem.
Take the opposite hypothesis that state education reduces literacy, now do the same process
on the same overall educational data and you'll come up with just as convincing an argument.
Why?
In both cases you have selected what data to present.
Let's suppose that there is in fact no relationship between state education and literacy.
The total amount of data available on education is vast.
There are thousands of possible case studies.
Random variation means that of these thousands of case studies, many will show little or
no correlation between state education and literacy, some will show a negative correlation
and some will show a positive one.
If you're putting one or other case in a debate, it's obvious what you going to do.
You going to select the cases that justify your position.
If on the other hand you are making an unbiased assessment of the situation, you'll have to
be particularly careful to avoid such selection either be taking in as broad an overall view
as possible or by choosing case studies by some means that avoids such selection effects
for example by random sampling.
In general, when we hear somebody justifying a position by citing a few examples out of
many possible cases, then they are making an argument from association, that is an argument
based on similar characteristics, and the immediate suspicion is that their position
is invalid and they have selected their examples because they fit their case.
So in the present debate, we know about hundreds of God's from the Ancient World.
When we hear an argument that half a dozen of these gods look similar to Jesus, the immediate
suspicion is that there is no association between other gods and Jesus but there is
significant random variation in the characteristics of God's.
Given a large enough number of gods to choose from, we will inevitably find some that look
similar to Jesus but this is by random chance rather than by any connection between them.
These God's have been chosen because they look similar to Jesus and while they do make
a convincing sounding argument, the apparently convincing argument is an artefact of the
presenter's data selection rather than being true.
So in the case of Jesus when looking at the argument from president we need to be able
to decide whether the arguments put to us are wholly or partly down to selection.
There are two key things which determine how likely this is.
One of these is the number of Gods we have to choose from and the other is the degree
of similarity between our chosen God and Jesus.
An artefact of selection is likely when the number of God's is large and the degree of
similarity is small, a true relationship is likely when the number of God's is small,
and the degree of similarity is large.
If we find a god who was born on December 25th, travelled around with 12 companions
during his ministry, performed miracles, was put to death to save us from sin, was raised
back to life on the third day and ascended into the afterlife; and we find that this
God Is one of a total of 6 possible candidates, then we can be pretty sure that the association
with Jesus is real rather than an artefact of selection.
If on the other hand we find a god who died for no particular reason, then came back to
life 3 years later, and then ended up in charge of the afterlife; and we find that this god
is one of several hundred possible candidates; then we're going to be pretty sure that this
association is an artefact of selection rather than being real.
And those of you who have read ahead will know that I am referring to Zalmoxis.
There are two other things that we need to consider and these are direct and circumstantial
evidence.
We know that Sherlock Holmes was based on Dr Joseph Bell and we know this because we
have Direct evidence in that Arthur Conan-Doyle told us so.
Had he not told us so we would still have circumstantial evidence because we know that
Joseph Bell was practising medicine at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary while Arthur Conan-Doyle was
a student there.
We also know that Joseph Bell had a particular approach to diagnosis of proposing several
diagnoses and then making specific observations to discriminate between competing possibilities.
Now thousands of other doctors around the world and down the ages have used this approach
and without this circumstantial evidence we wouldn't have much idea who Sherlock Holmes
was based on but with the circumstantial evidence we can narrow it down to those doctors practising
at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary during his training, making Joseph Bell the leading candidate.
So there are things that Sherlock Holmes has in common with Joseph Bell but they are rather
general and Joseph Bell is one of a large group of candidates for Homles' prototype.
Then we have circumstantial evidence.
This radically narrows the group of doctors we have to choose from because we now are
speaking about the group that shares that circumstantial evidence.
With this in hand, we can be confident that Joseph bell is the man.
In the case of Jesus and the argument from precedent we have no direct evidence linking
any of the gods to Jesus in that we have no record of anybody saying that Jesus was based
on any of them.
Actually that's not quite true.
There is abundant direct evidence for one god and that is Yahweh, but he is not one
of those put forward by mythicists in this argument.
Interestingly Robert Price does make a case for a mythical Jesus being based on Yahweh
but that is for another time.
By circumstantial evidence I mean evidence that suggest that the founders of christianity
knew of another god.
Maybe a founder had previously worshipped the other God, had family who worship the
god, or the god was worshipped in the first half of the first century in Judea, or in
the first half of the first century in the Roman Empire.
So in the cases of Sherlock Holmes and Jesus we can see how circumstantial evidence fits
into the assessment of evidence from association.
Circumstantial evidence has the effect of restricting the number of God's from which
we can select to those to whom the circumstantial evidence applies.
And this in tern means that an argument, for a given degree of similarity, is stronger
than it otherwise would be.
It is worth noting that the historicist version of the argument directed against apologists,
uses circumstantial evidence.
That is, evidence that the same populations progressed in their beliefs from other religions
to Christianity, and we know this to be historically true.
Aside from the obvious example of Judaism, The Roman populations first believed in Jupiter
and his pantheon, then solar invictus monotheism then a mixture of the two and then Christianity
and traces of all of these clearly appear in Christianity.
When looking at the question of similarity we need to be very careful about how specific
characteristics are define.
Take the example of “born of a virgin”.
Do women born of an earthly woman who has never had sexual intercourse with a man or
anything else?
Or do we mean born of an earthly woman who has never had sexual intercourse with an earthly
man but may have had sexual intercourse with a god?
Or perhaps we mean being born of anything that has not had sexual intercourse such as
perhaps a rock.
And those of you who have read ahead will know that I'm referring to Mithra.
The point is that whenever definition we choose we should apply equally to all the God's under
consideration.
What we should not do order is apply one definition to gods in general but another when applying
it to a god that seems otherwise promising.
I had intended to make a single video about the argument from precedent starting with
this introductory section and then going on to look at some of the gods involved.
You'll be relieved to hear that I change my mind.
It's been quite enough tedium for one video.
So I'll leave it to the next video to start looking at the gods involved.
But at least we have an idea of the method to apply.
The essential facts we need to judge a potential president are firstly the similarity between
that God and Jesus, and secondly the number of Gods who share the same circumstantial
evidence.